Few years ago, together with a medical professor, expert in magnesium from the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, I developed a special composition of magnesium extracted from the Dead Sea in Israel.
We called it MAGNOX, registered an international patent and launched a supplement with 520mg of elemental magnesium named Magnox 520 and started marketing it.
Magnesium is a mineral whose importance to the body is enormous. It participates in about 350 processes in the body, including muscle activity – the heart muscle and the muscles of movement. According to epidemiological studies, most of Western society suffers from magnesium deficiency. The main problem with magnesium is the difficulty in absorbing it from the digestive system into the cells.
The segment in the intestine where most of the magnesium is absorbed is short, a supplement taken by a patient should undergo disintegration and dissolution before it reaches this segment. In addition, magnesium is an intracellular mineral meaning its activity depends on absorption into the cell. Absorption into the cell is done through ion exchange at the designated sites in the cell membrane meaning magnesium is absorbed to the cell only as a free ion!
It turns out that most magnesium supplements do not meet these conditions, so even if they are eventually absorbed into the bloodstream, they are not absorbed into the cells and are excreted quite quickly through the kidney, the bladder, directly into the toilet…
Knowing all of this, I realized that most of the dozens of studies that dealt with magnesium absorption and were published in the medical journals, were based on a serum magnesium test which is no indication at all of absorption into the cells and therefore completely unimportant. Now what is required is a comparative study of magnesium uptake into cells.
Prof. Michael Schechter, one of the leading experts in magnesium, picked up the gauntlet. He tested in a Crossover Comparable study intracellular absorption of magnesium citrate compared to Magnox. The same patients took the citrate for one month and the Magnox for one month with 1-month break (washout). During the three months, four intracellular magnesium tests were taken (at zero times and after 30 days of each type of magnesium consumption). The results showed with the highest statistical probability that the Magnox was absorbed 2.7 times more than magnesium citrate in matter of intracellular absorption. The study was published in 2012 in the most important magazine in magnesium research – MAGNESIUM RESEARCH.
This was the first ever study testing intracellular absorption of magnesium.
The results of this medical study completely changed the concept of magnesium absorption. It turns out that all those different magnesium supplements – citrate, bisglycinate, taurate, lactate, etc., whose manufacturers boast of (serum) absorption studies, are actually spreading what known today as FAKE NEWS.
Magnox molecule considered today the magnesium, which is the most bioavailable in intracellular absorption and efficacy.