Dr. Abby Kramer and Dr. Genevieve Newton break down everything you need to know about magnesium — one of the most essential and most overlooked minerals in the human body. From its role in over 800 biochemical reactions (energy metabolism, DNA synthesis, cardiovascular function, neuromuscular signaling) to the growing crisis of soil depletion that makes deficiency nearly universal, this episode is a thorough deep-dive into why almost everyone should be supplementing.
Dr. Abby walks through the specific conditions where magnesium supplementation makes the biggest difference: chronic headaches, muscle cramping, sleep trouble, anxiety, cardiovascular issues, and menstrual cramps. Dr. Gen contextualizes the science — including why the commonly cited RDA of 310–420mg is probably far below optimal, and why dietary tracking apps are unreliable guides for actual magnesium intake.
The episode also covers Fringe's magnesium blend (glycinate for stress and sleep, malate for muscle recovery, orotate for heart and gut health), dosing guidance (starting at 200mg and titrating up), and what makes the powdered supplement market a "dumpster fire" — and how to read a label to avoid it. Whether you're already taking magnesium or have never tried it, this episode gives you the tools to do it right.
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Transcript
Dr. Abby: Hi everyone, Dr. Abby Kramer here on the fringe and I'm here with Dr. Genevieve Newton and we are going to chat all about magnesium today. It's gonna be like a magnesium 101 school. So Jen, can you tell us a bit like a broad definition, what exactly is magnesium? Everyone hears about it constantly, but what is it and what like actions does it have in the body?
Genevieve: Yeah, okay, so starting place, it is a mineral. Specifically, it's a macromineral, meaning you need relatively large amounts of it compared to some of the other minerals. So that being said, it's really an abundant mineral in terms of its distribution in our bodies and also in the earth. So if you were to go and sample rocks around the entire globe, you'll find magnesium all over the place. So it's... essential because of the fact that it is a micronutrient that we need in order to survive and to thrive and to be healthy. So we can get it from our diet and it's actually very, very, very widely distributed in food. like some really good sources would be things like your leafy green vegetables, your legumes, your nuts, your seeds, those types of things. But we also find it kind of as we move in through the food chain, right? So if it's in the soil, it gets incorporated into plants. We eat those plant foods. It has magnesium in it. The animals eat the plants. We the animals, they have magnesium in them. So it's really distributed everywhere. But we have, as you you and I have talked about so many times over the last few years, this really pervasive issue of deficiency in terms of our soil. And I know we'll get to that when we kind of look at the issue of deficiency and how prevalent it is. But going back to just this starting place,
Genevieve: So we have this very, very wide distribution. We're supposed to be getting it really abundantly in our diet and then we distribute it all throughout our body. But one of the things that's challenging about magnesium is in terms of us being able to identify. of what someone's magnesium status is, is that it isn't found in high concentrations in our blood. So we see it as it gets into the body, it's used for so many different things, which I'm going to go through in a moment, but it's found really like inside the cells. It's intracellular, so we don't have a good way of assessing really like we do for vitamin D. You know, it's a simple at-home blood test for a lot of people. It's very, very easy to do and very accessible. So this whole conversation about magnesium is
Genevieve: by a couple, actually more than a couple, of really sort of silent variables that we don't have much control over. And one of those is how much is now in our food, and then another is how much is in our body. And when it comes to our body, when I was initially writing our big blog about magnesium, I chose to use the biggest number that I could find so that we could get the best
Genevieve: understanding of how many things in the body magnesium is involved in. Because when you read about it, the number that you usually see is that magnesium is involved in over 300 chemical reactions of the body. But that's related to its really more direct role as being bound to an enzyme and regulating how that enzyme functions. If we extrapolate that to just look at everything that it's all of the reactions that it participates in to some extent, that goes up to over 800. So we have
Genevieve: over physiological reactions in which magnesium is either going to be bound to that enzyme or it's going to need to be present in some way in the medium to make it essentially happen. So it plays a role in so many different things. One of the big ones is energy metabolism. Like if you look at ATP, we see that the ATP molecule actually has a magnesium.
Genevieve: I'm bound to it, which is like so wild. So it's involved in that. And then when we look at all of these metabolic reactions like the Krebs cycle and different reactions of glycolysis and just all of these metabolic processes where we're making energy, it's very, very, very integral to that. Another big thing that it's involved in is DNA synthesis, RNA synthesis, protein synthesis. So all of these things that we need to build the substrates of our body. It's also really important for bone health, right? If we look inside of a bone, sometimes people think, bones are just calcium. No, you're going to see a lot of different minerals in there and magnesium is a really, really important one. Cardiovascular function and the way that our nerves and communicate with our muscles, that neuromuscular connection signaling, that is another place where magnesium plays a very important role. And then the last one I'd say is really in our insulin, sugar signaling. So you can see like that's just an absolutely massive list. So it's really, really, really, you know, widespread in terms of its importance, widespread in terms of its roles in the body. And it should be very widespread in our environment, but we do have some limitations.
Genevieve: due to our modern world. One of the other places that I didn't mention that we do find magnesium, and this is something that a lot of people don't know about, is that it's not only found in our foods, so in our plant foods, those really supposedly very high concentrations, and then, you the animal sources as well, but it's also really supposed to be found in our water. So depending on where you are geographically, this really does vary by location, because it all has to do with the distribution in the rocks.
Genevieve: And as the water passes through it picks up these minerals. But historically speaking water has also been a reasonable source of magnesium in some populations. It's one of those things that when we talk about hard water, you know, people have in their houses and it builds up in their pipes and stuff that will usually be a combination of magnesium and calcium. So yeah, I mean it's one of my favourite supplements to use and I know it's one of your favourite supplements to use in practice.
Genevieve: who how do you go about recommending magnesium to to your patients who do you recommend it to?
Dr. Abby: So the short answer is everyone, because find me someone that's getting enough magnesium through their lifestyle, through food and water these days, right? Like, you know, there's a handful of supplements, which if you guys have listened or followed us, you know we have the essentials line for a reason, because those are the supplements we believe that everyone pretty much should be taking every single day. So magnesium falls into that category, much like all the other minerals,
Dr. Abby: minerals, vitamin D we've just talked about super recently. So Most people, if not everyone, could benefit from magnesium supplementation. But I think the easier route is like, if I kind of go into the main symptom pictures people struggle with where I'm like, my gosh, you need magnesium right now. Right? Because just like vitamin D deficiency, there's kind of a spectrum, right? There's people that have glaring like daily symptoms that are screaming magnesium deficiency. And there's other people who really feel pretty good, but they still could use that daily boost because they're likely not getting enough. But magnesium is one of the number one supplements in my practice where you get people on a good quality magnesium at a therapeutic dose and they feel it. And it's like, it's such a low lift, like not enough people take magnesium. I've said this, I will keep saying this forever, arguably, at least this is where I stand right now. We all learn more in
Dr. Abby: change, but if you're gonna take one supplement a day, I would probably make it magnesium. This is what I'm saying right now on April 10th, 2026. We'll see if in five years I'm saying the same thing, but very important. Yeah, totally. Maybe I'll say mushrooms in a year. Who knows? But magnesium. Okay, so main things people with muscle cramping or tension. If people get charley horses at night, if they feel like they're always having muscle cramps and issues, magnesium.
Dr. Abby: Definitely start taking. People that get chronic headaches, that's a massive one for magnesium, whether they be tension, migraine, whatever. People that have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, magnesium is a great one to give that a go and then take it before bed, if that's you. People with any sort of heart condition, cardiovascular issues, should definitely take magnesium. or stress should definitely take magnesium and people with like joint pain inflammation arthritis that sort of thing should take magnesium I feel like that's the main buckets where I'm like immediately like let's get you on a magnesium supplement
Genevieve: Yeah, yeah, I agree. Do you recommend it to, in like higher doses to people who are dealing with diabetes, anything like that? Or do you find that kind of like your typical supplementation regimen is enough?
Dr. Abby: That so depends on the person because the other one I forgot to mention was digestive issues, especially if people tend towards constipation. Even not getting on like a laxative form of magnesium, just getting their like elemental magnesium levels good in their body can straighten that out real fast. Um, it it so depends on the person. say the average adult, I probably put on somewhere in the range of 200 to 600 milligrams per day. And that's why we started our magnesium product is 200 per scoop per serving because for a lot of people, that's a great dose. And I always like my patients to be at the lowest effective dose. If you take 200 milligrams a day and your headaches go away and you sleep awesome, great you don't need 400. But some people really need to be closer to that 600 range for whatever reason right and there we could go down the rabbit hole of this the people with gut issues are you absorbing it well are you taking a poor quality magnesium that's really gonna affect absorption. So I've seen people before that are taking like a thousand milligrams a night but they're taking a crappy form of magnesium right so you get them on a high quality one you shouldn't quite need that much.
Genevieve: Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. And I think that what you're saying, like, that's entirely consistent with what I see in the scientific literature. But that being said, the scientific literature in this area, I really don't trust it. think we have a few issues, as I mentioned before, that are layered on top of each other. one is that, as I said, it's hard to measure magnesium status in the body. So what we do is we tend to depend on dietary intake records. And so whether that be a food frequency questionnaire, a dietary recall, a three-day food record, a seven-day food record, whatever. We've got all these tools that are used whereby people remember the food that they eat.
Genevieve: down the food that they eat and then you put that into a nutrition database and it spits out numbers for you based on these analyses that were done a long time ago and they're not accurate and there's been literally it's radio silence in the in the scientific literature about this no one's raising any alarms whatsoever and we've seen that there are you know
Dr. Abby: Yeah, so those aren't even accurate.
Genevieve: studies that have come out where they've taken samples of vegetables and fruits and grains and different products from different geographical locations and there's a level of depletion of magnesium that ranges from you know maybe as low as 20 percent but all the way up to 80 to 90 percent so it so that being said it does make actually getting an accurate measurement of what's in food really difficult because it depends on the geographical location but then we don't have
Genevieve: On the other hand, we don't have the ability to just go in and do a really good biochemical sample of people easily where we can say, okay, this is what people's magnesium status is. And even considering those two really big limitations, we still see that numbers show up in the literature that range from like 45 to 60 % of people are deficient in their intake, right?
Dr. Abby: Alright. Yeah.
Genevieve: And so when you're looking at that, I think you can really safely say, okay, pretty much everybody is deficient. And then on top of that, we have another issue, is, and this is true for really all of our...
Dr. Abby: Right? Yeah.
Genevieve: micronutrients, what we do when we determine what the recommended nutrient intake is, right, which will be either an adequate intake or an RDA, that recommended daily allowance. We look at how much does it take to, and this has been done, this isn't like, you know, the 1900s, early to mid sort of thing. What is, how much does it take to prevent a deficiency disease? That doesn't tell you how much you need for optimal health. And there's very little research
Genevieve: that you know is accurate on what our ancestors would have consumed but the estimates for magnesium are that our ancestors consumed about 600 milligrams of elemental magnesium a day. Our RDA is set between 310 and 420 depending on your age and your sex. So there's a disconnect there just to begin with and then we have yet our last layer which is that
Dr. Abby: There's a gap.
Genevieve: Body sizes have increased a lot over the last several decades. And as our body size increases, our magnesium requirements increase. So there have been estimates that that can be up to 200 milligrams a day. or more compared to what that RDA was set at, which we already just said was not necessarily optimal for health, but to prevent disease. So it's just layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of issues related to our understanding of both the extent of the deficiency problem, but really also how much to use and how to go about fixing it that.
Genevieve: becomes a problem as well when we look at it in these terms, because there's just so many things that we don't know. You're going to recommend to people, well, you so often hear, because this is the dietetics response, go to food first, go to food first, go to food first, right? Well, you can't go to food first with this. And even if you are lucky enough to eat a very high quality diet, the amount that you're consuming is probably very low, but you're not going to know what it is, because you don't really
Dr. Abby: Yep. Yep. Right.
Dr. Abby: still isn't there.
Genevieve: know where it came from and the geographical soil depletion extent. So yeah, it's a huge issue. So you kind of mentioned, yeah, go ahead.
Dr. Abby: Well, it's like, I was just gonna say like back to the soil conversation, right? So unless you're, if you're getting everything from like a regenerative farm, you might be able to do it, right? But it's like, who can do that on every single food they're consuming, right? So it's, the bottom line is our soil just is like mostly dead now. So.
Genevieve: You might, yeah.
Genevieve: Yeah, and our water too. And it depends on, know, if you're dealing with a, if you're buying a more inexpensive food base, which unfortunately many people need to consume, you know, those farming practices tend to deplete the soil to an even greater extent, right? Yeah. So what do you see as far as like clinical responses in your practice when you supplement people with magnesium?
Dr. Abby: Yeah, correct. Yeah.
Dr. Abby: I mean, Magnesium's amazing. Almost you name it because like you spoke to so well earlier, like give me a system of the body that isn't affected by magnesium by like being low in magnesium that needs magnesium to thrive. Right. But all of the things I spoke about before, like problems people might have, I've seen. Cramping go away, like overnight people that get nightly Charlie horses. I've seen headaches reduced significantly in some people completely. I've seen. digestive balance restored and I am I find with magnesium most people feel a difference fairly quickly. It's not like it takes you know three months to see a difference. It usually is pretty fast people notice especially if they're at the right dose. So I would encourage people if you're like I've taken magnesium for so long and it hasn't affected my headaches try upping your dose especially if you're taking a high quality one like what we make one that isn't gonna like disrupt your GI. I've seen it really help people with like brain
Dr. Abby: fog and stuff like that even like cognition it helps with anxiety. I always make sure people are on magnesium for like you spoke about earlier bone health like if you're taking a great vitamin D and K make sure you're also taking magnesium because that's also really important there. It's just such a such a great product like whatever issue you have basically magnesium could support that and so it's worth
Genevieve: Thank
Dr. Abby: adding it to your daily supplement stack if you haven't yet and see what you notice. But I'd say those are the biggest heaviest hitters.
Genevieve: Yeah, I've definitely seen most of those in the scientific literature. magnesium has been relatively well researched, certainly as far as supplements go. And it hits across a lot of different clinical outcomes. So as you said, things like sleep and things like cognition and migraines. One of the issues that is interesting in the literature with respect to supplementation is that, and I think this is what we would call just a historical artifact, is that a lot of these studies use really crappy forms of magnesium to supplement with. They really did. So they're using magnesium oxide and they're using magnesium citrate. So I guess I didn't really talk about this when we were talking about what magnesium is because it is an important
Dr. Abby: Yeah. Like oxide, probably.
Genevieve: component of the discussion and that's that it is found in these different supplemental forms, right? So when we're talking about magnesium itself, we're just talking about the element, but when we find that element in nature, it's reacted to something else. And so we have these inorganic forms and we have these organic forms. It just depends on what it's bonded to. So magnesium oxide, for example, is like a super common inorganic form of magnesium. And these inorganic forms tend to be really poorly absorbed, whereas the organic forms are more highly bioavailable. They get into our body to a much greater extent, but even that really varies across forms. So if we look at these studies that are maybe using like 600 milligrams of supplementation of magnesium oxide, well, that could be the equivalent of, you know, 400 milligrams of supplementation of a more bioavailable form. So it's something that does kind of make it complicated.
Genevieve: when you're saying, I'm look at the scientific literature, I'm going to look at the doses they use, and I'm going to replicate that. Because we, yeah, it can definitely be different. But even that being like a confounding variable in the scientific literature, we still see some really dramatic results across a lot of these outcomes. Like, yeah.
Dr. Abby: different.
Dr. Abby: Mm-hmm. Well, that's what I gonna say. Even despite being like a cheap, poorly absorbed form, you still see crazy results. So it's like, you know, with an even better form.
Genevieve: You do, absolutely. But that's when you start seeing, yeah, you start seeing more of the side effects and that's one of the things that people worry about, right? They're like, I can't take magnesium because it's going to give me diarrhea. Well, if you take magnesium oxide, is potentially, if you take a higher dose, it's going to give you diarrhea for sure. But that's not necessarily the case with these more bioavailable. they're much more GI friendly. I was just reading, there was a really interesting systematic review of all of the sleep studies and trying to remember the numbers. was something like people fell asleep 17 minutes faster in all of these controlled studies and then they slept like 16 minutes longer. So it really does have, you
Dr. Abby: That's amazing.
Genevieve: That's a very dramatic effect on sleep. The other one that you've mentioned is people seeing really good benefits with our headaches. And most of the studies have looked at migraine headaches specifically, and they've been like really, really consistently demonstrating a positive, very positive response to it. Blood pressure, that's another one that's been researched. And, you know, it was just reading like a series of articles that were written
Genevieve: in SUPCO and so they did like this series on magnesium over the last few weeks and it was interesting but I think they downplayed the importance of magnesium to some extent kind of talking about some of the negative or not negative results but some of the studies that don't find positive results and so the conclusion was really important mineral but
Genevieve: They called it, the term that they used was like physiologically upstream, which absolutely it is. We just talked about how it's really important in it fundamentally in a lot of processes, right? So that being said though, you and I have just talked about all of these limitations in terms of interpreting that research, right? So issues with bioavailability and absorption and dosing and measurement of
Genevieve: body status of magnesium. I definitely think that when you look at the scientific literature as a whole, you really see that it's a very, very consistently beneficial supplement to use. Yeah, yeah, so I would say that. Very low risk.
Dr. Abby: Yeah, correct. And low risk. The other research one I wanted... The other research one I wanted to mention was, I can't believe I forgot to say this earlier, the menstrual cramp one, which I'm very excited about still. Menstrual cramps taking one group, well, one group was placebo. One group took 150 milligrams a night. The other group took 300 milligrams night or day, whatever. And they, the women, they were all younger women who experienced menstrual cramping with their cycle. They just had them
Genevieve: yes, Yeah.
Dr. Abby: take it during their luteal phase. For like the 10 to 14 days before their period, it wasn't even the entire month long. And like crazy positive results. So anyone that experiences that, definitely.
Genevieve: Yes, yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah, and that probably, you know, has to do with that neuromuscular action, right? The relaxation, you have those prostaglandins that are made and they cause the cramping and the tightening. And if you can counteract that with magnesium, like, yeah, it's absolutely, it's amazing. So you've mentioned the doses at night and day, like how do you typically recommend to people that they supplement when you're giving them these protocols? Like, what do you, do you recommend that they divide doses during the day?
Genevieve: How much do you recommend people take?
Dr. Abby: I don't recommend they divide it if they're taking a good quality magnesium because it shouldn't mess up their gut. it's more, mean, A, the first thing for me is always, because magnesium is such a daily essential supplement, it's whenever you're going to be consistent is my answer. Because a lot of people, take all their stuff in the morning, they forget to take it at night, and then they come back to me and it's like, three days out of the week I took it. So it's like, just take it in the morning then. But if sleep is your concern, you really should be
Dr. Abby: taking it at bedtime to get that like positive effect. But the name of the game with supplements like this, like our essentials and whenever you can be consistent, if you take everything at lunchtime, go for it. If you're a nighttime person, go for it. Magnesium, I haven't found, um, is going to make you like sleepy during the day. It just like really supports like deep restful sleep. If you take it at night, that's at, by the way, I need you to send me that sleep study, the review. We need to do.
Genevieve: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yes.
Dr. Abby: post on that. That's an extra 30 minutes of sleep. That's a lot.
Genevieve: Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. And I think your point about... make it so that it fits into people's routine. That's like the top recommendation. And then second, if it's not going to be an issue with remembering for you, then definitely take it at night because that's when you're going to potentially see the most benefit. That being said, if you're somebody that does deal with anxiety, then that maybe dividing and having that morning dose is also a good one.
Dr. Abby: Yeah. Yeah.
Genevieve: Yeah, particularly if you're going to be taking something that has magnesium glacinate in it. That's one of the things that we haven't really talked about are the different forms of magnesium. Do you want to talk about how our magnesium is formulated and how it's kind of unique to other products on the market?
Dr. Abby: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so ours is quite unique. I'd say the majority of magnesium supplements on the market are one form, which nothing wrong with that. So each form kind of has its own little personality and benefit. And I really wanted to do a blend and then so you get multiple different benefits in one supplement. But I feel like some of the other blends on the market are almost too many forms. And then it's like therapeutically, are you actually getting enough?
Dr. Abby: malate for like muscle recovery, right? If it's just like a sprinkle of eight different forms. You're still getting the elemental magnesium, so you're still gonna have a lot of benefit. But we really wanted to hit that sweet spot where people are getting enough to have that specific benefit and then enough overall. magnesium on a daily basis. So we chose to have magnesium glycinate, which is probably my favorite form of magnesium. It's great for stress, anxiety and sleep. people like if you have a busy brain, magnesium glycinate will be your best friend. So I really like it. It's a nice gentle calming effect. Magnesium malate, which is great for muscle cramping, exercise recovery, joint pain and inflammation, that kind of family of things. And then magnesium orotate, which I kind of fell in love with just from researching, I'd never used it before or really heard of it. And it's pretty cool. It's great for heart health. And there's some studies even on it supporting gut health, which was super cool to me. And I just had not seen like almost anyone use it in their products. And I was like, this is so undervalued.
Genevieve: Yeah, I agree. So the research that there is on magnesium orotate is very positive. The flip side of that is there isn't a lot of. research because it is a higher quality, more expensive form. And it's a newer form. Definitely the research shows that magnesium glycinate is like, it's the one that everybody goes to when they switch into like a higher quality magnesium supplement. Anybody who is taking sort of that cheaper was usually at this point taking magnesium citrate, maybe magnesium oxide. But then if you start kind of upping your,
Genevieve: your game and going to something people are always like take magnesium glycinate which you'll also see on the bottle it'll say magnesium bisglycinate it's just related to the molecular structure and there is a lot of research on that then in terms of
Genevieve: you know, benefits. And I think it has been difficult and it's always difficult to measure effects on anxiety. They're just sort of traditionally anything related to mood and cognition is harder to study. So the studies, you know, straight up, they are not all consistent in terms of showing benefits, but they used widely different ranges. They use different populations. A lot of the research is
Genevieve: Unfortunately. didn't select for people who had a lower magnesium intake to begin with, right? So that's something that you really want to do when you're measuring, you know, trying to measure effects with supplementation is, of course, you want to know what happens in a more healthier population, but also you want to know what happens in a deficient population. We really haven't unpacked that. Yeah. Yeah. So what about our dosing? How do you feel about recommending to people and where do they start and, you know, how should they use?
Genevieve: that.
Dr. Abby: Yep. I would recommend people when you start, you're talking about... If we're talking about our magnesium mix supplement, you start with one scoop a day, which is 200 milligrams and plan on doing that for 30 days. But I would say within a week or two, if you don't notice the result you're looking for to go up to two scoops, have, I would say the majority of my patients are on 400 to 600 milligrams a day. Now that doesn't mean people can't get great results at 200. So it just, it's so depends on the person.
Genevieve: Thank
Dr. Abby: But I don't think many people need to go straight to like 600 unless maybe that's what you were taking before with a different product or something like that and you find your sweet spot on what gets you sleeping better feeling better less anxiety Etc. Everyone can be a little bit different, but I would stay start with one scoop a day Give that a week or two then up it as needed. Some people might do great at a scoop and a half Which would be right around 300 So that's what's nice with it being in a powder form
Dr. Abby: is you can play around with the dosage rather easily or like you were saying to some people, find it really nice to do a scoop in the morning and a scoop at night when you're supporting anxiety and stress levels during the day. A lot of people really notice that's a positive benefit and then sleep at night.
Genevieve: And then how would you differentiate our product with respect to the other ingredients in it compared to what's on the market?
Dr. Abby: my goodness, well the powdered magnesium market is a dumpster fire. So that is the same story as our electrolytes, like our powdered products is almost all of them. If not all of them, probably all the ones I've seen are going to have natural flavors. They're going to be like half citric acid. have actually, I should do this again because I have a tub of a competitor's powdered magnesium and our tub. They're around the same dosage per scoop. And the tub and the scooper is about double the size in the competitors as ours, right? So then you've got to ask yourself, what is that? What's all that extra white powder? Right? It's probably a bunch of maltodextrin citric acid. So.
Dr. Abby: You want to, you always want to look at, and I feel like people are out of the habit of this when you're looking at labels, there's the supplement facts label, which is like the different forms of magnesium. There's 200 milligrams and a scoop in here, but underneath there in very tiny print is other ingredients or additional ingredients. And that's where you're going to find the sweeteners, the gums, the preservatives, the flow agents, the flavorings, all of that stuff. You want that to be as minimal as possible. And ideally it's ingredients you recognize. You're like, I know what that is or I've heard of that before Obviously with our powdered magnesium we added a bit of Thalmatin spoiler alert magnesium tastes terrible you guys So if you open up a magnesium capsule and put it in your mouth, you will understand why we put that in there So it's just slightly sweet. I could put it in like my whole water bottle and I probably wouldn't taste much but It's very easy to mix into a smoothie a little bit of water, some juice, you could put it in your kid's yogurt. To add to things is quite simple. I usually just put it with our electrolytes and then done.
Genevieve: Mm-hmm, it is important for people to understand that there can be, you know, if it's in a water bottle there can be a little bit of sediment at the bottom, right? Because it's a mineral, it's inorganic, it can precipitate to the bottom. That's totally, totally normal. Yeah. What about for kids? What do you recommend for kids?
Dr. Abby: normal.
Dr. Abby: For kids, I love magnesium as well. Very similar story. They're deficient just as our adults. And so we have that, well, it's in our FAQ. I don't think it's on the actual packaging, but according to children's age, we just titrate up. So kids that are closer to adult size, like, you know, 13 and up, they can do a full scoop just like adults can. I think people get scared with like kids in like middle school, high school range. They're like, can they take an adult product? I'm like, you're...
Dr. Abby: kids a foot taller than me, they sure can, right? Once they're like full grown, it's magnesium, it's very safe. So we should actually post that maybe in these show notes. Evan, I'll say that to our producer listening in, that we can post the kids dosing according to age on what we recommend. But again, magnesium is a very, very safe supplement. If your kids struggle with sleep, that is probably the first thing I would start adding for them because it's so safe. It's so
Genevieve: Thank
Dr. Abby: gentle and can really help the kids that wake up a lot or have a problem winding down at night. That would be a great way to support them.
Genevieve: Yeah, it's um, now that you're talking about, um, that it just brought something to mind, and that's that some people, when they look at kind of the the mainstream literature about magnesium supplementation, is they might see that there's a recommended upper limit on supplementation, and I can't remember what the number is right now. I think it's 350 milligrams. However, that is
Dr. Abby: That's the upper limit?
Genevieve: offer supplementation, but that's not the upper limit for intake. It's for what the recommendation is for supplementation, but it's based on GI upset. That's what it's based on. So I wanted to just kind of put it in there that, you know, again, I said that there is this historical precedent of using these poorly bioavailable GI upsetting forms of magnesium. And so when...
Dr. Abby: Yeah. Right.
Genevieve: you know, the Institute of Medicine and the governments look at their literature that's been done with supplementation and they see that there's a side effect of, you know, GI upset. That's when they say, we're going to put a recommended upper limit on it when really we now have these much more gut friendly that really don't cause GI issues. And the other part of it is that it's very easy to get around that by if you do find that you have a sensitive gut, even despite using a more bioavailability.
Genevieve: form, you just separate it into a morning and an evening dose, right? You have two doses. And then the other thing that it made me think about was that there can still be some confusion in terms of how much elemental magnesium is in an ingredient. So you might find a capsule that says 500 milligrams of magnesium glycinate. But then when you look and you see the elemental magnesium in magnesium
Dr. Abby: Yep. Yes.
Genevieve: glycinate it could be I'm trying to think of what that actually would be it's like 70 milligrams I think for magnesium glycinate. So that would be the equivalent. So if the bottle says 500 milligrams of magnesium and you're like this is great I can just take one pill it's that's all it is you've got to make sure that you you look and on that label and see what's the actual amount of magnesium elementally and that will be 70 or so for a good yeah.
Dr. Abby: Yes. Yes. And I remember that was like so confusing for us when we first started researching this. We're like, what is going on? Yes.
Genevieve: Yeah, because just because of the way that it's reported, right? It's the molecular weight versus the elemental amount.
Dr. Abby: Well, and on labels, you can label it so many different ways. We've seen that, like our manufacturer will send us like five different options for a label and it's like, pick one. So it can be kind of misleading based on however people are choosing to label it.
Genevieve: Yeah. Yeah.
Genevieve: Yeah, there are guaranteed there are many, many people out there who are supplementing far less magnesium than they think they are because they're looking at that full amount of the magnesium element complexed with whatever it's mixed with. So that's kind of a last thing. Yeah, I mean, is there anything else kind of in closing that you think we've missed today or I think we've covered most of the magnesium 101 issues?
Dr. Abby: Yep. Yep.
Genevieve: It's a very, very important mineral. Obviously, that's why we included it in our fringe essentials. And it's great to be able to talk about some of the issues that no one is talking about in this space, like underestimating your magnesium intake if you're using a dietary tracking app, for example. Like if you use chronometer or you use, you know, my fitness pal or whatever, you are getting a number from there that's probably not at all.
Genevieve: what you're actually consuming.
Dr. Abby: Right. So what would you say people should assume then that like say they're doing that? Is it like you should assume you're like getting half the amount it actually says? It's hard to say.
Genevieve: It's, this is the thing, we don't even know. We really don't know. I think that at this point, it's safe to say that everybody is, everybody is as consuming. less than they think they are if they're being very careful about their consumption and it's only coming from food. Certainly if you're consuming a supplement and you know what the amount of elemental magnesium is in there, that's going to give you a much more accurate, at least one accurate intake source, but if it's just coming from food, it's not accurate and it's, and as you said, could it be half as much? Yeah, it could be half as much. It might be more, it might be less. It really, it really depends and until those studies are done, we're not going to know.
Dr. Abby: Yeah. Yeah.
Genevieve: And all we see so far are just a handful of studies that have taken food products. natural food products and analyze their magnesium content and have found this massive range, you know, going from like 20 % to 90 % depletion over the last several decades. So it's a bit of a mess out there. And as you've said many times in this podcast, it's a very safe supplement. So it it goes on both of our number one lists in terms of what we both recommend for sure.
Dr. Abby: Yeah, so the take home of this episode is get on magnesium if you haven't, or get on a better one if you have struggled in the past with symptoms. It likely was the form or all of the other whatever ingredients were in there because it's an important one.
Genevieve: Yep, agreed.
