E Health Update And Magnesium PSA

Somewhere I know I talked about E and magnesium deficiency. I thought we'd cured his tics with a magnesium vitamin. We were thrilled. We haven't been to a doctor for him in about a year. After all the scary possibilities- cystic fibrosis, scleroderma, elevated ANA and the possibility of all kinds of troubling autoimmune diseases. Asthma, allergies, infectious disease, vestibular processing disorder, tic disorder. You name it, I've heard it. He's been tested for it. Poked, prodded, tested, scratched, CT scan, MRI. Yet nothing concrete, and NO ONE MENTIONED MAGNESIUM, ever. Not once.

I got that offhand comment from my friend a year ago and on the magnesium train we hopped. I'd read a small amount, which was good enough for me. Symptoms matched up pretty well. We gave him the vitamin, and voila, tics lessened and were almost 100% gone.

They came back a little for a time, but it didn't last long and we were good. Then, nothing. For about a year.

He was totally fine. Then, it seemed out of nowhere, started with the tics like he had shpilkes (yiddish for ants in your pants). Except these weren't ants in his pants. This was the pulling of the nose, the ripping at the eyes, the fingers just rubbing each other going a mile a minute, and the wiping at his mouth.

The most frustrating part was that he'd seem fine in the ocean and on the beach on Sundays, but the second we'd get back in my cousin's townhouse after the beach, he'd be at his face again. What were we going to do? Set up a tent on the beach? Live on a boat?

I didn't know whether to scream or cry.  I was pretty much out of options. The last specialist we went to was a rheumatologist. She bent him backward, he said "ow", so she ordered an x-ray for scoliosis. That's when B and I looked at each other and just did a Pheobe (Friends), "Oh, no." He doesn't have f'ing scoliosis. That was the nail in the coffin for realizing specialists just like to diagnose in their specialty. Just like the immunologist said it's autoimmune, the neurologist said tic disorder, the OT said vestibular processing disorder, the allergist said allergies, and the infectious disease doc looked at me like I might have Munchausen's By Proxy.

I'd been putting the Natural Calm Kids liquid vitamin in Trop 50 orange juice. I don't know why but one of the no pulp versions has extra calcium and vitamin D. They're the same price so why wouldn't I want the one with the extra vitamins in it? I'll tell you why.

Apparently, the whole magnesium deficiency thing is a delicate dance with calcium and vitamin D. It's a delicate balance that has to be maintained. He was fine until summer hit. Why? Because all of a sudden he's getting a much higher influx of Vitamin D because he's at camp, outside all day. He's at the town pool every Saturday. He's at the beach on Sundays. Apparently, the more Vitamin D, the more depleted of magnesium you get. Calcium also depletes magnesium. That's why if you're taking vitamins or food/drink fortified with extra calcium, you need to make sure you're also taking stuff with magnesium.

When you get your magnesium level right, you should see a difference almost immediately. A friend of mine on a message board mentioned the whole Vitamin D/Calcium connection and that in the summer, we might need to up E's dose to regulate him again- because it's summer. She said she needs to up hers when summer begins. That's all I needed to hear.

Monday, I gave him extra Natural Calm. By Tuesday he seemed better. It's only Wednesday, but I'm feeling confident. I ordered a roll on for him, I ordered B his own oral Natural Calm for adults, and I ordered one for me that's specifically for migraine. If I end up getting rid of E's tics, B's sometimes brain fogginess, AND my chronic pain, with magnesium, I'll be the happiest person alive.

And by the way- why was he ok at the beach but nowhere else? Well, the logical answer, that we had no idea about is that the ocean is one-third magnesium. Who knew? It's not something I would ever think of to even research. I never even thought about it topically.

Now, could his health issues be something else? I guess it could. Maybe it's a combination of things. I'm sure as time goes on, we'll keep finding out more and more. It's just that all the signs seem to point to this, at least for the tic part, especially with the whole ocean portion.

I don't want to get too excited. B doesn't even want me writing health updates because every time we thing we're good on the tics, I write about it, and they come back. I'll just say I'm cautiously optimistic now. We'd never heard anything about this calcium and Vitamin D thing so that's all new and now I have an option. That's what I'm happy about. I was scared I'd hit the end of the road. And then what? I have no more specialists, that I know of, in which to take him. We've been through five pediatricians, two allergists, two ENTs, two pulmonologists, an infectious disease doc, an immunologist, a neurologist, two dermatologists, an opthamologist (his eyes were part of the tics), an occupational therapist, and the last was the rheumatologist.

By the time I had E tested, he'd already been on the Natural Calm for months. He tested normal by then. So I don't even know how deficient he was or wasn't. Testing for magnesium deficiency isn't even on any doctor radar it seems. Testing is definitely not done as routine.

As soon as I heard of the whole magnesium connection, I ran right out to the store to buy a supplement. The last thing I was thinking of was doctors. I'd had enough doctors and I really don't trust any of them to diagnose anything after all we've been through with this. I'm not anti-doctor at all. But this has been a long, six year journey and any helpful info I've gotten for E, has been from friends and acquaintances just having random conversation, vs going to doctors. I'm really just more confident in my own sleuthing abilities on this subject. My kid has been pumped with more unnecessary medications from Albuterol to Singulair, both of which turned him into a little monster, and various really strong antibiotics. 

I just ordered more magnesium stuff from Jet- they seem to have the best prices. If you sign up for Jet, use the code Triple15 and you get 15% off your first order and two more. If you've already ordered from them, just use a different email address. They don't seem to care.

Here's what I ordered:
MigraZap
Life Flo Magnesium Oil Sport Roll On
Natural Vitality Calm Packettes

And this is the liquid I get for E:
Natural Vitality Calm Kids

Here are some of the symptoms of magnesium deficiency (from Wikipedia):

Signs and symptoms. Symptoms of magnesium deficiency include hyperexcitability, muscular symptoms (cramps, tremor, fasciculations, spasms, tetany, weakness), fatigue, loss of appetite, apathy, confusion, insomnia, irritability, poor memory, and reduced ability to learn.

This list is from Collective Evolution: http://www.collective-evolution.com/2016/07/11/the-many-signs-of-magnesium-deficiency-why-we-are-all-suffering-from-it-what-to-do-about-it/

• Constipation
• High blood pressure (Hypertension)
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Insomnia
• Behavioral disturbances
• Lethargy
• Impaired memory/thinking
• Seizures
• Fatigue
• Sleep disturbances
• Pain
• Muscle cramps
• Chronic back pain
• Headaches
• Migraines
• Muscular pain
• Tendonitis
• Anger
• Aggression
• ADHD
• Brain fog
• Tension
• Anxiety disorders such as OCD

Here is more information from a gov't site:
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnesium-HealthProfessional/