Originally Posted by
Enthalpic
As for Mg relaxing the bowels leading to the runs, that is crap
. The reason high dose Mg acts as a laxative is because it causes more water to be retained in the gut - the reason for this is, as above, the body won't allow serum Mg levels to go out of range. What occurs is that the body dilutes the Mg in the gut both from fluids you drink and from your body's water stores in order to get the Mg level into the safe range before absorption of the solution. If the Mg dose is too large for dilution and absorption you will take a runny dump and be done with it.
The relaxation of the bowels was just a guess at what happened to me. And ... it took me out of commission one entire morning during which time I alternated between sitting on the toilet, and lying on the floor of the bathroom ... I couldn't get any further from the toilet than that. After about 6 hours, it all subsided and I was able to continue with my day. Since then I haven't even considered going over the RDA of Magnesium ... if anything, I tend to avoid it a bit.