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[StevesPetRat]

Hey, quick question for anybody with better chemistry skills than me.

 

I buy malic and citric acid powder by the kilo and use it to make mineral water with magnesium (and a little calcium, if I'm off dairy) carbonate and potassium bicarbonate (use some sea salt also). However, because of the large amount of magnesium and potassium (usually 600 and 3000 mg) I supplement daily, I end up using around 6 g daily of each of those acids.

 

Malic acid is often referred to as a potent chelator of aluminum. Similarly, the wiki article on citric acid states that, "Citric acid is an excellent chelating agent, binding metals."

 

But if something can chelate aluminum, it must be able to bind other cations with the same charge with similar affinity, right? And once those things are dissolved, they just kinda float around until you metabolize them in the Krebs cycle or pee em out.

 

Anyway, am I doing damage by ingesting these quantities of citric and malic acids (or, technically, citrate and malate anions) daily, either by robbing my body of other necessary minerals or otherwise?

 

Thanks for any input. Haven't started a topic in a long time.

[pamojja]

I would get serum levels, or better still a hair tissue mineral analysis, done. Simply because I made the experience with high dose vitamin C that a severe Magnesium deficiency developed. But with all my googling-power found merely one guinea-pig study, which showed further depletion of Mg in already depleted animals with vitamin C. No other human evidence.

 

Which just shows the validity of chemical-bioindividuality, and the need to monitor with high doses of anything. You might be the first to report problems with high dose citrate and malate, or not develop any difficulties despite literature to the opposite.