supplements with many ingredients + calcium

The Magnesium Calcium Balance in the Cell

The Magnesium Calcium Balance in the Cell

Hello. I was just reading your levaquin book and here are 2 questions:


1. You recommend a supplement that has many ingredients. This might not be a good idea for floxies because we often get odd reactions from some ingredient and then we dont know what is the ingredient thats causing problems. This has happened to me several times and thats why I avoid supplements that have a lot of stuff in them. Would it not be wiser to take the most important supplements individually?

2. The multivitamin supplement you recommend also contains calcium. Is this good if our cells are already calcified and the calcium is causing damage in the tissues? It would make sense to me that we should avoid any supplement with calcium in it.

Thanks

Comments for supplements with many ingredients + calcium

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Both Good Questions
by: Kerri Knox, RN- The Immune Queen!

Hi Joni,

Both great questions, and I'm going to first make a comment before I answer them.

First of all, YOU are not a 'floxie'. You have a condition called Levaquin Tendonitis- or whatever you want to call it, but YOU are not IT. This may sound 'picky', but it's really not. By calling yourself a 'floxie', you are psychologically identifying with the problem and making it a part of yourself and your being and personality.

It makes it much harder to get rid of an illness if it's become a part of yourself than if it's something foreign to you or just a collection of symptoms that you happen to have. OK. It also makes it easy to generalize with things like, "Don't floxies usually have X....".

So, this last part is a lead in to your first question of don't 'floxies' often have reactions to supplements so it's better to take them one at a time.

I actually don't find that to be true. Maybe you find this true out on forums and such because people want to cut corners and get cheap synthetic supplements with crappy ingredients. But I find that very few of my clients have problems with multivitamins- but I make them buy high quality pharmaceutical grade products.

I actually find that more people have problems with the high dosage of single supplements (such as vitamin d) than a multi with many ingredients.

Part of the reason that I ALWAYS recommend a multi and not JUST high dose single supplements is because....

Continued below...
continued...
by: Kerri Knox, RN- The Immune Queen!

nutrients are not drugs. One single nutrient often requires small amounts (or sometimes large amounts) of several other nutrients to work and the problems that I see most often are side effects from the depletion of other nutrients- and not true 'side effects' of vitamins.

We know about some of the nutrients that interact with each other, but we don't know about them all and so when people have problems taking high dosages of something, then there may be no way to figure out what they depleted that is causing their problem and they'll chalk it up to having a problem with 'that' nutrient, when it's really NOT the nutrient, but the way that they are taking it.

Also, if a person has a high need for, or they are deficient in ONE nutrient, it's silly to think that is the ONLY nutrient that they are low on or that their body needs more of. If we don't absorb, we don't absorb LOTS of things. If we use up more nutrients than we take in, we use up LOTS of things.

Taking large doses of single nutrients is simplistic and western-medicine oriented. It's just simply not the way that our bodies work.


Having said that, YOU may be very sensitive to things and may need to tailor your regimen to avoid those sensitivities. But you may or may not even be HAVING sensitivities at all. If you read through my Toxicity book, you may be "Herxing" and not have 'sensitivities'.


I could absolutely be wrong, but it's just a thought to keep in the back of your mind. If that's the case, then you probably have SEVERE candida and that's a whole separate conversation.


Lastly, as far as calcium is concerned, I never have a problem with it contributing to calcifications as long as sufficient amounts of magnesium are taken with it. A small amount of calcium seems to be needed to balance things out when you are taking large doses of vitamins. And I see MORE problems with people specifically avoiding calcium (and therefore not taking multivitamins since they nearly all have some calcium) than I do with the moderate amount of calcium in vitamins.

With a recent study out about calcium possibly actually contributing to heart disease, I just had this same discussion about calcium with a group of alternative practitioners and they all had the same experiences with the small amount of calcium present in multivitamins not causing problems for people- but higher dose stand-alone calcium is where they see people having problems.


Hope this answered all of your questions. Let me know...


Kerri Knox, RN
Another comment on Calcium...
by: Kerri Knox, RN- The Immune Queen!

So, do remember that we NEED calcium too!! We require calcium to help neurons fire and muscles contract.

The problem is NOT that we have calcium - or even too much calcium, the problem is not enough magnesium. The 'natural state' of the cells is to be full of magnesium and relaxed (at rest). Even if we have too much calcium in the blood from some disease state like hyperparathyroidism, we will NOT become calcified simply because of that.

It's the lack of magnesium in the interior of the cells that ALLOWS the calcium to stay in there after the muscle or neuron is fired.

From the Exatest.com website that does INTRAcellular- rather than blood- electrolyte testing, they say, "The magnesium ion (Mg 2+ ) is larger, in its hydrated state, than the calcium ion (Ca2+ ) and is therefore capable of displacing the latter."

So, when you have enough mag, it will ALWAYS displace the calcium from the interior of the cells. Yet, we still need calcium to help muscles and nerves fire- and increasing calcium and vitamin d could force much calcium into the bones and leave your extracellular fluid short.

So taking a small amount of magnesium provides that insurance that you are getting the amount of calcium that you need.


Kerri Knox RN Immune Health Queen

Kerri Knox, RN- The Immune System Queen
Functional Medicine Practitioner
Immune System

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