Magnesium – Not Just a Natural Laxative

Many people know that magnesium is an important natural laxative available in natural medicine. But in addition to its properties as an effective constipation medicine, it is also worth looking at magnesium’s role in helping prevent and alleviate both osteoporosis and arthritis. It is important to understand that it is magnesium’s deficiencies in the modern diet that may have caused these problems in the first place.

Why is magnesium so deficient in the typical Western diet

The reason is that an average person eats less magnesium rich foods (like seeds, grains, and green, leafy vegetables) than in the past. In addition to this, the processing of grains strips away much of the mineral content in the grain, which in turn leads to lower mineral levels in the food products made from processed grains. Finally, alcohol, sugar, and caffeine consumption lead to increased excretion of magnesium from the body through the urine. All of this together led the USDA to estimate that between 50-70% of the population doesn’t intake enough magnesium through food sources alone.

So why would this magnesium deficiency affect osteoporosis and arthritis?

You may think that calcium is the only mineral that affects these conditions, and in some ways that is correct. The problem is that too much calcium without enough magnesium (a situation many Americans find themselves in) can be more damaging than not having enough calcium in the first place. This is because without magnesium, calcium doesn’t absorb properly in the body. It can collect in the soft tissue of the body and cause arthritis instead of being properly absorbed into the blood and bones. Calcium can also cause chronic constipation.

Magnesium suppresses a hormone known as PTH, which draws calcium out of bones. Meanwhile, it stimulates the production of calcitonin, another hormone that brings calcium into the bones and prevents it from entering the soft tissue of the body. Without enough magnesium in the body (or with too much calcium), PTH will not be suppressed and one’s bones will lose calcium – causing osteoporosis in the bones and arthritis in the joints from the overabundance of calcium that is in the soft tissue.

What is the connection between magnesium and calcium?

While this line of reasoning shows that magnesium is essential to allow the body to utilize calcium, others point to the fact that overall calcium absorption can be lower when high levels of magnesium are present (i.e. the two minerals compete for absorption). But recent studies on rats administered higher doses of magnesium showed that while some decrease in calcium absorption was present, the rats demonstrated significantly higher rates of new bone formation as well as bones that were more resistant to breaking force (i.e. stronger). Perhaps this is because the magnesium helped the rats effectively utilize the calcium they had.

Magnesium as a natural laxative

All of this indicates that you should closely scrutinize your magnesium levels if dealing with osteoporosis or arthritis. If magnesium is deficient from the diet, other issues may become chronic. Constipation is one issue that is linked to magnesium deficiency and in that case, a natural laxative like StayRegular might offer constipation relief by helping to address your magnesium levels.

In addition to a special blend of magnesium to help balance the nervous system and allow for healthy colon movement, StayRegular’s quad action formula uses osmosis to draw water into the bowels, expanding fiber to move waste through the colon, and probiotics to feed the colon and allow for healthy intestinal contractions. StayRegular is a natural constipation remedy that uses magnesium as just one element of a holistic constipation treatment.