Children’s Health – Anxiety, Depression and Magnesium

Children are also susceptible to magnesium deficiency which can lead to child depression. A diet rich in refined sugar, fat and …

…refined white flour is lacking in magnesium and will be found well below the *Recommended Daily Allowance.

The Food Your Child Eats Can Cause a Magnesium Deficiency

Junk food provides about 27% of most people’s daily calories. Children who drink sodas or soft drinks may have their magnesium stores leached out of their bodies because sugar uses up magnesium. Many carbonated drinks and processed foods such as cold cuts and hot dogs contain phosphates, which bind with magnesium to make insoluble magnesium phosphate, which is not absorbed by the body.

The Stress Your Child Experiences Can Cause a Magnesium Deficiency

The stress in children’s lives from peer pressure, academic and athletic performance pressures, worries about body image, the changes and hormonal fluctuations of puberty, exposure to violence through the media, and a diet of highly processed foods all take their toll on a child’s body and promote magnesium deficiency.

Each year millions of children and adults are started onto harmful and debilitating psychiatric drugs and psychological counseling for symptoms that may in fact be rooted in magnesium deficiency.

“Children can develop numerous and varied psychological symptoms because of a deficiency in magnesium, a nutrient their body requires. Does it make any common sense to mask an underlying problem with diet and magnesium deficiency with some other treatment for depression such as harmful and addictive drugs. Psychiatrists are too quick to rely on prescription drugs for suffering children and have no insight into the metabolic functioning of the mind and body and what happens when nutrients are deficient. Anxiety and depression are often nutrient-deficiency diseases and chemical sensitivities, certainly not drug deficiency diseases.

Carolyn Dean, M.D. N.D. , Medical Director Vida Costa Spa, author of “The Magnesium Miracle”.

“Magnesium relaxes the nervous system in a number of ways. Besides just relaxing the muscles, it actually is a natural blocker of a receptor in the brain called MMDA. This receptor is stimulated with calcium, actually, and it’s something that leads to over-excitation and stimulation of the brain and irritability, depression and many other things. Magnesium is a natural MMDA receptor antagonist, which helps to really calm the nervous system overall.

“Depression and anxiety are very related and I think magnesium helps reduce the same phenomena in the brain. I would always recommend that people use a nutritional approach to depression before actually using antidepressants because mostly they don’t work well.

Mark Hyman, M.D. – Medical Director and Founder of the Ultrawellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, author of severalNew York Times best-selling books on nutrition, diet and a healthy lifestyle. His clinic is a center for functional medicine, a new field of medicine that addresses chronic disease through its underlying causes rather than just the symptoms. A leading authority on alternative medicine, Dr. Hyman has appeared on numerous television programs including Today,Good Morning America, and The View. Magnesium is covered extensively in one of his books, Ultraprevention

Too Little Magnesium Can Cause Health Problems

The *Recommended Daily Allowance of magnesium (which is the minimum level needed to stave off deficiency symptoms not the maximum level) varies by age and gender:

Children 1 to 3 years: 80mg, Children 4 to 8 years: 130mg, Children 9 to 13 years: 240mg

Boys 14 to 18: 410mg, Girls 14 to 18: 360mg