This was a published study from April 2023 exploring dietary Magnesium and Potassium intake, and their respective effects on body fat for people with impaired glucose tolerance. We know that improving your blood sugar control — what’s called “glycemic control and insulin resistance” — can reduce mortality and morbidity associated with Type 2 diabetes. Body fat accumulation is the single most important risk factor for metabolic syndrome and predisposition to diabetes.
We focus on macronutrient intake all the time. We don’t focus on micronutrients. This study did. We also know from prior studies that higher dietary magnesium was associated with lower BMI, and other studies have shown dietary potassium was associated with obesity and metabolic syndrome.
Study:
- Prospective cross sectional study
- 155 Chinese subjects with known impaired glucose tolerance
- Median age 59; 58% were female
They specifically looked at:
- Body fat percentage
- Oral glucose tolerance tests
- Homeostatic Model Assessment of Insulin Resistance
- 3-day food records from nutritional program analysis
What did the find?
- Dietary intake of minerals was inversely correlated with body fat. (So the better mineral intake, the lower body fat.)
- People with obesity had the lowest daily consumption of iron (10.3mg), Magnesium (224 mg), and Potassium (1973mg). Normal weight individuals had nutrient intakes of Iron 13.2 mg, Magnesium 313 mg, and Potassium 2295 mg.
- Among targeted minerals, higher dietary magnesium and potassium intake remained significantly associated with lower body fat after adjustment of age, gender, macronutrients, fiber, and physical activity.
Our thoughts and how Biohackr Health can help:
We believe in maximizing your micronutrients. Before you go taking tons of supplements, it is good to do baseline diagnostic testing. Where are you now? What are you deficient in? Taking vitamin supplements or changing your diet to include these nutrients is a simple change, which study after study shows can affect your risk of insulin resistance (and glucose intolerance, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and heart disease risk).
Optimize you. We offer baseline micronutrient testing at our San Francisco and Palo Alto locations. It is a simple test performed in our clinic. We test for more than Magnesium and Potassium. We look at other vitamins like Vitamin A, D, C, E, K and Vitamin B, as well as minerals including calcium, zinc, copper, amino acids, antioxidants, metabolites, and carbohydrate metabolism markers depending on your weight loss goals.
Get to know your body. Individualized treatments are the future.
