Are You Getting Enough Magnesium? Assessing the Levels in Your Drinking Water
- Published:
- Updated: December 14, 2024
Summary
Magnesium plays a vital role in our health, yet many may be deficient without realizing it. Understanding the levels of magnesium in your drinking water is key to optimizing your intake. Here’s how to assess and interpret those levels:
- Importance of Magnesium: Magnesium is essential for over 300 enzymatic reactions in the body, impacting metabolism, bone health, and more.
- Signs of Deficiency: Recognizing symptoms like fatigue and muscle cramps can prompt action to address potential magnesium deficiency.
- Sources of Magnesium: Foods like leafy greens, nuts, and fish are rich sources, but drinking water can also contribute significantly.
We are in the mineral land and we will be diving into magnesium and its role in your drinking water. You are in for an experience that will tell you about all the mysteries of this crucial mineral and how it can work for you. You and I will take it on a journey together to learn how to measure magnesium in your water to help find the mysteries of magnesium and equip you with the information you need to plan your daily intake for a balanced life.
The Importance of Magnesium
It’s a mineral that we are abundantly deficient in, but it is critical to our health. It has more than 300 enzyme reactions that are a part of human metabolic activity. These include everything from protein production to muscle and nerve function, to blood glucose and blood pressure. All of that, not to mention that magnesium is involved in DNA replication, transcription to RNA, and translation to proteins, all components of life.
Beyond the metabolic function, magnesium is essential for bone health, as it is one of the major components of bones. It makes our bones tough and hard – they serve as a stabilising force. The amazing thing is that half of our body’s magnesium is held in our bones, the other half is encased in cells of body tissues and organs, and less than 1 per cent in the bloodstream. Magnesium is, of course, an all-around mineral that should be on our radar.
Signs and Symptoms of Magnesium Deficiency
Low magnesium (hypothetically called hypomagnesemia) has several effects on health and the physiology. The common symptoms are relatively unnoticeable. They include hungerlessness, exhaustion, weakness, nausea and vomiting. As the deficiency progresses, numbness, tingling, muscle cramps, seizures, mood swings and abnormal heartbeat can be symptoms.
Low magnesium is unfortunately an underdiagnosed condition because the symptoms are so diffuse. Most of us may be living with this deficiency and doing nothing about it, which is leading to adverse health outcomes. The good news is, if identified, it can often be reversed with just a little diet or lifestyle tweak.
What are the natural sources of magnesium?
There are multiple magnesium sources. And it’s plentiful — green leafy vegetables such as spinach, legumes, nuts, seeds, and whole grains are good sources. Even some fish, like mackerel and salmon, are high in magnesium.
Drinking water can be a great source of magnesium, too. Water minerals can be different from source to source, hard water is usually higher in magnesium than soft water. By general rule, if your water feels "chalky," you have too much minerals in it.
Magnesium in Drinking Water
Magnesium gets filtered in from nature. Water that runs through rocks containing magnesium-rich minerals (such as dolomite and magnesite) will absorb the mineral in soluble form. This is where the magnesium in a lot of mineral waters from nature comes from. Other times, magnesium could be added to water treatment for pH or remove contaminants.
Added minerals such as magnesium are added to some bottled waters, too. This could make up a big chunk of your magnesium intake each day, depending on the brand and quality of the water. …But note that bottled water does not all look the same and magnesium is not the same in every brand.
Assessing Magnesium Levels in Your Drinking Water
If you’re curious to know how much magnesium there is in your water, there’s a way to tell. The most standard method is to use a water testing kit (which you can buy either online or at a home depot). Such kits usually consist of a pair of test strips that change colour with minerals.
To use a water test kit, you just put a strip in a glass of your water, then compare the colour of the strip to a chart. This will tell you about your water’s mineral content, magnesium and so on.
Interpreting Your Results
Now you have your data, what’s next? When does your water have high or low magnesium? There’s no definitive "optimum" magnesium amount in water because minerals are so diverse. But the most simple rule of thumb is that, if your water has 10% or more of the daily recommended level of magnesium (about 40 mg per litre), it’s a good source of the mineral.
if your water is not more magnesium rich than this then it isn’t an important magnesium source for you. Not that this is bad – remember, drinking water is only one possible source of magnesium, and you can also consume a great deal of magnesium in other foods and supplements.
Increasing Your Magnesium Intake
So what if you’re missing magnesium from your water supply? There are several options. First thing to try is to adjust your diet to get a lot of magnesium. These are the highest magnesium foods:
Green leafy vegetables (spinach, kale)
Whole grain (brown rice, whole wheat bread)
Legumes (black beans, chickpeas)
Nuts and seeds (almonds, sunflower seeds)
Fish (mackerel, salmon)
Supplements are another option. There are magnesium supplements such as magnesium citrate, magnesium oxide, and magnesium chloride. Be sure to consult with your doctor or pharmacist before taking any new supplements because they will know how much you should take and whether they’ll have any interactions with other drugs or medical conditions.
Health Risks and Benefits of Magnesium in Drinking Water
A healthy heart, bone health, mood and brain are some of the many health benefits of consuming enough magnesium. They found that people who ate enough magnesium had fewer problems with hypertension, heart disease and diabetes.
But like all good things, you can never have too much good. Having too much magnesium will lead to a disorder called hypermagnesemia, which leads to nausea, diarrhoea, muscle weakness, and in the worst case, heart failure. We should mention that this is a fairly uncommon condition and only happens when a person takes too many magnesium supplements.
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