Anxiety can turn your life upside-down.
The worry. The thoughts swirling around like a record in your head. The feeling that the walls are closing in on you. You fear the worst for every situation, and build obstacles that interfere with your quality of life and willingness to do new things. And when those around you don’t even believe your anxiety is real, you start to wonder if you’re going crazy.
If you’re among the one-third of anxiety sufferers who are receiving treatment, your doctor has probably prescribed you anti-anxiety medications from the benzodiazepine family: Ativan, Valium, Librium, Xanax, or Klonopin. While they claim immediate relief, ‘benzos’ are addictive and very difficult to stop. Even the label says to only use for short-term use, but you may have been on them for years! When you do try to stop, your anxiety gets worse. Then you have to take another pill to just keep functioning.
While this seems like a very grim fate for anxiety sufferers, the good news is that anxiety disorders may be highly treatable.
What your doctor doesn’t want you to find out about is “The Anxiety Mineral,” that, when restored into your bloodstream, brain, and muscles can bring calm, relaxation, and alertness.
The Anxiety Mineral
The Anxiety Mineral is not a drug that will suppress your symptoms, instead it is a necessary cofactor that makes the body function properly.
Magnesium is required by over 700 enzyme systems in the human body. You need enough magnesium to make all these enzyme systems perform smoothly and to have sufficient magnesium tucked away in reserve, especially if you are susceptible to anxiety.
As I wrote in my Magnesium Miracle book:
When the adrenals are no longer protected by sufficient magnesium, the fight-or-flight hormones, adrenaline and noradrenaline, become more easily triggered. When they surge erratically, they cause a rapid pulse, high blood pressure, and heart palpitations. The more magnesium-deficient you are, the more exaggerated is the adrenaline release. Magnesium calms the nervous system and relaxes muscle tension, helping reduce anxiety and panic attacks.
In Chapter Three of The Magnesium Miracle, “Anxiety, Depression, and Sleep”, I open with the following question:
How do we graduate from being a calm person in control of our nervous system to an anxious, fearful individual? I think it’s due to a gradual, but chronic, decrease in magnesium reserves. When the body is stressed – and it can be for a dozen different reasons – our magnesium reserves dump this crucial mineral into our bloodstream, and we immediately become one of those people blessed with the ability to cope. We feel both calm and alert. Our friends and relatives think it’s just who we are, but it’s really how much magnesium we have in reserve.
If the stress continues and we don’t rest or replace our magnesium between episodes, our magnesium stores become depleted. Then, when you are faced with a stressor, the stress hormones (adrenalin and cortisol) are unable to elicit a magnesium response with its calming effect. In its place, adrenalin revs up your heart rate, elevates your blood pressure, and tenses your muscles in a fight or flight reaction.
That explains why many cases of anxiety are due to magnesium deficiency, and why almost all of the common anxiety triggers below are caused or made worse by a lack of magnesium.
10 Common Anxiety Triggers
When I wrote Atrial Fibrillation: ReMineralize Your Heart, I created a long list of AFib triggers. Now, I find myself listing many of the same triggers for Anxiety (each one of which may be due to magnesium deficiency or may cause magnesium deficiency), and each of these ultimately lead to shortness of breath, surging adrenaline, a racing heart, and fear.
Read this list of Anxiety triggers, and you will find the ones that most apply in your case. But don’t panic – you will soon realize that magnesium can eliminate most of these triggers.
1. Air pollution:
A BMJ article in 2015 analyzed data from 71,000 women and found an association between air pollution and anxiety.
The good news is that magnesium prevents bronchial spasm and can help clear toxins from the lungs. The ingredients in ReAline can assist the liver in detoxifying pollutants, including heavy metals.
2. Alcohol:
Drinking alcohol releases catecholamines from the adrenal glands – especially noradrenaline. Alcohol triggers the release of adrenaline stored in the heart. Plasma acetaldehyde, the main metabolite of ethanol, raises catecholamine concentrations in the heart muscle, acting as a heart stimulant. Alcohol directly, and the above metabolites, stress the heart, causing a racing heart that you may interpret as anxiety.
Alcohol withdrawal results in increased release of catecholamines. Alcohol excess is associated with hypertension. The residues of sulfites, pesticides, and fungicides found in some wines can trigger reactions in susceptible people.
Alcohol depletes magnesium, and the breakdown products of alcohol, such as acetaldehyde, require magnesium to be eliminated from the body. Alcohol also feeds intestinal yeast, resulting in yeast overgrowth and the production of 178 yeast toxins, including acetaldehyde.
3. Calcium:
Whatever lowers your magnesium levels can lead to symptoms of anxiety. Calcium supplements, a high dairy diet, and eating calcium-fortified food and drink (orange juice) can overwhelm your magnesium stores and lead to a relatively magnesium-deficient state. When you lower your calcium intake, you may find that your anxiety diminishes. Watch Dr. Andrea Rosanoff’s video, called “Calcium Magnesium Balance”, to see how the excitatory electrolyte calcium triggers the cell into excess activity in the presence of magnesium deficiency.
4. Coronary artery disease:
Having a diagnosis of CAD implies that you are suffering from magnesium deficiency and are subject to tension, irritability, anxiety, insomnia, and depression. Medically, the only treatment for plaque is statin drugs to decrease cholesterol. However, statins cause magnesium deficiency and many magnesium deficiency symptoms: muscle cramps, pain, stiffness, swelling, weakness, rhabdomyolysis (muscle inflammation and necrosis), tachycardia, anxiety, and depression.
Treating a magnesium-deficiency condition with drugs that cause more magnesium deficiency just doesn’t make sense, but that is exactly what is happening in modern medicine.
5. Dehydration:
Adequate hydration, with pure water, is essential for proper blood circulation and heart function. However, when we purify water these days, we lose most of the good minerals with the bad chemicals we are purifying, therefore hydration and remineralization go together.
I recommend drinking half your body weight (in lbs) in ounces of water and adding sea salt or Himalayan salt (1⁄4 – 1⁄2 tsp in every quart). Always carry your water bottle spiked with sea salt, magnesium, and a reputable multi-mineral solution with you.
Alcohol, coffee, and heavy exercise (including Hot Yoga) are all dehydrating, and they all cause magnesium deficiency. Attacks of vomiting and diarrhea can also be dehydrating and deplete your minerals. Magnesium deficiency can be caused by drinking mineral-depleted water, and drinking this water can lead to symptoms of anxiety.
6. Dental problems:
Lack of magnesium can cause the muscles of the face and jaw to go into spasm and cause tooth grinding, TMJ Syndrome, and jaw clenching. These are symptoms of tension and anxiety, but they are treated by dentists with medication and bite plates, even though they are caused by magnesium deficiency.
7. Diabetes:
One of the signs of diabetes is magnesium deficiency, so it’s no surprise that diabetes and anxiety are associated. According to the Canadian Diabetes Association, 14% of people with diabetes have generalized anxiety disorder and as many as 40% have some anxiety symptoms.
Diabetes increases the risk of high blood pressure and heart disease, and the drugs for each of these conditions can cause magnesium deficiency, making the diabetes and the anxiety worse. Elevated blood sugar does increase the heart rate, as well, which can be an anxiety trigger.
8. Electrolyte imbalance:
An imbalance of electrolyte minerals (magnesium, sodium, potassium, and calcium) can alter the way the heart conducts electricity. Many doctors prescribe potassium and calcium, tell their patients to avoid sodium, and totally neglect magnesium. As noted above, anything that diminishes magnesium can cause muscle tension, tachycardia, and symptoms of anxiety.
Magnesium, at a concentration ten thousand times greater than that of calcium inside the cells, allows only a certain amount of calcium to enter, in order to create the necessary electrical transmission, and then it immediately helps to eject the calcium once the job is done. Otherwise, if calcium accumulates in the cell, it causes hyperexcitability and calcification. Since allopathic doctors don’t regularly test for magnesium with an accurate blood test, they miss the importance of magnesium.
9. Heart disease:
The heart is one big muscle. The highest amount of magnesium in the whole body is found in the heart. When magnesium is deficient, the heart muscle can go into spasm, causing angina, a heart attack, or tachycardia, which can trigger an anxiety attack.
10. High blood pressure:
High blood pressure doesn’t cause anxiety, but anxiety and panic attacks can spike your blood pressure. Unfortunately, the 3-4 medications people are often given for high blood pressure cause more magnesium deficiency and the potential for more anxiety attacks.
By now, you can probably see that magnesium is a safe, natural way to treat anxiety and the important role it plays in regulating the many systems of the body that control these triggers.
NOTE: Magnesium can be used if you are on meds and along with a good diet, sleep and exercise, you may be able to wean off your meds. But, don’t just stop your meds and switch to magnesium. You must do this carefully under a doctor’s supervision.