DP Thailand Blog

Calcium and magnesium are two common minerals, but like many nutrient combinations in your diet, they tend to work best when taken together, either in your food or as a supplement. That is because they are both closely involved in the function of your muscles, and also in the structure of your bones. These are two distinctly different types of structure, and hence place different demands on the form of supply of the nutrition needed to keep them healthy.

Muscles contract when there is a movement of calcium from outside to the inside of the muscle cells. That causes a contraction of each muscle cell, generating movement. Magnesium prevents this from happening by causing the calcium to relax the muscle, rather than contract it, and a cramp is in simple terms caused by a lack of magnesium, so that the muscle cannot be relaxed, but remains contracted.

This is a simplification of an extremely complex process, because a deficiency of calcium in the fluid outside the cell can also cause muscle to spasm. So what is the problem causing a muscle cramp? It is actually caused by the balance of calcium and how it is being used between your body cells and your bones. Basically, if either calcium or magnesium is in short supply, or not present in the correct relative concentrations, your muscles will cramp because your soft tissue cells cannot relax through a lack of calcium in you extracellular fluid.  Magnesium can help this by suppressing the production of the hormone (parathyroid hormone) that prevents you muscle cells from relaxing.

You can get a good balance of calcium and magnesium together by means of a supplement of calcium and magnesium together, or by eating a diet rich in dairy products, nuts, grains, buckwheat and legumes.  Supplemental calcium and magnesium is available at your local or internet health food store.