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.
I took ~200mg, you can buy 200mg capsules on amazon. I haven't noticed any kind of tolerance, although just in case I no longer take it daily, as I do worry about a possible rebound of anxiety.
I've probably taken as much as 600mg in one sitting to no known ill effects. Wikipedia page similarly seems to confirm no known harmful effects from theanine. Also it is present, albeit in smaller quantities, in green and black tea. And the ratio of theanine to caffeine allegedly increases with longer steeps, although I haven't confirmed by checking, oh, what was it, dissociation constants that determine rate of dissolution?
Anyway, CBD edibles/tinctures work as well, although our friendly neighborhood Dr. DEA has listed CBD as schedule 1 (!) so, you know, use at your own risk. I recommend it though.
I take one twice daily, in the morning and the evening.
I take regular doses. I haven't noticed becoming acclimated.
It is a supplement that I have taken on and off for a decade or so. I decided to take it again regularly a few years ago, after noticing a tendency toward angry mood swings during a period where I was not taking any supplements at all. After observing this, I thought back on my previous supplement usage, and I recalled having a more even mood when I had been using 5-htp and l-theanine, and decided to try it again to see if it evened things out again. It did, and it continues to do so.
This seems like a reasonable time to do a shameless plug of a side project - finding which supplements worked and didn't over for me personally has been a huge PITA.
I love this! I've avoided all the personal tracking apps specifically because I don't control my own data. I love options like these that offer hosted or DIY variations (data ownership!).
Especially for DIY people like myself, you should make the github link a lot bigger. I would have missed it if I hadn't gone looking for it, which I only did because it was linked through HN :)
Some questions (and I haven't dug too deeply yet):
1. How much do you perform/use (if at all) analytic conclusions from groups of people not just individuals?
2. Is it mobile-web friendly?
3. Do you have plans for making a mobile version (I saw something about a REST api, and it seems just having a bidirectional channel to iOS HealthKit might be valuable)
4. What data sources do you use for supplement information/listings (eg examine.com and such). Especially since copyright of such source could be a contended issue in the future.
Yeah - I didn't trust anyone with all my data to give it back to me. Anonymity was another concern. The delete user setting is also something I provided just to illustrate I wasn't kidding. And then open-source was the last thing since otherwise, how can you tell if someone is just bullshitting you with saying they care about anonymity? (Aka everyone in the supplement industry!)
1. Zero. The goal is to maybe do it but provide a recommendation engine based off of X class of medicine/supplements have worked for you, and you fall into a bucket of Y people that respond to X, then recommend based off of that. (So simple machine learning clustering). I'm not going into that until I hit a minimum of a certain threshold of users (which maybe never, not willing to compromise). I care much more about information leakage and making sure that IF I do this, it's incredibly well-thought out. The last thing I want to recommend is microdosing/modafinil/research chemicals just because X% of users are using it. Nothing against them, just safety and privacy are always going to come before cool features. I've given a bit of thought into this, and I could write for pages on what a proper analytics engine should look like. I'll spare you the snore :)
2. YES. I haven't made the iOS or Android app yet. (but React was specifically chosen for this reason). Right now it's super mobile friendly for entering in data. I use it on my tablet and phone about 30-40 times a day. Yeah. I try a lot of supplements ... It's a weird thing. For charts and stuff, it's mediocre for mobile.
3. Yes! FitBit integration is done and works really well with sleep data. Next on the vendor list is Garmin. The problem with HealthKit is the SDK isn't as export-friendly (I understand why Apple is paranoid), so it's harder for me to move data from there, into the analytics engine and back.
4. Don't have a definite answer just yet. It actually will come in the next few months, but at the time being - people are coming in generally knowing exactly what they're taking. I'd also like something that just goes HEY, WHAT YOU'RE TAKING INTERFERES WITH Y! I also want to bring in decay effects, ie. if you start consuming caffeine at this hour and showing decay effects.
There's a lot here that I'm super passionate about, but work's been super crazy so it's all a balancing act of what do I add.
Sorry for the GitHub link changing, but before it was right at the bottom (where it now says demo), but when I showed it to a friend he was like "you understand that everyone thinks that's the signup button is 100% of the time right?" So I had a lot of people clicking on the page, clicking onto GitHub and then disappearing.
Anecdotally, I tried to find some Magnesium Glycinate in Vancouver a month ago, and everything was various mixtures, mostly citrate. I couldn't find pure Glycinate, although your Amazon links looks promising (for residents of the Americas).
That looks perfect, but no shipping to Greece for that one :/ It's so hard finding a good one, too, because of all the different ingredients that it may contain...
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.
I would also like to add quinoa, broccoli, and peas. There is a salad I frequently make which I call the 'Max-nesium salad'. It's pretty much just a combination of spinach/chard, raw almond shavings, black beans, quinoa, broccoli, and peas. You can also throw in beets if you like them.
Way to shoot my pun out of the sky. My only defense here is to go with the hard definition of a salad being a mixture of vegetables. Which means spinach-only would not constitute a salad. You are however correct that 'Max' would also be something like a bunch of spinach and a couple pumpkin seeds. That doesn't sound great, so I'm willing to drop it to 'Tasty Max-nesium Salad'.
Servings can have pretty different amounts of calories, and often people are looking for the cheapest way, rather than simply the densest way. I don't think this list is useful at all.
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...
Magnesium citrate and magnesium oxide (often called elemental magnesium or buffered magnesium) are the forms to avoid unless you're trying to clean out your colon.
Look for Magnesium glycinate or magnesium bisglycinate, but be careful because some of those will include significant amounts of "buffered" or elemental magnesium.
I don't see how it's any better than a comment here. I just wanted clarification as to whether the poster thinks elemental magnesium is a good thing or a bad thing.
I had loose vowels the first couple mornings after starting magnesium supplements. After five days my body adjusted and my bowel movements returned to normal.
I vomit within 30min of taking even the most minute amount of magnesium supplements. Multivitamins seem to be fine but magnesium alone in anything but a trace amount causes an allergic reaction. Are you saying that if I can put up with vomitting daily for a week or two then it might go away? I have a magnesium deficiency (often goes hand in hand with an allergy) and really need to fix this. Eventually I hope to see a specialist about it.
Thank you for the warning. I think in rational discussion, such things ought not even to be considered TMI, which is a squeamish, system 1 - type emotional reaction to information.
Well the first thing that runs through my mind is a scenario of someone seeing this and saying to their self, "ooooh magnesium will help me for this job interview Im about to go to, let me take a load of that stuff so I can be at my cognitive best!"
That could make for a rough day...
I think this is good advice in general to never start a new food, medication, supplement, etc. when you have something important to do.
Doesn't matter what I take or eat or don't eat before an interview, this happens to me every time. Not when I wake up, not when I'm showering or getting dressed, but right before I have to walk out the door. I'm amazed that I've ever even landed a job.
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.
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.
Got linky? I can google, but you may have the best link. ALso, anyone know of any good but inexpensive purchasable supplements that target magnesium / related compound mixes to reasonable research results like this? (or just to buy them separately)
Can't recommend a specific link, but I remember when looking into vitamins and so on several years ago I found the Vitamin D Council and the Weston Price Foundation both interesting and useful.
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."
I think the keto flu is more due to being in a state of low blood sugar and inability for your body to deal with the change in fuel supply rather than mineral/vitamin deficiency. You could quickly shock your body by not eating for a day and working out hard to speed right by a prolonged keto flu
It is my understanding that "keto flu" is due to the sudden loss of minerals via water loss during glycogen depletion (glycogen requires water to be stored)
That's why the SKD (Standard Keto Diet) recommends an electrolyte supplement during the first week.
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.
Some doctors think it's possible that taking calcium supplements may increase your risk of a heart attack. Other doctors believe that calcium supplements have little or no effect on your heart attack risk.
Many people take calcium supplements to treat or prevent bone disease, such as osteoporosis. It's thought that the calcium in these supplements could make its way into fatty plaques in your arteries — a condition called atherosclerosis — causing those plaques to harden and increase your risk of heart disease.
A 2013 study from the National Institutes of Health suggests there is an increased risk of heart attack, stroke or other cardiovascular diseases from taking calcium supplements for men only. Other studies suggest there is an increased risk for both men and women.
More research is needed before doctors know the effect calcium supplements may have on your heart attack risk. The calcium supplements that some doctors are concerned about are generally those that contain only calcium. However, more research is also needed to determine the effects of supplements combining calcium and vitamin D. Calcium from food sources, such as dairy and green leafy vegetables, is not a concern.
Current recommendations for getting enough calcium for people who have, or have risk factors for, osteoporosis haven't changed. As with any health issue, it's important to talk to your doctor to determine what's most appropriate in your case.
>Some doctors think it's possible that taking calcium supplements may increase your risk of a heart attack. Other doctors believe that calcium supplements have little or no effect on your heart attack risk.
Shouldn't it be what the medical science says on the matter, and individual doctors having no say in this?
Think of the human body as a system of many tightly coupled functions. Tinkering with one function can have effects on 4 other seemingly unrelated ones. That's why generalizations don't work very well when they are shorter than a full-blown study paper. You primary care doc should have a much better context about your health, your existing conditions, the particular risks that you have... all which may require a different recommendation from "the average".
If you have always been healthy and don't have have a primary care physician (generalist), go find one with whom you're comfortable (look for good communication and someone who suits your personality/expectations) and establish a history. It will feel like you're throwing away a few hundred dollars but with time this will come in handy. The one I have now is happy to help me, an engineer, understand the underlying concepts of my care, without wasting time dumbing things down too much—I can grok logic and tradeoffs, I'm just not clinically trained.
when things affect men and not women I'm always curious to know if there's a menopause correlation. Women are less likely to have heart issues than men... until menopause. I feel like when I first read that that science said it was a reason for men to donate blood more regularly. Now my google-fu is saying there may be an estrogen based reason. #scienceishard
Have a look at Labdoor's magnesium supplement reviews,[1] but keep in mind that the supplement they gave the highest quality score, Life Extension Magnesium Caps, is not necessarily the best supplement. It contains magnesium oxide, citrate, succinate, lysinate, and glycinate, but seeing as they managed to squeeze 500 mg of elemental magnesium into one capsule that a human can swallow, it's probably mostly magnesium oxide and not much of the other forms. So I would steer clear of that one.
Magnesium oxide is cheaper and less bulky than other supplemental forms of magnesium, but it is supposedly poorly absorbed.
The other top Mg supplements on Labdoor's list look OK, and I use Doctor's Best Magnesium (glycinate/lycinate) myself. Examine.com has a great article on magnesium,[2] including descriptions of the various magnesium compounds used in supplements. Tl;dr: magnesium citrate is well absorbed and relatively cheap. There are other good forms, but they are usually more expensive.
I'm pretty happy with Natural Calm. It's a Magnesium Citrate powder, available flavored and unflavored. I take 1.5 tsp in the evening with a scoop of collagen powder as part of my routine.
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?
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'll +1 that recommendation. I use magnesium to manage amphetamine tolerance and the chelated magnesium subjectively works much better than the regular magnesium tablets at my local co-op.
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.
