From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com (Steve Harris sbharris@ROMAN9.netcom.com) Newsgroups: misc.health.alternative Subject: Re: Magnesium Citrate Date: 16 Oct 2004 18:35:46 -0700 Message-ID: <79cf0a8.0410161735.72e10c9c@posting.google.com> "Gymmy Bob" <nospamming@bite.me> wrote in message news:<TpmdnQfW05D7Au3cRVn-2A@golden.net>... > Mag citrate is an acidic form of magnesium and probably contradicts any > health benefits you will get out of it by making your system acidic. COMMENT: Baloney! Learn some physiology! Metal citrate salts are salts-- they are neutral not acidic. And like lactate salts, metal citrate salts are metabolized to bicarbonate, which makes the body alkalotic, not acidic. Citrate and lactate salts have long been used to *alkalinize* the urine for this reason. Magnesium citrate will have the same effect. Lactic acid and citric acid (the acids themselves, not their salts) effectively do not present the body with any acid load,, any more than carbonic acid does. That is because they can all be completely metabolized to CO2 and water, and the CO2 is breathed away without affecting the urine. However, this is not true of the metalic salts of these acids, which can obviously be metabolized to bicarbonate ion, but no further. http://www.drugs.com/MMX/Sodium_Citrate_and_Citric_Acid.html > Try magnesium, chelated. Mag oxide gave me bone spurs in both feet and many > spots. The other health benefits were wonderful. COMMENT: Any magnesium salt that is soluble will do. The oxide and the hydroxide are indeed relatively poorly absorbed (generally due to the fact that except in small doses, few people make enough acid at single meals to completely convert more than a few hundred milligrams of magnesium oxide or hydroxide to the free soluble Mg++ ion (equivalent to what you get in MgCl2). There is no evidence that chelates are absorbed any better than magnesium chloride or lactate. Buy what's cheapest per milligram of Mg. > The RDA for magnesium is 420 mg. This is the minimum daily intake to barely > sustain life without disease. That's not how RDA's were historically arrived at (or DRI's either). > This is also the measurement of the elemental > requirements. I doubt 10Kg of mag oxide would give you this amount. Well, you doubt wrong. Studies show perhaps 4% absorption of Mg from MgO. It's up around 20% for other salts, so you do the math. SBH From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com (Steve Harris sbharris@ROMAN9.netcom.com) Newsgroups: misc.health.alternative Subject: Re: Magnesium Citrate Date: 17 Oct 2004 19:57:58 -0700 Message-ID: <79cf0a8.0410171857.36fe8de0@posting.google.com> Peter Meiers <Tren_Dean@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<417228EB.6D94@yahoo.com>... > Steve Harris sbharris@ROMAN9.netcom.com wrote: > > > Baloney! Learn some physiology! Metal citrate salts are salts-- they > > are neutral not acidic. > > WRONG. They are neutral with respect to electric charges, but in > solution they may very well be acidic (depending on the type of metal > ion). What happens once they are metabolized is quite another question. > > Peter COMMENT: "Neutral" here should be understood as an approximation, for all but salts of the very strongest acids and bases combined. But it's a pretty good approximation for the kinds of salts we're talking about. They might be slightly basic, but not enough to be caustic. The pHs of tribasic citrate salts run about 9. And no, soluble metal salts of acids are not going to be acidic in any case I I can think of. They are (mildly) basic if the conjugate acid is not a very strong acid. Citric acid has three protons, and the pKa of the last one is sufficiently high to make tribasic citrate salts somewhat basic. You can calculate it. The last (and controlling) pKa of citrate is 5.2 so the associated pKb = Kw- ka = 8.8. So [OH-]^2/[citrate] = 10^-8.8. If you put in 1 molar citrate just for example, you get the pOH = 8.8/2 = 4.4, so the pH comes out 14-4.4 = 9.6. That's alkaline, but (again) not enough to be caustic. For 0.1 M tribasic citrate you can see pH = 14 - [9.8/2] = 9.1. And so on, with the pH dropping half a point for every log in tribasic citrate concentration. SBH From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com (Steve Harris sbharris@ROMAN9.netcom.com) Newsgroups: misc.health.alternative Subject: Re: Magnesium Citrate Date: 18 Oct 2004 12:00:45 -0700 Message-ID: <79cf0a8.0410181100.4b792eba@posting.google.com> Peter Meiers <Tren_Dean@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<41734A8B.315B@yahoo.com>... > Steve Harris sbharris@ROMAN9.netcom.com wrote: > > > And no, soluble metal salts of acids are not going to be acidic in any > > case I I can think of. > > Ever prepared a phosphate buffer? Mixture of an acidic with a basic > phosphate. > Just an example. COMMENT: Not an example, because phosphate buffers are not metal salts of acids. They are are only partial metal salts of acids, with some of the acid left. In any buffer the acid has only been *partly* neutralized, and therefore of course the result may still be acidic. That's not what we were talking about with magnesium citrate. If you neutralize phosphoric acid it all the way to (tribasic) sodium phosphate, or for that matter all the way to tribasic magnesium phosphate, you'd get something extremely alkaline. The last pKa for phosphoric acid is 12.7, and if you put that through my equation above you get a pH for 1 M Na3PO4 of 13.35. That's VERY alkaline. And yes, FYI, I've prepared many a phosphate buffer. And knew what I was doing, too <g>. SBH |