Epsom Salts Information
Information compiled by Mary Wetherby, with editing and research information provided courtesy of Susan Owens. This information may be shared with families and professionals, but please do not use it in a part of a larger document/paper without obtaining written permission.
What are Epsom Salts?
Epsom Salts are the same thing as Magnesium Sulfate, which is a salt made of only magnesium and sulphate (and maybe a little bit of water). Magnesium is a positively charged ion, and it binds to sulfate, which is a negatively charged ion. Sulfate is a sulphur atom surrounded by four oxygen atoms.
What is the anticipated effect from an Epsom Salt bath?
Epsom Salts have long been used to stimulate detoxification, reduce
inflammation to sore muscles, promote healthy circulation, and help with relaxation and normalizing sleep patterns.
Most children respond to an ES bath by appearing happier, more relaxed. Some parents report that their children are more responsive, more ?with it?.
Some parents who give the bath in the evenings report that their children are able to get to sleep easier, and have a more normal sleep pattern.
Given over time, the ES baths may help reduce sensory integration symptoms. Some of this effect may occur due to benefits of detoxification, but it is much more likely to come from direct effects on the nervous system.
Why do they work? And Why is sulfation important?
One benefit of the ES baths is linked to an enzyme system known as phenolsulfotransferase or PST. Dr. Rosemary Waring researched this and found that in 92% of the autistic children tested, PST was functioning at below optimal levels.
This enzyme, like all other sulfotransferases, has to use a modified form of sulfate: not the form it takes in the bathtub. This change occurs inside your cells by adding the molecules adenosine and phosphate to sulfate before any sulfotransferase enzyme can use it. The molecular additions are said to turn sulfate into its ?activated form?.
If you think about it, none of this can be happening in the bathtub: it is happening in your body after sulfate is absorbed through the skin and after a complicated interplay of enzymes.
It is not going to happen spontaneously, no matter how much sulfate you have around.
When PST has enough activated sulfate to use, it will then attach the sulfate part of that molecule to molecules called phenols. In most cases, adding sulfate sets up those molecules for excretion in the urine, but it can actually activate other molecules.
When there is a deficiency of sulfate inside your cells, phenols may build up. In the brain and nervous system this may interfere with neurotransmitter function since many neurotransmitters are phenolic, too. For instance, there is actually a form of PST called catecholamine sulfotransferase or M-PST which acts on neurotransmitters.
Other sulfotransferases act on hormones and proteins and carbohydrates of certain sorts.
Again, epsom salts are believed to help PST by providing the much-needed sulfate to the child's body, by being absorbed transdermally (through the skin) during the bath.
The body is full of other sulfotransferases that need sulfate to be much more concentrated than what PST likes. These other sulfotransferases, among other jobs, help form the extracellular nets around certain neurons, and regulate things like axon guidance and neurons sending out processes to make connections.
The gastrointestinal system especially needs a lot of sulfate. A different sulfotransferase enzyme called TPST uses sulfate to activate two major gut enzymes. In animal studies the GI system takes as much sulfate out of the blood as the liver puts into the blood, so epsom salts are likely to mostly nourish the gut and spare the liver the job of making sulfate from scratch from the amino acid cysteine.
But how does this produce neurological improvements?
Detoxification is only a little part of sulfate's job. Most of the body's sulfate is used to form huge molecules that govern chemical traffic at the cell surface. Many of these sulfated molecules find their more enduring home in the area immediately around the cell called the extracellular matrix. [Extracellular = outside the cell] These sulfated molecules function in all cell types. However, in the brain, this type of molecule has a very special role, providing modulation, or something like a volume control. It does this by forming a geometric net outside particular types of neurons.
The sulfate in these molecules is no longer in an ionic form, like you see in epsom salts in the bathtub, but is part of highly organized structures that will attract, bind and regulate many of the ions that are involved in cell signalling before those ions even get to the surface of neurons or to ion channels. You haven't heard about this from your neurologist because research on the function of this type of molecule has been done mainly in the last decade, and in the last year or two, especially. Even so, there are pictures of these
nets around neurons that were drawn by scientists more than a hundred years ago before they knew what they were made of. Nobody thought they did anything!
What seems particularly relevant is that the nets are abundant and function in the auditory system, the somatosensory system, the vestibular system, the cerebellum, and in almost half of the cranial nerves. They even seem important for developing trunk strength.
You may recognize these systems as the parts of the nervous system that are targeted by sensory integration therapy. Interestingly, the nets won't form properly in the brain without two things happening at the same time: adequate biochemical resources, and continued rapid firing of the relevant nerves.
This argues favourably for coupling biochemical therapies that support this chemistry with the physical and educational approaches that are also known to offer benefits to these systems.
If you want to know more about the biochemical side of this, you can read a paper written by Susan Owens who has studied the sulfated molecules (called GAGs) for seven years. Her paper reviewing this area is part of a book that is sold by the Autism Research Unit in Sunderland: The Proceedings of the
2001 conference in Durham, England. See
http://osiris.sunderland.ac.uk/autism/
What are the potential long-term benefits of continued use?
After using Epsom salts on a regular basis, children may have improvements with language, behaviour, mood, and physical skills.
What if my child gets agitated?
Very few children may seem more agitated after the initial bath, or several baths later. It is not known why this happens, but it is easy to deal with. Just cut back on the baths for a few days and then begin again, but with a much smaller amount of ES-perhaps a teaspoon, and work up the amount very slowly. Also, you may see if the child reacts to magnesium by trying it in a different form orally.
Kirkman Laboratories "Guide To Intestinal Health" booklet discusses how impaired sulfation process can lead to a decreased production of peptides, and bile acids, which are important to digestive function, and lead to problems with maldigestion and malabsorption. Sulfation is also important to the intestinal lining. Over time, decreased sulfation can allow small portions of the gut wall to be exposed, creating the "Leaky Gut" which is suspect in allergies, asthma, and other neurobehavioral disorders. Sulfate's relative absence from the esophagus may be what makes reflux hurt so much.
Okay, I think we?ll try the baths--what do I need and how much Epsom Salt, and for how long?
The amount and frequency can vary from child to child. Some parents prefer to use as much as 2 cups of ES in a bathtub of water, allowing the child to be in the tub for around 20 minutes, on a daily basis.
Some parents prefer to do the baths every few days, some prefer every week. As mentioned before, if your child is one of the rare few who seem to get agitated by the bath, then simply cut back on the amount of salt used (my son was one of these kids and we dropped back to a teaspoon and worked up gradually to about ¼ to ½ a cup).
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