Plasma or red blood cell magnesium tests are useful for ruling out severe deficiency but should not be used to determine optimal or sufficient magnesium levels.

“if you want to know how much potassium you have in your body the best is probably red blood cell potassium which we'll talk about and it's gonna be in a micronutrient test again you can get a Serra magnesium which could be included as an add-on to a CMP a comprehensive metabolic panel but that is also not going to be a good indication of total body stores and you need to get a red blood cell magnesium if you want that”

“I do think a ceramagnesium is reasonably helpful”

“it's probably even higher so average probably population is magnesium deficient to some degree and even marginal deficiency increases the risk of arrhythmias”

“if you raise the cutoff on blood magnesium to a more optimal cut off blood can actually be a fairly good indicator so the typical cut off for magnesium deficiency is less than 1.7 milligrams per deciliter but our review paper showed that if you're less than two milligrams per deciliter and you have a low urinary magnesium that is very highly indicative of magnesium deficient”

“but sometimes they'll use like um IV magnesium load tests where they essentially give about 400 milligrams of magnesium over four hours IV and you see how much comes out in the urine over 24 hours and if you if the body is holding on to a certain percentage then you're considered deficient”

“my magnesium and RBC is 4.2 that's a good measure of magnesium overall stores”

“you can drink a bucket full of magnesium and you won't budge the mag RBC until you start to get the iron out of the body you got to do flotes you've got to bring in Iron regulation you've got to bring bi available copper into the system because it's that iron that's blocking the Magnesium uptake in the red blood cell”

“go to your online provider you can red blood cell magnesium is not terribly hard it's not impossible for people to get is that a good indicator of magnesium status is there anything better do you know who Charles poin is yes I do okay he won't work with someone until their mag RBC is up at six six or 6.5 and and I understand why because it's going to optimize performance”

“You want to test serum or plasma magnesium and RBC. That stands for red blood cell magnesium. Those are easy blood tests to obtain.”

“In general, I think if you think you are low in magnesium, start with blood tests, RBC magnesium, plasma or serum magnesium. A lot of people don't need to supplement.”

“Martin you can measure plasma levels and by the way that's a test that's commercially available I can honestly say I don't know the last time I've ordered it on myself or any of my patients but it's you know you can go to lab core request or wherever and request that um I think if you're really concerned about magnesium deficiency though you have to do these um other types of tests so one of them is a urinary test so this is a test where you collect the urine that uh is made over a period of time say 24 hours and you look at the amount of magnesium in the urine and that gives you a sense of magnesium deficiency”

“RBC magnesium is best indicator thus far.”

“but unfortunately most of the time it does not and the reason for this is because magnesium levels are assessed in plasma and I'm going to take a moment to explain this because I think it's important so the average person has slightly less than 1 ounce of magnesium in their body roughly 60% of all the Magnesium is found in the skeleton so most of our magnesium is found in our bones about 27% is found in the muscle and 6 to 7% is found in other cells less than 1% is f found outside of our cells about onethird of the magnesium in the bones is exchangeable in other words it serves the bones are serving as a reservoir so that the body can draw from it in times of need so when magnesium levels are low the body will draw from the bones to get that magnesium because it's so so important so most of the time magnesium will be pulled from the bones into plasma to maintain optimal levels the body regulates plas plasma magnesium concentrations within a very narrow range so typically around 0.7 to 1 Millar per liter if plasma magnesium levels drop below this range it could lead to hypom magnesia which is you know can cause all sorts of problems muscle weakness Tremors seizures abnormal heart rhythms and other potentially serious complications so our body will just continually pull from our bones to prevent magnesium levels from going below 0.7 m per liter for this reason plasma magnesium is not a good indicator of magnesium status for most healthy adults”

“similarly a red blood cell magnesium test which measures magnesium inside red blood cells while it might provide a better indication of magnesium status than plasma levels it still may not fully represent total body magnesium content so both tests are more likely to identify I would say more severe magnesium deficiency rather than a mild or moderate deficiency or something that we would call magnesium insufficiency”

“it's still I I personally think it's still a good idea to get a plasma or a red blood cell magnesium test just to rule out severe deficiency but not to use it as a guide of whether or not you have Optimum levels of magnesium or you have sufficient magnesium levels it's really just to rule out severe deficiency”

“if you were to look at your magnesium levels in like a classic blood draw, that's a terrible place to look. The magnesium that comes on your blood work that you get is not an indicative of all of what's actually happening in your body.”

“And so, a plasma magnesium test isn't necessarily going to show someone's getting insufficient magnesium because you're going to pull it out of your bones.”