Magnesium

Once again, this is addressed to KPD's and also to a wider population. This is about magnesium so it's a continuation of the previous Vitamin D topic since it's needed for the proper action of Vitamin D.

Magnesium is an essential mineral that's slowly disappearing from the modern diet, as industrial agriculture and industrial food processing increasingly dominate our food choices. One of the many things it's necessary for in mammals is proper insulin sensitivity and glucose control. A loss of glucose control due to insulin resistance can eventually lead to diabetes and all its complications.

Magnesium status is associated with insulin sensitivity (2, 3), and a low magnesium intake predicts the development of type II diabetes in most studies (4, 5) but not all (6). Magnesium supplements largely prevent diabetes in a rat model* (7). Interestingly, excess blood glucose and insulin themselves seem to reduce magnesium status, possibly creating a vicious cycle.
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/02/magnesium-and-insulin-sensitivity.html
Stephan Guyenet

Oral Magnesium Supplementation Improves Insulin Sensitivity and Metabolic Control in Type 2 Diabetic Subjects

http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/26/4/1147.long

Most Americans are considered to be deficient in magnesium. This is a mineral and we get it by eating plants or animals that have taken it up. The point Stephan is making is that our industrial system of agriculture isn't replacing essential minerals therefore they are falling as a percent of our diet.

Now if that weren't bad enough, we also have the problem of malabsorption.  This means that our bodies are being blocked from taking up these nutrients even when they are present. The chief villain here are grains with the gold star for bad news and all around trouble maker going to wheat. Not only do they drive up blood sugar but they all contain Phytic Acid. This chemical binds to minerals and keeps them from being absorbed into the body. We've been told about the rich nutrients in grains but what we haven't been told is that it hardly makes a difference if the grains block the absorption of these nutrients. This is about magnesium but there are a whole bunch of essential metals that are blocked by this particular chemical. Our buddy, wheat, is particularly good at this. You may as well get this straight, almost every problem I will talk about will implicate wheat as a villain in some way. Wheat and wheat products should be avoided whether you are diabetic or not.

The recommended minimum dosage of magnesium is 350 mg. Here's a list of foods which are magnesium rich. http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=nutrient&dbid=75 I would caution you about seeds and beans though. Beans have phytic acid and seeds tend to harbor Omega 6. They won't get you there anyway. Take the supplement on this one. Magnesium Oxide gets absorbed the worst but it's cheap so something is better than nothing.

Caution. Magnesium tends to have a laxative effect so if things start to loosen up, you should go down in dosage until the problem goes away.

Vitamin D and why

This concerns much more than KPD's. What if I told you I could reduce your risk of colon cancer by 60%  and your chance of heart attack by 30%? What if I threw into the mix, just for the heck of it, reductions in insulin resistance, improved beta cell function and defense against osteoporosis? I bet you would start to like me even though you know that whatever I'm going to tell you will probably involve 40 miles of bad road. What if I told you that you didn't have to do anything but take a pill, once a day? Guess what, it's all true and the little genie that's going to pull this off "Vitamin D". Hey, I can feel the love already.

First you need to look at this chart. Vitamin D incidence prevention 


What you see are some of the problems that Vitamin D is involved in.You also see the level that's needed in your body to get these effects. The level needed is 60. Now the bad part, if you are like most people you are probably around 25. Here's the problem, you get Vit D from the sun and most of us don't get enough good sunlight to get a healthy dosage. The fact is that is we live in a temperate zone on the planet, the angle of the sun striking our skin does not allow us to get enough Vit D. If you're dark skinned, you are seriously screwed.

I live in Michigan and it is known that if you live above Atlanta, Georgia there is no way to get enough sunshine in the winter months. Fair skin helps here. Sunlight hitting fair skin rapidly creates Vit D. Fair skin is a necessity in the north or south temperate regions. This is because the colder temps force people to cover up to preserve body temperature. This means the sun has less surface on which Vit D can be created. Being pale is an advantage here. Being dark, however, means that you will almost never get the needed Vit D, if you live in a cold climate.

This isn't a problem. You can go out and buy Vitamin D at your local drug store and make sure it's Vitamin D3 and not D2. Get the 2000 IU version, take two little pills a day and you should at least get up to 30 or 40. If you're, like me, dark skinned then taking 4 pills a day would get you up to 70 or 80. Who knows, this could change your luck.

Mike

PS If you continue to eat wheat, you might need a lot more since wheat, for whatever reason, tends to be antagonistic to Vitamin D.

Reduced plasma half-life of radio-labelled 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 in subjects receiving a high-fibre diet.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6299329?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum