Does magnesium help you sleep? With billions of dollars spent every year on sleep aids and the best sleep apps, it’s a valid question as we search for a restful night that also helps our body recover. Sleep is vital for overall health, but many of us aren’t getting enough of it. Among a long list, work, family responsibilities, anxiety and stress play major roles in keeping us from getting the sleep we need. The question is, can the best magnesium supplement help us out or is this just hype?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly half of all Americans say they feel sleepy during the day and 35.2% report sleeping less than seven hours a night, the recommended amount for the average adult. Not getting enough sleep isn’t just a nuisance, it is associated with health problems, such as chronic diseases, mental illness, obesity and depression.

Many of us turn to sleep aids for help: whether that’s on prescription or from the ever-growing number of over-the-counter products available. Along with melatonin and diphenhydramine, magnesium has joined the ranks of natural sleep aids said to provide people with a restful night’s sleep.

How effective is magnesium for sleep?

Magnesium is a mineral believed to be used for more than 300 functions of the body and plays an important role in bone structure. Your nervous system, muscle regulation, blood sugar levels, and more, all require magnesium to function. Magnesium rich foods include leafy green vegetables, legumes (peas and lentils), bananas, whole grains, avocados, nuts and dark chocolate. It is also in seeds, including sunflower and pumpkin.

A clinical trial of 46 elderly subjects (half of whom were given a placebo, the other half given 500 mg of magnesium for eight weeks) concluded that “supplementation of magnesium appears to improve subjective measures of insomnia”. The study, in the Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, suggested that those given magnesium during the trial period saw improvements in “sleep efficiency, sleep time and early morning awakening”.

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So, it may be tempting to search out the best magnesium supplements. However, there is still debate around their efficacy as sleep aids. While a small study supports it, another review of three randomized clinical trials had a different conclusion. A review in BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies compared oral magnesium to placebo in 151 older adults in three countries. The researchers concluded that evidence was “substandard for physicians to make well-informed recommendations on usage of oral magnesium for older adults with insomnia.”

Dr. Raj Dasgupta, a clinical associate professor of medicine at Keck Medicine, University of Southern California, who practises pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine, says: “The big question I always get is, ‘Is magnesium safe for sleep?' The short answer is, in essence, yes.”