Thought leader: Dr Sanjay Gupta
Dr Sanjay Gupta is a consultant cardiologist and heart specialist. He specialises in Cardiac Imaging at York Teaching Hospital in the United Kingdom and is an avid supporter of using magnesium for health and well-being. Dr Gupta is undoubtedly an expert in the field of magnesium and its various medical benefits. He has around 30 years of experience in medicine and during this time has refined his practice.
“I believe that the healthcare industry rarely ever provides healthcare. Instead, it provides disease management by using expensive and potentially harmful pills to mask symptoms. Secondly, I believe people come to see doctors to be engaged, educated and empowered rather than being given a set of pills before being shown the door,” says Dr Gupta.
“I think lifestyle management is perhaps the single most effective therapy in medicine and yet largely ignored because it is boring and not as profitable as promoting the newest and often most expensive tablets. I do believe that high quality reliable jargon-free information about health should be available at no cost to everyone in the world,” he adds.
Dr Gupta shares his thoughts on magnesium
In the video below, Dr Gupta talks about some of the benefits of magnesium for the heart, blood vessels and vital organs. These are his three take-away points on why magnesium is a vital element:
- “The majority of chronic illnesses are driven by chronic inflammation. With regards to the heart, atherosclerosis (hardening of our blood vessels) is the process that eventually leads to heart attacks and this is caused by chronic low-grade inflammation. The inflammation is caused by lifestyle factors such as smoking, poor nutrition (especially processed foods), lack of exercise, lack of good quality sleep and stress.
- “As the arteries harden over a number of years, it becomes more difficult for blood to get to our vital organs such as our brain, kidneys and heart. As these organs start getting deprived of blood they start malfunctioning.”
- “Any agent which can improve the blood supply to our vital organs can offer potential benefits to our health. Magnesium, in that sense, has the following beneficial properties: It can help relax smooth muscle and therefore relaxes our blood vessels allowing blood to get through more easily, it is anti-inflammatory and it has some anticoagulant properties which help blood to travel through the hardened blood vessels more easily.”
For more information on this topic, read through the article written by Dr Gupta on his website – Why magnesium is so good for us and yet we have so little of it.
More information about Dr Gupta
Dr Gupta currently works as a full-time cardiologist, which includes two busy cardiology outpatient clinics per week, coronary care ward rounds and ward-based in-patient responsibilities. He leads the non-invasive imaging unit at his hospital and also does stress echocardiography, complex transthoracic echocardiography and transesophageal echocardiography sessions.
“I do almost 200 transthoracic studies, 200 stress echocardiograms and 75 transesophageal studies every year. I lead a weekly imaging MDT meeting and have recently written a business case for the development of cardiac CT and MRI facilities at the hospital. I also represent general medicine on the patient safety group and am a HYMS tutor & have been awarded 2 clinical excellence awards,” says Dr Gupta.