If you’re struggling with thyroid disease, it’s important to know that your body has some pretty unique nutrient needs. Now, there are two minerals that are super critical, but are often overlooked – that you need in large amounts. These are calcium and magnesium.
In this article, I’ll talk about each of them, walk you through how they’re important, the types that are most effective, and the best amounts for you. Let’s dive in.
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When dealing with thyroid disease, you can often find yourself at risk of losing more of both calcium and magnesium than the average person. For calcium, this is because both thyroid levels and thyroid autoimmunity can disrupt bone metabolism and calcium storage.
For magnesium, changes to the thyroid can change stress hormones, which leads to more magnesium excretion on average. In both cases, thyroid issues have a compounding effect on what is already a difficult mineral for most people to get the right amounts of.
Since it’s already pretty common to be low in these nutrients, calcium and magnesium are both some of the leading deficiencies globally, and adding a factor of thyroid disease makes things even more complicated. Long story short, we need to get more of them!
When we talk about calcium, the first thing you’re likely to think about is how good it can be for your bones. But calcium is also necessary for:
Do you get muscle cramps? Premature fatigue from exercise? Are you wiped out for days after being physically busy? Are you chronically sore? These are all the ways that calcium can be connected to muscle contraction and your ability to “bounce back” from exercise.
For nerve conduction, this is a lot about relaxation and anxiety. If you’ve got a busy day with a lot of extra tasks and stress, are you able to unwind and shut down after a long day? Or does your mind keep on racing? For some, it can be as simple as a lack of calcium.
As it concerns hormone signalling, we have hormones we make, hormones that circulate, hormones that get broken down, and how we send hormone signals. Inadequate calcium can make things like hormone treatments less effective because the signals are less effective.
Finally, we have to talk about bone health. Bone thinning and fractures are important for both women and men, but especially for those struggling with thyroid disease. In fact, having thyroid disease raises your risk for premature hip fracture.
Key Insight: Even being on thyroid medication, especially in cases where folks are overdosing on it (which is 20-30% of the population), can bring an added risk for bone fracture, in addition to things like thyroid autoimmunity ,which can also serve as a contributing cause.
Generally speaking, we’ve got two main categories of calcium:
This relates to whether each form of calcium is able to dissolve in water or not. The trick here is that the insoluble forms of calcium are much more concentrated, and that’s tempting because on a label, it will look far more impressive.
But when something is insoluble, we do not absorb it as well into our bodies. Even if we do, they are more likely associated with the negatives of calcification, which include things like joint calcification, cardiac calcification, bone spurs, kand idney stones.
So what are the versions of insoluble calcium? Consider calcium from animal bones, oyster shells, inorganic sources (like rocks), or things like that. Algical, for example, is essentially a form of coral calcium and was popular for a moment in time.
The other issue with concentration is that, the more dense the calcium is, the more difficult it is to absorb and the more you need. They can be quite common in supplements, but they are certainly not preferred – especially for those with thyroid disease.
Key Insight: Insoluble forms of calcium, even if taken hours after, can also have disruptive effects on thyroid medication. This is a big one to watch out for.
When it comes to the data, we have the most on what is called calcium citrate. This is a calcium that is plant-derived and has a pH-neutral effect. What this means is that it is better absorbed and doesn’t require high amounts of stomach acid to be absorbed effectively.
Time and again, it has been shown to:
Now, because calcium citrate is better absorbed into our bodies, we don’t need as much of it. We only need a few hundred milligrams to make a big difference.
After learning a bit more about calcium, let’s turn our attention to the topic of magnesium. In a lot of ways, similar to calcium, magnesium is important for a lot of things. If we were to add them up, we’d find that magnesium is perhaps even more important than calcium!
At last count, there are about 400 enzyme systems in the body that are controlled and regulated via magnesium. This relates to things like:
Especially for women, and especially during perimenopause and menopause, low magnesium levels are rampant. When they’re too low, this can raise the risk for thyroid nodules and thyroid cancers. Both things we certainly want to avoid.
Magnesium can also be effective when it comes to diminishing anxiety and helping with sleep issues. The issue is that there are countless versions of magnesium, so we need to dive a bit deeper to figure out which might be the best for you…
Unlike calcium, there aren’t really any forms of magnesium that are bad on the whole. In this case, I’ve chosen to focus on magnesium citrate simply because it is so compatible with calcium citrate. They make a very good pair.
Much like calcium citrate, this is a type of magnesium that is very well absorbed. There are also good studies that the right amounts of magnesium citrate can reduce the risk of worsening thyroid disease.
Ultimately, magnesium is an element. This means that once it’s gotten into the body, it’s magnesium and not much else. Once separated from the carrier protein, it becomes magnesium that circulates within your body.
When I made my own Calcium Magnesium formulation, as part of my wider Thyroid Specific Formulations, I really wanted to pay attention to the logistics. That’s because both calcium and magnesium are macro minerals — meaning that they are physically larger than most.
The implication here is that calcium and magnesium won’t fit inside a multi-vitamin. In addition, when mixed together, they can make it more difficult for the body to absorb the micro minerals, things like zinc, selenium, or boron.
While it doesn’t mean that you can’t take these things together or at the same time, it just means that the “vehicles” which carry them need to be different. They can’t be mixed together in the same pill, because they may not play well together. There’s not enough room!
As I made these formulations, I made Thyroid Daily as the one-a-day multivitamin that you could take on a daily basis safely. And then Calcium Magnesium as the macro minerals which could be easily taken together.
For those who prefer to take Calcium Magnesium at nighttime, that is completely fine. In fact, many people swear by it when it comes to improving their sleep and the short-term relaxing effect that it can have on the body.
But if your sleep is fine, then by default I would recommend taking Calcium Magnesium in the morning. This is only for the sake of simplicity, but nighttime is totally fine.
Let me take you through some of the top questions that I’ve received about Calcium Magnesium and provide some helpful answers…
The ingredients are vegan-friendly, but I chose gelatin caps over veggie caps — simply because veggie caps are often high in iodine, and it is hard to get ones that are consistently lower in iodine. Otherwise, all the ingredients are vegan-friendly.
To answer that, it would be easier to tell you what you won’t be able to find in Calcium Magnesium. It is free from iodine, stimulants, hidden thyroid hormones, gluten, dairy, GMOs, or some of the other things you might wish to avoid.
For those with things like osteoporosis, you may be wondering if you need a higher dose of calcium to be able to compensate. Of course, you should always speak with your doctor, but what I want you to know is that it’s not simply about mega-dosing calcium.
Instead, it is about adequate amounts of calcium that are well absorbed into the body. In terms of dosage, with a healthy diet, calcium citrate is an appropriate dose even for those who are concerned about bone density issues.
Now that we know more about calcium and magnesium, I want to explain how we can bring all these things together to help focus on the complete picture of your thyroid health.
As it happens, I’ve already brought all of these things together into what I call the Daily Reset Bundle. This includes:
These three things alone are designed to cover all of the known micronutrients for long-term thyroid health. These are for those with thyroid disease, on thyroid medication, or simply for anyone looking to optimize their health.
If you take this foundation, including Calcium Magnesium, any other of my formulations that you might be taking are all made to be compatible. You’re not going to get too much of anything, and you’ll really feel those benefits as one big orchestra of health.
That’s the full story about calcium and magnesium, and how intentional formulations like Calcium Magnesium can be beneficial to your health. I hope you’ll take a moment to check it out, let me know what you think, and we’ll talk again real soon!
P.S. Whenever you are ready, here is how I can help you now:
Dr. Alan Glen Christianson (Dr. C) is a Naturopathic Endocrinologist and the author of The NY Times bestselling Hormone Healing Cookbook, The Metabolism Reset Diet, and The Thyroid Reset Diet.
Dr. C’s gift for figuring out what works has helped hundreds of thousands reverse thyroid disease, heal their adrenals, and lose weight naturally. Learn more about the surprising story that started his quest.
