6. THE HEALTH OF THE NERVES
Think of all the jobs the nervous system must perform. Every
activity of life, from the respiration of a single cell, to a
gross motor function such as piloting an aircraft, is controlled
by the nerves.
Yet nutrition as it applies to the nerves is a sadly neglected
affair. Any schoolchild knows he needs plenty of protein for
muscle, vitamin C for healthy gums, and calcium for strong bones.
But ask him what foods are good for his nerves and chances are he
doesn't know. Fortunately, the fats, proteins, and vitamins that
are needed for healthy nerve tissue are fairly abundant in the
diet. However, one nutrient that recent research has found to be
lacking in the diets of most people, and which lack may be the
cause, of so much nervous illness, is magnesium. Information on, the essentiality of magnesium
to the nerves was published by
Penn and Loewenstein of Columbia University in Science (January, 1966), and
will be discussed in a later chapter. Taking advantage of new advances in electronic
measuring techniques, the scientists studied the electrical
conduction of currents by the nerves. Their most important
finding was that while calcium is the prime conductor of these
minute electrical currents, it is magnesium that maintains normal
levels of calcium in the system.
How does magnesium regulate calcium levels? Inside the body,
these two minerals are positively charged. When they come into
contact with negatively charged particles, an electrical current
is formed. It is believed that fatty acids comprising the major
portion of nerve tissue are negatively charged. It is for this
reason, then, that calcium and magnesium supplies must be
constantly renewed; without them, the flow of current by the
nerves cannot be maintained.
In, like fashion, a storage battery "works" only when a
positive and a negative electrode are present to maintain an
electrical current. When the positive plates become exhausted,
the battery is no longer any good. By this same mechanism, small
amounts of electrical currents flow from the calcium ion to the
negatively charged nerve lipids. When magnesium levels are low,
the calcium supply becomes exhausted, and in the absence of
adequate calcium, the nerve cells cease to function.
Calms the Nerves
Magnesium works in other ways to preserve the health of the
nervous system. By the twentieth century, doctors had learned
that magnesium injections exert a depressant effect upon the
nerves. In fact, one of the early uses of the mineral was to
induce sleep. It is significant that hibernating animals have
very high magnesium levels. Magnesium has also been shown effective in
controlling convulsions, in pregnant women, epileptic seizures,
and "the shakes" in alcoholics.
Yet one of the paradoxical effects of the mineral upon the
nerves is that a magnesium-deficient person who takes magnesium
feels more energetic than before, even though the mineral is a
depressant and not a stimulant. Actually, magnesium relieves the
nervous irritability and excessive energy that give rise to
fatigue in the first place.
It should not be surprising, then, that when a person's
magnesium level is subnormal, the nerves are unable to control
such functions as muscle movement, respiration, and mental
processes. Twitching, irregular heartbeat, irritability, and
nervous fatigue are symptoms of what is frequently found to be
magnesium depletion.
Most often, deficiency is simply
a result of failure to obtain adequate magnesium from such
dietary sources as wheat germ, cocoa, desiccated liver, eggs,
green vegetables, soybeans, and almonds. In some instances,
however, absorption of nutrients can be impaired by coexisting
illness, such as an intestinal infection. In such an event, much
of the ingested magnesium may be lost from the body.
A Host of Disorders
A case history presented in the Archives of Neurology (June, 1965) by Dr. Robert Fishman of New York
illustrates just how "inadequate dietary intake coupled with
excess gastrointestinal loss" can lead to a host of nervous
disorders.
A 29-year-old man suffering from intestinal trouble for six
years finally had large portions of the large and small colon
removed. Six months later, he was readmitted to the hospital for
a broken vertebra resulting from a "generalized convulsion" he
had experienced during sleep. Dr. Fishman writes: "During the
week prior to admission, he was noted by his family to be
increasingly irritable and mildly confused, and to have twitching
of the muscles of the face, hands, and feet."
The patient, described as "agitated" and "anxious," soon
suffered a second convulsion. His pulse was 140 beats per minute
(70 is average). After injections of magnesium sulfate were
administered, his restlessness and neuromuscular difficulty
disappeared. As bowel function improved, his need for magnesium
gradually diminished.
Animals, too, can develop neurological damage when their diet
is deficient in magnesium. Grass
tetany results when cattle cannot obtain magnesium in ample
amounts from chlorophyll, the green coloring matter in grass.
Muscle spasms, frothing at the mouth, hypersensitivity, increased
pulse rate, and fatal convulsions may occur in prolonged
depletion.
Sometimes magnesium deficiency can cause disorders so severe
that massive doses of magnesium by injection are required. High
doses of injected magnesium, however, can cause profound
depression of the entire nervous system and, ultimately,
respiratory paralysis. The possibility of this danger is
increased when a pregnant woman develops preeclampsia.
This condition, which affects about one in 500 pregnant women,
may consist of convulsions, nausea, dizziness, and headache. It
is believed that defective chemical substances in the blood or
products derived from the placenta are unable to be excreted
properly and may cause harm to the fetus. It has become almost
routine for hospitals to inject the mother with magnesium to
control eclamptic convulsions and to facilitate kidney
function.
The uses of magnesium for nerve health still require further
research, but even from the results of the few studies already
made, we can be certain that unless our bodies are adequately
fortified with this mineral, the nervous system can degenerate
seriously.
A good supply of dolomite, meat,
eggs, fruits, nuts, and
vegetables can help to lessen the chances of developing nervous
conditions that stem from a magnesium imbalance.
During 1966, there were published in The Lancet an article and successive letters
dealing with a degenerative nervous disease that was observed
among patients in Nigeria, one of the larger African countries.
The original article by a Nigerian
doctor, Professor Monekosso, described the disease carefully and,
in effect, appealed for help in treating it. The disease was
characterized by "mental apathy and depression; ataxia [loss of
coordination]; decreased motor power, bulk, and tone; foot drop
and wrist drop; calk tenderness, and limbs cold to the touch."
The senses of touch and hearing were also impaired.
The symptoms were clearly suggestive of a form of beriberi,
the thiamine (vitamin
B1)deficiency disease, and sure enough, on
investigation it turned out that the thiamine intake of these
patients was inadequate. However, administration of either
thiamine alone or vitamin B complex did not cure them.
One of the later letters commenting on this article was
written by Dr. Joan Caddell of
the George Washington School of
Medicine in Washington, D.C. It was published in the October 1,
1966, issue of The Lancet. It was the opinion of Dr.
Caddell that magnesium deficiency was probably involved because
of the essential role of magnesium in the biosynthesis and
activation of thiamine pyrophosphate. . . . What she was really
saying was that sometimes a thiamine deficiency is caused by a
deficiency of magnesium and therefore it will not be cured by the
administration of thiamine alone. Quoting her own experience in
Nigeria, she stated:
"Malnourished young Nigerian children from the same
cultural group as the above [Monekosso] patients developed a
similar syndrome, often with more acute features. The children
had had severe, prolonged gastroenteritis and had received a diet
of cornstarch and cassava. Vitamin-B enriched protein-milk
therapy aggravated the syndrome, sometimes with the development
of staring, nysthemus, ataxia, tremors, or convulsions. Magnesium
deficiency was biochemically established by analysis of skeletal
muscle and plasma. The symptoms were reversed after addition of
magnesium to the therapy."
The exchange provides an excellent illustration of how much
medicine has yet to learn about the many roles of magnesium in
human metabolism and its indispensability to general health. The
fact is that, as new studies are published and new discoveries
made, it is becoming clearer and clearer that magnesium is one of
the basic nutrients needed for a healthy nervous system and
therefore almost any affliction in any part of the body might
turn out to be actually an illness of the nerves that are
involved because they are deficient in magnesium.
Epilepsy is one good
example of this. As far back as recorded history goes, the
"falling disease" has been one of the great mysteries of
medicine. While dozens and hundreds of other illnesses responded
to investigation, epilepsy remained unexplained and untreatable
by any known method. It, is only within the past year that there
has been published work revealing that epilepsy is accompanied by
a lower than normal level of magnesium in the spinal fluid, and
that administration of magnesium can be expected to bring about
quick improvement. It is a field that still requires much
investigation, but present indications are that deficient
magnesium in the spine, and the subsequent effect on major nerves
of the spine running to and from the brain, may be the actual
cause of epilepsy. Later in this book we will see that this work
emerging from the Hereford
Clinic and Deaf Smith Research Foundation in Hereford, Texas,
under the direction of Lewis B. Barnett, M.D., further establishes wide-range
effects that magnesium nutrition has on the nervous system.
Deficiency Caused Convulsions
Most recently, there was published in The Lancet
(April 1, 1967), a case history of a newborn infant who developed
convulsions because a metabolic abnormality did not permit the
child to utilize its magnesium intake properly. "On three
occasions withdrawing or decreasing magnesium supplements led to
a fall in both plasma-magnesium and plasma-calcium levels and to
recurrence of the convulsions." This is more evidence that if the
nervous system is deprived of adequate magnesium the entire
person will suffer for it.
If additional evidence were needed that healthy nerves require
magnesium, it would certainly be supplied by the recent
investigational studies entering into the development of "memory
pills" at the Abbott
Laboratories in Chicago. Memory, of course, is one of the
primary and most important functions of the human nervous system.
And the stimulant to memory and other mental function that is
being developed at Abbott has magnesium as its basis.
In other recent studies we have
learned that the motor nerves--those that carry messages by
electrical impulse from the brain to the muscles--are dependent
on magnesium for the ability to conduct these minute electrical
messages properly. Now we are learning that magnesium is equally
important to the central nervous system (spinal cord), and to the
brain itself. Add to this the essentiality of the same mineral
for hard healthy bones and teeth and for the functioning of many
of our enzyme systems, and we believe it becomes perfectly clear
that a person would have to be a fool to take any chance on not
getting enough magnesium for even a single day.
NEXT CHAPTER:
Chapter 7. Epilepsy
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