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Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.
This podcast is brought to you by Puori, which is a new-to-me company that I am really loving and very excited about. You’ve probably heard about the benefits of taking omega-3s, and you also have probably heard about some of the cautions that come with this. And I love Puori because they solve these problems. The main reasons I personally take omegas every day are to support cardiovascular health, brain health, and eye health. And we of course know from all of the data that regular omega-3s can have a really beneficial effect on the body’s ability to kind of keep inflammation at bay.
But some types of omega-3s can go rancid easily, and there can actually be some issues with sourcing and contaminants in a lot of them. So for a long time, I actually didn’t take any, but noticed a difference in my labs and was looking for a really high quality omega-3. And that is why I’m really excited that I found Puori. And it’s spelled P-U-O-R-I. And their omega-3s are third-party tested and certified by the Clean Label Project and by IFOS. So this is a clean omega-3 that I can completely trust and recommend. Every batch of their fish oil and all of their supplements are tested for more than 200 contaminants, and they publish their results online, so there’s complete transparency there. I find that this dose, that I actually notice a difference from it, and I see improvements, especially in my skin. So I was really excited again to find a safe version of this.
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This episode is brought to you by LMNT. And you’ve probably heard me talk about my love of getting enough salt before and how this made a drastic difference in my energy levels. And LMNT is the easiest way that I have found to do this as well as the tastiest. We know that proper hydration leads to better sleep, sharper focus, better energy, and so much more. But hydration isn’t just about drinking water. In fact, only drinking water alone all the time can actually be counterproductive. Because being optimally hydrated, which is a state called urohydration, is about optimizing your body’s fluid ratios. And this depends on many factors, including the intake and excretion of things like salt and electrolytes. Now, electrolytes are charged minerals that conduct electricity to power your nervous system. They also regulate hydration status by balancing fluids inside and outside of our cells. LMNT was created with a science-backed electrolyte ratio of 1,000 milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, and 60 milligrams of magnesium with no sugar. So even though these taste incredible, they don’t have added sugar, and I love my kids consuming them as well.
Electrolytes are a key component of healthy hydration. And here’s what happens when your electrolyte levels are dialed in. You find you have steady, maintained energy, better cognitive function. I noticed this really helps me get rid of brain fog. I suffer fewer headaches now, experience fewer muscle cramps, even during severe workouts. I perform better and longer. And for people who follow any kind of fasting or low carb diet protocol, when you stop eating carbs or when you’re fasting, the absence of insulin allows the kidneys to release sodium, sodium, replacing that lost sodium with an electrolyte solution can help you continue to feel good. And since LMNT is zero sugar, it won’t break a fast. You might also find that getting your sodium levels in the right range can help improve or maintain healthy blood pressure, regulate digestion, this is a big one for a lot of people, and keep skin hydrated. We know that hydrated skin is happy skin and these minerals are a big key in that as well. You can check out and try LMNT at drinklmnt.com/wellnessmama. And by using that link, you’ll receive a free LMNT sample pack with any order. So you can try all of their amazing flavors. My favorites right now are watermelon and grapefruit, but I also love their chocolate flavors with hot water as a form of a hot cocoa. So again, drinklmnt.com/wellnessmama to receive a free sample pack.
Katie: Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie Wells from wellnessmama.com. And if you have ever struggled with middle-of-the-night leg cramps, I know I did during pregnancy, then this episode might be extremely helpful for you. Although it’s very wide-ranging and goes into many more topics than just leg cramps, that’s definitely where we dive in. And I’m here with Patrick Sullivan, who is the co-founder and CEO of Jigsaw Health, which is a company renowned for an incredible host of products, many of which I’ve been using for many, many years. Patrick is also a former leg cramp sufferer, and he brings, as you will hear, a very personal and passionate perspective to this discussion and to the work that he does. He loves to talk about the transformative benefits of magnesium, which I am also a huge fan of talking about and have written about many times over the years. And in this episode, we deep dive into the many, many ways that magnesium is used in the body, why it’s so important, what it’s synergistic with, how stress affects it, and so much more. I think you will learn a lot in this episode. Definitely a lot of key takeaways. So without any further wait, let’s join Patrick Sullivan. Patrick, welcome. Thank you so much for being here.
Patrick: I am so delighted to be here, Katie. Thank you for having me.
Katie: I am so excited for this conversation, and I suspect that it will be very helpful to a lot of people listening. We’re going to be going deep on the topic of leg cramps and specifically why bananas are probably not the solution, which is great news for me because that is the only food I don’t like really in the whole entire world is bananas. So, I’m really-
Patrick: Me too.
Katie: Really? Okay. You don’t love bananas. I have it right now.
Patrick: No. And I keep trying to like them. Like every other year, I’m like, all right, maybe this is the year I like bananas. I just, I didn’t get into them and I don’t know why.
Katie: Same. I suspect I ate too many of them when I was a baby. And now I just don’t like them. But for whatever the reason, I am not a fan of bananas. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with them. Bananas can be good for you. I just don’t prefer them.
Patrick: Correct.
Katie: But I also know from researching for this episode and from following your work for a while, like they are not certainly the solution to leg cramps. And I think to understand why, it’s worth going deeper on this topic to understand what actually is going on when someone gets leg cramps. I know for me, that’s something I experienced, especially when I was pregnant. I would wake up in the middle of the night and stretch and my leg would cramp. And it was like, take your breath away, uncomfortable when your legs cramp like that. And the advice I actually got ironically from my doctor back then was to eat bananas, which I did not do. But I think you also have had personal experience with leg cramps. So can you walk us through your experience and give us some background on what’s kind of going on at the root of leg cramps?
Patrick: Certainly. As a kid growing up into my teenage years, I played a lot of soccer, and I loved soccer. Grew up in Texas. Very hot. Sweat a lot. And I remember waking up so many times in the middle of the night and being like, oh, my gosh, my legs hurt so bad. And I didn’t really know what to do. And as a little kid, I’m kind of like creeping into my mom and dad’s bedroom. And I’m like, mom, can I use the heating pad? And, you know, they would have to get up and plug it in for me and put it under my legs. Eventually that heat would kind of soothe my legs.
But what I’ve learned about leg cramps came from Dr. Decker Weiss. He’s a member of Scientific Advisory Board. He’s a naturopathic cardiologist. And he said something interesting to me one day, many, I don’t know, six or seven years ago now. So there’s actually two types of muscle cramps. So if you’re in the midst of an activity like playing soccer or pickleball, my new favorite sport, and you begin to cramp up, that’s the sign of a potential potassium deficiency. And of course, we all know that bananas are high in potassium.
But there’s a second type of muscle cramps. If you begin to cramp after the fact, after the activity, or those painful charley horses in the middle of the night, that’s actually the sign of a potential magnesium deficiency. And there’s not very much magnesium in bananas. So when your doctor says, oh, just eat more bananas, they’re loading you up with potassium, which is great. Definitely need more potassium. And in fact, many Americans are deficient in potassium and magnesium. But the real key to fixing those nighttime charley horses is actually magnesium.
So that, I think, was one of the clarifying things for me over the year. And it led to the creation of Jigsaw Health MagSoothe, which is a nighttime magnesium powder that also contains a little bit of potassium as well, just in case. But that nighttime magnesium powder is something I take every night. And it’s funny, I was telling a friend of mine last week, hey, I’m going to be on the Wellness Mama Podcast and I’m talking about leg cramps and he’s like, oh, that’s cool. What’s the thing? And I told him about those two types of leg cramps, and he goes, you know what? My mom. My mom gets a lot of leg cramps. I’m going to buy her some of this MagSoothet. And over the weekend, I got a text message from him with a screenshot of what his mom said. She said, I took MagSoothe last night. I slept six hours and pooped this morning. I’ll keep you posted on my bodily functions. Maybe I’ll become a testimonial.
So magnesium, the great thing is not only does it help with those nighttime leg cramps, it also helps with bowel movement and function. Really, the key is calcium and magnesium work in tandem with each other. So calcium clenches, magnesium relaxes. And when you are getting too much calcium, you get too much clench, and you have to counteract with some magnesium.
Katie: That makes sense. And I feel like anytime I get the chance to talk about magnesium, I am so excited because I’ve been writing about this for years. I remember over a decade ago, starting to discover some of the research on magnesium. And I’m sure you can speak to this much more eloquently than I can. But even back then, the numbers were really staggering on the amount of people who had some version of magnesium deficiency or just simply weren’t getting enough. And when I started researching, well, what are the things that deplete magnesium? The short list is everything in the modern world. And what are the things that give us magnesium? And the short answer is not very many things in the modern world because our food supply is depleted. But I know you’ve done a lot more research on this than I have. Can you walk us through, why are we seeing so much magnesium deficiency? And what are some of the big reasons that we’re seeing this, especially now?
Patrick: You really nailed a lot of it with that summary. The NHANES study, that was a study of nurses, I don’t recall the year that this came out. I want to say it was like mid-90s. It showed that 68% of that population that was being studied was not achieving the minimum required dose of magnesium per day. And we should get into dosages a little bit later. But that essentially said 68% of the studied population was effectively magnesium deficient.
And one of the easiest ways to figure out, well, am I deficient in magnesium? Are you getting those nighttime leg cramps? Are you getting those charley horses in your feet? Those kinds of things when you’re not in the midst of an activity, but it’s after an activity, whether you’ve been playing a sport, or even been out gardening or picking weeds, that kind of post-activity muscle cramping, that’s a real easy sign of magnesium deficiency.
And the good news is it’s easy to fix with supplementation. The bad news is it’s really difficult to fix with food. So one of the things we did several years ago at Jigsaw Health is we sent in a bag of sprouted organic almonds to a lab to analyze the amount of magnesium in the almonds. Because one of the things you’ll read online if you research foods that are high in magnesium, almonds pound for pound is one of the highest. And it turns out that this bag, the sample that we sent in had 71 milligrams of magnesium per ounce of almonds.
Well, the RDI, the recommended daily intake as set by the FDA, is 420 milligrams per day. So that’s about six or seven ounces of almonds. That’s almost like a plate full of almonds. If you were to visualize that, that’s like a thousand calories of almonds. So the food that is highest in magnesium is almost like half of a 2,000-calorie diet, if you’re doing caloric-based diets, almost half of your diet would come from a plate full of almonds. So it’s kind of frustrating, I would say, to say, gosh, do I really have to do supplements? But I think the answer is yes, the only way to get at least the RDI is either a thousand, thousand milligrams, or I’m sorry, a thousand, uh, calories worth of almonds per day, or taking something simple like Jigsaw MagSoothe.
Katie: Yeah, I remember reading that study and also the follow-ups that looked at even children are seeing deficiency in magnesium, which can be extra problematic when they’re still growing. And you mentioned that calcium and magnesium work in tandem. And I agree with you, it seems like especially when it comes to magnesium, supplementation is almost a necessary thing in the modern world. In fact, even when I had Chris Kresser on this podcast in our most recent episode, he was always a huge proponent of get everything from food, he even said, we no longer live in a nutrition environment where you can do that anymore. We have reached a point where to achieve the basic level, not even optimal, but the basic requirements, you almost have to supplement in today’s world. And so I think it’s important to shed light on that topic.
And I also know from researching this, magnesium does so much in the body. I think it’s originally they said 300 enzymatic reactions it’s involved in. I’ve seen other ones that say 600 now. But magnesium is necessary for a lot of things that go on in our body. I know right now it’s top of mind for me because I’m extremely sore from a workout. That’s a little bit different of a type of cramping, but it does help with, for instance, recovery from workouts. I notice a massive difference in deep sleep when I get magnesium regularly versus if I don’t. But can you speak to some of the other ways that our body uses magnesium and why it’s so important?
Patrick: In almost every article that you find when doing some basic magnesium research, you’ll see the phrase, magnesium is involved in over 300 biochemical reactions. That number, turns out, comes from Dr. Bert Vallee, who was the Harvard, basically, a Harvard medical researcher. And it was a best guess that he made back in the 1950s. So that 300 enzymatic reactions is just kind of like just recycled and recycled and everybody says, well, that’s what everybody says, that’s what it is.
Well, more recently, magnesium researcher Morley Robbins, who is the creator of something called the Root Cause Protocol, you can Google that and find Root Cause Protocol, or I think it’s rcp123.org. Morley Robbins, medical researcher, has found that magnesium is involved in at least 3,751 biochemical reactions. Ten times more than Bert Vallee’s best guess from the 1950s. Morley likes to refer to magnesium as the conductor of the symphony. Because magnesium is at the beginning of so many chains, so many biochemical reaction chains, one of the most important, which, of course, is ATP, adenosine triphosphate, which is the fancy word that we were all supposed to learn in chemistry middle school or high school, ATP being energy. ATP is actually Mg2+ATP, and without magnesium no energy.
Katie: Yeah, I feel like if that alone were the only reason, that would be a very strong case for the importance of paying attention to how much magnesium we consume on a daily basis. And you mentioned dosing, and I do want to go there. But first, so we talked about almonds. I believe, like I said, we’re in a both/and situation. It’s like a food and supplementation type thing in the modern world. So what are some other foods that are high in magnesium, just so we know dietary sources that we can also focus on?
Patrick: Leafy greens is really the second most common. Leafy greens. Unfortunately, my body doesn’t seem to like kale that much. So we’ve stumbled across two foods that I don’t like, bananas and kale. Beans are a decent source. And really any kind of Mediterranean diet has a number of different foods that are going to be helping to improve and get magnesium into the body. Whitefish, in particular, sea bass, I believe, is a decent amount of magnesium.
But it’s pretty tough to find the optimal dose. And maybe we should talk about that now. So the RDI, recommended daily intake, of 420 milligrams is set by the FDA. It was recently increased about five years ago from 400 up to 420 milligrams. But author Mildred Seelig, a PhD researcher, wrote a book called Magnesium Factor. This was published at least 20 years ago, but she suggested that to reach an optimal amount of magnesium, we need to be getting five milligrams per pound of body weight per day.
So quick math, if you weigh 100 pounds, five times 100, that’s 500 milligrams. I am about 198 so round it off to 200. I should be getting at almost 200 pounds about 1,000 milligrams per day of magnesium to reach my optimal dose. That’s two and a half times what the RDA or RDI, the FDA says that I should be getting. Morley Robbins, the magnesium researcher who we just talked about, he has added a corollary that I really like that says, okay, yes, what Mildred Seelig said, five milligrams per pound of body weight per day, increase based on stress. Because the body needs more energy when it’s under stress, therefore it’s burning more magnesium.
Katie: Yeah, I think that’s an important thing to dive into and was going to be my next question, actually. So we talked about the modern lifestyle in general not being great for our magnesium status. But from what I’ve read, a lot of things, some variables which are within our control that I think are worth optimizing. But even if we’re trying to live the healthiest lifestyle possible, there are still factors that can additionally sort of deplete our magnesium levels. And from my understanding, this is things like stress you mentioned, of course, lack of sleep, caffeine and alcohol both can, dehydration can, a non-optimal diet can. What are some of the other big depleters of magnesium that we can be aware of and try to counteract as well?
Patrick: So there’s 14 classes of drugs that deplete the body of magnesium. This is based on research done by Suzy Cohen, America’s most trusted pharmacist in her book, Drug Muggers. So acid blockers, antacids, antibiotics, antiviral agents, blood pressure drugs, central nervous system stimulants, cholesterol drugs, horticosteroids, hormone replacement therapy, including oral contraceptives, essentially birth control pills. Immunosuppressants, non-steroidal aromatase inhibitors, osteoporosis drugs, elective estrogen receptor modulators, sulfonamides, I’m not sure I’m saying that correctly. And then the last was just a number of different things that we don’t necessarily think of drugs, but alcohol, coffee, in particular caffeine, having too much calcium or extended calcium supplementation. I, for one, am not really a fan of supplementing with calcium, because I think calcium is one of the minerals that is so prevalent in the food supply. But even just a high sugar diet, these are all things that deplete the body of magnesium. And we’re not even thinking about it when we’re taking those other things.
Katie: Yeah, I agree with you on not needing to supplement calcium or at least the common forms of calcium. I think there can be a time and a place for targeted forms of calcium for detox if your magnesium level is in the right range.
On the dosage side though, I’m a very small, obscure case of this, but I’m an inverse modulator of lots of things that interact with the GABA pathway. So one thing I noticed, this is probably not going to apply to many people, but if I take magnesium at night, it tends to keep me awake all night. So I ended up taking it in the morning, but I also find if I take it kind of spread out like several doses throughout the morning and early afternoon, I tend to do better than if I, for me, take it at night or take it all in one massive dose. But do you have any suggestions for dosing in a way that helps get our magnesium into an optimal range most effectively?
Patrick: Yes. The basis of Jigsaw Health, really, my father and I started this company in 2005. We’re almost about to reach our 20th year in business. And one of the first formulas that he created was Jigsaw MagSRT, SRT stands for sustained release technology. And that was a kind of a scratching your own itch kind of a thing where he realized that he, based on a number of blood tests and a number of symptoms, he was like, I really am deficient in magnesium, but I also have irritable bowel syndrome. So trying to get high dose magnesium is really difficult.
And the reason is because magnesium is hydrophilic. Hydrophilic is a fancy word that means draws water to it. So magnesium draws water to it, like a magnet, if you will. And so magnesium is often used at certain forms of magnesium, magnesium chloride or magnesium oxide, are used really as a laxative. So in like preparing for a colonoscopy, they’ll have you take a high dose of magnesium oxide to cleanse your bowels. And it’s really just using magnesium as a side effect.
So my dad, MagSRT, was like, okay, well, if we use the very absorbable form of magnesium and then delayed the release of it, so we use this sustained release technology. It’s basically plant fibers, cellulose is the technical term. But this cellulose, this plant fiber that slowly breaks down the tablet as it goes through your GI tract enables you to then take a higher dose at sort of one time, but the pills, the tablets, break down over the course of six to eight hours, depending on the individual.
Katie: Yeah, I’ve had great results with that. I found actually when I first started taking magnesium before I found you guys, I was taking other forms that were probably not as ideal. And I sometimes would have like weird digestive reactions or even like skin reactions to them. And I had none of those issues with you guys. And I would guess it’s something to do with that and the fact that it’s like sustained release and my body’s able to absorb it more effectively.
I think it’s also important to talk about, is there an upper limit when it comes to magnesium supplementation? I know with fat soluble vitamins we want to be very careful about not getting too much of those and of course not becoming deficient in those either. With magnesium, I know it’s a little bit different. Are there cautions around sort of upper limits on dosage or things to be aware of if someone’s really trying to optimize their magnesium and they know they’re deficient?
Patrick: Great question. I think that most doctors would basically say it comes down to what your body can tolerate in terms of absorption. So because magnesium is hydrophilic, it draws water to it, if you’re taking more than your body can handle, you will be in the restroom and not in a good sort of like simple way or the healthy way, I’m trying to choose my words appropriately for the audience. You want your poop to be normal. If it’s runny, diarrhea, explosive, that’s when you’re taking too much. And really just back down on the dose.
Because we use so much magnesium and so much in our bodies, I’ve been taking a thousand milligrams per day, both from Jigsaw MagSRT and Jigsaw MagSoothe. And I’ll often use the Jigsaw Brain Boost as well, which is magnesium L-threonate, a number of different kinds of magnesium. So I’ve been experimenting with different kind of levels and dosages of that and I can handle it. I guess, you know, we do have some customers that will take MagSRT, and if they go more than two tablets, which is 250 milligrams at of time, that’s sort of their upper limit. MagSoothe, it’s a 200 milligram, it’s a powder. We recommend putting that into about two to four ounces of water before bed. That is a form that is magnesium glycinate. Which is an amino acid-based chelated form. Very calming. I would say highly absorbable. So, probably individualized.
The only sort of medical counter indication for quote, too much magnesium is if you have a rare kidney disease that doesn’t allow you to clear magnesium. But it’s extremely rare. The only contraindication for magnesium that I’m aware of.
Katie: Good to know. And I know you mentioned several products. I’ll make sure all of those are linked in the show notes so you guys can find them. And I know you have a ton of educational resources as well that really delve into the different forms, how they work in the body, as well as we haven’t even talked about, but I get so many products from you guys between the collagen, you have adrenal support, you have electrolytes that my kids actually like to drink, which is huge, and so many other things as well.
But you touched a little bit on the story and you and your dad. I would love to hear a little bit more about that because I haven’t gotten to ever ask you about that that directly. And it seems like this, the company and everything that you guys create, there’s such passion and purpose behind it. So I would just love to hear a little bit about the story about how that all came to be.
Patrick: Yeah, my dad struggled off and on with various chronic health challenges for almost 30 years. So starting in his early 20s into his late 40s. And he basically was like, look, if there is an effect, then there has to be a cause. So in the 80s, early 90s, when he was really kind of at the height of these various struggles, and it was irritable bowels, leaky gut, fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, insomnia, low energy, just all the things that don’t make you feel like you. He just was digging and digging and digging. So he was reading, you know, going to the library, getting basically his hands on any kind of health book that he could find. And every sort of piece to his puzzle that he could look for and begin to implement, he would do that.
And he found and eventually wrote a book called Wellness Piece by Piece, thus the name Jigsaw Health. He’s like, you know, there really isn’t a silver bullet. There’s a number of fundamental things that you have to do. You have to get the toxins out of the way. So for him, one of the things that he had 14 mercury amalgams in his mouth because he was born in the 50s and grew up then. When you had a cavity, you drilled it out and you put in a quote, silver filling, which is 50% mercury, a neurotoxin. And one of the things that he found through genetic testing is he has the APO 3, 4 snip. And that makes him a poor excreter of heavy metals. So some people will have silver amalgams, mercury amalgams, whatever you want to call them in their mouths, and not really have any symptoms. Others will be absolutely debilitated from them. It seems to come down to the body’s ability to excrete heavy metals. Well, he was a poor excreter, so the buildup of all that mercury over time led to a lot of problems.
Another kind of piece to his puzzle is he had a lot of ear, nose, and throat problems growing up. So took a lot of antibiotics, which washed out, just destroyed his microbiome, his gut flora. So finding probiotics that he could take that were high-dose. One of the things in the story behind Jigsaw Health’s probiotic formula is that most probiotics use prebiotics, FOS, F-O-S, Fructooligosaccharides. That is a prebiotic that feeds the good bugs.
Well, my dad found for him, because of his gastrointestinal problems, it would always give him gas. So he was like well, you know, scratching my own itch, I wanna make a probiotic that doesn’t have a prebiotic in it. So that’s what we sell at Jigsaw Health. And a lot of people who maybe have that problem with different kind of probiotics where their tummy gets, you know, kind of bubbly guts. Maybe it’s because of the FOS, the prebiotic that is in the formula.
So Jigsaw Health was really scratch your own itch kind of invention of my dad. And I’ve had the good fortune of being able to learn from him and come along. Learn a lot in the process. My job as the CEO, especially over these past 10 years, has been essentially to make sure that we have great customer service, great marketing, and just create a good, strong company so that we’re here for the long haul to help service as many customers as we can. And as you see on my shirt, I’m wearing our tagline, it’s “Fun to feel good.” And my wife, who’s the chief marketing officer, came up with that slogan, that tagline about five years ago. And we very much live by that principle. And we want to give that promise to our customers. It’s fun to feel good. And wellness does come piece by piece.
Katie: I love that. Like I said, I’ll link to everything you talked about in the show notes. I feel like one other potentially synergistic part of this that I would love to talk about anytime I get a chance to step onto the soapbox of the importance of sunlight. I love to do that, but it seems like you mentioned the ATP potential with magnesium supplementation. And we know that this also happens from full spectrum light exposure that sunlight so much more than just vitamin D. But I believe there’s an interaction with the right amount of healthy sunlight and magnesium as well. I don’t know if that’s something that you’ve deep dived into the research on, but I would love your thoughts on that because I feel like we’ve maybe unfairly vilified the sun in the last several decades. And then this is another piece of the modern lifestyle that’s not ideal for humans.
Patrick: I’m 100% on board with you. And if my algorithm on either X or Instagram is any indication, the zeitgeist of like, hey, we are sun beings. Like we need healthy, natural light. I think that is becoming more known. So one of the things that’s very interesting in particular about vitamin D, I am not an advocate of vitamin D3 supplementation. We do have some vitamin D in our Alaskan cod liver oil. It’s naturally occurring vitamin D. There’s also naturally occurring vitamin A because of how that product, that oil itself is processed there in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, it’s able to be maintained, but I’m not a big fan of vitamin D3 supplementation.
And this is actually also thanks to the research of Morley Robbins, who we spoke about earlier, the creator of The Root Cause Protocol. He posits, and he believes that the research lays this out, that too much D3, D3 is the storage version of vitamin D, not the active version of vitamin D. And so too much D3 storage, vitamin D, can lead to a number of different issues, including like potassium wasting. I’ll admit that the, it kind of gets beyond my understanding of the D3, but what I did learn is that to create natural vitamin D, like the vitamin D that is active in our bodies, it requires three different factors. Number one, magnesium. Number two, cholesterol. And number three, sunshine. So those three ingredients, actually create vitamin D.
And I have an interesting, you know, study of one in and of myself, where my vitamin D, the most recently that it was tested, it was tested at 57. And I don’t take any vitamin D3. The only vitamin D that I do take comes from Jigsaw Alaskan Cod Liver Oil, which is not a lot. There’s a little bit, but it’s not a lot. But I actively go out and walk our dogs around the neighborhood. And I take my shirt off. I’m like, I’m going to let the sun hit all the skin receptors that it can get inside of, on my skin to increase my vitamin D.
And the funny part is, about a year ago, it was down to, that level was down to about 30. And so I was reviewing my blood work with my doctors, with my doctor. And she was like, you know, I really would, because she really wants me to take vitamin D3. I’m like, I do not want to take vitamin D3. I will prove to you that I can get this number above 50 without any vitamin D3. I know that I have not been out in the sun as much as I should. And the reason was because Ashley, my wife and I, had recently built an indoor pickleball club.
So the indoor pickleball club, the Orchard at Jigsaw Health, which is right in our, basically the same building as our office at Jigsaw Health, we built this facility. And we had been, instead of playing pickleball in the sunshine in Arizona, for about six months, we were playing indoors at the new facility. And I was like, wouldn’t you know it, it showed up on my vitamin D levels that my vitamin D dropped because now all of a sudden I’m playing pickleball indoors. What I actively did was said, okay, we’re going to have to start going out around noon is about the best time to do it. I’m going to take off my shirt. I’m going to get that sunshine, and I will push my vitamin D levels back up. And wouldn’t you know, it worked. And the doctor was like, okay. I believe you now.
Katie: Yeah, I have had very similar experience in the past, and I’m so glad you explained the storage form versus the active form. I think that’s really important to understand. And that sunlight is so important. One tip I have is there’s an app called Dminder, and it lets you calculate based on where you are in your skin type, roughly how much vitamin D you’re getting in a sun session and help you avoid burning. So it kind of gives you warnings. You’re like, probably you’ve gotten enough vitamin D. Now you’re in the like not so helpful category of sun exposure.
But I find that gamifies it for me of helping remember daily to get enough magnesium, I mean, vitamin D and enough sunshine and kind of quantify it. It’s not always super accurate with lab tests, but I find if anything, it’s lower than the lab test. So I feel like if I’m doing good on the app, I’m probably also have a pretty good blood level when I lab test. So that’s just one tip. Are there any anything related to magnesium that I didn’t ask you yet that you think is important to hone in on, especially for women?
Patrick: Well, in pregnancy, I think, let’s go back to that. Pregnancy is a magnesium deficiency state. And preeclampsia is actually a very serious potentially life-threatening condition that is related directly to and solved with magnesium. So I think that magnesium, I kind of joke about it sometimes, that magnesium for many years has been like the Rodney Dangerfield of minerals. Where it’s like, hey, I can’t get no respect.
But I feel like that has actually really started to turn over the last decade or so, where so many people now are way more aware of getting more magnesium through supplementation, using good forms of magnesium into their diet, into their daily routine. And preeclampsia is one of the very, very important elements that I don’t know where OBGYN in general stand with magnesium. I think that they’re finally coming along and catching along. But the fact that you have like. Cramps, so debilitating during pregnancy that was solved not by bananas but by magnesium also, saved you from any sort of preeclampsia type issues and really the kind of hidden value of magnesium is that it runs the heart.
So if there’s any runners out there, especially long-distance runners, they’re probably aware of the phenomenon of about, you know, five or six marathoners will pass out and die at the finish line of a race every year. Five or six people that are presumably, quote-unquote, healthy because they’re running a marathon, but their hearts give out because they run out of magnesium. So just solving the leg cramp problem using that as your canary in the coal mine will have so many other benefits inside of your body.
And maybe this is a great place to end where a woman at a trade show one time we were talking and I was kind of going through the spiel and talking about all the different bullet points. And she said she asked a really great question. She said, can I become addicted to magnesium? And I kind of thought about it for a second. I said, you know what? You already are.
Katie: Yeah, I love that. And I think it definitely highlights my experience of having those leg cramps for the first time in pregnancy, them getting better with magnesium. And seemingly, like, to me, magnesium is in the category of extremely low risk, extremely high potential reward, especially understanding how many of us are deficient. And since it contributes to ATP and energy, and like you just mentioned, how the heart functions seems like especially important to be aware of and optimize before, during, and after pregnancy, because that is an additional stressor on the body, even if it’s a positive one. It is creating metabolic stress on the body.
But I have so much enjoyed this episode. You got to dive into so many important topics and hopefully solve so much more than just leg cramps for a lot of people listening. I know I’ve been beating the drum of the importance of magnesium for well over a decade now. I know that you have been as well. And I will put links to everything you mentioned in the show notes for you guys listening on the go. That’s at wellnessmama.com. Patrick, thank you so much for your time. I love this topic. You are an absolute joy to chat with. I hope we get to have more conversations in the future. But for today, thank you so much.
Patrick: Absolutely my pleasure. And let your readers, your listeners, your audience, your fans know that they can save $10 off of any purchase at Jigsaw Health and support your show.
Katie: Awesome. Well, I’ll make sure that link is in the show notes and that code is in the show notes. But Patrick, thank you again. I hope we get to have more future conversations. Thank you so much.
Patrick: Absolutely. Bye, Katie. Take care. Have a great week.
Katie: And thank you guys, as always, for listening and sharing your most valuable assets, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.
If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.
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