Natural Calm

I am not one to endorse products unless they're good, but ever since I have been taking this I have been sleeping better than I ever have before. I usually take a teaspoon or two dissolved in water before I go to bed, and it really helps knock me out. It works better than melatonin, 5-htp, or any other sleep aid I've tried. It's got a good flavor, too.

 

PR, what does it have in it?
Besides magnesium.

 

Magnesium.

It's sweetened with stevia.

 

I was slow with my edit. I take slo-mag and a calcium supplement to help with sleep. They are not in powder form though. I might give Natural Calm a try.

 

I used to take Calm. I don't remember it helping me with sleep, but also I don't remember having sleep issues back then. I don't even remember why I was taking it. I know tons of other people who were taking it too. I guess just to be calm.

 

PR, just now saw the label you posted. Slo mag is magnesium chloride. Magnesium citrate might absorb better. Slo mag doesn't help me a whole lot.

 

Did it help you be more calm?

 

I don't have any experience with magnesium chloride, and don't really know much about that form of magnesium. However, the one form of magnesium you want to avoid is magnesium oxide, which is what most of the cheaper magnesium supplements are. It is pretty much worthless since it doesn't absorb. The prefered forms of magnesium are the chelated forms like magnesium citrate, glycinate, malate and orotate.

 

Thanks for the info.:2thumbsup:

 

I feel that magnesium is one of the more important supplements one can take. It's good for your cardiovascular system (it relaxes the blood vessels and the heart muscle), it keeps you regular with regard to bowel movements, it helps to regulate blood sugar levels, it ensures the proper formation of bones, and it helps reduce stress. It's like a natural anti-anxiety drug.

 

Yes...I think I took it for anxiety. I'm actually probably going to go out and get more when I go to the store, more for sleep now...I don't really have anxiety anymore.

 

yeah, i don't have the energy to not sleep for 10 hours naturally when i fall asleep anyway.

 

It's safer to get your magnesium from whole fresh foods. Consider not only the naturally occurring magnesium in the fresh foods you may be eating, but also the many processed foods that may already be fortified with magnesium, when you randomly introduce any supplement to your diet, you can end up inadvertently getting more than you need.


http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-and-supplements/lifestyle-guide-11/supplement-guide-magnesium

http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnesium-HealthProfessional/

The above link provides a table of natural foods and the milligrams of magnesium per serving

 

I think I know what I am doing. Also, it's very hard for someone to overdose on magnesium unless they take an awful lot. 400mg isn't going to kill someone. Magnesium is a water soluble mineral, and you will likely end up shitting most of it out long before it builds up to a level toxic enough to kill you.

Of course it's always best for a person to get most of their nutrients from whole, unprocessed foods. But it's not always possible to attain optimal levels of certain nutrients through food, just like it's not always possible to achieve optimal levels of vitamin D from sun exposure.

I see supplements as, like the name suggests, supplementation to healthy eating. Not supplementation in place of healthy eating. You can eat extremely healthy and still not be getting enough of certain nutrients, which can be blamed in part to the poor quality of soil a lot of food is grown in these days. Magnesium is one of those minerals a lot of people are deficient in.

Pretty much anything can be toxic if taken in a large enough amount.

 

Without a clinical assessment you are simply guessing...

http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnesium-HealthProfessional/


Assessing magnesium status is difficult because most magnesium is inside cells or in bone. The most commonly used and readily available method for assessing magnesium status is measurement of serum magnesium concentration, even though serum levels have little correlation with total body magnesium levels or concentrations in specific tissues . Other methods for assessing magnesium status include measuring magnesium concentrations in erythrocytes, saliva, and urine; measuring ionized magnesium concentrations in blood, plasma, or serum; and conducting a magnesium-loading (or "tolerance") test. No single method is considered satisfactory. Some experts but not others consider the tolerance test (in which urinary magnesium is measured after parenteral infusion of a dose of magnesium) to be the best method to assess magnesium status in adults. To comprehensively evaluate magnesium status, both laboratory tests and a clinical assessment might be required .

 

I am not getting your point. I am not suggesting people take mega doses of magnesium. When taken daily in an amount not exceeding 400mg, it is perfectly safe. I have not heard of anyone overdosing from taking the recommended amount of magnesium. Again, unlike some vitamins/minerals (vitamin D for instance), magnesium is a water soluble mineral and it doesn't accumulate in the body. It is readily excreted in the urine and feces. You will get the shits from taking too much magnesium long before you run the risk of going into cardiac arrest. There is a difference between taking one or two magnesium pills a day and taking half a bottle.

 

The point is, be aware that you could be taking more than you need.

Nutritional science is very new, and what they are finding recently is there is a subtle synergy between these micro-nutrients. If you take too much, or the wrong form, you risk upsetting the bodys balance.

Not too long ago zinc supps were a big fad, then they found too much zinc impedes the absorption of, coincidentally, magnesium.

Another was the mega-dose vitamin c fad. No one thought it dangerous because of the water solubility thing, they thought your body just eliminates out what it doesn't need. Then they discovered a couple that had developed what they now call 'rebound scurvy'
Their bodys had developed a dependance to the supplement, and when they stopped taking it, they began to develop symptoms of scurvy

Experiment with supps at your own risk.
Myself I will stick with eating a wide variety of fresh whole foods.

 

There are risks involved in just about everything you put into your body. Still, I would say that the risks involved in taking vitamin and mineral supplements pale when compared to the dangers of taking drugs used to treat high cholesterol and blood pressure, which are over-prescribed to millions of people every year.

Unless a person is haphazardly consuming large quantities of vitamins, I would say the risks are minimal. But then again it varies from person to person, so it is up to each individual to use discernment when dosing with vitamins or anything else.

Like I already stated, it is best for a person to get most of their vitamins and minerals from the food they eat, but with modern farming practices and poor soil quality, most food doesn't pack nearly the same nutritional benefits as it once used to. And if you are eating most of your food cooked, the cooking process depletes a lot of nutrients from the food, which is why, ideally, at least 75% of the food a person eats should be raw.

Finally, the whole "rebound scurvy" thing has been shown to be overblown and an extremely rare occurrence, since there have been many studies done involving mega-doses of vitamin C on thousands of people, and none of the people involved in those studies ever developed rebound scurvy once the vitamin treatments stopped.

Also, there is always lot of anti-vitamin rhetoric being published in magazines and medical journals, which I find to be rather interesting since often those same sources are quick to promote pharmaceutical drugs as the antidote to all of life's ills, despite how dangerous many of those drugs have proven to be.

 

You must be out of pot?

 

Why do you say that? I have cut way back on my pot consumption. When I have it, I have it. When I don't, I don't. I don't really think about it. But you are right, I have not had any pot today.

EDIT:

Oh, nevermind. I get it now. I think.