{"id":204498,"date":"2025-06-22T06:47:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-22T06:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/204498\/"},"modified":"2025-06-22T06:47:14","modified_gmt":"2025-06-22T06:47:14","slug":"luke-oneill-the-science-of-magnesium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/204498\/","title":{"rendered":"Luke O\u2019Neill: The science of magnesium"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Magnesium supplements are often promoted as a sleeping aid \u2013 but is there any truth to this claim, or is it simply an old wives&#8217; tale?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On this week\u2019s<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newstalk.com\/podcasts\/show-me-the-science-with-luke-oneill\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong> Show Me the Science<\/strong><\/a> podcast, Professor Luke O\u2019Neill said the scientific evidence is tenuous at best.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYour average body has 25 grams of magnesium if you look at the amount \u2013 that&#8217;s about half a Mars bar, to put that into context,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHalf of it\u2019s in your bones and the bones have magnesium to stabilise them and do various things, so it\u2019s involved in bone function as well.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne per cent is in your blood, and then the rest of it\u2019s in other soft tissues distributed around the body.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Prof O\u2019Neill said that \u201cit\u2019s very hard to be magnesium deficient because there\u2019s so much of it everywhere\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>He said the best sources of magnesium are leafy greens, in particular spinach.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1159245\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/spinach-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\"\/> Spinach<\/p>\n<p>According to Prof O\u2019Neill, those who are deficient in magnesium may experience a drop in appetite, nausea, fatigue, heart arrhythmias and overall weakness.<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to the mineral\u2019s effect on sleep though, he said \u201cthe jury\u2019s out\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are very few proper trials on this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is a plausible reason why it might help you sleep and the biology of this would suggest possibly it might help muscles relax a bit, and that can maybe help you nod off.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[Magnesium] will decrease cortisol, and cortisol is a stress hormone and that will keep you awake, obviously.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen several studies have shown it can boost melatonin \u2013 maybe that\u2019s where this came from because melatonin is your natural sleeping tablet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, that\u2019s some evidence to link magnesium into sleep so that\u2019s reasonable \u2013 however, when you look at the data it\u2019s not there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to Prof O\u2019Neill, studies testing magnesium as a treatment for insomnia showed that it had \u201cno clear effect, and if there was an effect it was marginal, so they couldn\u2019t show a link\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Another study examined whether magnesium could be used to help muscle cramps which may keep people awake, but it also showed \u201cno clear affect\u201d, Prof O\u2019Neill said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Main image: Luke O&#8217;Neill (L), magnesium tablets (R).<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Magnesium supplements are often promoted as a sleeping aid \u2013 but is there any truth to this claim,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4318],"tags":[105,4434,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-204498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-nutrition","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114725679558307342","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}