We have reported on the importance of magnesium several times before. Unfortunately various research studies show that 40 to 80 per cent of Americans are deficient in the mineral, and you can bet the same is true for most British people.
Why? Magnesium is typically in whole foods like whole grains, wheatgerm, whole brown rice, nuts, pulses, sweetcorn, green leaves, broccoli, spinach, leeks, apricots, melons, mango, jacket potato, bananas and more.
Levels in the body are depleted by alcohol and dairy-rich diets, and by people with poor intestinal good bacteria levels. Magnesium levels decline as you age.
Magnesium is essential to vitamin D synthesis in the body, to the reactions of the mitochondria or power stations, to a pump in the membrane of every cell in your body that pumps sodium out of cells and potassium in, to DNA metabolism and repair, cell differentiation, and inflammation.
Magnesium deficiency has now been linked several times to an increased risk of cancer, particularly where the subjects had higher BMIs (they were overweight with higher body fat contents) one study showed that good levels of magnesium reduced colorectal cancer risk, while a second study (the EPIC cohort study) showed they reduced pancreatic cancer risk.
For every additional 100 mg of magnesium consumed daily the risk of colorectal cancer declines by 12 percent, and pancreatic cancer by 21 percent.
See also: Magnesium intake seems to reduce colorectal cancer risk
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