The first nutrient I recommend to women of any age is magnesium. Magnesium is needed for every cell in your body to function at its best and is a must for women throughout their lives, especially when they are going through perimenopause and menopause. This is a time when menopausal symptoms such as stress, poor sleep, and low mood play a huge role in quality of life. While it is suggested that diet, exercise, and self-care can really help, it can be difficult to manage to stay on top of all of this whilst not feeling quite yourself. But once you do get on top of it, you won’t look back! And this is where magnesium comes into play.
Science shows that magnesium can support mood, anxiety, sleep, hormone levels and bone health, to name just a few of the benefits https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519036/ (1). But what is the best way to get magnesium working for you? First, you need to ensure that you include foods in your diet that contain magnesium, such as nuts, legumes, avocados, seeds, whole grains, and certain fatty fish. However, researchers have found that dietary intake of magnesium is low in Western diets, playing a role in an array of common health problems (2) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12949381/. So, to make sure you get the maximum benefits from magnesium, it may be helpful to add it to your daily regime from other sources in addition to your diet.
Read on to find out more about why every woman should include magnesium in their daily lives and some simple and effective ways to do this:
1. Improve sleep
Just like eating and drinking, sleep is an essential human need. Sleep affects emotional, mental and physical well-being. Healthy sleep also supports good immune health, learning, and memory, a few areas of health that are common complaints of women over 40.
Magnesium may support better sleep by regulating your circadian rhythm, which is essentially your body’s natural clock. Plus, it can support muscle relaxation, which can help your body and mind feel ready for sleep. The benefits of magnesium for sleep have been supported by science, where researchers have found that people with low magnesium intake tend to sleep less and have poorer quality sleep (3). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6212970/. Rubbing BetterYou magnesium sleep lotion (RRP £11.99) on your feet and legs before bed can help you wind down and relax for a wonderful night's sleep. Just the ritual of massaging the lotion into your feet is soothing and immediately relaxing. It also smells great as it has lavender and chamomile oil in the blend and is the perfect way to prep for a good night’s sleep.
2. Improve mood
One-fifth of menopausal women struggle with depression, and some women say that they feel like they have permanent PMS. Reducing alcohol and finding time for exercise and self-care are key to managing mood, but magnesium also has a vital role to play in supporting women at time like this. Magnesium is necessary for regulating mood, and research has found that people who have low magnesium have higher rates of depression. In fact, one study found that over 80% of postmenopausal women had low blood levels of magnesium, and those women were more likely to report that they were depressed (4). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3895221/
3. Support healthy bones
Did you know that around 60% of your magnesium is stored in your bones? As oestrogen levels reduce with the onset of menopause, bones become more porous, leading to osteopenia and osteoporosis. Magnesium is vital for bone health and deficiency has been associated with a higher likelihood of getting osteoporosis (5) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519036/.
Researchers studied magnesium intake of over 70,000 postmenopausal women and found that better magnesium levels were associated with stronger bones over a period of 7 years (6) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3953885/
4. Supports a healthy heart
Did you know that postmenopausal women are at a higher risk of heart disease due to reduced oestrogen levels, stress and lifestyle choices? (7) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29338561/ . Luckily, another fantastic benefit of supplementing with magnesium is that it helps to control heart muscle contractions, supporting a healthy heart (8) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5786912/
In support of this, a large study of over 3700 postmenopausal women found that women with higher magnesium levels showed less inflammatory markers relating to heart disease, suggesting that they had better heart health (9) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19903755/.
5. Can help with symptoms of PMS
PMS comes with a broad range of symptoms, and can really affect a woman’s quality of life each month. Cramps, headaches, bloating and low mood are very common and can be tough to manage. It’s been suggested that magnesium levels rise and fall throughout a woman’s menstrual cycle, which may mean that women with a deficiency could have worse symptoms. This is why magnesium is often recommended to help relieve symptoms of PMS, and only 250g per day has been found to reduce symptoms like bloating, anxiety and depression (10). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4161081/
6. May boost exercise performance
There are some situations where people require more magnesium than usual, and exercise is one of those situations, depending on what kind of exercise you are doing (11) https://academic.oup.com/qjmed/article/111/11/759/4209351. The reason for this is that magnesium is needed to help reduce lactic acid, which builds up during anaerobic exercise and leads to fatigue. Interestingly, one study found that women with a higher magnesium intake had higher muscle mass and power and the researchers concluded that magnesium may help to preserve age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass (12) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26288012/
7. May relieve muscle tension
Many people find that transdermal magnesium can help relieve muscle tension and muscle spasms. In fact, one study found that people with fibromyalgia reported less pain after spraying magnesium oil on their arms and legs twice a day for one month (13) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26343101/. This is really interesting as other research has found that people with fibromyalgia tend to have too little magnesium in their muscle cells. This is great news for people who suffer with muscular pain and cramps, as science supports the idea that transdermal magnesium can be used to directly target muscular pain.
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by Dr. Naomi Newman-Beinart (PhD), health expert and nutritionist (BSc)