It is thought that there is a lack of magnesium in modern foodstuffs, the lack of which can negatively affect the thryroid (and other body parts, but the thyroid is a metabolism regulator so it's very important). There has been a lot of discussion of this on some animal health boards in the past few years, where some people have been supplementing magnesium to horses who have suffered bouts of laminitis (founder, a metabolic problem which makes their feet very sore) and getting very good results. This piqued my curiosity as I knew from raising sheep (I know, I know, baaaaaah....here come the jokes) that if you didn't mineral supplement correctly you'd get yourself in a heap of trouble with the fresh spring grass having too much of some trace elements and not enough of the others. If you ever bought a bag of sheep mineral you'd see in big letters DOES NOT CONTAIN COPPER, because they might need magnesium to digest all those extra (grass) sugars but the extra copper would kill them. The going theory on the horses (not quite mainstream yet but getting there) is that some horses have a genetic glitch that leaves them too sensitive to cope with modern feeding practices, which tend to be heavy on the carbohydrates from grains, and that gives them sugar overloads when combined with green grass and not enough plain, dry hay. Feeding alfalfa tends to compound this problem in susceptable horses because legumes have chemicals that mimic hormones and tend to furthur interfere with thryroid function. Of course there is a word for this I can't think of right now, it's a word meaning estrogen-like. Note a lot of these "herbal" menopausal over the counter remedies we now see in stores contain legumes like clover.
So therefore, since I had a mare who was borderline laminitic and miserable, who couldn't be let out to graze, and was living on nothing but dry hay, I put her on the cow minerals with Magnesium. Sorry John, but it's got mag-oxide in it. And sure enough, she lost weight and went sound in her hooves and is out in the pasture now. But we kick her out every evening when the others get the alfalfa, and she'll go back to half days this spring. I thought this was pretty cool. I have other horses who can eat twice and much as her easily, with no problems, same pasture, same hay, AND they need grain to hold weight. Has to be genetics. Imagine my coming to this websight for the first time and starting to read about the Diet Primer. Holy sh*t! Humans with starch intolerance! Where have I seen this before? My animals! I haven't talked to a veterinarian in awhile about my spine,(they will give you a great explanation of spondylitis if you ask) but I bet if we all went to vets instead of doctors they would no be scoffing at the the thought that diet affects metabolism and disease processes. They see this every day. They'd want to know what you're doing.
So I just wanted to give some background on why I put myself on the magnesium supplement when I read that it helps with calcium absorbtion. I don't do things on a whim. Magnesium is pretty low in multi-vitamins so I take a separate one to try to bump it up to 100% since it is not harmful in levels over that amount. But what I am curious about is why my fingernails got so much better after starting it if the mag-ox doesn't get used by humans. I know it works in horses, cows, and sheep but what is the thing we are lacking to make use of it?
