AMA #54: Magnesium: risks of deficiency, how to correct it, supplement options, potential cognitive and sleep benefits, and more

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
Hey, everyone, welcome to a sneak peek, Ask Me Anything or AMA episode of the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. At the end of this short episode, I'll explain how you can access the AMA episodes in full, along with a ton of other membership benefits we've created. Or you can learn more now by going to peterattiamd.com forward slash subscribe. So without further delay, here's today's sneak peek of the Ask Me Anything episode.
Welcome to Ask Me Anything AMA number 54 I'm once again joined by my cohost, Nick Stenson. In today's episode, we focus mainly on one thing, which is magnesium and magnesium supplementation. This is a supplement we get asked about a lot. In fact, it's certainly among the most asked about supplements. And I think that's because it exists in so many forms. There seems to be no limit to the amount of confusion surrounding this, and for that reason, we decided we probably need to do a dedicated podcast on this.
It's also one of the most common supplements that my patients take. In fact, I take three or four different forms of magnesium every day, and I get asked about it a lot. So I finally decided, let's have a deep discussion about it so people can understand it, because obviously if I'm taking that much of it, I must think it's pretty important.
In today's AMA, we speak about the role of magnesium in the body. It plays a very important role in so many processes. We talk about the three or four most important, and then of course, that leads to a very clear extension of, well, what are the negative aspects or the harms of magnesium deficiency? How do you know if somebody's magnesium deficient? We then talk about the various ways you can increase your magnesium levels, including through diet, but also through supplementation. From there, we dive deeper into the different types of magnesium supplements. And again, this might be the most important part of the discussion for people who don't really want to understand the physiology. They just want to know what to do. We end the discussion looking at the potential cognitive and sleep benefits of magnesium as well.
We then end the AMA with a quick discussion on a few new benchmarks I've been thinking about as it relates to exercise and age.
In particular, I've become really interested in understanding now that I'm 50, what I think I should be able to do relative to what I did when I was 40 or 30, and perhaps more importantly, how much longer I'll be able to do those things as I turn 55, 60, et cetera. This is just me musing on some things that I've been thinking a lot about, has nothing to do with magnesium. As always, if you're a subscriber and want to watch the full video of the podcast, you can find it on the show notes page. If you're not a subscriber, you can watch the sneak peek of the video on our YouTube page. So without further delay, I hope you enjoy AMA number 54

**Nick Stenson** (3:07)
Peter, welcome to another AMA.

**Peter Attia** (3:10)
Good. How are you?

**Nick Stenson** (3:11)
Doing good. I think we have a good one today. We get asked a lot about supplements, and I know it's not always your favorite subject to talk about, but we are actually dedicating this AMA to one type of supplement in particular, magnesium, magnesium, which we get a lot of questions about. I think there's a lot of confusion around. There's all these different types. There's all the different benefits. When do you use it? How much do you use it? How much is through food? How much is through an actual supplement?
And so we decided to compile all of those together and really hit them today. And I think the reason, if you're wondering why we're spending an entire AMA on it, is it's one of the most common supplements for patients in your practice.
You place a lot of emphasis on it for yourself and for your patients, and because of that, we decided to talk about it in detail today. And I think what might be helpful as we start this process for people is, at the simplest level, what is the role of magnesium in the body, and why does low magnesium matter? Why should people really care about this and listen to this full thing?

**Peter Attia** (4:21)
Yeah, everybody's heard of magnesium, as we'll talk about. There's no shortage of magnesium supplements out there. But in order to, I think, talk about this subject intelligently, it does help to set the stage and get into all the things magnesium does. Now, the reality of it is, magnesium is a cofactor in at least 300 enzymatic systems in the body. It is very important as a co-transporter for the movement of potassium and calcium across membranes. I guess maybe I'll say a little bit about that in a moment, but first, let me just give the high level. The three big systems where I think magnesium matters the most is with respect to bone health, with respect to nerve transmission, and with respect to glucose control and insulin metabolism. So again, there are lots of things. We could spend easily two or three hours just talking about what magnesium does. We're not going to do that. We're going to spend three minutes talking about that, but those would be the big three. So again, what is magnesium? All right, so magnesium is a cation. That means it's a positively charged ion. So it has two positive charges. And just like potassium is a cation with one positive charge and calcium is a cation with two positive charges, these things often have to move in opposition to each other. We'll talk about that in a moment with respect to nerve transmission.