MAGNESIUM, “the spark of life” regarded highly by drugless practitioners here and abroad for its capacity to improve a number of health conditions, is gaining popularity among senior citizens in Rizal, following pain-relief missions by a home for the aged in Antipolo.
Over 700 individuals, most of them seniors with body pains, reported relief after undergoing magnesium therapy provided by Kanlungan ni Maria.
The home for the aged introduced the therapy to its residents and senior citizens in the province early this year, said Fr. Dari D. Dioquino, Kanlungan priest in charge.
The senior citizens complained of frozen shoulders, back pain, painful and stiff fingers, gout, arthritis, stiff neck, muscle cramps, migraine, and other health conditions, he said. However, they demonstrated relief after receiving the therapy.
About 350 of the magnesium-beneficiaries are elderly who underwent a brief magnesium therapy during Kanlungan’s “Healing Mission” in Jalajala, Pililia, and Cainta in recent weeks, said Victoria Baterina Solis, Kanlungan special project director.
The main advocate for magnesium therapy in the Philippines is Mary Jean Netario-Cruz, who created the formulation being used by the Kanlungan medical missions.
Aside from the free therapy, the senior citizens also received a free bottle of magnesium (in liquid form), she said. They were also encouraged to continue magnesium therapy at home to get optimum benefit.
Since any one could do the therapy himself, each senior citizen was briefed by Kanlungan’s staff on proper transdermal application so they could do it at home. Relatives who accompanied the elderly were also instructed on the procedure.
“Recipients of the free therapy and magnesium are less-fortunate senior citizens in depressed areas in Rizal, who also received Kanlungan residents’ excess goods, like milk and other grocery items that would otherwise expire,” Solis noted.
The magnesium pain-relief missions also gained the interest of community health workers in the province for the mineral and the therapy itself, she said.
Dioquino said magnesium works on various body pains as more and more people flock to the venues of magnesium pain-relief missions.
“My knee joints and back pains have improved,” Socorro del Rosario, 78, said in Filipino in an interview. “My son, who had been suffering from stiff and painful fingers, also felt relief.”
Both del Rosario and her son Fernando, 54, are residents of Simeon Perez, Second District, Jalajala.
Wilma Acosta, 58, another resident of Jalajala, also reported improvement from the nausea she had been experiencing due to heart enlargement.
“Magnesium was massaged on my head and shoulder,” she said in Filipino. “I perspired and felt better afterward.”
Although Kanlungan pushed magnesium across depressed villages, the mineral also won over religious people—clergies and nuns alike—and a number of affluent individuals in the province, Dioquino said.
Dr. Caroline Dean, an American medical and naturopathic doctor, popularly known as “The Doctor of the Future,” explained in an e-mail that magnesium relieves pain since it “relaxes muscles and prevents muscle spasms and nerve twitching, both of which can cause pain.”
Pain killer depletes stored magnesium in the body, she added. Its depletion “causes more migraine-deficiency symptoms, the worst being the development of cardiovascular problems.”
The main symptoms of magnesium deficiency and calcium excess are “headaches, fatigue, insomnia and muscle pain,” Dean said.
Dean even prescribes magnesium to patients, including executives and athletes, who suffer from anxiety and panic attack, instead of sedatives.
In the Philippines Magiteque Therapy was “discovered” by Mary Jean Netario-Cruz, a leading magnesium advocate in the country, in 2010. She introduced it to the public the following year.
Magnesium repletion by the skin bypasses the laxative effect of oral magnesium, Cruz said. There is not an overdose since the body throws out excess magnesium.
“Magnesium deficiency is caused, among other things, by sweating, caffeine, certain pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol, stress and excessive calcium,” she said.
Cruz, a certified well-being coach, studied at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition—New York and is a member of the American Association of Drugless Practitioners.
She was appointed Wellness Program Director for Kanlungan in January after Dioquino, who had complained of body pains, felt relief after undergoing Magiteque Therapy.
Before her association with Kanlungan, Cruz conducted at least 1,000 magnesium-therapy sessions on various health conditions and certified over a dozen of “magi coaches” (magnesium therapy coaches) since 2011.
She also joined efforts by the government and private organizations to de-stress survivors of Supertyphoon Yolanda in evacuation camps in Manila in 2013.
Rolled out in September, the pain-relief mission seeks to help liberate the elderly from pains due to magnesium deficiency and introduce to people of various age groups the natural and safe healing power of the mineral, Cruz said.
“People should try the healing power of natural nutrients—among them magnesium—before resorting to medication by drugs,” she said.
Image credits: Oliver Samson