Perfect Solution by: Kerri Knox, RN- The Immune Queen!
Hi Tim,
It's not that you don't want to take magnesium if you have 'bowel problems' in general, but if you easily get loose stools. The biggest problem with magnesium is that it makes you have loose stools- so it sounds like it might be the perfect solution to your problem.
Magnesium actually works quite well as a laxative. The only thing to be careful about is that someone with sluggish bowels may overdose more easily than others.
Please don't be 'worried' about this, but simply familiarize yourself with the symptoms of Magnesium Overdose and be sure to back off on your dosage or stop if you feel poorly after taking magnesium. Magnesium will almost never make you feel worse, so just pay attention to how you feel.
Also, if you have severe constipation, consider that you might have Gluten Sensitivity. Constipation is a very common problem as are nutrient deficiencies such as magnesium. So the combination of the two problems makes me VERY suspicious.
Kerri Knox, RN- The Immune System Queen Functional Medicine Practitioner Immune System
Don't Feel Right by: Tim
The reason I asked is because I don't feel right after taking my magnesium. I backed off yesterday and started to feel the deficiency symptoms coming back so I took some again and felt horrible immediately.
I get this funny feeling in my head and feel strange. I only have a BM every 4-8 days (I've been like this for years. Is it safe to take a laxative without magnesium? What do you think I should do in this situation, except for taking gluten out of my diet?
Toxicity by: Kerri Knox, RN- The Immune Queen!
Hi Tim,
Well, it's also quite possible that you are EXTREMELY toxic due to the not having bowel movements regularly and so you are experiencing detoxification symptoms every time that you take your magnesium.
You may just have to rely on getting blood testing much more frequently than most people would have to in order to get your magnesium levels up. If you feel bad taking even small doses, it's hard to advise you any further since you are at high risk of overdosing.
But in any case, you really MUST get the bowel movement situation under control and begin having a bowel movement every single day. If your health is not already suffering, it most surely will in the future and there is even a strong connection between Parkinson's Disease and Chronic Constipation!
But I can't recommend that you take laxatives, except for the very short term, because they not only don't solve the underlying problem, but actually make it worse because you then become reliant on them.
Fiber is great and necessary, but I'm a big fan of getting plenty of fat in order to help your bowels as well. If you think about some of our ancestors, many ate zero fiber (Inuit, many Northern Europeans and the African Masai among others) ate virtually no fiber, yet presumably had healthy bowels in part because they kept them 'slick' with fat.
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