Magnesium’s FDA Health Claim

Even though magnesium is responsible for 80% of known metabolic processes, and magnesium deficiency can masquerade at least 70 different health conditions, the FDA has allowed only ONE Qualified Health Claim to be made about magnesium. It can treat high blood pressure, so let’s squeeze as much juice out of that claim as we can.

What is Appropriate Wording?

Here’s the mealy-mouthed wording the FDA used to grant this “qualified” health claim. The FDA “does not intend to object to the use of certain qualified health claims regarding the consumption of magnesium and a reduced risk of high blood pressure (hypertension), provided that the claims are appropriately worded to avoid misleading consumers and other factors for the use of the claim are met.” You could drive a truck through the loopholes embedded in this text. How do you know what appropriate wording is and what is not?

The FDA announcement then further questioned the benefits of magnesium, saying, “Inconsistent and inconclusive scientific evidence suggests that diets with adequate magnesium may reduce the risk of high blood pressure (hypertension), a condition associated with many factors.”

I suppose a “qualified” health claim is better than no claim at all. However, even worse, the FDA says it’s all about the magnesium in diets and refuses to mention dietary supplements. This goes along with the FDA’s position that nutritional supplements are only recommended to treat nutrient deficiencies, not to treat disease. If you say nutrients treat disease, you make it a drug, and you must undergo billion-dollar clinical trials to “prove” its effectiveness and worthiness to make a health claim. The magnesium researchers who promoted the blood pressure health claim for magnesium did a decade’s worth of lobbying to get this “qualified” health claim on the books. So, bravo to them.

At the Point of Malpractice

Now, let’s examine what we know about magnesium’s ability to help hypertension and how this claim can relate to so much more.

Around the time I was doing research for the first edition of The Magnesium Miracle, Fox et al. published an excellent review citing 67 references. The investigators stated that three biologic mechanisms could potentially explain how magnesium helps treat hypertension and the epidemic of diabetes and high cholesterol.

1. Magnesium deficiency causes a dysregulation of the sodium-magnesium exchange, resulting in higher intracellular sodium and thus higher blood pressure.
2. A relatively low magnesium level creates an intracellular imbalance between calcium and magnesium, which results in increased spasms in the smooth muscle of arteries and, therefore, increased blood pressure.
3. Magnesium deficiency causes insulin resistance, which in turn causes hyperinsulinemia, resulting in hypertension, diabetes, and hyperlipidemia.

Fox and his team cite study after study showing the importance of magnesium in many chronic conditions. They report on studies using IV magnesium therapeutically in critical situations such as acute asthma, ventricular tachycardia, and eclampsia. They know all this, yet their only conclusion is to call for more funding and research. Their actual words are:

“Randomized controlled trials need to be done to see whether magnesium supplementation will ameliorate the debilitating effects of hypertension, diabetes, and hyperlipidemia, especially in minority populations. The clinical implications of replacement therapy, if successful, would have a profound effect on improving the population’s health.”

Yes, magnesium therapy would have a profound effect on improving the health of the population. Yet doctors aren’t encouraged to draw their conclusions from thousands of papers proving that magnesium is essential to life. Instead, they treat magnesium as if it were a drug to be positioned in never-ending randomized clinical trials. Personally, I think we have actually reached the point of malpractice to withhold this vital information from the public.

Jack’s Story

How do I know that magnesium deficiency is absolutely associated with hypertension, diabetes, and high cholesterol? Let me tell you Jack’s story. Jack is 60, and he goes to his doctor for his annual checkup, but he’s been under tremendous stress. The doctor finds that his blood pressure is a little high, probably from stress, which causes magnesium depletion. It’s been a little high in the past, so he is put on a diuretic drug. When he comes back for a follow-up, his pressure is higher. The doctor doesn’t know why, but it’s because the diuretic drives Jack’s magnesium even lower. His doctor thinks he’s caught Jack’s blood pressure early and has to get more aggressive. The doctor puts Jack on two more antihypertensive drugs. A month later, seemingly out of the blue, but because of lower levels of magnesium caused by all three drugs, his cholesterol levels are elevated, and so is his blood sugar. The doctor, therefore, puts Jack on a statin drug and a diabetic drug. Both those drugs drain the body of more magnesium. And so the story goes: as more and more magnesium is lost, the symptoms of magnesium deficiency escalate into full-blown heart failure. However, the real failure is because doctors fail to understand that they are causing magnesium deficiency heart disease. And that’s why doctors don’t think heart disease can be cured; they keep making it worse by giving more and more drugs!

Heart Disease Statistics

The American Heart Association Heart Disease and Stroke Statistic Report from 2015 finds that:

• Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the United States, killing over 375,000 people a year.
• Heart disease is the number one killer of women, taking more lives than all forms of cancer combined.
• Cardiovascular operations and procedures increased about 28 percent from 2000 to 2010, according to federal data, totaling about 7.6 million in 2010.
• About 735,000 people in the U.S. have heart attacks each year. Of those, about 120,000 die.

Hypertension statistics are just as depressing. Almost 80 million U.S. adults have high blood pressure. That’s about 33 percent of the population. About 77 percent of those are using antihypertensive medication, but only 54 percent of people taking drugs have their condition controlled.

The smooth muscles lining blood vessels can spasm and cause high blood pressure with insufficient magnesium and too much calcium. If cholesterol is elevated, which can also be due to magnesium deficiency, cholesterol can bind to calcium causing atherosclerosis in the blood vessels, worsening high blood pressure.

Have you taken your 600mg of picometer magnesium today?

Carolyn Dean MD ND
The Doctor of the Future