Magnesium and the Brain (2011)

There was a thread on this about a year ago here, and after reading through the results I decided to start taking Magnesium supplements. I've had very good results. I really recommend it to anyone that has issues with anxiety or depression. While its certainly not a cure-all, its easy, cheap, and safe, so its absolutely worth a try.

Lots of discussion on supplements in the comments (which are totally fine). But for additional info, sources of dietary magnesium are (descending concentration): spinach/chard, pumpkin seeds, yogurt, almonds, black beans, avocado, figs, dark chocolate, banana.

Checking Google Scholar, this seems to be proven by clinical trials: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal..... Interesting.

I have a circadian rhythm disorder (non-24) and have tried a bunch of stuff that could potentially help with sleep, including magnesium in three or four different forms (including time release; they all seem to have the same effect). I also have a fairly good diet and likely get a good amount of magnesium from food.

500-600mg supplementation helps me stay asleep (but not get to sleep) but then I am much more tired the entire next day vs not getting the extra sleep. 300mg supplementation doesn't seem to do much of anything positive or negative.

From this experince, I would recommend:

1) If you want to try a supplement, I suggest powder so that you can try different doses easily. The form does not seem to make a difference for most people from what I've read. There are flavored powders widely available (look for store brands) that mix with a small amount of water.

2) If magnesium supplementation helps you then that could be a sign that your health would be improved more by improving your diet than adding a magnesium supplement.

3) Pumpkin seeds are a good way to add magnesium and great snack food in general. I like PumpKorn Origional (soy sauce, garlic, and pepper) or Go Raw Sprouted Pupkin Seeds (a bag looks expensive but lasts a while so is actually one of the less expensive ones; the sprouted ones seem lighter). Also, if you add just about any squash to a meal you can easily roast the seeds with a bit of salt. Squash and brown rice plus some cabbage family veggie are a good combination. If you pick the lightest squash of a particular size they are more likely to have more seeds.

Maybe this is TMI, but anyone wanting to try magnesium needs to ramp up their dose, as a sudden intake of magnesium supplement is likely to cause you to evacuate your colon in glorious fashion...

I started supplementing Magnesium about two years ago after listening to Tim Ferriss' interview with Charles Poliquin [0]. It has absolutely improved my sleep quality, workout recovery, testosterone levels (likely due to improved sleep), and mild depression. I recommend listening to the interview if you're interested in this type of stuff. Charles is a bit polarizing but he has consistently produced world class athletes over the years so he knows a few things.

[0] https://tim.blog/2015/07/21/charles-poliquin/

I've no doubt of some efficacy in certain situations for magnesium. However this article reads like this is the magic bullet to society's ails. Very anecdotal and hand picked cases do not make for a cure all, because there is no one substance that possesses this ability.

Emily Deans writes very informatively about nutrition topics in a sea of dross (also about medicine, psychology, biology if I recall correctly). Another use of Magnesium is as a adjunct to Vitamin D3 supplementation, since magnesium is used up in its metabolism and action.

I've recently given the Ketogenic diet a try. One of the things I was reading is that Keto-ers are generally pretty low on magnesium and may need to take supplements. I wonder if the lack of magnesium in the diet explains the so-called "keto flu."

Magnesium isn't good just for stress reduction, it is also great for sleep and relaxation. It also stimulates sex drive. Another wonder mineral is Calcium which can relieve back pains. When I take a combo of Ca+Mg I feel like I am 10 years younger.

Can anyone recommend a good supplement? There seem to be so many choices and compounds.

I remember reading once about an essential Magnesium to Calcium ratio being 1:2 or 2:1. I didn't follow references, but that article mentioned that having that intake ratio severely distorted can affect your health negatively. Can anyone with better understanding of the subject comment on the Magnesium to Calcium ratio?

Here's a guy who can't absorb magnesium properly (among other things) and needs regular injections. He's also literally a carnivore: http://forgetamnesia.tumblr.com/post/127847035996/i-am-an-ac... He recently lost his job, his home, and some teeth. https://twitter.com/ForgetAmnesia/status/910536598990741504

I use magnesium water (milk of magnesia in soda water) to calm my heart palpitations. It's worked better than any prescription from my doc so far

Are there many nutrients which may be present in good quantity in some food item, but some other chemical in that same food, interferes with the absorption (by the human body) of that nutrient?

Thinking of examples like spinach, where it is supposed to contain a lot of calcium, but also has oxalates (or oxalic acid) which interfere with the absorption of the calcium. Or is that a one-off case?

I have celiac. Most people know that that means "no wheat", but it also means having a difficulty absorbing nutrition in general, and I've gotten up close and personal with a variety of nutritional deficiencies, even in cases where I nominally had enough in my diet. For me personally, I seem to have the most trouble with the metals we're supposed to absorb; I can't speak to how common this is for celiacs (and I haven't found any particular research on that exact question; it may very well be out there but I haven't seen it). It turns out that in the last year I've discovered this also encompasses magnesium deficiency. What fun.

So, I'd add: I'm really not convinced by the bioavailability of magnesium oxide. YMMV because maybe there's a threshold effect and I couldn't get anything from it and your normal digestive system will be able to, but I would suggest that if you are interested in magnesium, the actually bioavailable stuff isn't that much more expensive. I've been using: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BD0RT0/ref=oh_aui_deta... and it very likely is having a positive effect on me where magnesium oxide was not having any effect. (For various complicated reasons it is difficult for me to be completely confident in that, but this claim is very likely.)

In fact this seems to be a general pattern; what you can buy in your local grocery stores is often quite crap in terms of bioavailability, and even what you can get from dedicated health stores is often only marginally better. So you might think the "good stuff" must be likely to be more expensive... but it often isn't actually that much more expensive if you order it online. It's sort of weird.

The other thing the article at best tangentially alludes to is that magnesium supplementation is likely to be a relatively slow process. In my experience, for some deficiencies I take a pill or two and within 24 hours I know yeah, I was missing that; iron I knew about after about a week (takes time to make blood). Magnesium takes a lot longer; I've read from others in similar positions to me that six months to a year in you can still be seeing improvements, which is matching my experience. If you want to try this out, be aware that it may be a subtle improvement over a long period of time, but it could also be a really important one. And that sucks, because the low amplitude of the signal relative to the day-to-day noise makes it really hard to tell if it's doing anything for you. However, that is simply what it is.

Another thing that's relevant is that there are some nutrients that need to be in some balance, and it is possible to raise up your magnesium only to find out that need more potassium, too. There's also some interaction with calcium and sodium. I suspect that if you're normally healthy and eat reasonably healthily that you won't encounter these issues, though. (I have substantial evidence, but again, no proof, that my body does a particularly poor job absorbing potassium. Hard to imagine what proof would look like, honestly. Fortunately and/or amusingly, potassium supplements have the opposite problem most supplements have... they're actually dangerously bioavailable. So that one turns out to be somewhat easy to cover, except that I have to remember to take it in small doses throughout the day, and it shouldn't be mixed with magnesium at the same time because it turns out they like to get together in your stomach and react to form a compound that has neither the magnesium nor the potassium bioavailable. Isn't this just such fun? Ugh.)

(Also, before someone smacks reply and starts trying to read me the riot act, please do review the careful caveating I've written into this post. I'm not an expert by any means; it is just that due to circumstances beyond my control and that I would not choose, I've been thrust into the deep end of this world and forced to go beyond what science can provide me completely rigorous answers for. And I am working with the conventional medical system here... however, there are just some ways that I'm having to improvise because when it really comes down to it, we're all unique whether we like it or not, and the doctors don't have all the answers for me. I'll cop to not being as careful as gwern, but, well, I'm generally dealing with much larger effects and much greater urgency than he is... I'm generally thinking in a multi-armed bandit style moreso than a conventional null-hypothesis p-value style.)

I'm surprised the article doesn't mention chlorophyll. You know; the magnesium-based stuff that makes plants green.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium_in_biology#Chlorophy...

I take magnesium every day because I have leg cramps, and supposedly it helps with that. Can't say that I notice any nootropic effects at all, but I do get less cramps, I guess.

Magnesium solved two problems for me: stiff muscles and insomnia.

Scientific information about how magnesium works is hard to come by. Here's what I have been able to gather from various sources: The cells in your body need calcium to go into "on state". To go into "off state" magnesium has to go in and displace calcium.

When your body is low on magnesium your muscles can't go into "off state" and your muscles become stiff. To relax you need an Epsom salt bath (it contains magnesium) or just take magnesium supplements.

When your brain cells can't go to "off state" you can't sleep. You need magnesium to help your brain cells go into off state. However there is this thing called "blood brain barrier" (look it up) that prevents magnesium from easily entering the brain. However magnesium l-threonate (that's a compound of magnesium, not a brand name) can pass through the barrier and help you sleep.

I have had sleep issues for many years. I saw many doctors including sleep specialists but all they wanted to do is put me on prescription meds. But these meds are addictive and you have to take it for the rest of your life. I didn't want that. These are "quick fixes". As a software developer I was interested in finding the underlying problem and fix that, as opposed to the quick fixes that the medical community was offering me.

A breakthrough came when I saw a naturopathic doctor for my stiff muscles and she advised me to take Epsom salt baths. That seemed to help. I investigated more and found out that the ingredient in Epsom salt that helped me is magnesium. Then I found out that you can actually get magnesium pills and tried that. That worked remarkably well. But the big surprise was that I slept better the night I tried the magnesium pill. Since then I have been researching how it is that magnesium helped me sleep.

Stress depletes magnesium in your body. If you are a software developer you are stressing your brain all day when you do your job and you are depleting magnesium. Low magnesium levels causes muscle issues as well as sleep issues. Magnesium supplements solve the problem.

It is very unfortunate that medical doctors don't seem to be very knowledgeable about this topic. When I see doctors I mention that I am taking magnesium for muscle and sleep issues and they seem surprised, but no doctor has yet told me that I am wrong.

Note that magnesium is a natural mineral, not a drug, essential for your body, and found in many foods. Excess amounts of magnesium can cause a laxative effect, but this is very temporary. Take magnesium before you go to bed, and the worst thing that can happen is you go easily the next morning.

I should recommend taking magnesium chloride for strengthen your immune system, it is very well used in functional and natural medicine these days.