Magnesium and major depression (2011)
&gt; &quot;Deficits of Mg may result from inadequate intake, malabsorption, or renal loss&quot;<p>Unless I missed it, the paper didn&#x27;t consider another possible cause of magnesium deficiency: depression.<p>I.e., the paper seems to conflate correlation with causation (i.e., magnesium deficiency may cause depression), and doesn&#x27;t consider that the causality may go in the other direction: that magnesium deficiency is a physiological manifestation of depression and other types of chronic negative emotion.<p>My experience with this is that I&#x27;ve worked for a long time to address chronic illness that has included conditions like depression, anxiety and chronic fatigue syndrome.<p>One of the many things I&#x27;ve tried has been to substantially increase magnesium intake, both via food sources and supplements.<p>My measured magnesium levels didn&#x27;t change simply by increasing intake.<p>What has made a difference was directly addressing the emotional and outer-life causes of my depression&#x2F;anxiety.<p>Even then it took a while, and the work&#x2F;improvement is still ongoing, but it&#x27;s very clear that my magnesium readings stayed low even when supplementing, and only started rising after a solid stretch of deep emotional healing work and significant improvements to life circumstances.<p>The still-nascent and controversial topic of epigenetics may be relevant here.