Which Magnesium? (And: When?)

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

In A Rush?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Magnesium is a mineral in which deficiency is very common (people are often not big fans of eating green leafy things)

  • Today’s main feature examines some of the popular kinds of magnesium supplements available, and assesses their relative usefulness

• Being unable to easily participate in spoken conversations is not just an inconvenience; it’s also a [causal, fixable] risk factor for age-related cognitive decline.

  • Today’s sponsor, Hear.com, are offering the most cutting-edge dual-processing technology in hearing aids that isolate and separate speech from background noise, now with their latest most advanced device yet!

• Today’s featured recipe is an all-healthy, fiber-rich, nutrient-packed, anti-inflammatory pineapple fried rice.

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

A Word To The Wise

Watch and Learn

The Best Menopause Advice You Don’t Want To Hear About

Nutritionist and perimenopause coach Claudia Canu, whom we’ve featured before in our Expert Insights segment, has advice:

Prefer text? The above video will take you to a 10almonds page with a text-overview, as well as the video!

Q&A Thursday

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small 😎

❝Good morning! I have been waiting for this day to ask: the magnesium in my calcium supplement is neither of the two versions you mentioned in a recent email newsletter. Is this a good type of magnesium and is it efficiently bioavailable in this composition? I also take magnesium that says it is elemental (oxide, gluconate, and lactate). Are these absorbable and useful in these sources? I am not interested in taking things if they aren’t helping me or making me healthier. Thank you for your wonderful, informative newsletter. It’s so nice to get non-biased information❞

Thank you for the kind words! We certainly do our best.

For reference: the attached image showed a supplement containing “Magnesium (as Magnesium Oxide & AlgaeCal® l.superpositum)”

Also for reference: the two versions we compared head-to-head were these very good options:

Magnesium Glycinate vs Magnesium Citrate – Which is Healthier?

Let’s first borrow from the above, where we mentioned: magnesium oxide is probably the most widely-sold magnesium supplement because it’s cheapest to make. It also has woeful bioavailability, to the point that there seems to be negligible benefit to taking it. So we don’t recommend that.

As for magnesium gluconate and magnesium lactate:

• Magnesium lactate has very good bioavailability and in cases where people have problems with other types (e.g. gastrointestinal side effects), this will probably not trigger those.

• Magnesium gluconate has excellent bioavailability, probably coming second only to magnesium glycinate.

The “AlgaeCal® l.superpositum” supplement is a little opaque (and we did notice they didn’t specify what percentage of the magnesium is magnesium oxide, and what percentage is from the algae, meaning it could be a 99:1 ratio split, just so that they can claim it’s in there), but we can say Lithothamnion superpositum is indeed an algae and magnesium from green things is usually good.

Except…

It’s generally best not to take magnesium and calcium together (as that supplement contains). While they do work synergistically once absorbed, they compete for absorption first so it’s best to take them separately. Because of magnesium’s sleep-improving qualities, many people take calcium in the morning, and magnesium in the evening, for this reason.

❝How about providing a plant-based alternative when you post meat-based recipes? I appreciate how much you advocate for veggie diets and think offering an alternative with your recipes would support that❞

Glad you’re enjoying! And yes, we do usually do that. But: pardon, we missed one (the Tuna Steak with Protein Salad) because it’d be more than a simple this-for-that substitution, we didn’t already have an alternative recipe up (as with the salmon recipes such as the Chili Hot-Bedded Salmon and Thai Green Curry Salmon Burgers).

Our recipes, by the way, will tend towards being vegan, vegetarian, or at least pescatarian. This is for several reasons:

• Good science suggests the best diet for general purpose good health is one that is mostly plants, with optional moderate amounts of fermented dairy products, fish, and/or eggs.

• Your writer here (it’s me, hi) has been vegan for many years, transitioning to such via pescatarianism and ovo-lacto vegetarianism, and so the skill of cooking meat is least fresh in my memory, meaning I’d not be confident writing about that, especially as cooking meat has the gravest health consequences for messing it up.

Note on biases: notwithstanding this writer being vegan, we at 10almonds are committed to reporting the science as it stands with no agenda besides good health. Hence, there will continue to be unbiased information about animal products’ health considerations, positive as well as negative.

See also: Do We Need Animal Products To Be Healthy?

…as well as, of course, some animal-based classics from our archives including:

We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of & Eggs: All Things In Moderation?

Finishing with one for the vegans though, you might enjoy:

Which Plant Milk? We Compare 6 Of The Most Popular

❝Could you address dry needling, who should administer it, and could it be a remedy for meralgia paresthetica? If not, could you speak to home-based remedies for meralgia paresthetica? Thank you?❞

We’ll need to take a main feature some time to answer this one fully, but we will say some quick things here:

• Dry needling, much like acupuncture, has been found to help with pain relief.

• Meralgia paresthetica, being a neuropathy, may benefit from some things that benefit people with peripheral neuropathy, such as lion’s mane mushroom. There is definitely not research to support this hypothesis yet though (so far as we could find anyway; there is plenty to support lion’s mane helping with nerve regeneration in general, but nothing specific for meralgia paresthetica).

Some previous articles you might enjoy meanwhile:

• Pinpointing The Usefulness Of Acupuncture

• Science-Based Alternative Pain Relief

• Peripheral Neuropathy: How To Avoid It, Manage It, Treat It

• What Does Lion’s Mane Actually Do, Anyway?

Take care!

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This Or That?

Vote on Which is Healthier

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You May Have Missed

• The Menopause Manifesto (book)

• The Off-Button For Your Brain

• The Five Key Traits Of Aging Healthily

Recipes Worth Sharing

Anti-Inflammatory Pineapple Fried Rice

Fried rice is not most people’s go-to when one thinks of health food, but this one is. It’s packed with plenty of nutrients, many of which are anti-inflammatory, but the real star is the pineapple (with its high bromelain content and thus particularly potent benefits).

Click below for our full recipe, and learn its secrets:

Penny For Your Thoughts?

Wishing you a day of healthy happiness today and every day,

The 10almonds Team