Elektra Magnesium 4 Horses 3.5

Owning and riding a horse can be an enriching experience; full of love, fun and friendship. It can however have its challenges if your horse becomes ill. Usually this is because of excessive stresses and depletion of important nutrients such as magnesium.

Often the soil (and therefore grasses) can be magnesium depleted and high in sugars. This 'high sugar - low magnesium' diet is stressful for horses, as it produces too much acid and over-stimulation. Horses can become twitchy and jittery, and sometimes very grumpy! Some horses can even develop metabolic syndrome and horse diabetes with laminitis (hoof disease) from this kind of diet.

Stresses can exacerbate a diet low in magnesium by causing further excessive magnesium loss. Many things can stress a horse from noise to travel, extreme weather conditions, ill-fitting shoes or untrimmed toes, performance pressures and much more.

You may already be doing many good things to promote a healthy horse environment, but still something seems wrong. It could be that magnesium is the missing element.

Magnesium (Mg) plays a number of important roles in your horse’s body. It is a vital mineral used in over 350 biochemical processes and involved in thousands of others as a vital co-factor to other nutrients.

Magnesium is required for bio-electrical energy production because it is required to make ATP (the energy currency of cells) in the mitochondria. It also plays an important role in muscle and nerve function, including conductivity, relaxation and recovery (repair). Horses deficient in magnesium can show signs of nervousness, excitability, wariness, and have muscle tremors.

Magnesium is known to help reduce equine obesity. It can also lessen the risk of laminitis in horses that are prone to it.

There may also be other nutritional issues that have to be addressed - such as if the horse has acidosis and stomach ulcers. In this case it is advisable to consult a horse nutritionist to guide you through the protocols to restore health using the right foods.

The most common mineral deficiency however is magnesium, which can manifest in different ways with different horses. According to horse therapist, Pauline Moore, because magnesium is needed for such a wide range of processes, signs of a magnesium deficiency can present in various ways, depending on genetics and prior stresses and traumas. She states that ten horses living in the same paddock may show signs of magnesium deficiency in ten different ways.

According to an article in Equinews, “there is actually very little magnesium found in the extracellular fluid (about 1%), which is why testing blood for magnesium deficiency is relatively inaccurate. Gross deficiency of magnesium could be life threatening but is rarely seen in horses. The current uses of supplemental magnesium are aimed at resolving subclinical deficiencies, the very ones that are difficult to test for but whose signs are recognizable.”