Rhonda Patrick· PhD
all the green leafy vegetables in my smoothie is that they're high in magnesium magnesium is at the center of a chlorophyll molecule chlorophyll gives plants their green color so if you're eating a lot of green plant you can be rest assured that you're getting enough magnesium which is a good thing because around 45% of the u.s. population does not meet the adequate intake for magnesium which is currently set around 350 to 400 milligrams a day and athletes can require up to 10 and 15 percent even more than that over 300 different enzymes in the body require magnesium to function properly including those enzymes that use and produce ATP the energetic currency of the cell ATP also must be bound to a magnesium ion in order to be biologically active producing energy and using energy is needed to survive so any magnesium that the body gets is going to be allocated to make sure that these enzymes that are you need magnesium to produce energy are going to get the magnesium but there's also other enzymes that require magnesium to function DNA repair enzymes DNA repair enzymes repair any DNA damage that occurs DNA damage occurs from just normal metabolism and also just normal immune function and DNA repair enzymes repaired that damage to make sure that a mutation doesn't occur in addition magnesium is required for DNA polymerases and DNA ligase which also makes sure that any sort of mutation that possibly could occur during a cell replication doesn't happen so magnesium is very important to prevent cancer initiating factors such as DNA damage and also mutations from occurring