Acid-Base Status Affects Renal Magnesium Losses in Healthy, Elderly Persons
Magnesium is definately on the list of the top few very important nutrients that we are chronically deficient in. Poor quality diets contribute to this, but more of an animal based diet leads to increased acidity which needs to be bufferred in the kidneys. The result is a loss of magnesium to protect us from the increased acidity.
Really a catch-22…increased acidity is not tolerated well by our cells and lead to a variety of chronic diseases (cancer comes to mind), but to take care of the acidity we lose magnesium which has it’s own list of chronic diseases that result from deficiency. The bottom line is that a plant based diet is healthier for us all around. But, you will lose weight on the Atkins’ diet.