Magnesium is an essential nutrient that your body requires, helping your muscles function properly, as well as helping provide energy and regulating the levels of other nutrients in your system. People with some conditions may benefit from magnesium supplements, but magnesium may also have adverse effects on other conditions. Understanding the role of magnesium in conditions such as myasthenia gravis and eye dilation may help you talk with your doctor about how much magnesium you require each day.
Myasthenia Gravis
Myasthenia gravis is an autoimmune condition that involves the brain and muscles, causing muscle weakness and poor muscle movement along with difficulty swallowing and speaking. This disorder often affects the function of the eyelids and the muscles that control eye movement, and these effects may result in vision changes or eye discomfort. If you have any symptom of myasthenia gravis, contact your doctor immediately for an evaluation to help improve muscle control and function and prevent further complications.
Magnesium
Magnesium is an important nutrient in your body, but it does not help treat or resolve myasthenia gravis or associated symptoms. In fact, magnesium may exacerbate myasthenia gravis and result in a worsening of symptoms. If you have myasthenia gravis and take magnesium, your doctor will likely have you stop taking the supplement.
Dilated Eyes
Your iris, the colored part of your eye, is a sphincter muscle that can constrict and dilate to allow the right amount of light to enter your eye. Myasthenia gravis involves muscles of the eye, but the condition typically affects the muscles that control your eye movement and not the iris. If you experience vision changes related to myasthenia gravis or other conditions and you go to your eye doctor for an examination, your doctor will most likely use eye drops to dilate your eyes. This allows her to see into the back of your eye and determine the cause of your eye problems. Magnesium will not have a role in helping eye dilation, whether caused by disease or your doctor.
Treatment
If you have myasthenia gravis, your doctor may have you stop taking certain medications and supplements, such as magnesium, that could affect the disease. Your doctor may have you begin new medications that will reduce the severity of your symptoms. If medication therapy does not improve muscle weakness or other associated symptoms, your doctor may recommend a surgical procedure to remove the thymus, a gland that may have a role in the condition.
References
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; Myasthenia Gravis Fact Sheet; April 2011
- University of Maryland Medical Center; Magnesium; Steven D. Ehrlich, NMD; June 2009
- University of Illinois at Chicago; College of Pharmacy; What Drugs Should be Avoided in Myasthenia Gravis?; January 2007
- "Primer on the Autonomic Nervous System"; David Robertson, Ed. and Stanley Thompson; 2004
