Magnesium Supports Healthy Sleep: How This Mineral Can Help You Get a Good Night's Rest*
How well do you sleep at night?
If you're like most people, you could probably use some help catching more Zs. One mineral that can help support your sleep is magnesium.* Magnesium plays a role in many biochemical processes in the body, including nerve function and muscle relaxation.* As an essential mineral, magnesium is a nutrient that the body cannot make on its own. You have to get it through the foods you eat or through dietary supplements. (More on that later!)
In this blog post, we will discuss how magnesium can support healthy sleep and offer tips on how to find a magnesium supplement to help you feel better faster!*
- Adults need at least seven hours of sleep per night.
- Your body uses sleep as the time to reset and recharge.
- Magnesium is the second most abundant mineral in the body.
- While it is available in foods, today’s modern diets don’t usually provide enough.
- This essential mineral helps relieve tension and improve well-being, for more effective rest.*
- Magnesium also helps calm your natural stress response.*
- Not all magnesium is created equal; some forms are poorly absorbed.
- ATA Mg® is absorbed 24% faster, as a patented form for the brain with high bioavailability.*
Why Sleep Matters
Who needs sleep? Everyone – even you. But many adults aren’t getting the recommended seven hours or more each night. However, it’s incredibly important to prioritize rest. Sleep is the time when your body rests, restores and resets itself. Even though you might think of sleep as a slow and mellow time, your body is hard at work. So many of your bodily processes need you to sleep so they can do all their regular maintenance and updates. Sleep is not a bonus bank of time that you can dip into when you need to get more stuff done! Your body has an overnight to-do list that includes:
- Allowing your immune system to work through its maintenance and updates.
- Conservation of energy.
- Converting your short-term memories into long-term ones, then filing them away for later.
- Keeping your hunger and satiety hormones in a healthy balance.
- Letting your brain’s emotional centers the time they need to process.
- Maintaining all your cells, tissues and systems.
Guess what? When you stay up late or pull an all-nighter to work on your to-do list, your body can’t get through its own!
How Magnesium Supports Sleep*
Magnesium is an essential mineral that supports vital processes of both the mind and body. Your body relies on magnesium for over 300 enzyme reactions, and it’s the second most prevalent mineral in every cell. While it is available through food, today’s modern diets lack adequate supplies, especially when we eat mostly processed foods. In addition, many supplements contain forms the body can’t unlock easily. A lot of people aren’t getting nearly enough magnesium – or feeling its full effects!
Magnesium relieves tension and supports soothing slumber.* This mineral also helps activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Also known as your “rest and digest” system, it is in charge of shifting you toward a state of peaceful calm and relaxation. Magnesium helps regulate certain neurotransmitters as well as melatonin, which is tasked with maintaining the body’s internal clock (circadian rhythm).*
11 Tips to Support Healthy Sleep*
Are you working on your “sleep hygiene”? (That’s the name for the habits, behaviors and environmental factors that contribute to our nightly rest.) If you want to make sleep a higher priority in your life, start with these simple tips and lifestyle changes. But be patient with yourself – you’re only human and any new habit takes time to take root!
- Put down your phone at night (and keep the TV off). Screens emit blue light, which tells your brain to stay alert and awake. That’s great during the day but doesn’t help you prepare for bedtime! Aim to log off two hours before bed.
- See sunlight and darkness daily, even if it’s from your car. This helps your internal clock stay on track. Artificial light (especially at night) can throw off your body’s circadian rhythm.
- Go to bed a little earlier. Even a quarter hour is enough to make a difference. Start small if you’re trying to get more sleep. Once turning in 15 minutes early feels natural, try giving yourself another 15 minutes, until you’re getting at least seven hours nightly. That’s what adults need, even if you are convinced you can get by on far less rest!
- Give yourself a bedtime. Yes, adults should have a bedtime, too. What time do you need to get up tomorrow? Set your alarm clock for seven hours before that. Try to opt for a consistent schedule on weekdays and weekends. That Monday 6 a.m. wake-up call is easier when you didn’t sleep until noon on Sunday!
- Stop trying to “catch up.” Consistency is key when it comes to healthy rest. While sleeping more when you need it is fine – yay, you, for prioritizing rest – don’t skimp during the week thinking you’ll just sleep in all weekend. It’ll make next week harder!
- Take back your bedtime hours. There’s a thing that’s common among adults with too much on their plates: revenge bedtime procrastination. It’s when you stay up past your bedtime even though you’re tired because you feel like you deserve more time to do what you want. Instead, make time for yourself throughout the day, even if it’s 5 or 10 minutes.
- Make your bedroom comfier. When it comes to healthy rest, think of Goldilocks. You don’t want to be too cold or too warm. You want to be “just right.” The Sleep Foundation says that the best temperature for comfortable sleep is 65 degrees F by the way.
- Cut out caffeine in the afternoon. While you might need a late in the day pick-me-up, that 4 p.m. latte could keep you awake – caffeine’s effects can last for six hours or more in some people. Instead, try a glass of water and quick stretch or walk!
- Block out the light and noise. You’re not being a diva if you can’t sleep when it’s noisy or bright. Those things can actually interfere with your ability to get into deep rest. So close the shades, add some blackout curtains or wear a sleep mask. To deal with noise, close windows, use ear plugs or download a white noise app.
- Slow down at night. What are you watching or doing in the evenings? If you’re watching horror shows, doing intense exercise or listening to true crime podcasts, it might be harder to shift into wind-down mode. Save those things for earlier in the day, and do slower and mellower tasks after dinner.
- Reach for magnesium – but make sure the supplement you choose is one you can actually feel!
About Magnesium Mind
Enzymedica recently launched a new magnesium supplement that’s formulated to help you “feel better faster.” It uses a patented form of magnesium that you can actually feel (and there’s science to back it up).
Magnesium Mind supports soothing slumber, calms stressful days and promotes quick thinking.* With ATA Mg® for 24% faster absorption, Magnesium Mind helps relieve tension and improve well-being, to help you get the healthy sleep you need to show up as your best self.* It also helps calm your natural stress response, to bring ease to stressful days and challenging times.* ATA Mg® gets right to your brain, while supporting your memory, learning and overall cognition.*
The suggested use of Magnesium Mind is that you take one capsule two times each day. These supplements are vegan and they contain no gluten, milk, casein, soy, egg or artificial colors, fillers or flavors.
About ATA Mg®
Enzymedica’s new Magnesium Mind and Magnesium Motion supplements feature patented ATA Mg®, which offers superior absorption to the brain and cells, compared with many forms of magnesium such as citrate and oxide. ATA Mg® combines this potent mineral with taurine, an amino acid used by the body to deliver magnesium ions to the cells. This unique combination has been clinically proven to absorb 24% faster – for a difference you can feel.
Taurine plays critical roles in healthy brain function and acts on neuromodulation and relaxation. It is also a powerful antioxidant, reducing free radicals produced in the brain. ATA Mg® has been proven to cross the blood-brain barrier and modulate excitatory neurotransmitters.* (The blood-brain barrier maintains homeostasis, or balance, in the brain. Think of it like a bouncer at a club. It determines what gets in and what doesn’t.)
Resources
https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/index.html
https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-hygiene/revenge-bedtime-procrastination
https://fluidsbarrierscns.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12987-020-00230-3
https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/minerals/magnesium
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12011-018-1351-9
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnesium-HealthProfessional/