The UltraMind Solution (41 page)

We eat a diet that has practically no magnesium—a highly processed, refined diet that is based mostly on white flour, meat, and dairy, none of which contain magnesium.

We are under chronic stress and this also decreases our magnesium levels. In fact, one study in Kosovo found that those under chronic war stress lost large amounts of magnesium in their urine.

Magnesium levels are also decreased by excess alcohol, salt, coffee, sugar, phosphoric acid in colas, profuse sweating, chronic diarrhea, excessive menstruation, diuretics (water pills), antibiotics, other drugs, and some intestinal parasites.

We live lifestyles that cause us to lose whatever magnesium we have in our bodies, and we never replace it.

When was the last time you had a good dose of sea vegetables (seaweed), nuts, greens, and beans? If you are like most Americans, your nut consumption mostly comes from peanut butter, and mostly in chocolate peanut butter cups. As for seaweed, greens, and beans ... well, most Americans don’t eat much of these at all.

So if you suffer from any of the symptoms I mentioned or have any of the diseases I noted—it is an easy fix!

But how do you fix it? Simply increase beans, greens, and seaweed in your diet. Get rid of the magnesium suckers like stress, coffee, alcohol, and sugar. And take an extra magnesium supplement.

In other words, follow the UltraMind Solution. (I will explain how you can do it in more detail in Part III.)

Magnesium supplementation had magnificent effects on my patient Mary. Let me tell you her story.

Many of my patients are doctors—and usually they have run the gamut of specialists and experts to find a solution to their ills. Mary, a thirty-six-year-old physician, was no exception.

For years she suffered intractable migraines, finding only marginal relief in the strongest narcotic pain medication and antinausea pills. She had been to every headache clinic and tried every medication to prevent or treat her migraines without any relief. After listening to her story, the solution was obvious to me...

Besides the migraines, she suffered from panic attacks, anxiety, insomnia, and palpitations, as well as muscle cramps and severe constipation—she went to the bathroom only once a week.

Every symptom she had pointed to everything in her body being tight or twitchy—tight emotions, tight head, twitchy heart, tight muscles, really tight bowels.

Mary was so depleted in magnesium she needed nearly ten times the amount I usually give people. Once her levels normalized we reduced the dose, and within days her anxiety, insomnia, palpitations, muscle cramps, constipation, and, most important, the migraines she had for years were gone.

We, of course, need all the essential minerals. That’s why they call them essential!

We have already talked about the most important one—magnesium. But a few more stand out as critical for brain function and health. Zinc and selenium are specifically important for your brain, so we need to review them before we close.

Zinc

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