Sunday Health Hack No. 12 – Every evening, before you go to bed, take 300-400mg of Magnesium Citrate.
From regulating blood sugar to boosting performance, magnesium is crucial for your brain and body.
Magnesium is found throughout your body. Every cell in your body contains this mineral and needs it to function.
About 60% of the magnesium in your body occurs in your bones, while the rest is in muscles, soft tissues, and fluids, including blood.
So Magnesium is critical for maintaining bone health and protecting against bone loss.
One of its main roles is to act as a co-factor – a helper molecule – in the more than 600 biochemical reactions continuously performed by enzymes in your body.
Magnesium plays a vital role in your energy creation (converting food into energy), for protein formation (creating new proteins from amino acids), for your gene maintenance (helping create and repair DNA and RNA), for your muscle movements (aiding in muscle contraction and relaxation), and your nervous system regulation (regulating neurotransmitters which send messages throughout your brain and nervous system).
Thus, Magnesium plays a key role in your brain function and mood too, and low levels are linked to an increased risk of depression.
Fitness tip – Magnesium helps to move blood sugar into your muscles and decomposes lactate, which can build up during exercise and causes fatigue.
Even more important is magnesium’s pivotal role in both anaerobic and aerobic energy production, particularly in the metabolism of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the ‘energy currency’ of the body.
When you recover after exercise, magnesium keeps on working. It helps relax the muscles and prevent them from cramping. It also helps replenish red blood cells, which have been hard at work providing your body with oxygen during exercise. And it helps reduce inflammation (in fact, magnesium is one of the most powerful anti-inflammatory minerals we consume).
Another notable magnesium muscle recovery benefit is how it positively impacts other nutrients. For example, magnesium activates Vitamin D (Sunday Health Hack No. 6), and low Vitamin D levels can cause muscle weakness and pain.
Sleep hack – Magnesium is often used as a natural remedy for sleep issues such as insomnia too.
This is because magnesium regulates several neurotransmitters involved in the sleep “process”, such as gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA), a naturally occurring amino acid, which blocks certain brain signals and decreases the activity in your nervous system, producing a calming effect.
Insomnia is a common sleep disorder where you have difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep. People with insomnia suffer from a lack of energy and don’t feel refreshed in the morning. And insomnia can lead to excessive daytime sleepiness, irritability, anxiety, or depression.
Magnesium is a natural muscle relaxant, so it helps the whole body to calm down. It lowers blood pressure too. So it provides all the things you need for a good night sleep (and maintaining it).
Though magnesium is present in foods such as leafy greens, avocado, nuts, seed or – my favourite – also dark chocolate, survey have shown that 50% of the Western population is magnesium deficient.
And even if your magnesium levels are okay, the benefits mentioned above like better sleep, better exercise performance or better mood still additionally improved significantly when people took some extra magnesium supplements.
So, the Sunday Health Hack for today is – Before you go to bed, take 300-400mg of magnesium citrate as a supplement (capsule).
“Citrate” is the best bioavailable form to take magnesium. 300-400mg is the recommended dose for showing the best effects in studies (and it’s safe).
I am using a product from “Natural Elements” (no affiliation whatsoever!), available eg. at Amazon.
Bath tip – If you like to take a bath now and then, put a magnesium tablet into the bath water. One of these you can buy for cheap in the supermarket for dissolving it in water as a “magnesium drink”. Most often these are “magnesium carbonate” products which are actually useless (no bioavailability) when you drink it. But your skin absorbs some of the magnesium nicely, offering you another beneficial “relaxation” layer with your hot bath.
Stacking Hack – In my former Sunday Health Hack No. 11 about Zinc I also pointed out its important role for sleep and recovery. Magnesium and Zinc complement each other (1+1=3). Your sleep will improve even more, and so will your muscle growth, bone density, brain functions, fat burning processes, energy levels or your mood.
Strength & ease, Yours Andreas
Sunday Quote
Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness!
Sunday Music
Well, speaking of “Insomnia” 🙂