Magnesium and heart rhythm problems

Thanks to your and others' posts, I've become aware I have two bottles of magnesium I've been relying on (different brands - one, I fished out my recycling bin to check).

Turns out both say they're magnesium oxide! One says it has added zinc (and I just read somewhere that zinc can negate the effect of certain eye vitamins - ones I take on doctors' orders, AREDS2. That zinc sensitivity only afflicts 15% of those taking the vitamins. ).

AREDs is very expensive and supposed to help ward off blindness for those with macular degeneration (Serious business! I'm almost blind in my right eye already.)

What's more, the zinc study was supposedly done on the basis of a double blind study seeing how people did on supplements with and without AREDS, both kinds (with and without zinc.) Not only did it show some people shouldn't take it, it said those with the zinc sensitivity could be harmed by it.)

Beating my head against the wall!!

So much for living on the internet trying to research issues to do with my two big diagnoses - AFIB/arrhythmia, and wet macular degeneration!

I'm about to arrange to arrange a "Watchman Procedure" (minor heart operation - if any heart operation is minor) so I can stop taking the blood thinner. Why? Because it turns out it worsens the timeline whereby wet macular degeneration leads to blindness. (It's incurable. A matter not of "IF" but "WHEN")

And vis a vis the magnesium, I've been taking what I thought was THE magnesium for two reasons:

1) To minimize my painful night-time leg cramps
2) To make sure I'm keeping up my electrolytes.

Now I'm completely flummoxed! I guess I'll do some more Googling to try to distinguish them, in case particular kinds are desirable for my purposes. I suspect the magnesium taurate [sic] isn't even available around here.

I don't think this conundrum would be complete without mentioning that thanks to a member here, I now realize I need to have a "reversal agent" available since I'm taking blood thinner.
That's because sometimes one needs to cancel out the blood thinning effect of that medicine, immediately - like if one has a hemorrhagic stroke (instead of the ischemic kind the blood thinners protect against. Or is in an accident and needs surgery, or.....or....) That member said he learned his local hospital didn't carry the reversal agent because it's too expensive - that the nearest hospital carrying it was 8 hours away! Well, I checked with my hospital and they don't have the anti-anti coagulant either.

In fairness, one needs one or two infusions of it FAST, if one needs it (like in case of the other kind of stroke). One infusion costs $25,000 and the second costs the same. I think I'm truly at my wits end about these issues. (I called my cardiologist to ask him about it, and he didn't even know the hospital didn't have the reversal agent!)

HELP!!

Thinking I ought to turn this into a new topic - about the difficulties in figuring out how to choose medicines
in terms of interactions. It's to the point to where I think I ought to just flip a coin about each issue and hold off on the Watchman Procedure. (I'll just add for good measure that I learned that Biotin, if taken before a thyroid test, distorts the results...)

At least I'll look for the new kind of magnesiums in case they're available to help both my cardiac arrythmia and the other for my
night-time cramps. TWO KINDS OF MAGNESIUM!?!

There IS such a thing as "Polypharmacy" - which is a medical malady whereby one is just taking too many pills. It's especially a problem with today's medicine, because with everything slightly complicated relegated to a specialist, no ONE doctor knows what we ought to be taking. That, plus doctors' tendency to recommend a pill to solve a problem called to his/her attention

I doubt even my PCP knows all my list of meds and supplements even though they're in my chart - much less how they interact.
(I'm supposed to take three separate medicines on an empty stomach first thing in the morning! How so??)

Interesting discussion on Magnesium. There is a risk to taking too much of any of the key electrolytes that govern body activities. Some of the unintended consequences that be serious... like arrhythmias. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/153188

This post is four years old, but I thought I'd mention that I used to need a whole lot more water than average, too. Then I figured out that I was eating way too much protein, more than my body could easily process, and that's why I needed so much water.
If you want to see how much protein (and other nutrients) you are getting, you can use the 'recipe nutrition calculator' on myfooddata.com . . . it's free-- I just type in an approximation of one day's food intake as if it were one 'recipe' and take a look at my totals for vitamins, minerals, amino acids etc.