Magnesium and HPA-D

If you’ve been feeling stressed, tired, or burned out lately, you may be experiencind HPA-D (hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis dysfunction). This is heavily involved in the bodies stress response. Magnesium could be the missing piece to help you feel better. While we often think of magnesium as a mineral important for bone health or muscle function, it plays a crucial role in supporting your adrenal glands, which are responsible for producing the stress hormone cortisol. Let’s dive into the link between magnesium and adrenal function, and why ensuring you have enough magnesium in your diet can make all the difference.

What Do Your Adrenal Glands Do?

Your adrenal glands, located on top of your kidneys, are small but powerful organs that help regulate a variety of functions in the body. They produce several important hormones, including cortisol, adrenaline, and aldosterone, which are involved in stress responses, metabolism, immune system regulation, and fluid balance. When you’re stressed, your adrenal glands go into high gear, releasing cortisol to help you cope with the stress.

But when stress is chronic, like in today’s fast-paced world, your stress response can become overly spiked. This can lead to symptoms of what’s often called (and wrongly called) adrenal fatigue. Technically it’s really the HPA axis. This can lead to chronic tiredness, low energy, difficulty sleeping, and even anxiety. This is where magnesium steps in to help.

How Magnesium Supports Your Adrenal Glands

Magnesium plays an essential role in keeping your adrenal glands working smoothly. Here’s how it helps:

1. Regulates Cortisol Production
   
   Magnesium helps maintain balanced cortisol levels. Cortisol is your body’s primary stress hormone, but too much of it can lead to negative health effects like anxiety, high blood pressure, and even weight gain. Magnesium has a calming effect on the nervous system, helping to keep cortisol production in check, especially during periods of stress. This balance is crucial for preventing the over-activation of the HPA axis.
   

2. Promotes Hormonal Balance
   
   The adrenal glands don’t just produce cortisol—they also produce other hormones, like aldosterone and adrenaline, which help regulate blood pressure and energy. Magnesium helps ensure these hormones remain in balance. If your magnesium levels are too low, it can affect how your adrenal glands release these critical hormones, leading to problems like fluctuating blood pressure or energy crashes.
   

3. Magnesium Deficiency Can Worsen Stress
   
   Magnesium plays a role in over 300 enzymatic processes in your body, many of which are directly related to energy production and cell function. Without enough magnesium, your body may struggle to manage stress, leading to an increased sensitivity to stressors. This can place extra strain on your adrenal glands, further contributing to feelings of exhaustion and burnout.
   

Signs You Might Be Magnesium Deficient

If you’re dealing with chronic stress, fatigue, or symptoms of adrenal burnout, magnesium deficiency might be a contributing factor. Some common signs of magnesium deficiency include:

• Muscle cramps or spasms

• Anxiety or irritability

• Insomnia or poor sleep quality

• Fatigue and weakness

• High blood pressure or heart palpitations

If you’re experiencing these symptoms, it may be worth looking into your magnesium levels and considering ways to boost your intake.

How to Boost Your Magnesium Levels

The good news is that magnesium is relatively easy to incorporate into your diet. Here are some magnesium-rich foods to help support your adrenal glands:

• Leafy greens (spinach, swiss chard)

• Nuts and seeds (almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds)

• Fish (salmon, mackerel)

• Shellfish (crabs, oysters, lobsters)

• Meat (lamb, liver, pork)

• Avocados and bananas 

• Yogurt

• Dark chocolate

• Figs

If you're not getting enough magnesium from food, you might consider magnesium supplements. However, it’s always a good idea to speak with a healthcare professional before starting any supplementation.

What does it mean if your magnesium is too high? 

High magnesium levels, or hypermagnesemia, can occur when the body is unable to properly excrete magnesium, often due to kidney dysfunction, excessive magnesium supplementation, or certain medications. In individuals with thyroid issues, particularly hypothyroidism, magnesium levels may become elevated because the thyroid plays a key role in regulating electrolyte balance, and an underactive thyroid can impair kidney function, leading to magnesium retention. Additionally, magnesium is essential for the conversion of the inactive thyroid hormone (T4) into its active form (T3), and an imbalance in magnesium—whether too high or too low—can disrupt this process, further affecting thyroid function. This creates a feedback loop where both thyroid and magnesium imbalances can influence each other, complicating the overall hormonal regulation in the body.

Magnesium is more than just a mineral for bones, it’s a key player in supporting your adrenal glands and keeping your stress response in check. By ensuring you have enough magnesium, you’re not only promoting better overall health but also helping to balance your hormones and prevent HPA-axis dysfunction.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, tired, or stressed out, it may be time to take a closer look at your magnesium intake. Simple dietary changes can make a big difference in supporting your adrenal glands and improving your overall well-being.

Is There a Connection Between Thyroid Function and Cold Exposure?

It is well known that those with hypothyroidism have poor tolerance to cold weather. The thyroid is heavily involved in metabolism and acts as a sort of thermostat for the body. When it becomes dysfunctional, it gets worse at regulating temperature and does not handle cold weather as well. Common advice is to avoid the cold. Is it possible that cold exposure is exactly what we should be doing? If we progressively improve the body’s tolerance to cold, can we influence the thyroid?

Homeostasis is the body’s desire to maintain balance, and we have many regulators of the body such as pH level, O2/CO2 levels, and blood-glucose. These regulators are tightly regulated; for example, if you are exercising vigorously, you are rapidly depleting oxygen because your muscle is using it. To increase oxygen levels, you’ll start breathing through your mouth. As you exercise more, the demand for oxygen decreases because you are becoming a more efficient machine so you will be able to exercise longer and harder before needing to breathe through your mouth. This is called “adaptive homeostasis” and is the basis behind any kind of performance training. This, by the way, is information from a course I just took from Dr. Mike T. Nelson called “Physiologic Flexibility” (which I highly recommend).

What is interesting is that these homeostatic regulators are two way streets, meaning if you work on your ability to be in a hypoxic state (low oxygen), it can increase your exercise tolerance and vice versa.

Temperature is also a homeostatic regulator. So if homeostatic regulators are two way streets, and those with hypothyroidism poorly tolerate the cold, can we influence the thyroid by cold water immersion? There is some preliminary research that suggests this might be true.

In 2014, a study was conducted in New Zealand (Mustafa & Elgazzar) where they took white rabbits and kept them in a cold room (39.2 degrees Fahrenheit) for 7 weeks. Compared to a control group, the cold group had more free T3 and T4 (thyroid hormones), had more conversion of T4 to T3, and increased uptake of the thyroid; all indicators of improved thyroid function. 

Of course these are rabbits, and their physiology is not identical to ours. It’s hard to get human volunteers to sit in a cold room for 7 weeks, nor would any ethics board approve it. However, with the popularity of cold water immersion on the rise, this could be an easily conducted study in humans. 

How can we explain this? Two words, Brown Fat. Well actually it’s 3, Brown Adipose Tissue, which I’ll abbreviate to BAT. There is white fat, or WAT, and BAT. The difference is that BAT has mitochondria in it which are metabolically active and are what make the change from a white color to brown color. Babies are born with a lot of BAT and it’s why babies don't shiver. The mitochondria are able to regulate temperature. Our body has a few ways to warm up, through mitochondria and through shivering. The fact that babies have BAT is the reason they don’t shiver. It was long thought that as we age, we convert BAT to WAT and then the need to shiver increases. However, it may be due to a modern lifestyle and less exposure to the elements. 

There are tons of studies that show that cold exposure can convert WAT to BAT such as this one. And this study shows that higher levels of BAT are associated with higher levels of thyroid hormone. 

I think it is fascinating that something as simple as cold exposure may have an influence on our endocrine system, and this could have huge implications. Hopefully, there will be more evidence coming out on this topic, meanwhile, I’ll be jumping in my ice bath. 

References:

Broeders EPM, Vijgen GHEJ, Havekes B, Bouvy ND, Mottaghy FM, et al. (2018) Correction: Thyroid Hormone Activates Brown Adipose Tissue and Increases Non-Shivering Thermogenesis—A Cohort Study in a Group of Thyroid Carcinoma Patients. PLOS ONE 13(12): e0209225. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209225

Mustafa S, Elgazzar A. Influence of chronic exposure to cold environment on thyroid gland function in rabbits. Horm Metab Res. 2014 Jul;46(8):546-9. doi: 10.1055/s-0033-1363284. Epub 2014 Jan 20. PMID: 24446160.

Peres Valgas da Silva C, Hernández-Saavedra D, White JD, Stanford KI. Cold and Exercise: Therapeutic Tools to Activate Brown Adipose Tissue and Combat Obesity. Biology (Basel). 2019 Feb 12;8(1):9. doi: 10.3390/biology8010009. PMID: 30759802; PMCID: PMC6466122.