Kickas.org Forums Ankylosing Spondylitis General Discussion Helpful Tips magnesium for muscle cramps, etc.

now it could just be that i haven't had an episode since i started with the magnesium as my AM calf cramps and my whenever foot cramps are not all the time, but i've been taking just 250 mg of magnesium every day one of the times i take my citracal calcium / D pill, and been a few months, no muscle cramps since i started. maybe there really is something to be said for it. but i do wonder, why didn't i get these muscle cramps in the past and then as i got older and developed the inflammatory arthritis, then they developed.

anyway, magnesium for muscle cramps does seem to work.

as everyone here was telling me for the longest time.

i started taking it mostly to move my bowels along. seems to work for that as well. and the reason i hadn't taken it in the past, seemed to work too well for that before.

Hi Sue,
Regularly supplementing with some magnesium helps a lot with managing muscle cramps with me too. It seems to be better for me as a preventative treatment, than an emergency treatment while having a cramp though. I'm glad to hear the Magnesium has had a positive effect on you.

Between you and me (and whoever is reading this post), I have been feeling that modern day's food may be nutritious enough for for healthy people to survive on, but not always enough for the people with illnesses such as ours, especially when we have gastrointestinal complications.

According to Dr. Carolyn Dean, who wrote "The Magnesium Miracle", magnesium is used to detox our bodies of environmental poisons, pain meds and corticosteroids. Flouride in the water binds with magnesium to make it unavailable to us.

"Autoimmune disease may be the end stage of a buildup of toxicity along with a deficiency of nutrients, such as magnesium, that are designed to clear toxins form the body." p.178

"The body is not able to adequatley process junk food, with its dozens of chemical additives. It treats these chemical additives like foreign invaders and has to detoxify them in the liver. The intermediary metabolites are sometimes more toxic than the original, leaving the body hypersensitive and hyperimmune, sometimes turning on the body and creating autoimmune disease (such as multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis). Magnesium is depleted in the attempt to detoxify the body of these foreign chemicals." p.175

Our current culture seems to have an endless amount of ways that we can depleat magnesium from our bodies. Couple that with the fact that our food today has fewer minerals in it due to artificial, chemical fertilizers, and it is no wonder we just can't seems to get enough minerals through a healthy diet.

Hi all
I have a weird question, do you know if AS can cause you to have loose bowels, just for a bit now i literally have to run to the toilet..
I havent really been told much about AS just that it causes spine and sacroiliac joint pain.
Cheers Toria

Hi Toria,
Yes a wonderful part of AS is the loose bowl you will have good days and bad days. AS gets us in so many ways keep reading you will soon learn what we have to go through.

Kevin

hi james,

just counted the pills i have left in the bottle, realize i've been on the magnesium now for about 3 months without a cramp. think that's long enough to believe the magnesium has something to do with it. as i definitely didn't go that long between cramps before.

as for food, i really thought with all the veggies, fruits, nuts i ate, that i was getting plenty of magnesium, so really do think for some reason we just need more than the average person. maybe it is a digestion issue? maybe something else is going on?

glad magnesium helps you too!

i know for me that severe pain will cause my bowels to not function properly, i will not digest my food properly (i can see what i ate undigested) and then really loose bowels because of this. when i get the pain under control, the bowels turn around as well.

also, its common for people with spondyloarthropathies to have inflammation in the illeum which also leads to constipation, diarrhea, or IBS.

i do wonder too if we just need more magnesium than the average person?

no fluorinated water here, not much junk food, a diet high in fruits, veggies, beans, nuts. and i buy organic / pesticide free as often as possible. interesting topic to ponder though.

foods high in magnesium:

http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/magnesium

hi toria,

i notice that if i get 'thunder storms' aka lots of rumbling and sometimes loose stool AS pain follows. so thunder and lightning go together for me

Magnesium is a godsend in my opinion. I take a supplement called Natural Calm and it not only helps with muscle cramps but also with sleeping, and the old regularity. I started taking it before bedtime as a sleep aid and noticed the other improvements as nice side-effects.

Nothing beats it for a sleep aid. I'm off of melatonin entirely since starting on the mg/natural calm. Great stuff and glad to hear you're having good results.