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Comment by wincy | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. I recently started using Magnesium Glycinate as a supplement and I feel it truly changed my life, not exaggerating. I’ve suffered from chronic general anxiety for most of my teens and adult life. Magnesium has completely cleared this up, things I thought were just part of my personality (being anxious and other associated things) were actually due to a chronic magnesium deficiency. I just have to make sure I get a decent amount of calcium in my diet (via canned mackerel mostly) to avoid muscle twitches from the magnesium.

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I have been heavy dosing magnesium (glycinate, citrate) for years and am still a nervous wreck. Your mileage may vary.

I’ve recently switched to magnesium L-Threonate which has shown to be far more effective at being absorbed by the brain and I’ve found myself far less anxious in social situations.

The L-Threonate compound was developed at MIT specifically for better brain absorption. Source: https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/96066/Slutsky...

I found that mag l-threonate helps me fall asleep after an anxious afternoon/night but I'm groggy in the morning. Also, I've read anecdotal reports that after a couple of weeks of regular use, the effect flattens out (sorry, too lazy to search for those reports) and one has to take a break for the effect to return. Have you noticed anything along those lines?

For me, the effect is less (or possibly just less noticable) after a few weeks. But some coffee or tea gets me going pretty quickly and the effects wear off.

I've always been a slow morning person, so 30-60 minutes to start feeling normal is on par for me, so it doesn't really affect my timetable, but you may have a different schedule in mind.

My morning bowel movements when I take magnesium l-threonate are amazing, however, which used to slow me down even more on a typical morning.

If you're interested in testing a further nutritional approach, I suggest the stack suggested by the late great Charles Poliquin.

The stack: https://www.facebook.com/StrengthSenseiInc/videos/anxiety-so... (sorry for FB link)

Background on Poliquin: https://tim.blog/2015/07/21/charles-poliquin/

The RDA on Magnesium is almost never there on multivitamin formulas and so should be added separatedly, I can't really feel that (significantly) it helps for anxiety or jittery though, same goes for theanine, in fact theanine makes my jittery/anxiety worse. Best for jittery/anxiety is taurine, at around 2 grams per each 100mg of caffeine, YMMV.

I've noted overall anxiety got noteacible better when I added DHEA, I'd guess due to changes in the cortisol to DHEA ratio.

This NIH info may be useful for people looking for RDAs:

"Vitamin and Mineral Supplement Fact Sheets" [https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/list-VitaminsMinerals/]

For example, the Mg page lists RDA's by sex and age: [https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnesium-Consumer/]

It recommends 400-420mg/d for adult males, 310-320 for women (matches the # on my MVM container)

(I found this quickly by starting at the MedlinePlus front page, recommended to me by an Info specialist at a major medical center. Well laid-out readable access to a lot of vetted info from the U.S. National Library of Medicine.)

[https://medlineplus.gov/]

Oh that’s interesting! I bet that’s why I can’t tolerate coffee but the caffeine + taurine in Monster and Red Bull are fantastic for giving me energy.

Thanks for the taurine tip. I've always enjoyed the red bull sensation more than coffee. Never thought taurine would be neuro-active enough, but I'm revisiting that idea.

Theanine is great with caffeine also. I just spoon it in 200-400mg into my coffee.

Chiming in to second this.

I've had anxiety problems most of my life, and when a death in the family shook everything it got really, really bad.

I tried everything I could think of except prescription meds (maybe should have, but I didn't like the side effects or addictive potential) and one day while lurking I read a random comment on HN about magnesium.

I decided, Why not, its cheap, and it has had a truly profound effect on my life, among the generally healthy choices I started to make. It took a little time, but it worked a LOT and the muscle spasms and cramps subsided too!

I can't believe sometimes how different my life has become.

Yup, I started taking Mg supplements for cramping during climbing and it worked. It also stopped my depressive moods.

You could also try quinine. I recently discovered that drinking a glass or two of bitter lemon, bitter orange or tonic water a day helps with my muscle tremors. Magnesium doesn't help much.

Side effect is the high sugar intake, which concerns me somewhat. I can't stand most artificial sweeteners, so drinking light products is no alternative.

What type of muscle spasms were you having? My spouse has high anxiety, some depression, and a persistent issue of localized muscle spasms or twitches in her arm when their anxiety is extra high.

It was a twitching of muscles in my upper arm such as triceps usually, sometimes forearms, sometimes calf muscles and facial muscles around the eyes. It didn't cause pain but it was annoying and a little troubling. The light twitching would just go on an on for hours, every 5-15 seconds seemingly unending. I recall my cat batting at the back of my arm while sitting on my back balcony one morning. I think it was wiggling a loose thread on my shirt.

It didn't really seem to follow any logic, except I noticed alcohol made them worse. Alcohol also caused an increase in anxiety in the following days. I also experienced symptoms of depression. It was a very dark time.

There was definitely more going on than just magnesium but it wasn't until I tried the magnesium that I had any breakthrough.

Good luck. Another poster in these comments mentioned that you can get non-prescription testing for magnesium and other markers from Walk-In Labs ( https://www.walkinlab.com/ ) if you want to go that route. I also know there are doctors out there that will work with this kind of medicine, but I don't know too much about that. Magnesium is pretty safe, but I understand there is some possibility for problems with taking too much.

I genuinely wish you the greatest success, I'm confident that with careful, thoughtful effort along with your loving support, your spouse can start to feel better.

Maybe consider meditation too? Box breathing[0][1] is an often recommended technique for this sort of thing.

Dr. Andrew Huberman[3] recommends a breathing technique, I cant remember what he calls it, but is easily performed to counteract sympathetic nervous stress: Breath in sharply through the nose, quickly to about half capacity Once, brief pause, followed by a second sharp inhalation through the nose to mostly full capacity, brief pause, and then release the total breath through the mouth. He suggests doing this 2 or 3 times to engage the parasympathetic nervous response.

[0] - https://quietkit.com/box-breathing/

[1] - https://www.webmd.com/balance/what-is-box-breathing

[2] - Huberman Labs podcast available on RSS feeds - "Overcoming Anxiety" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z25f6qy361Y

Ok, your comment is shocking to me: I've been having annoying muscle twitches lately (probably from drinking lots of coffee), and one thing I found online was that magnesium supplements could help. I eventually ended up trying it, but the twitches just keep getting worse and worse; I didn't realize until now the magnesium is probably what is worsening things. Could anyone ELI5 what' the relationship between calcium, magnesium and muscle twitches?

Your body has to move calcium ions in and out of (striated) muscles to trigger contractions. This is done through "calcium channels". Mg2+ is an antagonist to the activation of calcium channels.

You need enough calcium to achieve a strong reliable contraction, and enough magnesium to keep the channels "closed" when they should be closed (among very many other physiological uses).

In short, you need a balance of calcium and magnesium for reliable muscle function. A gross excess or lack of either is bad.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5652077/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4315934/

Thank you, this is interesting. It's kind of weird, realizing I don't understand my own body at all.

Wow, I started magnesium recently because of migraines. I’ve been twitching occasionally and I’ve been wondering why. Might just need more calcium. Thanks for sharing.

Because Magnesium and Calcium are both divalent the primary mechanisms of absorption tend to compete if you take them both together. You'll get higher bio-availability if you separate them in time (e.g. one with breakfast, the other with dinner).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5652077/

Thanks for the suggestion. I think my problem is I'm just not getting enough calcium now that I'm getting a lot more magnesium. My legs and arms occasionally have been twitching and I've been having terrible sleep starts, since I started taking magnesium.

You may want to add theanine to the mix in a 2:1 mag:theanine ratio. It will improve you anxiety even further

Just a warning to anyone on anti-seizure or mood stabilizing meds. Theanine can seriously fuck you up because it alters glutamate channels that your medication may also be altering.

I think the warning should be "If you're not a doctor, don't play at one".

Not everyone can afford a good doctor, so experimenting on their own might be the only way to fix something. People have been hacking their CPAP machines for awhile even though it could kill them.

I can afford good doctors. They are 90% waste of time. 10% life saving.

Good Support groups are far better for your health. Although it often boils down to cut carbs.

Mind sharing references for this ?

Personal experience. The easiest source to read is Wikipedia. Look at the mechanisms of action.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theanine

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticonvulsant

I, too, wish to chime in here. I've seen people that are absolute wrecks unless they're on theanine, either alone or as an adjunct therapy. I suspect a surprisingly large number of people just have entirely screwed up glutamate/glutamine cycles, and theanine is an amino analogue of them (makes more sense when you realize the name is l-gamma-glutamylthelyamide).

Interesting, I am specifically taking magnesium to stop muscle twitches. In your case it is the opposite.

It is commonplace for people to eat magnesium supplements before taking certain central stimulants to decrease yaw clenching and gurning, not sure if it helps or not, but it is a thing.

I too take magnesium in an attempt to stop muscle twitches (fasciculations). This was recommended to me by a neurologist after a couple of tests. My fasciculations started during a period of serious stress and anxiety (of the "I think I'm dying"-variety). They've never really fully gone away. Some nights I can't sleep because some muscle is randomly twitching all night. Magnesium helps, but so does staying away from caffeine and making sure to keep hydrated.

Damn this hits close to home. I've been convinced I have some debilitating neurological condition even since I saw my finger twitches a little with my arm stretched out. On top of that I've been having really bad sleep starts. Talked with neurologist and doctor who didn't seem worried at all.

Around this time I had a few migraines and was recommend to take magnesium. Not sure if that's what caused the sleep starts but I also noticed my leg started to occasionally twitch inwards when I'm sitting. The sleep starts have kept me up for hours at night. Going to try and add more calcium in my diet to see if that helps the problem.

How much and which brand do you take?

Not sure what he’s doing but this should help:

http://fellrnr.com/wiki/Magnesium

I use this[0] not every day because I’ll get muscle spasms unless I eat a lot of calcium, but a few times a week seems to make a big difference.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZD7R4RF/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_...

If you're getting muscle spams, are you really "supplementing"?

Yes.

Just like if you take some extra Zinc (30mg-50mg picolinate) for a variety of reasons - you have to take a bit of copper with it, or eventually your copper supplies will be drained and start causing issues.

I’m not 100% sure if it was zinc but I supplemented zinc for like a week then had the worst constipation of my entire life. Like, wife had to run to the pharmacy to resolve it while I cried in agony sort of bad. So yeah, be careful with how you supplement!

I'd like to hope most people are careful in how they supplement, and do due diligence as necessary.

Unfortunately, I know how people actually operate. It's quite depressing.

Weird I take magnesium to prevent muscle cramps. I don’t supplement calcium at all.

I was under the impression that cramps are from an imbalance of potassium, calcium and magnesium. Supplementing the one you are lacking generally resolves the problem, but its hard to know for an individual without trial and error unless you are 100% sure of your diet.

I mentioned in passing to a nurse at my gym that I get calf cramps from running. She told me to get a supplement from Amazon called Calm. It eliminated the cramps, and after an especially rough squat workout I used to get cramps, it also took care of that. Although you need to be very careful with the dosage, it is basically a laxative.

Did the glycinate formulation have a markedly better effect than more common alternatives?

Ive read people recommend glycinate because they find that salt has less laxative effects than the others

Not really sure, I heard that magnesium citrate can have laxative effects. I used to use cal-mag which helped anxiety but it never really “clicked” in my head that it was helping, I used it for muscle cramps.

Ditto. I'm using mg orotate for that reason. Haven't tried mg glycinate.

Haven’t had any issues with citrate. I use natural calm (brand) and tend to take the minimum dose only as needed.

The glycinate is a well absorbed form of magnesium. Threonate is also well absorbed and is able to pass the blood-brain barrier.

Malate and citrate are pretty absorbable too, but I (am not who you were responding to but) use Magnesium bis-glycinate (TRAACS) form. It works well enough.

Keep in mind I am not a doctor or biologist, but many common forms of magnesium, commonly in multivitamins, are absorbed (slowly) via metal channels which require calcium to be taken as well or else the absorption slows and stops. As a result, it will pass through your GI instead of being absorbed into your body.

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