Magnesium Deficiency
Magnesium deficiency may occur in man as a result of prolonged episodes of vomiting or malabsorption as in severe diarrhea.
Gastric juice contains a fair amount of magnesium and excessive vomiting could result in substantial losses of the mineral in addition to the loss resulting from the failure to retain ingested food.
Certain drugs – ammonium chloride and mercurial diuretics – result in loss of magnesium through the urine.
Magnesium deficiency has been reported in children with protein-calorie malnutrition due to primarily to diarrhea which increases fecal loss of the mineral.
Recovery was more prompt when diets were supplements with magnesium.
Hypomagnesaemia is associated with chronic alcoholism and with the neuromuscular symptoms of alcoholic withdrawal.
When pancreatitis is also present, magnesium replacement therapy becomes an important part of treatment because magnesium (and calcium) in blood may be decreased due to presumably to deposition in areas of adipose tissue.
Magnesium content of adipose tissue has been shown to be markedly increased in humans dying from acute pancreatitis and in animals in whom pancreatitis was induce experimentally.
Cellular loss of magnesium may be a primarily biochemical mechanism in the etiology of various types of myocardial lesions.
The high content of magnesium in hard water cited as a possible reason for the lower incidence of sudden death from heart disease in areas of hard water as compared to soft water areas.
Magnesium Deficiency
