If you don’t get enough of this mineral it could increase your risk for cardiovascular disease.

A lot of people may think that they need to completely change their life style to reduce their risk for cardiovascular disease, and theydon’t want to do that.

If you have an unhealthy lifestyle, I would absolutely recommend that you make changes, but sometimes you can actually reduce your risk for serious disease very easily.

The researchers in the following study show us an easy way to reduce the risk of death from coronary heart disease (Kieboom BC, et.al., 2016).

9820 participants, both men and women, were followed for an average of 8.7 years. The results showed that low serum magnesium was associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease and sudden cardiac death. It also accelerated atherosclerosis (increased thickness of the inner lining of the carotid artery wall) and affected the heart rate.

Getting deposits in the arteries are not good, but this did not explain the increased risk of dying, so there is even more to the beneficial effects of magnesium than this research can explain.

Magnesium’s ability to stop already established vascular calcification has been documented in a laboratory study and was associated with magnesium transport through the cell membrane (Montes de Oca A, et.al., 2014).

There are several studies showing that magnesium can reduce artery calcification. This one showed decreased arterial calcification as the magnesium intake increased when measured with Computed Tomography (Hruby A, et.al., 2014).

Magnesium is best absorbed in the form of an amino acid chelate and is not causing gastrointestinal irritation like magnesium oxide is known to do

References

Hruby A, O'Donnell CJ, Jacques PF, Meigs JB, Hoffmann U, McKeown NM, Magnesium intake is inversely associated with coronary artery calcification: the Framingham Heart Study. JACC Cardiovasc Imaging. 2014 Jan;7(1):59-69.

Kieboom BC, Niemeijer MN, Leening MJ, van den Berg ME, Franco OH, Deckers JW, Hofman A, Zietse R, Stricker BH, Hoorn EJ. Serum Magnesium and the Risk of Death From Coronary Heart Disease and Sudden Cardiac Death. J Am Heart Assoc. 2016 Jan 22;5(1).

Montes de Oca A, Guerrero F, Martinez-Moreno JM, Madueño JA, Herencia C, Peralta A, Almaden Y, Lopez I, Aguilera-Tejero E, Gundlach K, Büchel J, Peter ME, Passlick-Deetjen J, Rodriguez M, Muñoz-Castañeda JR. Magnesium inhibits Wnt/β-catenin activity and reverses the osteogenic transformation of vascular smooth muscle cells. PLoS One. 2014 Feb 25;9(2):e89525.

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