The #1 Magnesium Mistake Everyone Makes
If you’re taking magnesium for sleep or muscle cramps and notice it’s not working, you could be making one of these common magnesium mistakes. Learn how to take magnesium correctly for the most magnesium benefits. Your health will thank you.
The number one magnesium mistake that nearly everyone makes. If you’re taking magnesium to fix your sleep or your anxiety or a muscle tension like a muscle cramp and it’s not working, you might be unknowingly making a massive mistake. Look at the back of your magnesium supplement bottle. You will notice that the average dosage is between 350 to 420 mg per dose. Here’s what they never tell you.
That number was never designed to optimize the amount of magnesium you really need for your brain, for your nervous system. That number was calculated to give you the survival threshold to prevent serious deficiency diseases like seizures. That’s it, just the bare minimum. And when you take the bare minimum amount which is directed on the back of the label and you’re expecting certain results and you don’t get the results, don’t be surprised because that amount was never designed to create a therapeutic effect. And this all boils down to one misunderstanding on what RDA really means.
Here’s the definition of RDA, check this out. The RDA is the average daily level of intake sufficient to meet the nutrient requirements of healthy individuals. The RDA numbers were designed for people that were already healthy, that don’t have muscle cramps or high blood pressure. If you have serious muscle cramps, insomnia, anxiety, the demand and requirement for magnesium goes higher. And on top of that, if you drink coffee with caffeine, if you’re eating some sugar, if you’re taking in an acid, the demand for magnesium is higher.
The RDA assumes that you are a healthy person eating a healthy diet. And personally, it’s rare to find people out there that are healthy that are eating a healthy diet. Now, the RDA for magnesium was set up in 1997 based on body weight, which correlated to women that weigh 133 lb, which nowadays a lot of women weigh more than that, and men that weighed 166 lb, which nowadays they weigh a lot more. So, if we actually recalculate and do the numbers on someone like me that I weigh 195 lb, the adjustments from about 420 mg for magnesium for me should be about 600 mg per day, not 420. I’m just talking about the RDA, the bare minimum amount to prevent a disease.
We’re not talking about corrective doses. We’re not talking about the doses they even used in certain studies that showed improvements in anxiety, depression, blood pressure, and migraines. Those studies use up to like 800 mg of magnesium per day, sometimes for weeks and sometimes even higher than that. One clinical group stated that the minimum doses to begin correcting a deficiency is 600 mg per day. And they mentioned it should be continued for more than a month before you even see any results.
So, when someone starts taking 300 or even 400 mg of magnesium for a couple weeks and says it doesn’t work, of course it’s not going to work because it’s like filling up your swimming pool with a garden hose and they turn it off within 10 minutes. And then this brings us to the next massive mistake. The form of magnesium that most people take and that most research is historically based on is something called magnesium oxide. Now, magnesium oxide is super cheap. It’s compact, so you could fit a lot of it in one capsule.
You could fit like 400 mg in one little capsule. That’s why people like it because they don’t have to take multiple capsules to get their 400 mg. But, the problem with magnesium oxide is it only has a 4% absorption rate. That means if you’re taking a 400 mg magnesium oxide pill, the body might absorb 16 mg. And then if you try to compensate and take more, you’re going to get diarrhea, cramping, GI distress because all of that unabsorbed magnesium pulls water out of your intestines.
And then think about magnesium research. Most of the research on magnesium is using magnesium oxide. So, first of all, you know they’re not going to be able to give them too much because they’re going to get diarrhea. And the absorption is so small, 16 mg per 400 mg tablet is just not going to show the results. And this is why when you look up the research on magnesium, many of the studies don’t really prove or show significant benefit.
I don’t recommend anyone taking magnesium oxide unless you have severe constipation and maybe you’re taking it just for that as a temporary thing. A much better form of magnesium would be to take magnesium glycinate. First of all, you won’t have the GI problems, you won’t have diarrhea. Secondly, you absorb 80% and magnesium glycinate comes with the glycinate part, which actually helps calm down the nervous system. It helps increase something called GABA, which actually can help you sleep a little bit better.
But now let’s talk about something even more interesting and how magnesium affects your brain. Your brain has an accelerator gas pedal and it has a brake. So, the neurons can get really excited or they can wind down and calm down and get in a relaxed state so you could sleep. And without getting too far in the woods, okay? Glutamate is the gas pedal.
That’s the thing that excites the neurons and there’s a little receptor connected to this that allows this to work and this is a normal thing that happens, right? When you hyperfocus on something, when you react very quick, when you need brain power, this system kicks in. But then it’s supposed to wind down when you’re about ready to go to sleep and then when you’re sleeping and you’re recovering, okay? So, we have this on-off situation. Glutamate is the on and then GABA is the off switch or the calming effect in the neurons.
And so, what you need to know is magnesium is the helper, it’s called the cofactor, for this receptor to help wind this system down. To allow the overexcited neurons to turn down. But when magnesium is low, we have no way of turning down this gas pedal. So, the neurons stay overexcited. So, the brain tends to run hot even when you’re sleeping.
Well, what does that feel like? It feels almost identical to high levels of cortisol. And this is why high levels of cortisol and neuron overexcitation produce virtually the same symptoms, okay? Anxiety, insomnia, especially the latter part of the night, okay? Irritability, like little things bother you.
You tend to crave certain things, racing thoughts, cramping in your calves or your feet or a charley horse, palpitations that can lead to arrhythmias. So, in other words, all of these symptoms could be either a cortisol issue, which is a stress issue, or something going on in the brain that can’t turn off. And most people assume it’s just cortisol. So, they might take ashwagandha, they might take other things, adaptogens to help calm them down and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes they even take magnesium, 400 mg, and they might feel a little bit better, but for a lot of people, the problem might not be cortisol, it’s this over here, in which case you’re going to need a lot more magnesium to turn that thing off because a lot of people if they have these symptoms are not in a healthy state.
So, one of the most frustrating things for people is when they try to take supplements for a certain thing or vitamins and just don’t see change. Well, one of the reasons is you’re not taking enough. But the bigger interesting question is, are there other symptoms that can differentiate or determine if you have more of a cortisol problem or an overactive brain, okay? And the answer is yes. For cortisol, you’re going to have a tendency to have more belly fat.
You’re going to have higher blood glucose. You might have more cortisol in the morning, which will actually create more glucose in the morning, too. That’s called the dawn phenomenon. You may have problems with the i