Janet Lewis: Hello, and welcome to this week’s edition of the Green Wisdom Health Show. I’m Janet Lewis.
Dr. Lewis: I’m Dr. Lewis.
Janet Lewis: We are bringing you an exciting show about the miracle magic of magnesium. I know you guys have always wanted to know about magnesium, and it’s one of those minerals that’s very important in our health. I believe it does over 300 different functions in your body, and it’s something people desperately need but it is also very important that you get the right kind of magnesium. Dr. Lewis is going to educate us a little bit today about what kinds are out there, what you need, and what it does for the body that you might not know.
Dr. Lewis: Well, there are a lot of different kinds of magnesium, and I caution people to stay away from the types of supplements that have phosphate, sulfate, oxide. Those are not really good forms of anything. It’d be great if you put them on your plants and let the plants convert it to something that you can deal with. That’s why Janet and I ask so many people, “Well, how many times do you have a bowel movement per day?” If it’s one a day or less, then we put you on magnesium citrate. Citrate is a very good form, but it’s also very hydroscopic, and absorbs or attracts water, which gives you a tendency to have more bowel movements. You do have to be careful, because even if four a day is right for you, if you start out at four a day, you might have to go to the bathroom too much. There’s a lot of different types, and there’s a dimagnesium malate, and then there’s the citrate I talked about, but some of the better minerals are called traacs, T-R-A-A-C-S, and that’s a registered trademark. It’s more absorbable.
Dr. Lewis: Then you’ve got magnesium lysinate, magnesium glycinate. They’re a little more gentle. For people that have, say, high blood pressure, well, you need to put them on something that’s a little bit slower to absorb, which would be the glycinate and the lysate. Malate would be good, or a combination of them, so I’m gonna just, and you know me. I’m gonna ramble.
Janet Lewis: Well, I think it’s interesting to note that they say there’s an 80% of our American society that is deficient in magnesium, so, while you’re thinking, “Oh, magnesium sounds so boring,” if 80% of you guys out there are deficient in it, we just think maybe you should be educated a little bit about why you need it, and what all it can do. Many times it can do things in place of many of the drugs that you’re taking. It may be something that you’ve just never thought of, or maybe you thought, “Hey, it gives me diarrhea so I don’t want to do that,” so maybe you could discuss a little bit about what forms of that do that, and what we give versus what people are generally used to getting.
Dr. Lewis: Well, again it depends on how often you have bowel movements, and I always tell people this is complimentary, not alternative, but I’ve had a lot of people, it’s like, well, if you take this and then your blood pressure begins to go down, then you need to talk to the physician that put you on the drugs to make any changes there. Far as in the foods, it’s in dairy products, it’s in fish, meat, and seafood, and I treat a lot of vegans. They just really, they have trouble getting enough nutrition to make them healthy. Other sources of magnesium are like apples, apricots, avocados, and bananas. Now, bananas are known for their potassium, but they have a lot more magnesium too. Many of you have heard the story about my conversation with the organic farmer that said he feels great on my supplements and feels terrible without them. He says, “But I eat totally organic,” and I said, “Yeah, but you still don’t know if it’s one part per million or 16 thousand parts per million of magnesium, molybdenum, manganese,” because you don’t know where they’re grown and how much they’ve lost during the transport of these foods. It’s really, in my opinion, pretty much impossible to get proper nutrition out of your food itself.
Dr. Lewis: I read a lot of books and I read massive amounts of research, and then there’s research that’s actually skewed and it’s not real research. It’s just a con job, so you have to be able to discern that. I actually pay a lot of money to go to seminars to help people that are more of a research scientist help me decide what’s real and what’s not, and pay a lot of money to do that too, so I hope you all appreciate that I get knowledge from people that are more knowledgeable than me in certain areas. Actually, I usually quote the research that says, the government said at one point that we were 94% deficient in magnesium, because 94 sounds a little bit more alarming than 80%, and again, you don’t know if you’re getting it or not. Even doing the RBC magnesium test, which is way, way more accurate than the serum, it is rare for somebody, even taking magnesium, to ever come to a point where it’s on the high end of normal. It’s really, really rare, so.
Dr. Lewis: Some of the reasons that I think you should try it, it’s a catalyst in the enzymes, the 300 activities that Janet talked about. Not totally, but it’s pretty heavily involved in energy production enzymes. It has a lot to do with absorption of calcium and potassium, and that’s very important too. If you don’t have enough magnesium, then you have like a nerve impulse that doesn’t go as fast as it should. It interferes with nerve impulses, and that can cause irritability. Yes, I’ve seen, even kids with ADD/ADHD, and their mother would sprinkle it in something to get the kid to take it. Usually it’s apple sauce, hopefully organic, or stir it in their yucky yogurt, because most yogurt’s not any good at all, but if you’re going to stir in magnesium, stir in probiotics too, which I hope to get some of that. We usually run out of time before we run out of notes. I make notes for about a three or four hour show, and this is 30 minutes.
Dr. Lewis: If you have PMS, you know. I’m a chiropractor, and women would come in and say, “Oh, my menstrual cycle hurts me so bad.” Well, adjusting them and working with the muscles, and that helps a great deal. Even my daughters would come in and say, “Well, I’m about to start my period,” and I’d adjust them and they’d feel better, but I’d also encourage them to take magnesium. Then they would just breeze through their period with about a 90% reduction in pain and cramping.
Janet Lewis: Isn’t that interesting, that that can be what’s missing. I know that many times when a young girl or a woman craves chocolate, that it’s usually the magnesium that they’re trying to get from that, and they do that around their cycles.
Dr. Lewis: Yeah, magnesium and also serotonin, which is the feel-good, happy hormone. Janet always says I’m the female in the relationship because I jump on chocolate and she doesn’t care on way or the other, so. Yeah, I’ll be the female if you give me chocolate.
Dr. Lewis: Depression, dizziness. Yeah, dizziness, muscle weakness, and although we’re talking about magnesium, those people that are out in the hot sun and they get an increase in vitamin D plus they’re trying to sweat and all that, one of the things that happens is you get the intracellular calcium that actually comes out into the bloodstream, and then that’ll cause cramping and heat-strokes and sometimes even death. Since we’re all mineral deficient, people that are out there sweating sure needs to take a lot of different minerals. I got too hot the other day, out messing with the RV, getting it ready for vacation. I came in, I was shaking like crazy, and I told Janet, I said, “Yeah, I got overheated.” She said, “I wondered where you were,” so she immediately fixed me up a concoction of electrolyte energy with extra magnesium and calcium and potassium, and I sat down. I was good to go in about 20 minutes, so minerals are extremely important because you’re just not going to get enough out of your diet. I don’t care if you do eat organic, it’s just not enough.
Dr. Lewis: PMS or dizziness or irritability, whether that’s male or female, you might try magnesium. I personally like the reactive magnesium, because it has so many forms. I think that’s better, unless you’re just really chronically constipated. Then I’d go for magnesium citrate. I actually take some at night because it calms you down, and takes a lot of acidity out of the body and you sleep more peacefully. It takes care of many people that have restless leg syndrome. It’s just, you know it’s missing so you might as well just throw it in there.
Janet Lewis: Yeah, I also think it’s interesting that people that have AFib, isn’t that one of the missing things for that, is magnesium as well?
Dr. Lewis: You know, in a lot of areas. I put them on magnesium immediately and tell them to go see a cardiologist, but usually, or many times by the time they get to the cardiologist the AFib’s gone away, but there’s a lot of other conditions that can relate to that, so that’s when a cardiologist should be involved. Magnesium, there’s a lot of research that says it will dissolve calcium and phosphate kidney stones, and I see on Facebook all these people have put their woes on Facebook, and I’m thinking, “I’ve got the answer,” but I don’t usually say anything because I’m not asked. We’ve got a friend that’s down there getting his kidney stones blasted today. Nothing like spending two grand to, maybe 10 grand sometimes, to get that done when you could’ve just taken magnesium and sometimes B6 and potassium, to prevent it.
Janet Lewis: I think that’s an interesting topic, because there’s a lot of people that have kidney stones and they think that’s just something they suffer with, so you’re saying magnesium is actually a part of that?
Dr. Lewis: Well, there’s different research. The quick answer to that is yes, that’s what I’m saying. There’s research that says activated B6 or P5P will help with that, and then there’s research says that if you give them one pill of potassium citrate per day … When people have it bad, they have kidney stones, I say, “Well, see a kidney specialist of course, but take … ” I put them on everything, the P5P, the proper form of magnesium, and the potassium, and one of the big hints is if you have calcium oxalate stones in your urine, it’s like, well, you’re very, very likely to form kidney stones if you don’t have them already.
Janet Lewis: You know this how?
Dr. Lewis: Calcium oxalate crystals in the urine.
Janet Lewis: How do you see that?
Dr. Lewis: You’ve got to do lab. You know, guess, guess, guess, and I talked to a jillion people yesterday, and I have about that many to talk to today. You can’t really piecemeal it and halfway do it. One woman said, “Well, I’m doing this person’s because they said this, and I’m doing this other person’s vitamins here and I want your opinion,” and it’s like, you know. Goes back to the old adage of too many cooks spoil the soup. She won’t get as good of results as somebody that says, “Hey, just do my lab work and tell me what to get on.” I had a man yesterday, he’s 81. He says, “I’ll just do whatever you say.” I said … He’s like, “Hey, whatever,” and he actually is a suck-up. He said, “Is that Janet out there? Is that your daughter?” I was like, “Yeah, well, you need a new eye doctor,” but, he was actually flirting with Janet because she does look a lot younger because she takes a lot of supplements, so.
Janet Lewis: I believe you just took my compliment away, with an eye doctor. I think his eyes were perfect.
Dr. Lewis: I’m sorry honey, I was wrong. Yeah. Well, he was messing with me, but, you know. The thing about magnesium, and I talked to a pregnant lady yesterday and she’s going to go ahead and get her lab work and get something done, but there’s a study that’s published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that said there’s a 70% lower incidence of mental retardation in children of mothers who take magnesium supplements during pregnancy. You can reduce the incidence of mental retardation 70% by taking magnesium. Of course, there’s other things you need to take. The incidence of cerebral palsy was 90% lower with magnesium supplements, and again, don’t take magnesium oxide. That’s not a good form at all.
Dr. Lewis: One form I have not talked about and probably should, because Janet puts it in my drink … Thank God, she loves me enough to throw stuff in. I generally don’t know what she throws in it, but there’s a patented magnesium called magnesium L-threonate, and that’s very, very important because it’s the only one that they know for a fact can cross the blood-brain barrier. If it crosses the blood-brain barrier, what does it do? Binds with mercury and aluminum, which is very, very common toxins that are injected into us willingly, but I won’t get into that. Aluminum and mercury are massive, massive pollutants and we get it all over the place, so you need to throw in these certain minerals that will bind with the toxic metals and make you healthier. This magnesium threonate … You know, Janet, I don’t think she worries about anything but my brain function and my heart, so I get a dose of that every day. Maybe more than that, I don’t know. It’s very, very important.
Dr. Lewis: I read a study one time that said low magnesium levels makes almost all diseases worse, and headed in a direction there, it’s called diabetes, or as Wilfred Brimley would say with his beautiful mustache, I’m jealous because mine’s not that pretty, he said, “Diabetes.” You know, it has a lot to do with how well that functions, and I’ve got some notes over there Janet may get into, but. Even though you’re trying to get it through your food, you might really and truly want to supplement. I’d be afraid not to. I’ve had patients over the years that says, “Well, now that you have me on magnesium, I don’t need to be adjusted nearly as much.” One person said, “Doctor, you’re going to run yourself out of business,” and I said, “Good. I’ll go fishing.” I don’t care. If you’re that healthy, great.
Dr. Lewis: As far as picking it up and utilizing it in your GI tract, you know, that’s another thing that we talk about a lot. One guy called, well, a lady called yesterday and said, “I’m taking this much and this much and this much, and all these supplements, it’s all adding up,” and I said, “Yeah, but the problem is, you’re not absorbing it.” In order to help absorption, you have to take the digestive enzymes, and we have some that are definitely our favorites, that’s much, much, much stronger than what we used to get great results with. We’ve improved that, but you have to have probiotics, and more strains is better. We have some that, assays, about three times more than what they sell it for, but one of my favorites, I’ll just go briefly over lactobacillus rhamnosus. It helps enhance cellular immune responses, even in healthy volunteers. It helps the immune system in healthy people. It alleviates clinical signs of gastrointestinal inflammation. How many of you do not have GI inflammation? Yeah, nobody is raising their hands there. Then you got the more well-known lactobacillus, acidophilus, that’s the one that, it’s very important in vaginal health as well as GI health because it creates acid, which leads me to another bone of contention.
Dr. Lewis: Some people get on internet, and they read something, and it’s like, “Oh my God.” People are going around now saying, “Well cancer can’t live in an alkaline body,” and they’re doing everything they can to make their body alkaline, and they are really, really, really messing up their health. God, in his infinite wisdom, you know. Saliva should be alkaline. Stomach should be acid, and that’s a big problem because most of us that think you have too much don’t have enough, that’s the problem. In the intestines there’s buffering of alkaline to acid, so the lactobacillus acidophilus, acid, it has a huge antioxidant activity. It’s very effective against the grown of H pylori. It’s been very proven effective against that, and then the vaginosis, or infection of the vaginal area. Then there’s a lactobacillus brevis, which also helps immune responses. It inhibits a lot of bad things to happen because it increases the activity of natural killer cells. That’s pretty important thing, tumor necrosis factor, which means against tumors. Then you’ve got the lactobacillus vulgaris, you’ve got plantarium, which is real good for the people that have seriously irritable bowel syndrome and things like that. It reduces gas, so I can see women saying, “What did he say? Was it lactobacillus plantarium, because my husband has way excessive amounts of gas,” and all of these and many others actually increase the absorption of magnesium and many other things.
Dr. Lewis: We’ve talked about the lactobacillus. Then you need to get to the bifidobacterium. The infantis is really, really good. It’s actually antimicrobial against clostridium difficile, the C dif. That’s a really horrible infection to have. Then, bacto-bacterium longum, the casei. There’s all sorts of the … The people that get sore throats, you want to look for a probiotic that has the lactobacillus salivarius in it, and you want to start that out, even if it’s in a capsule. Open it up and put it in your mouth, because the salivarius is really, really important in oral cavity or mouth health and the health of your gums and teeth. It’s also good against H pylori and you know, things like that. It’s important all the way through, but it’s really incredibly important just to make sure there’s enough down there to make the absorption of the magnesium better.
Dr. Lewis: You know, I can go on and on. Janet, do you want to get to the questions? I’m going to go down a rabbit trail if you don’t.
Janet Lewis: Well, and I will get to the questions also, but I just wanted to say, tell a few more things that Dr. Lewis hasn’t mentioned about magnesium, because there’s many people that ask about these problems. One thing that magnesium helps with is fibromyalgia, believe it or not.
Dr. Lewis: Magnesium malate usually is the form there.
Janet Lewis: Type two diabetes, which I guess Dr. Lewis would have to explain how that helps, but-
Dr. Lewis: Well, I mentioned. Just take it and we’ll monitor your A1C, and your insulin.
Janet Lewis: I think a really big one is migraine headaches, because there’s a lot of people suffering from headaches and magnesium, simple magnesium can help stop the migraine headaches. I thought that was very interesting, but yes. We do want to make sure we get to our questions because we love our listeners that always ask them. That way we know what y’all are wanting to hear about. Jonathan from New Mexico is always one of our favorites, and he’s asked-
Dr. Lewis: We’re giving him royalty for using his name now.
Janet Lewis: Oh yeah, he loves it when we mention his name. He said his son got a, I’m sure I’m saying this wrong, necrotizing fasciitis, aka flesh-eating bacteria, and he lives in New Mexico and I guess they have that out there a lot. He’s healing okay, and if you could talk about this, where it comes from, et cetera, that would be great.
Dr. Lewis: Okay. The one I know about that’s most popular is called MRSA, methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, and my favorite story to that is I got bit twice on the leg by a, theoretically a brown recluse spider. They’re so reclusive I didn’t see him, but, and me being the brilliant man I am, I waited five days until I couldn’t walk before I went in to the see the doctor. I love our medical doctors, because they saved my leg, and … I’ll try to make this a short story, but anyway, the guy cut it out, and they came in. They had swabbed the area and they swabbed my nose, and then they sent in another surgeon. He squeezed it and sniffed it and said, “Is that sore?” I said, “No.” He said, “It should be.” He said, “You do not have MRSA,” which is the one that is the flesh-eating bacteria. “We do not understand why, because the last 50 spider bites, there was one guy that didn’t have it, but he was a young strong man fresh out of the military. Everybody else gets the MRSA bacteria from the spider bite,” and he said, “If you don’t get it from the spider bite you get it from the hospital because we have superbugs in here that get resistant to them trying to kill them. Why don’t you have it?” I said, “It’s nutrition. You wouldn’t really understand.”
Dr. Lewis: He was a really great surgeon, better than the one who did the surgery on me, which got fired and run out of Longview, but he did a good job on my leg. I literally gave a lecture to the nurses at 3:00 am, because they don’t let you sleep and get any rest in the hospital, about olive leaf. Now, olive leaf is incredibly important, and that was back before I realized there was some really, really strong olive leaves, which is what we carry now, so. Olive leaf, we did colloidal silver. Janet healed up that hole in my leg you could’ve thrown a golf ball in … It’s funny watching the muscles move up and down, because there wasn’t any skin there, but anyways. Cut in a circle, and the doctor knew better to do that, because he told me, so it wouldn’t heal, and he wanted a $6000 skin graft off my butt to put it over my leg. I said, “No,” and anyway, Janet with her knowledge of herbs, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and essential oils, she healed that up and the surgeon said, “I have never seen one heal like this,” and, you know. “You didn’t get a skin graft.” I said, “Well, no. You cut it wrong, and you said that.” He said, “I’ve never seen this happen. What happened?” I said, “All those supplements you said didn’t work.”
Dr. Lewis: See, I needed the medical care and he did a really good job. He saved my leg from rotting off, and probably from early death, but olive leaf and colloidal silver. Be careful with the silver. Don’t make your own.
Janet Lewis: That’s something that everybody should just keep in their medicine cabinet, and it has to be a high amount of oleuropein. It’s just not over-the-counter olive leaf like you guys are getting ready to go out and grab. It has to have a high amount of oleuropein, which is what makes it work, and we carry it here.
Dr. Lewis: Yeah. I was on one that had a lower amount, but I was taking massive amounts of pills, too. That’s back before I learned as much as I know now, but I’ll know more next year too, so.
Janet Lewis: Okay. Our next question comes from Kelly. She wants to know of any supplements that can alleviate symptoms of interstitial cystitis, and that is also known as a painful bladder syndrome, and it’s a chronic condition causing bladder pressure and bladder pain. You guys probably don’t have this, but women do many times.
Dr. Lewis: Men suffer too when y’all have it, though.
Janet Lewis: That’s true. She knows that coffee, tea, citrus juices and artificial sweeteners and spicy foods can aggravate it, so is there anything else that can help or hurt when it comes to diet?
Dr. Lewis: Yeah, and Vicky got on this, Shooting Straight with Dr. Lewis. Vicky got on there and said D-Mannose and colloidal silver, and Vicky’s been with us for many years and she’s very intelligent about these things, and that’s a good answer.
Janet Lewis: You guys could be added to that. When he said Shooting Straight with Dr. Lewis, that is a closed Facebook group, but if you will shoot us an email we will be happy to add you to the group so you can get in on the conversation as well. I can testify to this product personally, for what we, or I use it for. I had a hysterectomy, which made me have that problem. We have something that’s called cystistatin, that is excellent at actually … It’s something you use first. It’s a bottle of, it’s got uva ursi, bearberry, marshmallow, bladderwrack, and celery seed, but you go through a bottle of that, it’s actually like a urinary tract infection type killer. If you’ve got a urinary tract infection, it’ll kill it off, and then when you’re done with that, you go to a bottle of something called UT-defense. It’s for urinary tract, and it has a different set of ingredients.
Dr. Lewis: For the ones that have, you know, chronic things, it’s a cranberry concentrate, and there’s a lot of misinformation about cranberry. Then it’s got dandelion leaf and hibiscus flowers, and these are extracts, and we have women that get somewhere close to incredible results, and we have men that just are thrilled because their wife’s not in pain all the time.
Janet Lewis: It’s actually, you know, diet is great to clean up as well, but if you do some of these products, you can actually get by with eating or drinking a little bit more of the quote, wrong things that set it off, because it will help keep it under control, and me being who I am thought I’d take both of them at the same time. These are both orthomolecular products, and the rep for them said, “Do not do that.” He said, “There’s a reason why we make one and then the other,” so, it’s cystistatin, it’s C-Y-S-T-I-S-T-A-T-I-N, first, and then you go to UT-defense.
Dr. Lewis: Yeah. We thought only men said, “Well, if a little bit’s good, more is better,” but Janet, again. She’s the man in the relationship, because I’m over there eating chocolate, so. She thought more is better, so she did them both.
Janet Lewis: Also, getting back to the magnesium thing. You know, a lot of people wonder if they have the right magnesium levels. I wanted to mention that we do offer a super-panel. I’m going to discuss the men’s panel because men primarily are the ones that we see really need to magnesium, when we run it on lab. The super-panel men’s that we run, it includes a magnesium RBC, and you’re wondering what’s an RBC. Many times when you go to the doctor and have your lab run and ask him to run magnesium, they’ll run magnesium-
Dr. Lewis: It’s a serum.
Janet Lewis: -but it’s not actually what’s getting in on a cell level. It’s just what’s out in the bloodstream, and the RBC one that we run is actually a spun magnesium, where they actually see how much magnesium you’re getting on a cell level.
Dr. Lewis: In the red blood cells, itself.
Janet Lewis: There’s early signs of magnesium deficiency to keep an eye out for, if you’re deficient, like loss of appetite, and headaches, and nausea and vomiting. Fatigue and weakness, so I just wanted to make sure I covered that a little bit for people, because I felt like magnesium still needed a little bit.
Dr. Lewis: You know what interferes with the absorption of magnesium?
Janet Lewis: What’s that?
Dr. Lewis: Alcohol intake.
Janet Lewis: Oh. Really? It blocks it, or you just don’t, it just eats it up?
Dr. Lewis: Well actually, a little bit of both, but the use of diuretics, diarrhea. Presence of fluoride. These people said, “Oh, this water out of the tap’s good.” Well, you’re getting enough fluoride in there, you have to greatly increase your magnesium level. Those of us, including me, that take high levels of zinc for our prostate and immune system, need magnesium. When I give a single mineral, I tell people it’s better to take the reacted multi-min, which is the multi-minerals, for balance. It’s really better that way.
Janet Lewis: I know certain medications can also eat up your magnesium in the body, so they’re treating you with antibiotics and diuretics and that actually helps you lose your magnesium, so it’s very important that you supplement with that if you’re on any of those medications, because you need that for your heart, because your heart will sometimes cramp too. If your leg muscles are cramping at night like Dr. Lewis mentioned, you just have to remember that your heart is also a muscle and it can cramp the same way.
Dr. Lewis: Yeah, so, you know, I’d like to thank you for the ones that shared this, and there’s a lot of that going on. We have an incredible influx of people, so if you want to get our care, you’d better jump on the train, but I would like for you please to let us know, is this helpful that we’re talking about one thing and I’m not going down through too many rabbit trails? I’d really like your feedback, positive or negative. I will listen to it, so we would ask that you always be blessed.
Janet Lewis: With laughter on your lips and joy in your eyes. Hope you guys have a great rest of your week, and we’ll be here next time on the Green Wisdom Health Show.
