[alexjplant]

> the current "It's got electrolytes" craze

The modern emphasis on electrolytes is directionally correct but ultimately silly. Most electrolyte satchets and drinks are just overpriced salt water with artificial flavoring and sweeteners. The majority of the Western world actually fails to meet their recommended intake of potassium and magnesium. The former is rare in beverages because of its bitter taste and possible drug interactions. Magnesium is also used somewhat sparingly because certain forms create GI distress. This is very unfortunate since both of these minerals are essential to overall health and of great benefit to the cardiovascular and circulatory systems when taken in recommended amounts.

I dump Lite Salt (potassium and sodium chloride in equal amounts), Stevia, and powdered grapefruit into a bottle and shake to make my own electrolyte drink. It's dirt cheap and tastes like flat Fresca.

[Aerroon]

My quality of life improved by a significant amount when I started supplementing magnesium. Better sleep and a bunch of other things. It's actually scary how much of a difference something so simple (and cheap) made.

[ccimmergreen]

Sounds like placebo effect. Which works too, but it doesn't have to be magnesium, zinc, or snake oil for that matter.

[adrian_b]

Placebo effect may exist for someone who claims to sleep better with it, but there are effects that are definitely not placebo.

In the water that I drink in the morning I dissolve small quantities of powders of magnesium bisglycinate and potassium citrate.

Before starting to do this, after days with more intense physical effort, I frequently had nocturnal leg cramps. Since I began taking this regularly, I never had leg cramps again.

[Nasrudith]

Understandable thing to test for but, in my experience magnesium has been legitimate for me. I've found it improved my ability to think personally and depression. The 'dosing effects' are the thing that convinced me it is a real effect. If I ran out of it and was say, waiting for it coming in the mail I could go for it for some days without noticing a difference. That level of 'some endurance, don't need it daily' seemed to suggest some real pharmacology behidn it.

I also say for me because if you already have good levels of magnesium in your diet, it will have nothing to improve.

[senkora]

gwern once ran a rigorous N=1 self-experiment on magnesium with self-blinding and week-long blocks, and concluded that it was probably helpful to him: https://gwern.net/nootropic/magnesium#conclusion

You are welcome to review his methodology and see if it still seems like the placebo effect.

[Noumenon72]

Based on his ranking of MP (mood/productivity), he concluded that it helped for the first three weeks and then got worse because he was overdosing on the magnesium. So not much there is going to apply to the general case.

[Aerroon]

Perhaps, but at the same time my blood pressure reduced too. I think people dismiss supplements a bit too easily, but hey, that's their choice.

[adrian_b]

I believe that it is undesirable to ingest excessive amounts of chlorides.

Normally, the amount of chloride intake should not exceed the amount of sodium intake, i.e. one should not ingest other chlorides except table salt. The normal amount of chloride in the body is less than that of sodium, a part of the sodium ions being neutralized by bicarbonate anions. Any excess chloride requires additional work for the kidneys, to eliminate it from the body. Excreting chloride is also likely to take with it some of the useful metallic cations that you have supplemented.

Other metallic cations than sodium should be combined with organic anions, i.e. one should ingest their salts made with organic acids chosen from normal nutrients.

Good choices are potassium citrate (one of the cheapest organic acids that is also a normal component of food) and magnesium bisglycinate (because the magnesium salts of cheaper organic acids, like citric acid, are not soluble in water, while magnesium bisglycinate not only is soluble in water, but it also does not form solid precipitates with other components of food, which would prevent its absorption in the gut).

Both potassium citrate and magnesium bisglycinate can be found as cheap pure powders, which are preferable to any other forms, like capsules, which contain useless excipients for which there is no reason to be introduced in your body.

Besides sodium, the only other exception to the rule of using salts of organic acids is calcium, which can be supplemented as calcium phosphate or bone meal. However, calcium phosphate powder is not soluble in water, so unlike sodium and magnesium salts powders it cannot be put in drinking water, but it should be mixed like table salt in some solid food, before eating it.

[RobotToaster]

It's worth noting that glycine can have negative psychological effects on some people, anxiety, insomnia, etc. Supposedly it's because it's a NMDA receptor co agonist.

[adrian_b]

The amount of glycine that accompanies the at most a few hundred milligrams of magnesium per day that you might want to use as supplement is relatively small in comparison with the glycine content of most kinds of food that you eat anyway.

Bisglycinate is the cheapest form of chelate magnesium, but there are somewhat more expensive forms of chelate magnesium, which use other amino-acids instead of glycine. Someone who is very sensitive to glycine could use those. The non-chelate forms of magnesium are prone to form solid precipitates that pass through the gut without being absorbed.

Much more glycine than in a Mg supplement would be provided by any food with gelatin, so if someone really has glycine sensitivity, that should manifest when eating food with gelatin.

[trillic]

I do lite salt, maltodextrin, magnesium glycinate, and lemonlime powder.