Your Tight Muscles Are a Warning — Here's What They're Missing

Dr. Berg’s Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast

Dr. Eric Berg

Health & Fitness

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2026

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Constantly dealing with tight traps, muscle tightness, jaw tension, teeth grinding, or eye twitching? Discover the connection between magnesium and calcium, why your muscles stay tight, and how to finally relieve chronic muscle tension naturally.

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0:00 Introduction: Tight traps all the time

0:23 Calcium and muscle tightness

1:06 Why muscles stay tight

3:11 Medications that mimic magnesium

4:01 Calcium and tight traps

5:38 The circadian rhythm of magnesium

6:40 Magnesium and vitamin K2

8:26 Magnesium and calcium supplements

Calcium does far more than support bone health. About 99% of the calcium in your body is involved in cell signaling and communication, including muscle contraction and maintaining a healthy heartbeat.

When a muscle contracts, calcium enters the muscle cell. For the muscle to relax, calcium must be pushed back out. This process requires ATP. Magnesium is essential for ATP function, making it a key nutrient for proper muscle relaxation.

Palpitations, arrhythmias, muscle tension, headaches, teeth grinding, and eye twitching are common symptoms in people who are low in magnesium.

Calcium channel blockers mimic some of the effects of magnesium, as do certain medications used for Alzheimer’s disease.

Vitamin K2 is important for keeping calcium out of soft tissues and directing it where it belongs, but it also depends on magnesium to function properly. Your body’s pH can also influence how effectively magnesium works.

Instead of focusing on calcium supplements, prioritize magnesium. Magnesium glycinate is one of the most absorbable forms and is often preferred for supporting healthy magnesium levels.

Dr. Eric Berg DC Bio:

Dr. Berg, age 61, is a chiropractor who specializes in Healthy Ketosis & Intermittent Fasting. He is the Director of Dr. Berg Nutritionals and author of the best-selling book The Healthy Keto Plan. He no longer practices, but focuses on health education through social media.

Disclaimer:

Dr. Eric Berg received his Doctor of Chiropractic degree from Palmer College of Chiropractic in 1988. His use of “doctor” or “Dr.” in relation to himself solely refers to that degree. Dr. Berg is a licensed chiropractor in Virginia, California, and Louisiana, but he no longer practices chiropractic in any state and does not see patients, so he can focus on educating people as a full-time activity, yet he maintains an active license. This video is for general informational purposes only. It should not be used to self-diagnose, and it is not a substitute for a medical exam, cure, treatment, diagnosis, prescription, or recommendation. It does not create a doctor-patient relationship between Dr. Berg and you. You should not make any change in your health regimen or diet before first consulting a physician and obtaining a medical exam, diagnosis, and recommendation. Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.

*Dr. Eric Berg, DC, is not AI-generated. AI-enhanced elements may be used in this video for production purposes only

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Why your muscles never fully relax. You wake up in the morning, your traps are really tight.
0:05.9	Before bed, your traps are tight. What about the twitch underneath your left eye that just kind of
0:11.0	randomly pops out of nowhere? Or what about the tension of the jaw or the grinding of the teeth at night?
0:16.4	Every single one of those things are the same problem and it has nothing to do with stress,
0:22.6	posture or stretching.
0:23.6	We have been taught that calcium is all about bone, right?
0:28.6	But actually, 99% of the purpose of calcium in our body is to support cell communication
0:36.6	signaling. Calcium controls every single muscle contraction, every single
0:41.9	nerve firing, every heartbeat. Right now when you're watching this, your heart is beating.
0:46.4	That is calcium. Your eyes moving across the screen right now, that's calcium. And of course
0:51.9	the tightness in your muscles right here, calcium as well,
0:55.0	but it's stuck calcium. Before I get into how do we solve this, I really need you to understand
1:02.2	what's happening to the muscles in regard to calcium. So when we're talking about contraction
1:08.3	in the muscles, what that is is calcium going into the muscle.
1:14.1	So calcium going in the muscle is the on switch that causes contraction.
1:18.8	Calcium going out of the muscle is relaxation.
1:23.6	Calcium is both the on switch and the off switch.
1:28.3	When we're dealing with relaxation, what has to occur is that calcium has to be pushed through a lot of resistance out of the muscle, okay?
1:40.3	And that requires ATP. And in order for ATP to work, it needs magnesium. It's dependent on magnesium.
1:50.2	ATP cannot work without magnesium. When we deal with contraction, what we have is a super concentrated amount of calcium outside the cell. and then we have a very low diluted concentration
2:04.6	inside the cell. And so when you activate the muscle with your nervous system, it opens the gate
2:10.8	and passively this calcium flows through because there's so much pressure, and that's going to
	...

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