Key Takeaways…
- There are no known contraindications between melatonin and magnesium together.
- Most contraindications come from pharmaceutical drugs taken together
- Both melatonin and magnesium are a powerful combination for sleep
- When you combine these two supplements with blocking blue light, magic happens.
Question: Can You Take Melatonin and Magnesium Together For Sleep?
Short Answer: Yes
The medical industrial complex has programmed our minds since we were children.
I remember commercials telling me to go “talk with my doctor” about some medication. I always had an issue with that. Because clearly the medical industrial complex is a “for profit” business. Making money is what they do.
It doesn’t seem likely that you would actually go to your doctor and the doctor would tell you to avoid medications now does it? How do they know that every doctor will do what they’re told and tell their patients that taking medication is a good thing?
They must have a whole lot of trust to run commercials that make it sound like your doctor is a source for unbiased information.
You know why the “system” has that trust in doctors to always say the right thing? It’s their medical license. If the doctor does not follow the “standard of care” or as I call it the “standard of scare” then they could lose their license and their entire career.
They have a lot of debt to pay off and lots of ongoing expenses. They have an incentive to keep the whole thing going.
This is why your doctor might give lip service to taking melatonin or magnesium for sleep but it will not be something they get very excited about.
The real answer is that both melatonin and magnesium are wonderful natural supplements you can take at the same time before you go to bed.
Understanding Contraindications:
Drugs
A really high percentage of pharmaceutical mediations are synthesized from nature. So nature is the source of most all drugs on the market today. The actual number is about 70%. The problem is when a natural product becomes “synthesized”.
According to Better Health Channel…
“Synthetic drugs (or new psychoactive substances (NPS), aim to mimic the effects of existing illicit drugs (such as cannabis, cocaine, MDMA and LSD). Synthetic drugs have different chemical structures from the illicit substances they are trying to mimic.”
How Does a Drug Become Synthetic?
What scientists will do is isolate one particular plant alkaloid knowing it has some kind of biological effect. Once the alkaloid is isolated from all of the other buffering compounds found in the plant material, then they’ll need to multiply that alkaloid by thousands of times. Since it wouldn’t be cost effective to extract the amount of plant material necessary for the alkaloids needed, they’ll simply recreate the chemical structure of that original plant alkaloid in a lab.
So it’ll be chemically similar, but not the same. This is where the plant gets synthesized from plant to chemical and then turned into a medication that a drug company can profit from. The company did all the work of figure out exactly how to synthesize it and what strength they should make it. This is how plants become patented medications with 1,000 percent markups.
We discussed how plant alkaloids are synthesized but we didn’t talk about how isolating them from the buffering compounds is one of the main issues with contraindications of drugs. You see the synthesizing part is one thing, but the isolation part is never found in nature.
Nature always provides buffering compounds and alkaloids in their perfect structure and ratio. It’s like the perfect color temperature, wavelength and frequency of the sun.
Even though we can make lightbulbs we cannot mimic the exact frequency of the sun. There are bulbs that try to do this and they’re much healthier.
Nature is incredible how it’s setup. There are vitamins, minerals, enzymes and other compounds in an orange that we haven’t’ even discovered yet.
When you remove one natural constituent from all the other compounds, create a chemical version of it and multiply its strength by a thousand times, you’re going to have issues. This is the exact reason why taking two medications at the same time could have massive side effects….or as I call them effects.
Did you know there have been zero long term studies analyzing the side effects of multiple drugs taken at the same time?
Natural Substances
Supplements are made entirely differently. First most of them are not isolated but some are. Vitamin C would be an example. There’s “whole food” vitamin c and ascorbic acid. Ascorbic acid does not contain the P-factors, J-factors, the flavonoids and tyrosinase (which is an enzyme necessary for copper to be loaded into a key protein called ceruloplasmin).
Even if a supplement is isolated, it’s not synthesized, made in a lab and concentrated 1,000 times to get a result.
Since natural supplements aren’t synthesized in a lab, most of them can be combined with each other with almost zero harm. The reason is natural supplements are closer to nature.
Melatonin For Sleep
The first thing to note about melatonin is that it’s not a sleeping pill. I don’t recommend taking sleep medications, as they can be extremely dangerous. Melatonin is a very powerful antioxidant and mostly it is a circadian rhythm regulator. It’s classified as a soporific meaning that it can induce sleep. But really what it’s doing is pulling you closer to what your circadian rhythms should be.
Melatonin is bringing you back to normal. Think of walking a dog and it keeps veering off to the right or left of the leash. You have to gently tug and nudge the leash to bring the dog back onto the pathway you’re walking. That pathway is your circadian rhythm.
Melatonin helps you get back on that path.
There are natural ways to get you back on that path. The most natural way is watching the sunrise (UVA light from morning sun helps create melatonin and set your circadian rhythm for that day) and blocking blue light during the day.
Exposure to blue light causes melatonin suppression so you’ll want to continue to block blue light leading into early evening using blue blocking glasses or getting special bulbs that do not suppress melatonin in your body.
Melatonin can be taken during the day or night. It can be taken in doses in the thousands of milligrams. I don’t generally recommend taking melatonin during the day. I would only take it during the day if I had a chronic disease going on.
For more information about melatonin there are two really good books that I would recommend. One is called Melatonin: Miracle Molecule. The other book is called Melatonin: Breakthrough Discoveries.
Biological Pathways
Melatonin gets synthesized in your pineal gland through the amino acid tryptophan. Melatonin is also created in every cell of the body, not just the pineal gland. It is regulated by the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus in your brain which is the master clock in your body. It is a self regulating hormone that requires a lifetime of study to understand.
It is mainly regulated by diurnal light and dark cycles.
Magnesium For Sleep
Magnesium is the most important mineral in the human body. There is not another mineral that carries out more actions. It’s required for just about everything to happen. It’s hard to find at least one biological process that doesn’t require magnesium.
Magnesium is known as the “relaxation mineral”. Your body has anywhere from 9000 to 1300 enzymes in it depending on who you read. Magnesium itself runs 3,751 of those 1300 enzymes. This means one mineral, magnesium is responsible for running 42% of your metabolism.
Magnesium is the first mineral lost due to stress. The amount of stress we’re under today is unlike any other time in human history. It’s no wonder that roughly 75% of the population is magnesium deficient.
Magnesium is necessary to
- Donate electrons
- Reduce oxidative stress
- Relax muscles
- Prepare to sleep
- Convert thyroid hormone T4 to active thyroid hormone T3 in your liver
- Create vitamin d from the sun
- Chelate heavy metals
- Create adenosine triphosphate (ATP – energy) in complex 4 of the electron transport chain in your mitochondria called cytochrome c oxidase
- and thousands of other necessary biological processes
Because of all this, and modern stress levels, we’re always low on it.
How I Take Magnesium For Sleep
It is possible to take too much magnesium, If you do, you’ll notice digestive issues and possibly diarrhea. For daily supplementation I recommend starting out with around 300mg per day. I recommend making sure you’re getting magnesium from food.
Foods high in magnesium are..
- Cacao
- Pumpkin seeds
- Spinach
- Almonds
- Black beans
If you can squeeze at least 1 to 2 of these foods into your diet daily, along with the magnesium supplement with your meals, you’re off to the races. What I also recommend is also doing transdermal magnesium applications 2 x per day. I do them after breakfast but before lunch. Then I do another 3 to 5 sprays after lunch but before dinner.
I use this magnesium spray but you can also try this one from Dr. Norman Shealy if you do not like it.
Do whatever works for you.
Getting magnesium in your water is another delivery mechanism. I like to add either Calm or Remag to my 96 oz of water that I sip on throughout the day.
The last piece when it comes to transdermal magnesium application is doing a magnesium bath. These are incredible for getting the magnesium to soak in through the pores of your skin. If you’re doing a magnesium bath make sure you sit in there for at least 20 to 30 minutes in the warmest water possible.
I usually do magnesium baths more in the Fall and Winter when it’s colder. But make sure, you have no blue lights (use these bulbs instead) in your bathroom to disrupt your circadian rhythms. The whole point of doing a a magnesium bath is to help you go to sleep.
How I Combine Magnesium & Melatonin
I only supplement melatonin on days that I watch the sunrise (which is every day). I make melatonin endogenously by getting AM sun and protecting my eyes and skin from blue light during the day. I normally go to bed around 10pm (or before if I can). Right now I’m taking 50 mg of melatonin around 9pm. During the Winter months I go to bed earlier so I’ll shift my melatonin to about 8 or 8:30.
If I’m at my parents house or a friends house under blue light (always wearing my blue blockers of course) I’ll take my melatonin when I get home when my skin isn’t exposed to blue light. There’s a very specific way to take melatonin that you need to know in order for it to work.
I’ll supplement magnesium during the day and eat magnesium rich foods. I’ll apply the transdermal magnesium spray (5 sprays 2 times per day) and then take a magnesium bath right before bed.
The combination of magnesium, melatonin and blocking blue light is incredibly powerful for helping to fall asleep.
Conclusion
All of this can seem like a lot and it can seem complicated. Yes I take melatonin and magnesium together every day. My body makes it so supplementing with it is in alignment with natures cycles. If I were dealing with insomnia or other sleep issues, I would try these 3 things and see if they help. But make sure to take melatonin correctly.
Since melatonin is altered by light it will not work if you take 10mg of melatonin and then watch a movie on Netflix. You must remove all blue light from your home (either through glasses or lightbulbs) in order for melatonin to actually work.
For some insomnia sufferers this tri-fecta could be the solution. For others with more serious circadian rhythm issues, it might not solve your sleep issue but it could significantly reduce symptoms.
Questions:
- Have you tried magnesium for sleep? Did it work?
- Have you tried melatonin for sleep? Did it work?
- Have you combined melatonin, blocking blue light and magnesium?
- What have been your results?
Comment below.
