Ben Greenfield explains why most magnesium supplements don't work. A rat study showed raising brain magnesium boosted synapses and plasticity, but translating that into effective human supplements has proven difficult. The problem is bioavailability: commercial products fail to reach the brain magnesium levels needed for those benefits.
In fact, our early animal experiment, when we found we could increase the synapse number and the plasticity, is we actually humanized the concentration of magnesium in, for rats, which means originally they are very low. We actually artificially elevated rats' brain magnesium level to human level. Suddenly we found, oh my God, there's a lot more synapse and each synapse are more plastic. So that actually is the initial early trigger for me to say, wait a minute, this is exciting. By 25 years old, I think that's, you know, although my other colleagues think the magnesium is not exciting, for me, I say that must be important. After screening many, many compounds, we found something extremely simple. That is just the magnesium ion, which is readily available anywhere. Is a powerful molecule that can increase the synapse number and also plasticity of each synapse.
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