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You can go to ground.news/scishow or click the link in the description to  get 40% off the Vantage level subscription. If you have trouble sleeping,  you may have tried melatonin or other over-the-counter sleep  aids alongside counting sheep.

But there’s a lot of buzz right now about a new  potential sleep aid - magnesium supplements. So is it the answer to your sleepless nights? Here’s everything you need to know  about magnesium, from A to ZZZ. [♪ INTRO] Supplement fads come and go, and right  now, magnesium is having its moment.

For those of you who haven’t  thought about magnesium since high school chemistry class,  let's start with a refresher. Magnesium is a metal and the 12th  element on the periodic table. But more importantly to us,  it’s a micronutrient found in nuts, beans, whole grains,  and green, leafy veggies.

In our bodies, magnesium helps hundreds of enzymes carry out their little enzyme jobs, like  synthesizing RNA and making proteins. Magnesium also plays a role in maintaining  the structure of our bones and teeth, as well as regulating blood  pressure and blood sugar. It even acts as an electrical  conductor in your nervous system to help regulate muscle contraction.

So whether it helps you sleep or not, your body needs magnesium  to do all kinds of things. And while we know it’s a vital  nutrient for all that stuff, the evidence of its ability to get  you to dreamland isn’t as cut and dry. For instance, one 2012 study found  that in older people with insomnia, dietary magnesium supplements  helped them get more sleep, and improved their overall sleep quality.

However, a 2021 meta-analysis compiling  the results of three different trials found that adding oral supplements of magnesium  only improved peoples’ sleep time by around 16 minutes, which is like,  one and a half snoozes on my alarm app. Unfortunately, nobody has done any  large, randomized trials tracking sleep in people taking these magnesium  supplements over long periods of time. The longest study duration that the  meta-analysis looked at was eight weeks, so it’s not clear if these  results really last long-term.

But while we’re still not sure how helpful  magnesium is for putting you to sleep, we do have plenty of evidence that  magnesium may help with anxiety, which can be a big part of  what’s keeping us awake. In studies done on mice, magnesium has  demonstrated a lot of anti-anxiety potential. For instance, mice given magnesium  supplements showed a higher ability to keep their cool when solving mazes  than their un-supplemented peers.

And yes, this may apply to humans as well. Well, maybe not the mazes  thing, but the anxiety thing. One study found that in people  who had both high anxiety and a magnesium deficiency, giving them  magnesium supplements reduced their stress levels, especially when the  magnesium was combined with a B6 supplement.

But those people were specifically  identified as having a magnesium deficiency. So, if you're not already low on magnesium, taking a supplement might  not have a noticeable effect. And we haven’t even mentioned that the  kind of magnesium you take matters, too.

Because you’re never just eating pure magnesium. There are a lot of different  magnesium-containing compounds that get marketed as supplements, all of which are  absorbed a bit differently by the body. A 2018 study in rats tested how different  magnesium compounds were absorbed by various tissues, and found that  not all magnesium are created equal.

The key difference seems to be whether  the compounds were organic or inorganic. And no, that doesn’t mean the  organic ones were like $8 more and only sold at Whole Foods. Chemically speaking, organic compounds  have carbon-hydrogen bonds in them, and inorganic ones don’t.

That’s all. The study found inorganic magnesium  compounds like magnesium oxide and magnesium sulfate were not  as easily taken up by the body, and therefore couldn't make their way into  the rat's tissues to be any help at all. On the other hand, organic compounds  like magnesium acetyl taurate and magnesium malate were more readily absorbed by the intestines and into the blood,  sailing right through those cell membranes and settling themselves into the rat brains.

And magnesium can only help you do  stuff if you absorb it, so those organic supplements were more strongly associated  with decreasing rat anxiety, too. Of the five magnesium preparations tested  in the study, the rats who were given magnesium acetyl taurate demonstrated  the lowest anxiety and also had the highest magnesium concentrations  in their brain tissue after 8 hours. So the type of magnesium might have some bearing on how well it works as an  anxiety buster and sleep aid, but studies show the amount can  be really important as well.

In a 2001 study in mice,  magnesium levels in the animals was found to affect their  sleep, but more was not better. In fact, it was found that  keeping magnesium concentrations within an optimal range was  important to getting good rest. Having too much magnesium  offered no sleep aid at all.

According to the National Institutes of  Health, adult women should be getting around 320 mg per day while  adult men require around 400 mg, though that ideal amount changes  throughout a person’s lifetime. That said, science doesn't yet  have enough information to settle whether magnesium is the sleep messiah  the current zeitgeist makes it out to be. But while we don’t know if  it’s going to help you sleep, research does show that between  two-thirds and three-quarters of Americans aren’t getting adequate amounts  of magnesium in their diets.

So a lot of people may benefit from  magnesium supplements regardless. It should be noted that some  magnesium-containing products are also often used as laxatives -- Milk of Magnesia, which  is mostly just magnesium hydroxide, isn't your grandma's favorite  laxative for nothing. So, you might not want to  go full throttle right away on a new supplement until you  know how it’ll affect you.

Whether or not it’s going to be the  answer to your sleepless nights, we do know that magnesium does  a lot of good in our bodies. Now before you hit the hay,  we need to thank Ground News for supporting this Scishow video. Keeping up with the latest  health news can be tough with all the different narratives out there, and it takes some serious fact checking to  feel confident about what we're sharing.

That's where ground news comes in. Ground news is a startup that was founded in  2018 by Harleen Kaur, a former NASA engineer. This platform brings together  news from around the world, giving folks like you and me the tools to  approach information with a critical eye.

You can use their app and website  to explore what's happening in the health industry, and discover  what stories you might be missing. Like this article about the  magnesium drink that swept TikTok, the Sleepy Girl mocktail, and  whether or not experts recommend it. If you'd like to dig deeper after reading  that one, Ground News provides quick access to more than 25 additional  reads on the same topic, 100% of which are high factuality and come  from politically centered publications, highlighting a significant  blindspot for individuals who exclusively rely on either  right or left leaning sources.

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Thanks for watching Scishow. [♪ OUTRO]