The Weekly Sugar Rush - Why stress can feel so hard to deal with

We are deep into the summer holidays now - how are your stress levels?  Even if you don't have children on holiday we all need a little help sometimes with reducing and managing our stress levels. 

So this week in the Weekly Sugar Rush I want to focus on the importance of magnesium.

Magnesium is so key to the body, it has a role to play in about 500 different functions.  Most importantly it is a co-factor in helping insulin move glucose into the cells for energy production.

Magnesium is used by the liver to help create the raw materials for oestrogen and progesterone production.

It is also a nutrient that really helps to calm the body overall. It calms the mind, it calms our muscles, it helps us relax and it helps us sleep. It has huge value all the way across the body.

Because most of us are magnesium deficient we don't notice the signs of magnesium deficiency anymore, which are restless legs, regular cramps, inability to go in to a restful sleep, hormone imbalances, migraines and poor blood glucose regulation.

Modern farming practices are such that our soils are now deficient in magnesium. The fertilizers and pesticides used kill the microbes in the soil.  These microbes are responsible for helping to metabolise the magnesium. So the crops growing don't have access to magnesium and cannot absorb it.  You would now have to eat 40 bowls of spinach to get the same magnesium content as one bowl of spinach in the 1940s.  The result is that most of us are magnesium deficient.

Because magnesium is such a crucial nutrient for hormone balance and good blood glucose regulation every woman post 40 should be taking a magnesium supplement on a daily basis.