my own anecdotal experience with magnesium : i was generally prone to leg cramps even when young that usually subsides when i take salty water. i had developed hyperthroidism in late 90s that was treated eventually with radio-iodide. subsequently i went into hypothyroid state. soon after was a violent cramps episode which became regular that even if i took few hundred steps my legs would start cramping up. A steep descent into quality of life had me try many many tests as the initial suspicion was some kind of clot. Quite painful nerve conduction velocity tests were done. I was the subject of academic curiosity at stanford hospital. I was on codeine and other pain medications. After a year of this, one day happened to talk to a regular doctor (no specialization), who treats patients from asian subcontinent. He said that i may have magnesium deficiency which was apparently common for my ethnic background. Since by that time i had tried everything, this was an easy choice. Just a couple of weeks in with cal-mag citrate (400mg/day), felt something different in my legs and the whole nigthmare just lifted. I was able to return to hikes etc and would only occasionally need magnesium. It has been 2 decades since, and i dont take magnesium anymore and do strenous workouts and never again triggered any cramps episode.
I took glycinate for a while. Deep sleep with lots of dreams. But soon followed extreme pressure in head with severe headache that i completely stopped.
Increasingly hard to get Mg tablets without Vitamin B and so increasingly easy to get excess B12. Australian formulations of magnesium sold by Swisse don't have B. The same branding in HK does. I wrote to them about it, interesting response: "check the therapeutic goods administration site for canonical ingredients we don't commit to labelling the jar" they do list the neutral filler and Mg they just don't say "no B12"
B is typically included for synergistic uptake reasons I believe.
Excess B12 is really bad. Neuropathy. Considering you take Mg to get rid of muscle cramps (pain, conducted by nerves), a bit ironic. It's increasingly common in Australia now.
Excess Mg is unlikely. I think the body chucks it out in Urine pretty rapidly. I still take it, the cramps after sport return within a few months when I stop. I have a fruit and veg rich diet, I get plenty of natural Mg and K which is also good for muscle cramps. Age related insufficiency I suspect (63) malabsorption comes with age.
Do you have any source for this? I can find some "it-might-be-bad" studies through a quick googling, but in general the idea seem to be that excess B12 is thought to be unproblematic ("it's just peed out").
How much really is dangerously excess? How do methylcobalamin vs cyanocobalamin compare in this regard? I noticed B12 supplements usually exceed the RDA by some orders of magnitude.
> Increasingly hard to get Mg tablets without Vitamin B
Same problem with iron supplements. Not particularly easy to find iron without folic acid. Folic acid can be very harmful for people with methylation problems (an extremely widespread genetic thing) who should supplement methylfolate instead. Whoever feels stimulated and harder to sleep after taking a folic acid pill - beware.
B12 is water soluble and does not cause neuropathy. It was a error by the original poster.
As for methyl vs cyano, it depends whether you have the genetic factors that would benefit or not from methyl groups. In my case I wouldn't benefit so I don't take the methyl form and instead take the hydroxy and adeno forms.
Cyano is useless. Needs multiple steps in the liver to convert.
There’s a fair number of brands selling mg alone and fe alone. Maybe it’s hard outside the US? Or maybe places like target and CVS don’t carry them - those places do have limited options.
As always with supplements, a deficiency might cause the issue (cramps in this case) and the supplement gets you back to normal levels, preventing cramps. If you’re experiencing cramps but don’t have a magnesium deficiency, taking magnesium supplements won’t make the cramps go away.
But it works for me and I know more anecdata cases.
Maybe it depends on technical cause of what seems to be cramps. And maybe it helps indirectly by helping some other process in the body. But in ny experience there’s direct correlation between magnesium intake and cramps and nail health.
I’ve a feeling genetics may be involved since my kid also has similar tendencies. And doctor we went to for his night cramps did suggest magnesium which worked. So whether there’s research or not, doctors do suggest it and it does seem to help at least in some cases.
When I have a cramp in my calf and I take mg in powder form it goes away within a minute. I am also no longer able to trigger a cramp which I can before taking mg. I don't think a placebo would work that quick and that well.
From experience it does work in cases where through intensive training and very high 'sweating' both from cardio training and saunas you temd to lose a lot of minerals.
I'd always believe a doctor over anonymous internet experiences. If your doctor thinks it's not helpful, follow their advice. I found my cramps stopped, but anecdata is not evidence.
I mean you should take magnesium if you are deficient on a blood test.
If you take too much magnesium you will just get diarrhea.
The non-blood test way would be to take magnesium until you get diarrhea and then take less but that is obviously not a pleasant experience.
I take magnesium because it is really obvious when I track micro nutrients that I don't get enough in my diet. It mostly depends though on how much spinach I am eating.
Some more anecdata: magnesium greatly reduces annoying muscle twitches for me. I get them quite frequently when I don't take magnesium for a while. Magnesium citrate is easily available here, without added vitamin b6. No side effects from what I've observed over the years.
Also muscle cramps. I like to stretch out all my muscles when I first wake up while still in bed and when I don't supplement magnesium this has sometimes triggered cramps in leg muscles. When supplementing magnesium this never happen, and the stretched muscles feel better, more relaxed.
I find this to be true as well. I have nerve damage/pressure from bad back. If I miss a dose before bed, I almost invariably get a calf cramp in the early morning hours before waking. Very annoying, only way to get rid of it is get out of bed and stand up on it. I think flooding the body with the magnesium before bed, before it has a chance to maybe get rid of excess perhaps, because taking it too far from bedtime I'll still have twitches and cramps.
Always love to see a Gwern article on the front page. I threw some cash his way for changing my life over a decade ago with his page on spaced repetition, and more recently for his page on using pure nicotine to form other habits.
Magnesium — cheap & plain-as-possible magnesium pills — are a great laxative. I suspect that this has follow-on psychological effects. All the expensive pills are just to avoid the laxative effect. No further benefit. So if you think a good dump contributes to your wellbeing, consider the plain stuff.
There is no such thing as “plain”. You can’t eat pure magnesium. mg oxide is cheap, but apparently mostly laxative. Mg citrate is part laxative but also absorbed. Mg glycinate is more expensive but avoids the laxative effect.
For the muscle relaxant effect (other than perhaps bowel muscles), mg oxide is hardly useful.
> For the muscle relaxant effect (other than perhaps bowel muscles), mg oxide is hardly useful.
This is what I’m questioning. Most of these variants are claiming subtler psychological effects — when the basic stuff has a very direct effect that I think is positive.
I always just buy the magnesium pills that just say “magnesium.”
> All the expensive pills are just to avoid the laxative effect. No further benefit.
Different substances may have seriously different subjective (e.g. on mood, sleep) effect in at least some people (e.g. me). I may be a good idea to try bisglycinate, orotate, threanate to check whether some of them act the way you like.
Theonate gives scary NDE style dreams/out of body experiences. It is supposedly a nanoparticle formulation that crosses the blood brain barrier. Makes me wonder about safety.
My understanding is that the human body stores magnesium, said stores sufficient for approximately 30 days.
As such, daily magnesium is far less important that the 30 day moving average.
In theory, there is enough magnesium in your bones (~12 g) to cover your RDA (~400 mg) for 30 days [1]. However, only a third of that is available without strongly negatively affecting your health. So if your Mg stores are full (if!), then you have about 10 days worth "stored". However, your day-to-day Mg homeostasis is done by your kidneys, i.e. on a much, much shorter time scale. So your daily intake does matter, but sporadic deficiencies can be compensated for about 10 days.
Another thing why magnesium oxide could not be the optimal compound for you: It's a laxative. That might be good to know before you start daily supplementation. Personally, I have bisglycinate.
Readit News
Magnesium Glycinate makes me sleep like a baby at night.
B is typically included for synergistic uptake reasons I believe.
Excess B12 is really bad. Neuropathy. Considering you take Mg to get rid of muscle cramps (pain, conducted by nerves), a bit ironic. It's increasingly common in Australia now.
Excess Mg is unlikely. I think the body chucks it out in Urine pretty rapidly. I still take it, the cramps after sport return within a few months when I stop. I have a fruit and veg rich diet, I get plenty of natural Mg and K which is also good for muscle cramps. Age related insufficiency I suspect (63) malabsorption comes with age.
B12 has to jump through a number of hoops before it‘s even converted into a usable form [1].
I‘m sure you‘re meaning well, but B12 deficiency is a wide spread problem [2], and it’s questionable that excess is worse than deficiency.
1: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19832808/#&gid=article-figur...
2: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7792587/
EDIT: After posting, I saw your other comments. Maybe you can update parent.
Do you have any source for this? I can find some "it-might-be-bad" studies through a quick googling, but in general the idea seem to be that excess B12 is thought to be unproblematic ("it's just peed out").
How much really is dangerously excess? How do methylcobalamin vs cyanocobalamin compare in this regard? I noticed B12 supplements usually exceed the RDA by some orders of magnitude.
> Increasingly hard to get Mg tablets without Vitamin B
Same problem with iron supplements. Not particularly easy to find iron without folic acid. Folic acid can be very harmful for people with methylation problems (an extremely widespread genetic thing) who should supplement methylfolate instead. Whoever feels stimulated and harder to sleep after taking a folic acid pill - beware.
As for methyl vs cyano, it depends whether you have the genetic factors that would benefit or not from methyl groups. In my case I wouldn't benefit so I don't take the methyl form and instead take the hydroxy and adeno forms.
Cyano is useless. Needs multiple steps in the liver to convert.
I got my Bs mixed up it's Mg + B6
https://purebulk.com/search?type=product&q=magnesium
Or grab these next time in Europe. 0.50 Euros effervescent tablets https://www.rossmann.de/de/gesundheit-altapharma-brausetable...
I never heard about the B12 problem. But effervescent tablets without artificial sweetener are unheard off.
Maybe it depends on technical cause of what seems to be cramps. And maybe it helps indirectly by helping some other process in the body. But in ny experience there’s direct correlation between magnesium intake and cramps and nail health.
I’ve a feeling genetics may be involved since my kid also has similar tendencies. And doctor we went to for his night cramps did suggest magnesium which worked. So whether there’s research or not, doctors do suggest it and it does seem to help at least in some cases.
If you're experiencing muscle cramps due to low magnesium then adding a supplement will almost certainly fix the problem.
If you're experiencing muscle cramps for another reason, it won't work, probably.
But supplements are cheap and low risk, so it's a good thing to try first.
A more accurate statement would be "there is no scientific proof that Mg works against cramps [absent a Mg deficiency]."
Source: I can reproduce this on demand.
Running for a year now, it doesn't seem to make a difference.
The non-blood test way would be to take magnesium until you get diarrhea and then take less but that is obviously not a pleasant experience.
I take magnesium because it is really obvious when I track micro nutrients that I don't get enough in my diet. It mostly depends though on how much spinach I am eating.
Really? I found plenty at popular online stores. Or are you saying that the vitamin B is undisclosed on the labels???
For the muscle relaxant effect (other than perhaps bowel muscles), mg oxide is hardly useful.
This is what I’m questioning. Most of these variants are claiming subtler psychological effects — when the basic stuff has a very direct effect that I think is positive.
I always just buy the magnesium pills that just say “magnesium.”
Why not consider that it might alter the gut flora?
Different substances may have seriously different subjective (e.g. on mood, sleep) effect in at least some people (e.g. me). I may be a good idea to try bisglycinate, orotate, threanate to check whether some of them act the way you like.
[1] Alawi et al. (2018) Magnesium and Human Health: Perspectives and Research Directions; https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5926493/
This has changed: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9786204/
Notably, though, their results indicate effects on cognition and memory, which the OP's experiments don't seem to address.