Posted by Larry Hoover on March 27, 2005, at 8:08:15
In reply to Re: Magnesium survey » Larry Hoover, posted by Sarah T. on March 27, 2005, at 5:48:36
> Hi Larry. When you say that you don't give a thought to the Calcium, do you mean that you don't take any Calcium supplements?
No, I don't supplement calcium. I eat a fair bit of canned salmon. The steam processing softens the bones enough that you eat them in their entirety.
> Do you know what sort of psychotropic activity glycine has? I've done some searches on Taurine, but I'm not yet familiar with glycine's effects. I will look it up, but I'd be interested to hear your ideas about it as well.
Glycine is supposed to be anxiolytic, but I honestly haven't dug into that in any detail.
> Also, what are the benefits of chelation? The label on the bottle of magnesium glycinate says, "Chelated Magnesium."
Chelation is similar to what we call a salt. I tried to simplify things by not getting into this distinction. Chela means claw, in Greek. One end of an amino acid has a carboxylate functional group, and that's what forms a weak bond with the magnesium ion. (EDTA has four carboxylate groups, and it is often used to chelate minerals.) It takes a number of these glycine molecules to surround a single magnesium ion, to hold it in their (collective) claws. Glycine is the simplest amino acid (structurally), so it has a higher magnesium "yield" per gram of chelate. But really, any amino acid could chelate a mineral ion.
When you dry a chelate, it doesn't form crystals like true salts. But we don't generally need to worry about stuff like that in the nutritional aspect. Chelates dissolve readily in the acid of the gut. That's the bottom line. You get free magnesium, and free glycine (or whatever), and each has its own physiological activity (if any).
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:476058
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20050323/msgs/476165.html