Dear Friends,
Each time I offer up tips on how to find high quality supplements or avoid being scammed by deceptive or outright fraudulent supplements, it generates a lot of interest.
You may recall that one of my biggest pet peeves is supplement ingredient labels listing so-called proprietary ingredient blends.
This is where the supplement maker groups a long list of ingredients together, and only reveals the total amount of the blend, not the amount of each ingredient in the blend itself.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, when you see these blends, very often the supplement company is trying to hide or disguise something from you.
These blends make it impossible to know how much of each ingredient you are actually getting – and in my experience, the ingredients people care about the most tend to be present in the smallest quantities.
This is currently happening with magnesium supplements – and I think a lot of shoppers don’t realize what they’re actually buying.
Here’s an example: you’ll see products claiming that 2 of their capsules will give you 1,000mg of magnesium a day from a blend, or to make it sound better a “complex” of 8 different types of magnesium.
Sounds impressive, right?
I’m going to walk you through how I analyze the math on products like this and show you why I believe this type of formulation has to be overwhelmingly magnesium oxide – one of the cheapest and poorest absorbed forms of magnesium used in dietary supplements.
On top of this, when taken in very high amounts, magnesium oxide can cause unwanted gastrointestinal effects in some users.
Why Would You Even Want 1,000mg from a Supplement?
The typical American adult gets 250 to 350mg of magnesium a day from diet alone.
Since the RDA is about 400mg a day – it’s a little less for women, a bit more for men – it’s true the vast majority of us come up short on magnesium from diet alone, so taking a quality magnesium supplement makes sense to bridge the gap.
But, supplementing 1,000mg a day for an extended period doesn’t make sense, unless you have an unusual medical situation where you’re following your doctor’s orders.
Remember too little of important nutrients is a bad thing, but too much of a good thing can also be bad, and this is especially true of minerals like magnesium.
You don’t want to overdo it.
Second, why would you even need 8 different types of magnesium in one supplement?
You don’t. The goal is relatively simple – get an adequate amount of magnesium into the bloodstream without causing any stomach, intestinal or other problems.
If you’re wondering why all these types of magnesium exist, it’s because pure elemental magnesium is a highly reactive metal that your body can’t absorb on its own.
It must be bonded to another compound to form a stable powder.
In the case of our favorite magnesium, the bisglycinate chelate, the magnesium is bound to the amino acid glycine.
In magnesium citrate, citric acid is used, and in magnesium oxide the magnesium is bound to an oxygen molecule.
But all of these forms are really just a means to an end, with the end being not causing unwanted effects while maximizing the amount of magnesium that gets into the bloodstream so it can go to work for you and support the over 300 processes in the body where magnesium plays a role.
That’s the mission.
The Math on These Blends Doesn’t Add Up
Some products in the market say 2 capsules will give you 1,000mg of magnesium.
The capsules are larger sized, what the industry calls “00s”.
We generally don’t want to go bigger than this, because the capsule can become hard to swallow for many people.
If you look at the typical Supplement Facts panel on the label of these magnesium complexes, they often indicate that a 2-capsule serving provides 1,000mg of magnesium.
This is followed with the blend of 8 types of magnesium.
Now, in case you don’t know, labeling guidelines mandate that you list the items in this blend in order of size contribution from largest to smallest.
Before even looking at the blend, I expected that magnesium oxide would be listed first and be the largest component for reasons we’ll cover next.
Magnesium glycinate is typically listed second in the list. This is the prized form of magnesium many supplement users seek– unfortunately, the math suggests there can’t be much of it here.
Another tidbit to remember - if you look at the other ingredients section at the bottom, it lists excipients like microcrystalline cellulose, magnesium stearate and silicon dioxide.
The reason I mention these is because a capsule can only hold a finite amount of powder, and the weight of these other ingredients has to be accounted for in addition to the 8 forms of magnesium.
How I Concluded These Formulations Must Be Mostly Magnesium Oxide.
First, going back to our 00 sized capsule here, it typically holds somewhere between 450mg to 900mg of powder, depending on the ingredient.
That’s a big range, and the amount you can fit depends on the density of the powder and how much it can be compressed.
If it’s a light fluffy powder, you’re only going to get around 450mg in each capsule.
On the other end, is the heavier powders that compact well, and the filling equipment will be able to get around 900mg per capsule.
Most forms of magnesium are very light weight. For example, the magnesium bisglycinate chelate powder is very light and fluffy and doesn’t compact well. This limits how much can go into a capsule.
There is one magnesium form that’s considered heavy and dense and takes up much less room in capsules.
Want to guess what it is? Yes, it’s magnesium oxide.
So the powder density is one part of the equation that provides a good clue of what’s really in this magnesium blend.
The second part that completes the picture is the percentage of elemental magnesium you get from each form.
Most of the 8 magnesium types in the blend we’re examining are between 10% and 20% elemental magnesium.
Take magnesium glycinate for example. A fully reacted bisglycinate chelate is about 10% elemental magnesium (“buffered”, “partially reacted” or “blends” may be higher but aren’t the same molecule).
That means to get just 50mg of magnesium from this form, requires 500mg of the light fluffy powder we just discussed. That couldn’t even fit in one of these capsules.
So even though it’s the second ingredient in the blend, there can’t be much in the product, which is another sign the blend is mostly magnesium oxide.
Curious what’s the percentage of magnesium in magnesium oxide?
It’s not 10 or 20%, it’s 60%.
Putting It All Together.
To have 1,000mg of magnesium in 2 of these capsules, it means each one has 500mg of elemental magnesium.
Let’s say 90% of that 500 mg — or 450 mg — is coming from magnesium oxide. This would require about 750mg of magnesium oxide in a capsule (450 is 60% of 750).
Even using a dense, capsule-friendly grade of magnesium oxide, that would take up most of the available capsule space.
This doesn’t leave much room for the other 50mg of magnesium in the capsule, which would be coming from the lighter, fluffier forms in the blend that are only 10% to 20% elemental magnesium.
Not to mention the excipients we saw on the label that take up capsule space.
Here’s the bottom line. With these assumptions, I can’t find a way to make the math work otherwise.
You can try various iterations for yourself based on the numbers I provided.
My conclusion is that a product built this way has to be overwhelmingly magnesium oxide.
Now I want to be clear about what this is: an analysis based on the label, on standard capsule sizes and on published ingredient specs (not based on a lab test), and I’d encourage you to run the numbers yourself using the figures above.
And this is why I say avoid supplement blends like this, where the supplement brand doesn’t tell you what you’re getting.
When a label doesn’t give you the breakdown, you have no way to know whether you’re getting what you think you’re paying for.
Why We Don’t Like Magnesium Oxide for Supplement Formulas
Magnesium oxide is poorly absorbed with published estimates indicating that as little as 4% of the magnesium makes it to the bloodstream.
And this percentage gets worse as the serving size gets larger – along with the chances of loose stools and other intestinal distress.
Magnesium oxide has some value acting as a mild antacid in the stomach, but we do not believe it’s a good way to bridge dietary shortfalls of magnesium.
Look at it this way.
Magnesium oxide is cheap, 60% elemental magnesium and compacts well, making it very capsule friendly.
Why would all these other magnesium types have been developed for supplements if magnesium oxide was a good option?
They probably wouldn’t exist.
Why We Prefer Pure Magnesium Bisglycinate Chelate
As noted, we think that a pure magnesium bisglycinate chelate is the best choice for supplements.
It’s well-absorbed and generally well-tolerated, with less likelihood of the gastrointestinal effects that can come with magnesium oxide and some other forms.
As it enters the bloodstream, the magnesium and glycine separate, and each can help the body in their unique ways.
Now as I demonstrated, magnesium bisglycinate chelate is not ideal for capsules. That’s why we made the TrueMagnesium drink powder.
Each scoop gives you 200 mg of magnesium, and with 60 servings in each canister, you can take one or two a day, depending on your needs.
Yours for Good Health,
Carl Pradelli
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