Very Rough Draft On Why Everyone Should Be Magnesium-Pilled
So magnesium is responsible for over 100 different processes in the body. This means that if you have something that feels slightly off, maybe a magnesium supplement is good for you.
There are many magnesium supplements. A bunch of them are meh. Magnesium Oxide which is commonly found and pretty cheap actually isn’t the best one for absorption. You want something better, like Citrate, Glycinate, or a combination one of a bunch of different magnesiums.
A bunch of the supplements have a bunch of other vitamins in them too. These can be okay, but I would actually stay away from those. If you want a multivitamin, I would get a multivitamin. I would keep the magnesium pure due to how you would be taking it.
You want to take the magnesium in the morning, after you are done fasting and are eating or whatever, and you want to take it at night, sometime before bed.
The magnesium helps you not feel so weird in the morning. If you are having weird scrambled thoughts, it helps with that. And then at night, if you are having weird anxiety or intrusive thoughts, it helps with that. It also, being an electrolyte, helps you feel more “hydrated.”
Because you are taking it at night, having magnesium mixed with a bunch of B-vitamins for example would disrupt your sleep. You don’t want that. And because you are taking it in the morning, every morning, you don’t want it to have a bunch of other stuff either so that you just know what you are taking.
Now, why am I so magnesium-pilled?
Magnesium gets flushed out of your system in like 23 hours. It doesn’t even stay in you for a day. It’s an electrolyte, remember. It also does not get stored or made by you. If you didn’t eat enough magnesium that day, you just don’t have enough magnesium that day. You don’t have “past” magnesium that you can rely on.
This contrasts heavily with iron. Iron gets stored in a bunch of places in your body. If you are iron-deficient, you probably have been iron-deficient for a long time, and it will probably take you a while to become less iron-deficient.
Not so with magnesium! It is not stored anywhere. You cannot go inside your own fat or inside your own bones and crack open a chest of magnesium.
Given how many things magnesium is used for, I have a theory that random things just feeling wonky or weird can be due to lower magnesium at any given random moment even if your “general” magnesium levels appear completely fine on every blood test. If it is a hot day and your body needs a bunch of magnesium for some random homeostasis thing, guess what, now you have way less magnesium for other things that might need it.
Because it is in such heavy use and in such heavy use for so many different processes is why I am thinking, alright, not having enough can actually create a bottleneck somewhere.
To add - different things magnesium is used for
To add - study showing how much less distance soldiers can cover in 95 degree weather, versus 85, versus 75
1. Some quick googling suggests that the body does have magnesium stores in bones and muscles.
2. Gwern's two magnesium self-experiments showed harm. (https://gwern.net/nootropic/magnesium)
In general, I treat health benefits of supplementation as an extraordinary claim due to small-n, publication bias, observational methodology &c.
This post gives me no reason to think magnesium supplementation is an exception to that.
Also, many micronutrients are involved in >100 processes, this just isn't a high bar to clear and says little, in my opinion, about whether supplementation would be helpful.
hmmmm. i take 400mg magnesium glycinate (60mg elemental Mg) in the evening alongside 25mg b6 (P-5-P), 2000 iu vit d3, 200mcg vit k2 MK7, 2000mg omega3 (1200mg EPA & 800mg DHA)
do u have thoughts on Mg dosage/quantity?
you mention taking magnesium by itself in the morning & at night -- ig u have all other supplements at lunch, then?