How Magnesium Supports DNA Repair and Healthy Aging

Steven Bartlett: What is the most important thing we haven't talked about that we should have talked about? Run down.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I think we talked a little bit about magnesium, but I don't know that we talked enough about magnesium. It is important because, gosh, over 300 different enzymes in your body need it to function properly. So, it's what's called a cofactor, and I mentioned DNA repair enzymes. It's also used to make energy. So you need magnesium to make energy and to use energy.

You need magnesium to repair damage that's happening all the time. And close to 50% of the population in the United States does not have adequate levels of magnesium because they're not eating the foods that they need to get the magnesium. Dark leafy greens. I mentioned it's at the center of a chlorophyll molecule.

There have been studies that have shown that for every 100-milligram decrease in magnesium intake, there's a 24% increase in pancreatic cancer incidence, and that's in a dose-dependent manner. So you keep going up and up. I think that people don't realize that they're not getting enough magnesium. Magnesium is required to turn vitamin D3 into the steroid hormone.

So some people have an insufficient amount of magnesium that they're taking in, and they're actually not able to turn enough vitamin D into that steroid hormone. Again, magnesium is controlling 300 enzymes. Some of those enzymes are the ones that convert vitamin D3 into the steroid hormone. So magnesium is hugely important.

It's something that can be easily corrected. The deficiency could be easily corrected by taking a supplement, but also by eating more leafy greens, which are the best source of magnesium. The question is: what do supplements do? What kind of supplement do you take?

How much should you take? All these things are, I think, questions that people are interested in.

Steven Bartlett: So I've got some magnesium here. Is taking magnesium going to have a positive role, then, in my speed of aging?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I do think so. Yes. We talked about cancer incidence, right?

Magnesium. So, I think magnesium is one of those minerals that, when you don't have enough of it, causes insidious damage over time. That damage accumulates and then rears its ugly head in the fifth, sixth, or seventh decade of life. And that ugly head happens to be cancer. So I do think that if you are able to avoid magnesium deficiency and insufficiency, then you are going to be able to make sure there's enough magnesium around for everything in your body to use it for what it needs it for.

Steven Bartlett: And I've heard you say that 50% of people are deficient in magnesium in the United States, right?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Close to 50%. And not to mention, you just talked about electrolytes. Athletes actually require between 10% to 20% more magnesium than the general population because their magnesium losses are so great. And so they can be even more deficient.

Magnesium is needed for red blood cells. And so, people can have lower energy as well. Magnesium is important for so many different things. And like I said, I do think there's a trade-off here where, whatever magnesium you are getting from your diet, if you're not getting enough of it, it's probably going to make energy instead of being used to repair damage, because you need to make energy every day, right?

That's the most important thing. If you don't make energy, you die. You can't survive. So whatever magnesium your body is getting, it's not going to the process of repairing DNA, which doesn't really matter until you're in your fifth, sixth, or seventh decade of life and cancer risk increases, right?

And so there's this idea, put out by my mentor Dr. Bruce Ames, called triage theory. And he's shown some evidence for it. Magnesium is one example where magnesium seems to be triaged to energy production at the expense of repairing your DNA.

What does that mean? It means that if you're not getting enough magnesium through your dietary intake and you're not supplementing with it, your body is finding a way to triage whatever magnesium you're getting to the most essential functions that will help with short-term survival. There are 300 different enzymes that need it to perform their functions.

Steven Bartlett: Triage means it's basically allocating—

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yes. It's allocating it to the processes inside your body that are essential for short-term survival right now.

Steven Bartlett: Got you.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Long-term health, diseases of aging, like cancer, that doesn't matter as much, right?

Steven Bartlett: If you're deficient...

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, your body basically says, "No, I'm not going to give whatever precious magnesium I have right now to prevent cancer because I need to live long enough to reproduce and pass on my genes." And cancer doesn't happen until I'm well past that, right? So this idea, it's called the triage theory, and it's been shown for several different micronutrients. Another one is vitamin K.

So vitamin K is really high in dark leafy greens. Well, what Bruce has shown is that vitamin K is important for a couple of things. One, it's important for blood coagulation, blood clotting, and that all happens in the liver. You activate proteins in the liver for blood clotting.

If you don't have vitamin K, you can't do that, right? It's one of the reasons why, when a baby's first born, they give it a vitamin K shot so that it has blood coagulation.

Steven Bartlett: On your YouTube channel, you made a video about magnesium, which I recommend everybody goes and watches if you are interested in going deeper on this subject. And on your YouTube, I found a stat that said every 100-milligram drop in magnesium intake is linked to a 24% higher risk of pancreatic cancer.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yes.

Steven Bartlett: Which is shocking.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It is. And again, it comes down to the DNA repair enzymes that require magnesium to be activated. And if over a lifetime, you're part of that 50% of the population in the United States that doesn't get enough magnesium, then you're talking about not being able to repair damage to your DNA over decades. And essentially what that means is, at some point damage happens to your DNA in the right part of a gene that is what's called oncogenic.

It's cancer-causing, and so eventually it's going to cause cancer if you're not able to repair that damage, right? And so getting enough magnesium is important to make sure you're repairing that damage. And it's not only important for cancer, but also all-cause mortality. So there are also studies showing that people with the highest magnesium levels have a 40% lower all-cause mortality than people with the lowest magnesium levels.

And they have a 50% lower cancer-related mortality compared to people with the lowest levels. So again, cancer is still in there, and we're seeing that magnesium intake is very important with respect to cancer. That is something people don't realize: when they're not getting enough magnesium in their diet, they're not eating their leafy greens, or they're not taking a supplement, they're affecting their long-term risk of cancer. So people with high magnesium levels have a 50% lower risk of cancer death than those with low levels, right?

Steven Bartlett: And is that—you obviously can't do a double-blind, placebo-controlled test on that—so they're not really establishing causation? It could be other things, like the other dietary factors that go into that. Maybe, if we think about causation, people who eat a lot of hamburgers don't have a lot of leafy greens.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Exactly. You nailed it. Essentially, magnesium is packaged in these foods that are beneficial, like dark leafy greens. And there are so many other benefits along with them that you can't establish causation and say, "Aha, it's just the magnesium." I would argue it's probably not just the magnesium, but magnesium does play an important role.

You can't, of course, pinpoint it to just magnesium because you're right: there are many other important, healthy micronutrients in these plants that are beneficial for health as well.