Diabetes Articles

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This page contains medical journal articles and/or doctors' commentaries on the role of mineral deficiencies and other factors in illness, and the value of minerals, vitamins, and a proper diet for healthy living.

Diabetes Articles...

We know that people with diabetes who have high blood sugar lose a lot more magnesium in the urine and, as a result, run the risk of magnesium deficiency," says Karen Kubena, Ph.D., associate professor of nutrition at Texas A&M University in College Station.

...the study last year by Richard Ames demonstrating that “…an abundant sodium intake may improve glucose tolerance and insulin resistance, especially in diabetic, salt-sensitive, and or medicated essential hypertensive subjects." [more]

Sweet Tooth
Health Sciences Institute e-Alert
November 3, 2003

Dear Reader,
Want to suppress your cravings for sweets? According to Western Research Laboratories, magnesium can help you do just that. In fact, one theory has it that women often crave chocolate and other sweets during menstruation because their magnesium levels are significantly lowered.

But reducing your desire for sweets is apparently just one of the ways that magnesium can help address type 2 diabetes.

In the e-Alert "It's Elemental" (10/21/03), I told you how a good intake of magnesium is essential to heart health. While researching information for that e-Alert I came across a study that's not exactly recent (in fact it's four years old), but still offers an important conclusion that anyone who has type 2 diabetes or a pre-diabetic condition needs to know about.

Intake & absorption

A team led by researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHU) designed a study to further explore previous findings that low serum magnesium levels are associated with a risk of type 2 diabetes.

As reported in the archives of Internal Medicine, researchers assessed six years of data on more than 12,000 subjects who participated in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study. Serum magnesium levels were recorded from blood tests, and at the outset none of the subjects had type 2 diabetes.

The ratio of white subjects to black subjects was about 3:1. Over six years, 8 percent of the white subjects and 14 percent of the black subjects developed diabetes. Among black participants, there was no significant association between low magnesium levels and diabetes risk. But among the white subjects there was a clear association. In fact, white subjects with the highest levels of magnesium had half the risk of type 2 diabetes compared to those with the lowest magnesium levels.

Although the discrepancy between whites and blacks was unexpected, researchers speculated that magnesium's protective mechanism was "overwhelmed" by the higher rates of type 2 diabetes among black subjects (a well-known phenomenon in the medical community). Blacks are also known to have more complications associated with diabetes than whites.

The JHU team also examined dietary information that showed no significant correlation between low dietary intake of magnesium and diabetes risk. And while that might seem at first like a paradox, remember that body stores of magnesium can be depleted in a number of ways. As I mentioned in last week's e-Alert, a high intake of starches, alcohol, diuretics and some prescription drugs (such as antibiotics) can increase urinary excretion of magnesium. And in addition to menstruation (as I mentioned above), stress can also contribute to magnesium depletion.

So while the foods you eat may be magnesium-rich, these depleting factors can easily starve your body of this essential mineral.

Benefits abound

So to quickly recap magnesium's potential benefits, both large and small:

* Helps prevent type 2 diabetes
* Helps prevent coronary heart disease
* Promotes bone flexibility
* Reduces the cravings for sweets that can contribute to the development of type 2 diabetes

And in the September e-Alert Dr. Spreen said that he also
uses calcium and magnesium to treat muscle cramps and bruxism (gnashing of teeth at night during sleep).

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