Does Magnesium Help you Sleep? Maybe…

Magnesium is an essential nutrient that helps regulate blood pressure, blood sugar, nerve and muscle function. I take 266mg every night before bedtime but I wonder if it’s just a placebo effect. An article in the New York Times explored the subject and the following are excerpts from the article:

“Little research has been done on whether the mineral helps with sleep, Dr. Martin a clinical psychologist who studies sleep disorders at Florida International University says.  The studies that do exist are not high-quality but a few limited studies do support taking magnesium for sleep, said Dr. Sujay Kansagra, a sleep specialist at Duke Health.

In one trial published in 2025, researchers split 155 healthy adults with poor sleep into two groups: one that took 250 milligrams of magnesium glycinate within 30 to 60 minutes before bed, and another that took a placebo. The researchers reported that while the magnesium group had “significantly greater” improvements in their insomnia symptoms than the placebo group, those improvements were modest. Read the study here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40918053/

In a 2022 review of nine studies on how magnesium influences sleep, researchers concluded that while some research showed a link between magnesium supplements and better sleep, randomized clinical trials (which can prove cause and effect) had more mixed results. Read the review here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12011-022-03162-1

Dr. Kansagra said, “the hype is much, much further ahead than objective science.”

Magnesium may influence certain sleep-related neurotransmitters in the nervous system in ways that increase feelings of calmness and decrease muscle tension and restlessness, she said. It’s also possible that people who sleep better after taking magnesium supplements are experiencing a placebo effect. Meaning, the act of taking a supplement alone may promote better sleep.

Dr. Kelly Glazer Baron, director of the behavioral sleep medicine program at the University of Utah says that most people prefer magnesium glycinate or magnesium L-threonate for sleep because they aren’t as likely to cause the gastrointestinal side effects like diarrhea, nausea and cramping

As with all supplements, magnesium supplements are not regulated for safety and effectiveness the way prescription drugs are. So it’s a good idea to buy supplements that have been vetted by third-party certification programs like the U.S. Pharmacopeia or NSF. Keep in mind, too, that you never want to automatically reach for a supplement without looking deeper into the source of the issue. Always ask your medical provider about issues like sleep. We want to avoid just treating a symptom while inadvertently skipping over the root cause.