“...Magnesium in the Heart and Blood Vessels

Magnesium is a vital structural component of all muscle cells, and the heart is mainly muscle. Indeed, heart muscle, when healthy, contains even more magnesium than other muscles do. And when magnesium levels become low, they can drop more in heart muscle cells than in other muscles.
Each molecule of myosin (muscle protein) has an atom of magnesium in it. Muscles therefore have to have magnesium to work. About 27 percent of the body’ magnesium is in muscle tissue, including the small muscle cells that make blood vessels contract or relax as blood, driven by heart muscle’s pumping, flows through them. If a magnesium deficiency begins to affect the heart’s muscle cells and the “nervous conduction system” of the heart, this organ, which must beat regularly and continuously, may run into trouble. The availability of magnesium within the heart affects the rhythm of the heart both directly and indirectly by controlling potassium and calcium levels. This also affects the conduction system. A low level of magnesium in the heart muscle cells can bring on heart arrhythmias ranging from the merely disturbing, such as palpitations, to the severe, including disturbances that can be life-threatening. Blood vessel muscle cells need healthy amounts of magnesium to relax properly after each contraction. They can become stiff and inflexible if their magnesium gets too low.
Early in 2002, a pharmaceutical ad on television stated that each human being has thousands of enzymes, and that their proper function is needed for health. This is true.
Enzymes are what make the body’s chemical reactions take place at the proper times, at the proper speed, and in the proper amounts. Any biochemistry student cantell you that including Mg++ (the symbol for magnesium ion – magnesium in its electrically charged form) in a reaction has a good chance of giving you the right answer to test questions.
That is because magnesium is a necessary catalyst for all sorts of life reactions. Among the enzymes that have been studied intensively, over 350 need magnesium, directly, to do their jobs properly. For the sake of comparison, the mineral zinc, for example, is required for about 200 enzymes; copper, for less than 20; and selenium, for 10 that have been identified in animal studies so far. To mention just a few, magnesium is directly necessary to the enzymes that break down glucose (blood sugar), control the production of cholesterol, make nucleic acids such as DNA, make proteins (all enzymes are proteins), and break down fats. Importantly, magnesium is necessary to the enzymes that keep potassium inside cells – including those of the cardiovascular system – where it is necessary for cellular activity, and to keep sodium outside the cells, thereby preventing edema or swelling. Without adequate magnesium, these enzymes either will not act or will act at the wrong rate or at the wrong time – or both.
In addition to the more than 350 enzymes for which magnesium is directly necessary, it is indirectly required for thousands of others. Once especially important reaction that needs magnesium is the one that controls the molecule adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. ATP is present in the entire living world. You can think of it as life’s batteries – a substance that can store and release energy back and forth, like a switch. But to do so it needs magnesium. Literally every energy-consuming reaction in life involves ATP and thus needs magnesium to proceed. This is what puts the number of enzymes that need magnesium into the thousands. It would be hard to overestimate magnesium’s importance in enzyme function, both directly, as a cofactor, and indirectly via ATP reactions. Muscle contraction requires energy, and thus requires ATP and magnesium. The pumping heart is a muscle that alternately contracts and relaxes. The contracting and dilating of blood vessels are due to muscles contracting and relaxing. All of this activity requires magnesium, both directly and indirectly through ATP. No wonder low magnesium can affect the heart and its blood vessels. ...”

Source: “The Magnesium Factor” © 2003, Authors: Mildred S. Seelig, M.D., MPH; Master, American College of Nutrition Andrea Rosanoff, Ph.D.

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