
Dietary magnesium tied to lower risk of heart disease and diabetes
A diet rich in magnesium - found in foods like leafy greens, fish, nuts and whole grains - may help lower the risk of chronic health problems like heart disease and diabetes, a research review suggests.
Some previous studies linked insufficient magnesium levels to a greater risk of developing a wide range of health problems including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, and cardiovascular disease, said lead study author Dr. Xuexian Fang, a nutrition researcher at Zhengzhou University in China.
For the current study, Fang and colleagues analyzed data on dietary magnesium and chronic disease from 40 studies published from 1999 to 2016 on more than one million people across nine countries.
Compared with people who had the lowest levels of magnesium in their diets, people who got the most magnesium were 10 percent less likely to develop heart disease, 12 percent less likely to have a stroke and 26 percent less likely to develop diabetes.
"Magnesium plays an important role in maintaining human health," Fang said by email.
Combined, the studies in the analysis included 7,678 cases of cardiovascular disease, 6,845 cases of coronary heart disease, 701 cases of heart failure, 4,755 cases of stroke, 26,299 cases of type 2 diabetes and 10,983 deaths.
When researchers looked at the effect of increasing dietary magnesium by 100 milligrams a day, they didn't find a statically meaningful impact on the total risk of cardiovascular disease or coronary heart disease.
But they did find that increasing dietary magnesium by this amount was tied to a 22 pe
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