Email to The Magnesium Web Site, 2009
Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:22:03 EDT
Ventricular tachycardia
Hello, this info was first published on http://www.easy-immune-health.com/what-magnesium-did-for-my-heartventricular-tachycardia.html .
I simply copied and made one small update.i.e.the length of time I've been off meds.Feel free to contact me if needs be.
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Since 2000 I've had some very serious bouts with the heart condition Ventricular Tachycardia. I've passed out twice and had to be defibrillated once and on many occasions I couldn't even climb stairs for fear that my heart would go crazy and I would get light-headed.So serious was my condition that two surgeries(the most recent being in 2006 at the prestigious New York Presbyterian,known for their heart care) couldn't solve it.
They were actually on the brink of implanting a defibrillator but because of my reservations they sent me home on strong medication instead.
Since that time I had read so much on heart nutrition and on how critical magnesium was for general and especially heart health that I was convinced that, being a highly competitive soccer player that magnesium deficiency along with other dietary factors most likely was behind my condition.
Let me add here that I was totally blown away by the wealth of Research done by the World Health Organization linking magnesium deficiency to heart disease among loads of other health conditions.
Sometime around early 2008 I really went at my health more aggressively with nutritional tweaks and changes. I started consuming more marine based green/superfood powders and magnesium supplements.
I started noticing a difference in my heart workings and when it got too convincing I went to my cardiologist and told him that I would like to reduce my meds to see if I really still needed that dosage or any at all. He was very polite but stubborn and he talked me out of trying anything that he believed could worsen my condition..In fact, such was the polarity of our views that while I was trying to reduce my meds he was telling me he was still convinced that I needed a defibrillator.So admittedly, he won that battle.
Around September I was able to find what I believe to be some of the best water in the USA, maybe even the world. This is water from Adobe Springs in California (bottled under Noah's California Spring Water) and has one of the highest levels of natural magnesium at 110mg/liter.
According to Mineral Waters.org, Poland Springs which is one of the most popular waters around (well at least in the New York area) has only 1 mg/liter of magnesium and most other waters don't fare much better.
In a matter of weeks, though, the message from my mind/body intuition was too compelling. I decided I would reduce my medications gradually and accept whatever consequences that might follow.
I know all doctors are totally against this action but I do believe that with certain health conditions conventional medicine would never trust a patients intuition over Big Science and a continued stalemate would've been inevitable.
In short,as I am writing this It's almost 5 months since I've been off all medication. Playing soccer,weights and doing everything to the max with no signs whatsoever that I've ever even had a heart condition before.
I truly believe the high-magnesium water and other magnesium-loaded foods is to a very very high degree responsible for that turn around. I'm not advertising when I say this but I truly wish the world to know more about this water and this super mineral.
Magnesium is incredible beyond words.
Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:05:00
ARRHYTHMIAS, ANGINA
You may or not find this of interest, but I thought I would send it to you anyway. Please feel free to respond or not as you may.
I am a historically healthy 67 year old male. Two years ago, while walking from a trolley platform to my house on a cold Minnesota night, around zero deg F, all of a sudden I felt a tightening in my chest unlike anything I had ever felt before. That said, during the preceding summer while bicycling for long distance at an average speed of 21 mph typically, I felt a dull pain in my chest which would persist for an hour or so after I stopped. Nothing like what I felt on the way from the trolley platform, but bothersome at least.
After several additional cold air episodes with chest pain, I made an appointment with a cardiologist at the recommendation of my own internist. On taking an oral heath history, he thought I might be suffering from coronary heart disease and scheduled me for an angiogram. He said that if an occlusion were found, they would place one (or more) stents in the artery(s). I was semi conscious during the procedure, so the physician performing the procedure could talk to me afterwards. He said, in essence, that the arteries showed no evidence of coronary heart disease. I wasn't coherent enough to discuss the matter, but did so at a follow up appointment with my cardiologist. Without going into a great deal of detail, the gist of the conversation was that he would put me on medication to treat the symptoms, and that I might be one of a small number of male patients who suffer from microvascular disease, and explained to me what it was.
Since that time, my condition worsened, and none of a series of medications, including nitrogen compounds, calcium channel blockers, beta blockers, etc., none of which gave me relief. Additionally, I began to suffer from annoying and frightening heart arryhthmias, which I had never experienced before.
I mentioned this to my cardiologist, and he told me that I had a condition (which he had diagnosed from a number of ECG's that he had taken) that I had WPW syndrome, and that might have something to do with the abnormal rhythms of my heart. He put me on another beta blocker, metroprolol, which actually made my condition worse, not better, but I dutifully continued to take them for a year. He then suggested I do a stress test to see if it would trigger any of my arrhythmias or angina pains. Remarkably, I experienced NONE, even after nearly 15 minutes into the Bruce protocol.
I continued to have the arrhythmias and occasional angina, but it seemed to be self limiting, and I resigned myself to the probability that nothing could be done and that I would just have to learn to live with it.
I then found information on the Internet about a procedure called EECP, which as I assume you know, is a non-invasive procedure that has had a very good record on relieving refractory heart conditions. I asked my heart clinician if this might work for me, and he said that the clinic had EECP equipment and that "it couldn't hurt to try."
I went through the series of 35 hour long treatments, and felt generally good after each one. But I still occasionally had angina pain. I wanted to believe I was better, but most likely I was not.
Another condition that I had begun to experience was very, very painful night time leg cramps, and cramps elsewhere in my body. They were more than annoying. Some of them were frighteningly painful. My blood pressure, which had always been in the 115 to 120 over mid-70's range had slowly crept up to 165-170 over 100 plus.
Back to my cardiologist once again with the new symptoms. I told him that I wanted to go off the beta blockers because they gave me awful side effects and I thought they were making the arrhythmias worse. He put me on lisinopril 10 mg bid. That brought the BP down to a normal range, but did nothing about the arrhythmias. He put me on some kind of a portable ECG monitor for 30 days to see if he could see a pattern. Some days I had dozen of events, some days only a few. I sent the monitor back a day before going on a 14 day vacation. During the vacation, I was very active physically. I even climbed to the top of a very steep volcano and left younger and healthier companions way behind me. I thought, maybe the EECG fixed at least some of the problems.
My elation was short lived, as when I deplaned from the return flight, and was walking down the concourse toward the baggage check (walking, carrying no baggage) I was gripped with the worst chest pain I have ever experienced. It was knee buckling, and I was sure that this is how and where I would die. I sat down on the floor of the concourse (there was no where to sit) and my companion stared at me in alarm. He said later that all the color drained from my face. I was dripping with perspiration. It was late Sunday evening, and although he said he was going to call 911, by then I was feeling less pain and told him (probably foolishly) that he shouldn't bother. I would be all right.
It took about a half hour for the pain to go completely away. I was going to call my doctor the following day, but I felt perfectly fine and decided to wait until my next scheduled appointment in 3 weeks unless I had another "event." I haven't had one.
Here is where the magnesium enters the picture. While on vacation, I had some bad leg cramps and one of my companions told me he had had them at one time, but taking magnesium supplements relieved them completely. I picked up some Magnesium Oxide 350 mg tablets and started taking 3 a day. Before I realized anything was happening, I noticed that my leg cramps in two weeks time had disappeared. I also noticed that my arrhythmias were GONE. Although I was still on the lisinopril, my blood pressure and pulse dropped considerably. Resting pulse now 55, down from 70. Blood pressure down to 105 over 65. No angina.
I now believe that I was misdiagnosed with microvascular disease. The EECP should at least have mitigated it, but since I had the worst angina attack I have ever experienced two weeks after completion of the treatment, I doubt that it had any effect whatever on my angina.
I believe that I have had, from the beginning, a very significant magnesium deficiency. Furthermore, I think my angina was not due to microvascular disease, but to vasospastic coronary disease. I think all of this is consistent with magnesium deficiency. I know there are tests--probably expensive and possibly invasive--to determine whether my angina is vasospastic related or not.
Your website has been helpful in putting all this in perspective. I really wish the medical community had some notion of what magnesium deficiency can cause. No one could connect the dots, so no one suggested I try a $10 bottle of magnesium supplements.
I am now using Magnesium Gluconate, which I understand may have more bioavailability than the MgO I started with. I am very optimistic, for the first time in several years, that all of the heart issues (as well as the muscle cramps) are over for me. I think my heart will last me as long as I need it now.
Thanks for your website. I think it should be required of all MD's to study nutrition, and the role of micronutrients in disease. I don't blame anyone for the lack of expertise. No one knows everything. I think I am very lucky to have discovered a cure on my own. Just wish it hadn't taken so long, and that I had to go through the process of finding the key to my maladies.
http://www.mgwater.com/
Healthy Water
Association--USA