Why Magnesium Matters

When we talk about physical health, we usually think about food and movement—but real health goes deeper. It includes how we sleep, how we manage stress, and how our nervous system functions. Today we’re talking about magnesium, a mineral that plays a role in over 300 biochemical reactions in the body—and one many of us are deficient in.

Recently, a study suggested that magnesium may be as effective as antidepressants for some people when it comes to mild to moderate depression. That’s powerful—and it opens the door to seeing mental and physical health as deeply connected.

Transcript

Hello, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast Working on Amazing. This is the podcast where we talk about the work that it takes to rebuild an amazing life.

Now, on today's episode, we're gonna be talking about something along the lines of physical health.

Physical health is definitely one of the areas I focus on, but I wanna just remind you that physical health can include food and movement, but it also really goes deeper than that.

I mean, it includes how we sleep, how we manage stress, and how our nervous system functions. So today, I wanna talk about magnesium. It sounds crazy, but it has such a huge impact on the way your body functions.

I think we have to talk about it. It's a mineral that plays a role in over 300 biochemical reactions in your body, and did you know that most of us are deficient in magnesium?

Especially in the Western world, the way we do things, many of us function at a magnesium deficiency.

All right, so a recent study has suggested that magnesium could be as effective as antidepressants for some people, which I'm not saying go swap out your prescription.

I'm just saying, this is a super effective mineral that we've overlooked, and we're not getting enough of it in our diet. So let's talk about what magnesium is, and is it right for you to add a magnesium supplement? It's such a vital mineral.

So I think we would be remiss if we didn't just have a conversation. I love magnesium. I'm on the magnesium train.

I think it's great. So when I take a bath, I put magnesium in my bath. I love it, okay?

But you can take supplements and do so much more. Magnesium matters because it supports your mood and your emotional regulation, so your ability to regulate when your emotions run really high. Magnesium helps you regulate your emotions.

Crazy, right? Magnesium can help you asleep when you have trouble sleeping. Magnesium is often a supplement that is a good baseline place to start.

Magnesium helps with muscle and nerve function. It helps with our stress response. It helps with our heart rhythm and our blood sugar balance.

2:43

Benefits and Deficiency

So, okay, if any of this is sounding good to you, let's go through a few indicators that you could possibly be deficient in magnesium. And of course, doctors can run tests.

I don't know exactly what tests they run, because I'm not a doctor, and please understand that. But also know this could be a simple thing to try if you notice any of these symptoms. It's just a simple supplement that could make a difference.

So you might be, potentially, low in magnesium if you have trouble sleeping, if you have anxiety and irritability, muscle cramping or twitching, fatigue, headaches, constipation.

All those things, especially if you hit five of those things, you know, I rattled off six. So if you hit like four or five, it could be like, hey, maybe I am deficient magnesium, and I didn't even realize it. Okay?

3:46

Depletion and Mental Health

Modern life, the way we live today depletes magnesium for a few reasons. Stress burns through magnesium faster in your body. And we live high stress lives, very fast paced, right?

So the other thing is processed foods. We eat a lot of processed foods. That's very common in our culture today.

And those foods have been stripped of most of the minerals and the nutrients. So they are magnesium deficient. The soil where we grow the food is oftentimes more mineral depleted.

I mean, we've been planting and, you know, as our growth spurts have boomed and there are more people and more planting, a lot of times the soil is been depleted of minerals. Also, caffeine and alcohol can reduce magnesium absorption. All right?

So magnesium and your mental health. Magnesium really does regulate your neurotransmitters, like serotonin and GABA. Both of those are crucial for calming the nervous system.

All right? That's why it's being studied for anxiety and depression and PMS and mood symptoms and stress resilience. So like I said, when I started, magnesium doesn't replace therapy and it doesn't replace your medication.

But it can be a very powerful support tool alongside them. And if you're struggling just a little bit, it could be a place to start. I was somebody who really hesitated to get on a prescription drug.

If it's mild, maybe this could be a place to start. Always talk to your doctor and your therapist first.

5:40

Sleep and Magnesium Types

All right. Magnesium can help with sleep. Magnesium helps relax your muscles.

So it can also help calm your nervous system, and it supports melatonin production. We've always heard about melatonin, and that was a good natural sleep aid for a really long time.

And now I'm hearing some things say that overuse of melatonin might be not so great for your heart. I don't know all the details. Once again, I am not a doctor.

I just read these things and find them fascinating. But magnesium helps support your natural melatonin production, and I think that's really good.

So people who struggle with falling asleep, who struggle with staying asleep and waking up anxious might see an improvement when their magnesium levels are supported. Now here's the tricky part.

When we talk about magnesium, I love magnesium, and I've been on this magnesium train. So you can get magnesium spray and rub it on your feet before you go to bed, and that really does help me go to sleep.

If you have mild sleep issues, that could be the thing for you. But then you hear about magnesium and all kinds of other forms, and what kind of supplement to take, and this and that.

There are many different types of magnesium, and that's why this gets confusing, because you say, okay, take a magnesium supplement, but there are different types. So there's magnesium glycinate, and that's best for anxiety, stress, sleep, mood.

It's really gentle on your stomach, and it's highly absorbable. Okay, so that's magnesium glycinate. But then there's magnesium threonate, and that's best for your brain health.

So when you see these supplements that help you focus and help your memory, a lot of times it has magnesium threonate in it, because it crosses that blood-brain barrier, all right? So it can be used for cognitive support, which is really important.

Then there's magnesium citrate, and you might have heard of this one, because that's used for constipation.

So if you've had a child who is really constipated, or you yourself were, or you had to get maybe colonoscopy, some of what they give you when they're cleaning out your colon to help for constipation or cleaning the colon, would be magnesium citrate,

okay? And if you've ever looked at the bottle of what they give you, it may, you may recognize that term. So like I said, there are lots of different types of magnesium.

There's magnesium malate, and that supports muscle pain, fatigue, fibromyalgia, energy production. Then there's magnesium oxide, that's kind of more like salt, it's cheap, it's poorly absorbed.

It mostly works as a laxative, and it's not ideal for mood or sleep support, okay?

8:54

Selecting Magnesium Glycinate

So, if you were to only take one type of magnesium, because, like I said, there's all kinds, it would probably be the most general and easy to use one.

So, if you're going and looking for a magnesium supplement that could support your general health, stress, mood, sleep, it would be magnesium glycinate, okay? That's the most versatile, it's calming, it's well-absorbed for most people, all right?

So, if you go to the store looking for a magnesium supplement, and you're like, whoa, there's a lot here, look for magnesium glycinate, okay? Now, typically, obviously, read the package instructions. Obviously, talk to your doctor.

If you're seeking, like, counseling, or you're in therapy, talk to your therapist about it. I mean, don't just listen to something and jump on it. Do your own research.

But I think magnesium is one of these things we're just sleeping on. We don't realize how depleted we are. We don't realize how much we need this support, okay?

So, if you go and you get magnesium glycinate, what do you do? Well, a typical dose, and this is just typical, it's not brand-specific, but if you, a typical dose would be anywhere from 200 to 400 milligrams a day, all right?

And it really is best to take it in the evening, because then you would get that support for sleep. And that is really important, and that matters. So, you could take it at night, and it would help you sleep.

I have magnesium glycinate in a powder, and sometimes I mix it with tart cherry juice, tart cherry juice is supposed to help with melatonin production. So, the two together, both really can help as a sleep aid.

So, I use the powder, I feel like it gets absorbed in my body better than having to break down a pill inside my stomach. Everybody's different. I know there's lots of different forms.

I know that there is a magnesium in gummy form, like a gummy bear. It's a gummy vitamin and it's called calm. And I remember taking that for a while right after my divorce.

And that's magnesium glycine. All right. So, if you take it in the evening, it's going to probably help you with your sleep.

But overall, throughout the day, you know, you're going to notice hopefully a difference.

If you truly are magnesium deficient, once you start taking more magnesium, and you're supporting your system by giving it the mineral that it desperately needs, you should notice a difference.

It really is best if, I think, with any supplement, but especially this, start slow. Like, don't start at the top dose, because I read this article that people who took a ton of magnesium, you know, it helped with their depression.

That is an extremely interesting article. Yes, but start slow. See what your body tolerates.

Everybody's different. And when it comes to supplementing with these different things that, you know, now we're not getting the vitamins and minerals that maybe our ancestors got, right?

Because they were eating food from the ground, and the soil wasn't as depleted, right? Be slow with it. Don't just go full tilt.

Take your time. Try a little bit, see how your body reacts. Everybody is different.

And this is a supplement.

12:45

Personal Impact and Simple Steps

Are there ways to up magnesium naturally in your body? Yes. And one of the top foods for magnesium is pumpkin seeds.

And I try to eat a handful most days for that reason. I looked up what is really good to get magnesium into my body naturally. Because taking a supplement is a good way to replace the vitamin and mineral depletion that we have.

But it's also good if you can incorporate natural sources of that. So I do pumpkin seeds because I read that they were one of the highest. Sesame seeds, I believe, are pretty high.

So I can support myself with magnesium, getting it from a natural source. But I also supplement with the Magnesium Glycinate Powder in my Tartagery Juice because I feel like that helps as well. And I feel like I just need a little boost.

And I pour magnesium in my tub when I take a bath. And I have read, and I don't know how true this is, because I read all kinds of things, and not everything can be trusted. But you absorb magnesium through your skin.

And that's why when you spray the oil on the bottoms of your feet, or you sit in a bath, it really, really helps, because you're absorbing it through your skin.

There are a lot of different ways and types of magnesium to take, and it can be overwhelming. And I don't want to overwhelm you with, well, you can get the oil spray. Well, you can take a supplement.

Take it at night. You can do this. You can...

Start simple. See if you notice a difference. And like for me, what I noticed was every time I took a bath, I felt significantly better.

If I felt down emotionally, if I felt down physically, like if I were feel like I was getting a cold or just really feeling sick, if I got a bath and that replenished the magnesium, it took me a while to make that connection.

But when I replenished the magnesium, when my body absorbed magnesium, I felt better.

And over time, slowly, I began to realize I was deficient in magnesium, and that's why I felt like the bath was the answer to everything, because I always put, added magnesium to my bath and my salts.

So I was like, well, a bath is just, has magical properties. That's what I would have thought. But no, it was the fact that I was absorbing the magnesium.

So then I started trying to find other ways to support magnesium in my diet, like the pumpkin seeds, or even a little bit of supplement by adding the magnesium powder to my tart cherry juice at night.

Little things, like we don't have to go overboard. And I did, I bought the magnesium oil to rub on my feet. And it makes a difference, it really does.

But you don't have to do all of the things. You can just do one thing and see, does this make a difference? Do I feel better after it?

Like, I would feel better after my bath. Or when I rub the magnesium oil on the bottom of my feet, I really do fall asleep faster. It really does make a difference.

It's a really simple, simple thing to do. I notice I sleep better when I take the magnesium in the cherry juice.

I noticed way back after my divorce, when I would take those calm gummy supplements, and they were magnesium, it did it, helped me sleep better. So just pick one thing and say, okay, I'm going to try this. Does it make a difference?

Do I notice a difference? You may not be magnesium deficient, but a lot of people are. So you could be.

It could be something that really helps support your health.

16:44

Foundational Body Support

And sometimes we're fighting this battle of stress and anxiety. And a lot is going on. If you're listening to this podcast, it's because you've gone through a major life change.

Divorce, death, loss. Something major has happened, and you feel like you're starting over. That is high stress.

Let's not go into a high stress season or sit in the middle of a high stress season and not support our body's function for handling that. It's not going to make the stress go away. I'm not saying that.

But why be depleted internally, physically? Why not shore up our internal reserves in way of handling stress at a very physical level, so that we are better equipped to handle the emotional waves when they do come? That's all I'm saying.

This isn't a magic wand. It's not going to make your stress automatically go away. It's not going to make your grief disappear.

It's just going to help your body at a very physical, biological level handle it in a more efficient way. And let's not have our bodies depleted and amplifying our stress when we're already emotionally overwhelmed. So it's something to think about.

I think that magnesium, it reminds me that sometimes healing doesn't start with doing more. Sometimes, it really just starts with supporting our body better. And it can be really simple.

Magnesium is so simple. It's not the new supplement on the market. It's not the latest and greatest new-fangled thing.

It's been around forever. And I think that's why it gets overlooked. And why we've depleted it is because we don't even think about it.

We're so used to it just being a thing. So, sometimes, the answer can be really, really simple. And sometimes, it's not the whole answer.

It's just a tiny piece. But when your body is supported, then you are in a better place to tackle the hard and heavy challenges emotionally and mentally.

So, I don't know where you are today, but I encourage you to do your own research about magnesium, to see if maybe adding something simple is right for you, whether it's an oil that you spray on the bottom of your feet, whether it's something you add

to your bath at night to relax, or a supplement you choose to take. Whatever it is, or pumpkin seeds that you choose to eat and add to your diet, however you do it, I hope that you start looking for ways to support your body naturally and wholly.

And oftentimes, those solutions are simpler than we give them credit for. Sometimes just getting back to the basics is where we need to go, right? Like, it's simple.

We live in a world of complex ideas. We live in a world of really big thoughts, and there's AI, and we're going to build a colony on the moon, and go into Mars, and all these crazy things.

So much, so big, and we feel like the answers are health, mental health, physical health has to be super big and complex. But the building blocks are always going to be really simple and really basic.

And when we overlook the simple and basic things, then we don't have a great foundation, right? So the answer doesn't always need to be big and complex, and hard to understand.

Sometimes, a part of the answer and a part of the solution is really simple, and really basic, and really foundational. And to me, that is the definition of magnesium.

It's very basic, it's very simple, but it is foundational in the way our body needs it to run. All right? I hope that you found a little bit of information about magnesium helpful.

I would love to hear from you. If you would like to find me, you can find me online, www.workingonamazing.com, or you can find me on social media. I really do hang out on Facebook the most.

I'm on Substack, and I'm on Facebook, and a few other social media platforms, but I really do end up responding and hanging out on Facebook the most. So it's just a page, Working on Amazing. You can find me there and shoot me a message.

I would really, really love to hear from you. Thank you so much for joining me today. I look forward to talking to you next time.

Bye.