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Are you an aspiring leader who knows you have more to offer but you can't seem to get ahead? Do you frequently feel overwhelmed and undersupported? Listen to the Overcome to Become podcast as we talk about actionable tasks and mindsets that you can apply to begin leading yourself. Hi, my name is Angela Buckley, your host and author of the Strength in Nature Leadership series. I'm a mother, consultant, triathlete and author and Overcome to Become. I share with you the science, fact and experience proven lessons 've learned in my own leadership journey to beat burnout. Thanks for listening.
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Hi, welcome back to the next episode of Overcome to Become. My name is Angela Buckley, and I'm your host today. And today we are going to be talking about my favorite electrolyte magnesium.
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Magnesium is one of these elements that we know about, we might hear about and recently has actually been getting quite a bit more time in the headlines in the news. But I wanted to tell you a little bit about my story with magnesium because as an endurance athlete, we have been very interested in it for a long time. So many people talk about electrolytes and your immediate default thought is to go right into salt, right? What's your table salt?
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But really when we talk about salt, it's an entire blend of minerals that can be included into that salt in particular if you're taking.
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Um, sea salt instead of a traditional table salt that is mined. And also the other thing that we know about our body is that it's not just one electrolyte that is important, but it's actually a blend of electrolytes that we need to be working with and that our body needs to utilize. The reason I personally started paying attention to magnesium is because I had read and study where they were injecting magnesium into athletes who had exercise induced migraines. Exercised induced migraines. What is that? Well, they weren't exactly sure and the study of migraine has come a long way in the last 20 years. But when I was first starting out my endurance athletic journey, we took headache medicine and moved on and said wow, that's unfortunate and if you were lucky maybe there was a specialist in your area that you could go talk to, but there wasn't a lot of information associated with it at the time.
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And overtime they started understanding more and more about some of what's happening in our gut, some of the things that's happening with our electrolyte palette and certainly as athletes, endurance athletes in particular, where you're going for hours on end, you are burning through your electrolyte usage in your body and you need to replenish that. And one of the things that we have come to understand is that when your body is at high temperature from racing.
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Your nutrient uptake is not as efficient, so you need to be doing that in the off times. And one of the experiments that they had been running was to look at the magnesium profile and the blood serum and then understanding that people who really, really were struggling with this post exercise migraine that they were benefiting from magnesium uptake. And so one of the studies was to actually go and have shots of magnesium into those muscles that they would be using for the race in order to stave off the headaches.
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Thankfully, I personally never had to experience any of that. Yes, there were occasions where I had a headache after a race, but when you use your body and you put your heart into it, I think that's that might be par for the course, right? We need some time to recover and we need some time for our body to pick it back up.
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OK, but that doesn't mean that there isn't the lesson to be learned. As they were studying magnesium for migraines, we were beginning to understand more and more about what magnesium does in the body in its complement to potassium and chlorides.
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So.
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Now that we know so much more about magnesium, we cannot understand that magnesium is an important part of the anti-inflammatory process. We understand that magnesium is it plays an important role in combating depression, in particular low level depression. It's one of the first things that health responders might ask you to do if you don't have any other health related issues trying to add magnesium into your.
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Body into your diet naturally would be the first step, and the second step would be to try to add it into your body. Taking supplements primarily in the evening, the recommended dose tends to be 400 milligrams, that's too much for my body. I end up taking just half of that and it's enough for me. Um, I tend to be smaller. So there is a little bit of range of what your body needs and that's just something reading right off the back of the labels. These are products that are available over the counter at your local drugstore or health food store, etcetera.
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But why, right? So we understand now that the magnesium is involved in hundreds of those biochemical reactions in your body. It helps fight some of that inflammation. It helps in the processing or creating of proteins in your muscle movements, again, back referencing back to the athletes and their struggles and also in nervous system regulation.
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The other interesting thing about magnesium is that it may support healthy blood sugar levels. So I really love to include cinnamon when I'm talking about blood sugar levels. I think it's a very natural way to help regulate insulin levels in the body and the magnesium complements that as well. So those are two things that are really important for us to understand as a result of all the things that.
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It's doing while it's playing in the body. What we're seeing in the research is that your inflammation can potentially be reduced. When you reduce your inflammation then the potential for reducing heart related health attacks is also reduced. Your blood pressure can be reduced a little bit, right? I'm not saying take this in lieu or without talking to your doctor if you're talking about blood pressure medications.
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But um, as a general overall health approach is what I'm talking about maximizing health. So and then also potentially it improves the symptoms of PMS. Why is that? That's because all those muscles are cramping during that time of the month. Like that's an intentional part of the process as it tries to break those blood vessels and that continuous use of those muscles contracting, contracting, contracting.
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Requires magnesium and when we have low magnesium we have more cramps. Again, conversation back to the athletes tying that all together, making sure that anytime you have any sort of tight muscles. Uncomfortableness. It's a hint that your body has a low magnesium level at that moment. In fact, it's so effective that you will now see magnesium as part of a relaxing health aide, even in some of the sports drinks. Here's your evening sports drink. It might include lavender and magnesium as part of its supplements, and it helps your body take up that magnesium into your muscles when you're tight.
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I'll even include it in my evening races the night before, making sure that I have enough magnesium in my body so that I sleep well, so that I'm comfortable going into my race in the morning. And then we also understand that magnesium is an important, important complement to calcium when we're talking about bone health, in particular bone density. So tying all that in is really super important, one of the nice things about.
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Magnesium is that it's really quite safe and that it is wild, widely available. Again, go take a look at your local food store, at your local pharmacy, wherever you take your supplements. Many of them are available and magnesium is simple. So, it might be, on average. You can see that the recommendations run, and again, I'm I'm no medical doctor, but for the men they tend to run 400 to 420 milligrams per day. For the women tends to run 300-320 per day. Again, for me, I'm smaller. I end up taking 200 as a supplement in addition to the food sources that I get my magnesium. And I do try to make sure that I have high sources of magnesium naturally in my body throughout the day. Some of those things that I like to look at include pumpkin seeds. I have chia seeds every day for breakfast. I add that into my oatmeal.
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Regular items that you will see in my pantry include spinach, almonds, cashews, black beans, peanut butter, salmon, halibut, avocado. Honestly, I just read down the list of all the things that are in my cabinet and basically every single one of them were on the high magnesium food list. So I like to eat magnesium. I like to feel comfortable in my muscles and more relaxed I have mentioned from time to time.
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That I have scoliosis, so that includes a little bit of cramping naturally in your back. Yes, I go to see my chiropractor on a regular basis, but I also find that a healthy lifestyle with stretching and good food that supplements that helps me combat that constant tension that occurs as a result of that curvature.
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So that's where we are. That's what we're talking about when we talk about magnesium. It is a simple electrolyte that is easily available. It is not expensive. It's available readily in our day-to-day foods. If you look for them, if you're in particular chasing down those seeds, very high magnesium Chai does not go bad anywhere. It travels with you really well. So I keep that around. I have a stash at my office. I have a stash of my.
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Kitchen of course. I have a stash in my gym bag. As long as they don't get what they stay, they travel, they go, they it's a it's a great little travel companion and goes into your food very well. Add it to your yogurt, add it to your oatmeal, and also for me, I use it to make a fun little pudding. There's plenty of recipes available to make Chai pudding with almond milk or something. Again, one easy way of getting your body relaxed in the evening.
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It's one easy way to combat combat depression. It's an easy way to combat.
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Um, inflammation in the body. So if you are struggling with any particular real health event, please make sure that you see a medical doctor and follow through and understand what that is looking like for you individually whenever I am talking and telling you about the things that are available in science literature that comes across my desk on a regular basis.
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Rightly, I started out this episode indicating that the research popped up in my inbox. It is true I spend many hours in the research libraries as I'm working on my PhD, but my PhD is not in food science and it is not in Medical Sciences, so.
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While I do do a lot of research and these science articles do pop up into my inbox, I am not a medical doctor and I am not a research therapist by any stretch of the imagination. But I do like to share with you the science as it comes available. And I like to share with you the personal stories and anecdotes as they have applied to my life in hopes that you can also practice them, apply them, and see where they fit for you as well. So, magnesium.
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It helps with that combating of the depression, helps you sleep, helps you relax a little bit more and all of these things are really important when we're talking about overcoming overwhelm and beating burnout. So thanks very much for listening. I hope you give that a try if you feel that that is a good fit for you and I will see you next week.
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You've just concluded an episode of Overcome to Become a leadership podcast focusing on leading yourself first. Thanks for listening. I'm Angela Buckley with creatively efficient author of the Strength in Nature Leadership series. To learn more about mindsets and leadership, follow me on Instagram at @CreativelyEfficient.
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