A confession before any science: in our house, my wife researches all the vitamins and supplements, for the most part, so I’ve watched the magnesium aisle up close. It’s changed so much over the last thirty years. It used to be there was, like, just a handful of options, and now it’s a sea of options, and a lot of the time you have no idea what’s real or what’s not. You don’t know where it’s made, you don’t know exactly what’s in it. You can tell a lot of it’s marketing and not backed by science.
When we tried magnesium glycinate, I felt totally fine, but that night my wife felt like her heart rate was increasing. We don’t know for sure it was the magnesium, but it was enough that no one wanted to try it again, so we paused it. An endocrinologist later told me my own magnesium wasn’t that low anyway, so I didn’t need to push it.
“Magnesium deficiency is on the rise and of great concern,” says Ali Miller, a registered dietitian who focuses on food-as-medicine. “We see 50 to 70% of the US population with a deficiency, so much so that it’s becoming a public health concern.”
The Sneaky Symptoms
“Muscle cramps and spasms: magnesium is crucial for muscle relaxation, balancing calcium and potassium in muscle cells,” says Dr. Sethi, a physician who lists it first among the signs he tells patients never to ignore.
The eye twitch is the one I know personally. I’ve definitely had it, not totally sure what to blame it on, but it’s one of those things that just sort of comes and goes. It feels like it’s almost stress related, that’s what we always blame it on. The others dietitians flag: night-time calf cramps, trouble staying asleep, anxiety, migraines, PMS, heart palpitations, stubborn constipation, restless legs, and afternoon energy crashes. One alone isn’t a diagnosis. Three or more together is the pattern.
The Sleep Connection
This is the one I know best. Sleep has always been difficult, you have those stretches where you’re sleeping great, and then the next thing you know you’re waking up every night at three AM and you just can’t go back to sleep. I should probably actually try magnesium more for that. The thing everyone likes to do now is get sunlight in your eyes in the morning, that’s a Huberman thing, supposed to reset your circadian rhythms and, oddly enough, help you sleep at night. Funny enough, when I’ve worked out extra hard to wear myself out and sleep better, I always end up more awake than normal. Doesn’t make sense to me logically, but here we are.
Why the Blood Test Misses It
I’ve made my own peace with this gap. When the blood work comes back fine but you still feel off, sometimes I just chalk it up to getting older. Compare how you felt at twenty-two to fifty-two and fifty-two is never gonna win on energy. So I look at blood work as an internal check, to catch something before it gets out of hand, not as a readout of how you feel day to day. Unless you’ve got an acute issue, it’s almost never tied to how you feel. You hear about people running marathons who were doing great and then keel over, and the right blood work might have caught it. With magnesium it’s worse than usual, because a standard serum test only sees the sliver in your blood, not what’s drained from muscle and bone.
Food First, Then Form
Food moves the number fastest, pumpkin seeds, cooked spinach, black beans, almonds, dark chocolate. On supplements, “we want to be looking for magnesium bis-glycinate as the optimal form to supplement with,” Miller says, the same glycinate in most sleep-and-cramp formulas.
But if there’s one habit worth more than any single supplement, it’s vetting what you buy. We once bought one late, hoping it’d help with certain things, and it just didn’t. There was a study where everyone assumed fish oil was all great and all the same, and then they cut a bunch of samples open and a lot were kind of rancid inside. You never know, so you’ve gotta be super vigilant. Even with something proven good for you, ask your doctor which ones they recommend, and I don’t mean a doctor on Instagram promoting a product they make money off of. I mean your own doctor. When you find out which ones they personally take, that’s a great sign of which ones you should be taking.
Christine Morgan is a Registered and Licensed Dietitian who currently practices in dialysis. Her experience includes renal nutrition, food service, and geriatrics. Her education includes a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition and Dietetics from West Chester University of Pennsylvania, and she completed her Dietetic Internship with the University of Delaware. She is also a member of the Tri-State Renal Dietitians Association.
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