Depression symptoms can develop including anxiety because of a magnesium deficiency which will adversely affect women's health.

Each year millions of people are started onto harmful and debilitating psychiatric drugs and psychological counseling for symptoms that may in fact be rooted in magnesium deficiency.Additional millions unsuccessfully cope with their problems by turning to overeating, smoking, alcohol abuse, street drugs and other addictions to suppress their pain. As a nation we are suffering a 32 percent incidence of anxiety, depression and drug abuse.

People do not get anxiety, panic attacks or depressed because they have a Valium or Prozac deficiency. Our bodies do not need these drugs for important metabolic processes. However, we can develop numerous and varied psychological symptoms because of a deficiency in magnesium, a nutrient our body does require. Does it make any common sense to switch our addiction from sugar, alcohol, drugs and cigarettes to prescription drugs without looking at the possible underlying physical/nutritional causes. Psychiatrists are too quick to rely on prescription drugs for suffering patients and have no insight into the metabolic functioning of the mind and body and what happens when nutrients are deficient. Anxiety and depression are often nutrient-deficiency diseases and chemical sensitivities, certainly not drug deficiency diseases.

Carolyn Dean, M.D. N.D., Medical Director Vida Costa Spa, author of "The Magnesium Miracle".

Magnesium relaxes the nervous system in a number of ways. Besides just relaxing the muscles, it actually is a natural blocker of a receptor in the brain called MMDA. This receptor is stimulated with calcium, actually, and it's something that leads to over-excitation and stimulation of the brain and irritability, depression and many other things. Magnesium is a natural MMDA receptor antagonist, which helps to really calm the nervous system overall.

Depression and anxiety are very related and I think magnesium helps reduce the same phenomena in the brain. I would always recommend that people use a nutritional approach to depression before actually using antidepressants because mostly they don't work well.

Mark Hyman, M.D. - Medical Director and Founder of the Ultrawellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, author of several New York Times best-selling books on nutrition, diet and a healthy lifestyle. His clinic is a center for functional medicine, a new field of medicine that addresses chronic disease through its underlying causes rather than just the symptoms. A leading authority on alternative medicine, Dr. Hyman has appeared on numerous television programs including Today, Good Morning America, and The View. Magnesium is covered extensively in one of his books, Ultraprevention.