Welcome to Straight Talk on Health. I’m your host Dr. Chet Zelasko. Straight Talk on Health is a joint production with WGVU in Grand Rapids MI. I examine the practical application of health information. Nutrition. Exercise. Diet. Supplementation. I look at the science behind them, and let you know whether it’s something to consider or not. You can check out other things that I do on my website Drchet.com and sign up for my free emails.
If there is one thing we can pretty much agree on, it’s that we want to retain as many of our important memories as we can along with the ability to learn new things. That’s why a couple of recent studies on the mineral magnesium caught my attention. Both were published in the past 2 years by the same research group but the results of one study inspired the second and inspired me to recommend a third.
Researchers used data from the UK Biobank Study to examine the relationship between magnesium intake, blood pressure, and specific brain volumes. Just over 6000 male and female subjects ages 40-73 years of age completed the 16 month study. Brain volumes were assessed by MRI and included grey matter, white matter, and white matter lesions. Dietary intake was assessed at least 5 times over the course of the study via the Oxford WebQ food frequency questionnaire. As much as I complain about FFQs, because of the graphics used to depict portion sizes, it’s a better alternative to the old paper/pencil on actual paper FFQ online or other FFQs.
The results demonstrated that high magnesium intake was associated with increased grey matter and a lower volume of white matter lesions. There was no relationship between BP and magnesium intake. What is also interesting was that brain volumes stayed stationary if magnesium intake remained stable. But if magnesium levels were low and rose, there was an increase in grey matter. It is unclear if reducing magnesium intake would decrease grey matter.
The question is why? The purpose of the study was based on prior research that showed that low magnesium intake is related to increased BP. But there was none in the study. What caused the neuroprotective effect?
After the first study, we were left with the researchers’ question: if magnesium intake and BP were not related to a neuroprotective effect, what was? The researchers had some idea based on prior research: inflammation. Let’s take a look at what they found on the follow-up to their original study.
The methodology and subject pool of the study was essentially the same as the other study with the addition of several measures of inflammation, including hs-CRP. Hs-CRP stands for High sensitivity C-Reactive Protein and is the best measure reflective of whole body inflammation currently available. Researchers found that as magnesium intake increased, inflammation decreased. Subjects with higher levels of magnesium intake had increased brain volumes including grey matter and white matter, but not white matter lesions. This was an observational study, so cause and effect cannot be determined, but with close to 6,000 subjects, I think we can safely say there’s a definite relationship between magnesium intake and a neuroprotective effect.
How Much Do I Need? The average intake of magnesium was 380 mg for men and 340 mg for women. A reader recently sent me a post that stated a physician recommended that everyone should take 500 mg of magnesium every day. I’m not going to go that far because there’s still too much we don’t know. The biggest issue is we don’t know where the subjects got their magnesium; this study was done in the United Kingdom and they tend to eat more plant-based foods than Americans.
I’ve written to the lead author of the study to see if they plan to publish a third part of this study: breaking down the contribution from foods and from supplements—I’ll let you know what he says. As Americans, we think in terms of a pill to solve our problems instead of food, so finding out whether supplemental magnesium is beneficial or not is important.
For now, I’m going to recommend that we increase our consumption of the top five sources of magnesium from foods. Those are:
1 ounce pumpkin seeds
3 ounces spinach
1 ounce almonds
3 ounces avocado
1 ounce dark chocolate
When you think about it, those are tasty foods that include seeds, nuts, as well as chocolate. Seems like an easy way to get more magnesium. Give it a try—your brain will probably love you for it!
I’ve got some more time left.so let’s take a look at another study. This one is about the amino acid taurine, often found in energy drinks and protein powders. The title said “Could your energy drink be fueling cancer?” “Now what” was my first thought. Researchers reported in a press release that the amino acid taurine may help cancerous cells make energy to fuel its growth. Because taurine is found in energy drinks and protein supplements, I wanted to check whether this is something to be concerned about or not.
This was a complex study from the perspective of identifying what were the potential stimulators of tumor progression in bone marrow. A taurine carrier was identified. The researchers conducted tests which added taurine to specific types of leukemia cells to determine tumor progression. They concluded that further research was necessary to find something that would block taurine carriers from carrying taurine into tumor calls. The reason is that it could potentially stimulate the production of energy via glycolysis.
The methods section of the paper was over 5 single spaced pages long. That doesn’t make it bad but each unique test has to have a standard error of the method. In other words, how specific and precise does the method measure the variable. Using available leukemia cell lines is a first step to test theories but these are theoretical. They did use a rodent model but there were few rodents in each subject group. On top of that, taurine is naturally produced in the body and they specifically identified tumor sites as one of the locations where taurine is produced. How can that be differentiated from natural production and supplementation?
In my opinion, they were far too aggressive in their conclusions about energy drinks potentially fueling cancer. It should also be noted that the bulk of the research was done in a private lab in cooperation with a university research group. The specter of financial gain can’t be ignored if a solution is eventually found by these researchers. For now, the most conservative approach is that if you have an aggressive myeloid leukemia, consider reducing taurine intake from all sources which would also include meats, dairy and eggs. There is a lot more research that has to be done before we definitively know how this information impacts the real world.
That’s it for this episode. If you like this podcast, please hit the like button and tell your friends and colleagues about it. Until next time, this is Dr. Chet Zelasko saying health is a choice. Choose wisely today and every day.
References: European Journal of Nutrition (2024) 63:1807–1818
1. https://scitechdaily.com/could-your-energy-drink-be-feeding-cancer-what-scientists-just-discovered/
2. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09018-7
