Overview
Magnesium is a nutritionally essential metal and enzyme cofactor. Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021 attaches magnesium to the wiki as an essential-metal node where deficiency is usually more clinically important than excess, while high exposure can produce neuromuscular, cardiovascular, and central nervous system toxicity.
Status
This page is a source-map stub created during the re-ingest of Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021. Substantive magnesium-specific expansion awaits a dedicated magnesium ingest.
Frequently asked questions
Is magnesium a toxic heavy metal or a nutrient?
Magnesium is a nutritionally essential metal and an enzyme cofactor, so it is primarily a nutrient rather than a purely toxic heavy metal. According to Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021, deficiency is usually more clinically important than excess, though high exposure can still cause harm.
Can you get too much magnesium, and what happens if you do?
Yes. While magnesium deficiency is usually the more clinically important concern, Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021 notes that high magnesium exposure can produce neuromuscular, cardiovascular, and central nervous system toxicity.
Why does the Heavy Metal Index have so little detailed information on magnesium?
This magnesium page is currently a source-map stub created during the re-ingest of Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021. Substantive magnesium-specific detail awaits a dedicated magnesium ingest, so the page reflects only that one source for now.
What role does magnesium play in the body?
Magnesium functions as a nutritionally essential metal and an enzyme cofactor, per Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021. The page frames it as an essential-metal node where the primary clinical concern is deficiency rather than excess.
Sources
- Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021 — Ufelle AC, Barchowsky A, 2021. Toxic Effects of Metals, Ch 23 in Casarett & Doull’s Essentials of Toxicology, 4th ed.
References
Works cited in this page’s text, in first-appearance order. This is not the full corpus for this page; it is only what the prose above draws on. The complete set of sources is listed under Sources below. Each title links to its source record, which carries the ingest receipt, the extracted values, and the file hash of the document it was built from.
- Toxic Effects of Metals (Chapter 23), in Casarett & Doull’s Essentials of Toxicology, Fourth EditionTextbook
Update history
The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and the full version history lives in git. When DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.
| Commit | Date | Change | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| a8052bb | 2026-08-09 | major | 1 source added; contamination-profile values revised; 10 sections added |