Unlocking Restful Nights: How Magnesium Supplements Improve Sleep Quality

Unlocking Restful Nights: How Magnesium Supplements Improve Sleep Quality

High quality sleep is one of the most important things to get nailed down. Good sleep improves every aspect of your performance. There is so much research on this, and yet so many people either don’t prioritize getting enough sleep or really struggle with getting enough sleep. I am guilty of this myself, between being the father of four young kids, a demanding job, trying to stay in shape, and all of the other priorities in my life; 24 hours never feels like enough. I strive to get the 7 hours of sleep recommended as minimum by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society, however I often fall short and regularly find myself only getting 5 hours or less. 

This shows prominently in my whoop sleep data, which by the way I love and highly recommend if you are trying to improve your fitness and rest habits, sign up here. You can see that I get very low sleep some days. However, I’m still able to operate a high-level because I decided that I had to start making the most out of the sleep I do get, so I started trying out different approaches to 1) get more sleep within my life constraints and 2) have the sleep that I do get be of higher quality. One thing that immediately showed results for me was adding in Magnesium supplementation in the afternoon or at night. By using my whoop, I was able to put some metrics on what things measurably improved my sleep quality. Magnesium was a stand-out often making double digit improvements to my heart-rate variability(HRV). This along with Lemon Balm are my two most critical supplements for getting great sleep.

To understand how this can have such a large impact it’s useful to understand more about Magnesium and its role in the body.

Magnesium’s Role in the Human Body

The importance of Magnesium for normal functioning cannot be overstated. It has broad importance across many areas. Some highlights specific to its ability to improve sleep quality to drive this point home:

• Cofactor for over 300 enzymatic reactions, including those involved in protein synthesis, muscle and nerve function, blood glucose control, and blood pressure regulation.
• Regulates muscle contractions and nerve impulses. Magnesium plays a pivotal role in the relaxation of muscles, helping to prevent muscle cramps and spasms.
• Helps maintain healthy blood pressure levels by promoting the dilation of blood vessels.
• Magnesium influences the activity of neurotransmitters involved in sleep, such as gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). GABA promotes relaxation and reduces neuronal excitability, facilitating the onset of sleep.
• It aids in the regulation of melatonin, a hormone that controls the sleep-wake cycle. Proper melatonin levels are essential for falling asleep and maintaining a regular sleep pattern.
• Magnesium helps reduce stress and anxiety by regulating the body’s response to stress hormones like cortisol. Lower stress and anxiety levels can significantly improve sleep quality.

Receipts on Magnesium’s Effectiveness for Improving Sleep

Okay, so we’ve established that Magnesium is important and in theory should help improve sleep, but is this backed by real world results in scientific studies? YES! This effect is very well studied and there are numerous published experiments demonstrating this. Here is just a short list of results from studies on Magnesium:

• Elderly subjects who took 500 mg of magnesium daily for eight weeks experienced an 11% improvement in sleep efficiency compared to placebo.
• In a different trial magnesium supplementation reduced insomnia severity by 31.6% after eight weeks of treatment .
• Research in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry indicated that magnesium supplementation significantly reduced serum cortisol levels, a stress hormone that can interfere with sleep, by 19.8%.
• The study published in the Magnesium Research journal showed that magnesium supplementation resulted in a 20.7% reduction in nighttime awakenings, contributing to more restful sleep.

This list could go on and on because this effect is so well studied that there are dozens of trials showing positive results. It’s actually a bit surprising that it’s not more common knowledge how powerful magnesium can be for helping with getting a better night’s rest.

How to take Magnesium for sleep?

So, you’re convinced that Magnesium is important and can help with optimizing your sleep, but how do you take it? You can go two routes. You can try and increase the amount of magnesium in your dietary intake. This looks like eating more foods that are high in magnesium content. Some of my favorites are cacao (or very dark chocolate), pumpkin seeds, hemp seeds, avocados, and salmon. I try to keep my diet pretty clean all the time so I’m usually already doing this, but for those who don’t it may be enough to add in some of these foods. 

However, for many folks supplementation is the way to go. This is where some people tend to get tripped up. There are a bunch of different kinds of magnesium you can buy in supplement form, and they all work in slightly different ways, and have a different profile of effectiveness and can have somewhat differing side-effects. Any of them can be effective, but there are some that are better than others specifically when used for getting better sleep and frankly everyone responds a bit differently so you may need to try a few and see what works best for you. My favorite is this micronized version from Nootropics Depot:

MicroMag Optimized Magnesium

You can simply supplement with this at nighttime and start getting a better night’s sleep right away. Alternatively, you can also try Magnesium Glycinate which is highly bioavailable with low gastrointestinal side effects, or Magnesium L Threonate, which people like for its purported superior ability to be absorbed in the brain. I’d recommend staying away from Magnesium Citrate because it can have a laxative effect and many people find that aspect a bit uncomfortable. Although, if you tend towards constipation that may be a feature and not a bug!

I’m eager to hear from folks if they are seeing the same benefits that I did. Drop me a note in the comments if you have tried Magnesium for better sleep and how it worked for you.