… In the sense of, I made a mistake, so you can learn from my mistake.
The long short of it was that I cracked a rib and then woke up the next morning with some strange and worrisome symptoms: shortness of breath, light headedness, on-and-off tingling extremities, extreme weakness, and a general feeling of shock – trying to stay conscious, but feeling very very bad about that endeavor.
All potential symptoms of a quickly -advancing lung injury – maybe a pneumonothorax + lung collapse, or pneumonia. But the problem was that my O2 sats were normal.
I’m well aware that one shouldn’t rely completely on a pulseOx – don’t put all your eggs in one $5-cheap-sensor basket. But by now I’m able to assess pretty well with a pulseOx, and I could see – I was able to easily bring my O2 up to 99+ by doing breathing exercises, which tells me that it’s probably accurate. I waited – urgent care wasn’t open that time of day anyway.
After about two hours or so, the symptoms slowly improved, and I stabilized. At that point, I had had a few inert hours to think about things, and I realized that it all likelihood this was not a symptom related to my lungs, but a symptom related to my application of concentrated magnesium lotion.
I have had magnesium toxicity before, we just partially while I am confident that this is what I think it is. Typically, it’s no problem – I take magnesium routinely to help sleep, etc. But this morning was a bit different:
My wife had been given some concentrated magnesium lotion, and I figured, “hey, magnesium will help My injured lung and rib relax; I’ll just put some magnesium lotion on that.” To help it absorb, I put down DMSO on the rib first – the rib, which is essentially the armpit (extremely absorbant tissue). On an empty stomach. And then did a sauna.
None of that, but I realized that my magnesium levels were probably well stocked anyways, because I’d had liver earlier that week. But, all in all, it was helpful to know that I’m probably not magnesium deficient – as long as it happened, that’s good to know. It was also helpful to know that it wasn’t lung related, just yet anyways.
Generally, I don’t think many people have to worry about magnesium overdose – unless you’re serum magnesium is well-stocked, and on top of that you dump a huge dose, you’re probably ok. But hopefully this experience helps!
Note: if you do get magnesium toxicity: take a calcium supplement immediately. Calcium is the medical-grade magnesium neutralizer for magnesium toxicity.
