Why MDs Don't Prescribe Magnesium

According to Carolyn Dean, MD, ND, "there are hundreds of references from medical review journals [in Dr. Dean's book, The Miracle of Magnesium]. I was able to show that many common symptoms for which we really have no drug treatment can be treated by magnesium. -Simple things like angina (chest pain caused by heart problems), muscle spasms, tics, insomnia, migraines, a list of twenty-two conditions. It's well-known that during pregnancy, if a woman has seizures or hypertension, a condition called preeclampsia -- the treatment is intravenous magnesium. They can't use drugs for fear of damaging the fetus, so they use something extremely safe and it always works. But I've spoken to heart specialists and asked why they go all the way through the five different types of drugs used for acute heart attack patients, and then as number six give them magnesium. They say, "Well, when we finally get to the magnesium, it always works." But they don't give it first because it's really not written up in the medical references. It's not a drug, so it doesn't make the "short list". And when I ask, Why don't you use that first? It's almost like, Drugs are powerful, and they're what doctors give. Doctors don't give supplements. They're too common. It's just not something that even I learned about in medical school, so doctors do not feel comfortable, it seems, prescribing dietary supplements. When they go through six to ten years of medicals school and internships and residencies, they figure if they haven't learned it in their training, then it doesn't exist. They do not learn nutrition and they do not learn dietary supplements, and they shy away from them."

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