Sports Nutrition – Magnesium and Tendonitis Treatment

Using Magnesium for Tendonitis problems is a very overlooked component of reversing the Tendonitis dynamic.

As a culture we like ‘quick fixes’ and ‘magic bullets’ and effortless cures. That’s why we go to see doctors, so the great all-knowing doctor will hand us an instant cure or at the very least, an easy fix.

Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work that way. You have tendonitis because your body is out of balance in some way or multiple ways. The western lifestyle easily attracts this.

To cure tendonitis, you need to counter the factors that are leading your body down a direction of increasing pain and tightness. It will take a little bit of effort, and it will take a little bit of brain power to investigate and figure out what exactly is going on.

Let’s talk about Magnesium, and then we’ll talk about how and why it makes a difference for people with Tendinitis.

What Is Magnesium?

We’re not going to go over the history of magnesium or solve the mystery of who discovered magnesium.

We’re just going to cover magnesium facts that are relevant to your Tendonitis, Tennis Elbow, Carpal Tunnel, Wrist Tendonitis, Rotator Cuff, Whiplash, etc.

So what is magnesium?

Magnesium is a mineral naturally found in many food sources. Our human body needs lots of different vitamins and minerals, but magnesium is #4 on the most needed list.

Magnesium rich foods include dark green leafy vegetables, seaweed, hard water sources of drinking water, some nuts and some forms of wheat.

Magnesium is vital for us because it is used in over 300 biochemical reactions in the body including being required for nerve impulse transmission and turning off the contraction of a muscle fiber.

There are many magnesium benefits, the relationship with the tendonitis dynamic is one of them. Due to it’s role in regulating muscle activity, magnesium is a big one for a heart that works correctly.

You don’t want to take magnesium for Tendonitis, you want to take it for your heart, and for the rest of your body to function in a healthy way.

Magnesium Deficiency

It is essentially not possible to get magnesium poisoning or magnesium toxicity from eating a diet consisting of regular food sources.

It’s -really- tough to get too much magnesium from food sources.

It is, however, entirely possible to get magnesium deficiency from our usual diet. The nutrition value of the modern western diet is incredibly poor, so it makes sense that we are eating more and getting less and less vital nutrition from our foods.

Foods rich in magnesium should be sought after and cultivated. This is great if you live in an urban area with local farmer’s markets, or in the country where you can grow your own or get vegetables from locals that do.

But most people living in an urban environment only have access to the crappy food that supermarkets pass off as healthy food.

What Causes Magnesium Deficiency?

You can be magnesium deficient by not taking in enough magnesium.

Along with not taking enough magnesium in, you can also become magnesium deficient by using your muscles too much.

The body requires Calcium to fire, or contract, a muscle fiber. Magnesium is required to release, or turn off that contraction.

Firing a muscle over an over obviously increases the amount of calcium used up to contract a muscle fiber, and thus increases the amount of magnesium used to to turn each of those firing muscle fibers ‘off’.

So basically, there are two primary ways to create a magnesium deficiency. You either don’t eat enough sources of magnesium, or for a variety of reasons, your body uses a lot of magnesium and that leaves you deficient in magnesium.

Which comes right back down to not having enough magnesium intake in your diet.

Symptoms of Magnesium Deficiency in no particular order:

Osteoporosis, heart palpitations, decreased B-complex activation, decreased protein synthesis and enzyme reactions, spasm, cramping, asthma, fatigue, fibromyalgia, PMS, stroke, etc.

The signs of magnesium deficiency symptoms can be subtle, or obvious in the form of disease. Just remember, that it took a long period of time of being magnesium deficient to develop the physical ecology of having ‘disease’. So it may take a while while taking sufficient levels of Magnesium intake to ‘cure’ the disease.

Magnesium deficiency symptoms can be tricky because they -look- like actual disease or other problems….like Tendonitis.

For more on magnesium and whole body health, there is a lot of information on NutritionalMagnesium.com

Magnesium For Tendonitis Prevention and Healing

The benefits of magnesium for Tendonitis prevention, treatment, curing, and healing cannot be overlooked (but regularly is).

Lack of magnesium plays a role long before you ever feel pain, and continues to play a role while your new and then chronic Tendonitis lingers and gets worse over time.

How does it do that?

1. Muscles require Calcium to fire, and Magnesium to relax/stop firing.

2. You don’t eat enough quality sources of magnesium, so your muscles slowly start to suffer as the ecology of your body and the specific area starts to fail to work properly.

3. You perform some repetitive activity, whether sports like baseball, a hobby like knitting, or work activities like typing and mousing. This means that you are eating through a lot of calcium and magnesium that you aren’t replacing appropriately.

4. This helps your muscles ‘lock’ into being tight. Different parts of your muscles can also get ‘confused’ and not be sure whether to fire or let go, and not really able to because they don’t have the right balance of necessary nutrients, so they get stuck into tiny bits of spasm, which basically starts to create a pain dynamic of tightness, waste product and irritant, and danger signals sent to the nervous system.

5. This all happens under the radar, slowly starting to ache, then hurt a little, then hurt a lot, until you hit the point where you realize that you are desperate for a tendonitis remedy.

Ok, so what now?

Ok, so you have Tendonitis of some kind, or Tendonitis symptoms, and you’ve just read all this about Magnesium benefits for Tendonitis.

Now what? What to do with all that information about Magnesium for Tendonitis?

1. If you have tendonitis pain, then you have muscles that are chronically too tight. This points to being or becoming magnesium deficient.

2. If you notice that your muscles spasm sometimes or constantly, then you are calcium and/or magnesium deficient.

3. Depending on your diet and nutritional intake, it’s safe to say you could use more calcium and magnesium.

4. If you feel like your muscles just won’t ‘let go’, and/or if you feel like the pain has a ‘tension’ element, then it’s safe to say that you could benefit from more magnesium.

I’ve seen some surprisingly fast results from taking in magnesium. I once worked with a guy who had near constant cramping and spasm in his leg. Massage helped stop them for a little bit, but when he took a calcium magnesium supplement, they vanished.

I’ve had that experience myself, with smaller muscle spasm.

Pain creates tightness (and vice versa). Tightness uses up magnesium. Your diet is unlikely to provide you the magnesium you need.

Try adding some magnesium and see what happens. I’m not going to say how much, that’s up to you, and it’s different for everybody.

And, it’s worth it to see if this is a component of your Tendonitis pain, tightness, and other symptoms.

Like all things in life, try it out, pay attention, and see what happens.

To successfully treat Tendonitis like Plantar Fasciitis, Carpal Tunnel, and Tennis Elbow, supplementing magnesium for Tendonitis is a great addition to using the appropriate Tendonitis treatment that works.

Article by Joshua Tucker, B.A., C.M.T.
The Tendonitis Expert
http://www.TendonitisExpert.com 

Reprinted with permission.