Magnesium in primary care and preventive medicine: clinical correlation of magnesium loading studies.

Diagnostic categories that are useful for describing patients with acute or organ failure disease are generally less useful labels for primary care and preventive medicine patients whose conditions are better described by signs and symptoms. Symptoms may be clues to ill health but are not often criteria for a major diagnostic labeling. In my practice I have used a computer-based medical record system that permits portrayal and comparison of symptom data to correlate varying degrees of retention of an intramuscular magnesium-loading study (IMMLS) with symptom patterns in 172 patients. The group of patients who show a paradoxical excretion of more Mg than they were given in the IMMLS are a distinctive group with lower blood pressures and significantly fewer digestive and skin symptoms, fewer symptoms of inflammation but more emotional symptoms than those with normal Mg excretion. The group who retained > 49% of the load had higher blood pressures and significantly fewer symptoms of inflammation of the skin and of the reproductive tract.