You need to be taking WAY more magnesium

Guys, what's going on? How are you doing? First of all, check out how long the hair is. I don't think I've ever had hair this long. I'm doing a hair growth maxing protocol and it's growing really fast. I got a haircut like a month and a half ago. But anyway, I wanted to make this a video accompaniment to the magnesium hypersaturation protocol just because there's a lot of nuance in this one in terms of how it's actually applied. And I find that I'm able to explain it a lot better when I'm actually Talking about it as opposed to writing it. So, you know, biggest thing with the Magnesium Maxing Protocol, this hyper-saturated nutrient protocol, is the thesis. And the thesis is that we are using so much magnesium and our absorption is so inherently limited given the state of our gastrointestinal system and the cofactors required for the cofactor, which is magnesium, that recommended daily allowances really aren't moving the needle much. So we all know that most people aren't reaching the RDA anyway, and we all know that most people need to be taking magnesium. And my argument is that that's still understating the problem. And this is coming from someone who, like, I've taken magnesium for a really long time. That's like the first supplement that I took was magnesium glycinate that I got from Costco. But it really never moved the needle for me other than just like being like, yeah, this is something that I need. And this is something that I obviously, you know, benefit from taking. And it really changed when I started getting curious. When I started getting curious and when I started getting into orthomolecularism, which is this concept of using vitamins and minerals not as a daily supplement but as an actual therapeutic tool. And this is the same vein that has brought us things like vitamin B1 therapy. Elliot Overton really brought to the forefront This orthomolecular approach and orthomolecular utilization of something as seemingly mundane as vitamin B1 or thiamine. So we're kind of applying the same principle to magnesium, and we're doing it in a way that makes the most sense to truly create deep saturation. Now, the reason that I started with this hypersaturation protocol was not necessarily because I thought that I was inherently chronically deeply deficient. deficient in magnesium, it was quite frankly because my nervous system was shot and my nervous system was what needed a deep reset. And I found the one tool that made the most sense in terms of long-lasting and truly deep-cutting nervous system reset was the GABAergic and NMDA-modulating effects of magnesium. And the seeming mechanistic benefits that would come from saturating my brain cells With this mineral and the impact that it would have on some of these transport channels that would hopefully create a dampening switch on my nervous system. For context, like, I've had probably the craziest last year, year and a half of issues related to mold. And, you know, I'm kind of grateful for it because it's completely changed my concept and understanding of health as a whole and realizing how much of a factor the nervous system plays And all of this in these feedback loops. And the reason being, why is everyone getting so sick and why is everyone having so many problems? Realizing that the nervous system component is debatably one of, if not the largest component, and how it actually becomes very quickly a neurochemical thing as opposed to just a psychological thing. So anyway, reasons why we need more magnesium than we think. It really comes down to this thing that we always talk about, which is the nature of our environment. This fact that we have these keystone minerals and these keystone functions, effectively like keystone species in an environment, right? When an environment starts to get polluted, we can tell like how polluted an environment is by how many canaries die, right? Or the frogs. The frogs are a keystone species. You want to assess the health of this pond, You look at the health of the frogs. With us and in our bodies, we have similar keystone minerals and nutrient deficiencies that kind of take the brunt and they're indicative of the overall thrivingness of our environment, our internal environment. Additionally, we have like the keystone organelle, which is the mitochondria. So we can assume just given the nature that we are all living in the same reality when it comes to our environment. Like we all spend a lot of time on our computers and our phones. We spend a lot of time stressed out for the most part. Yeah. We spend a lot of times indoors. We spend a lot of times eating pretty shitty food. And even if we try to avoid it, we really can't, right? We can't fully avoid it. So magnesium is one of those keystone things that becomes depleted because it's pretty much involved in every biological process. The typical range of enzymatic reactions we believe magnesium to be a key component of is between 300 to 600. It started out at 300, and as we continue to do more research, we're realizing that it's actually critical in pretty much just about everything. And the most blatantly obvious one, and in my opinion, probably the most underrated one, is the fact that in order for your body to properly utilize ATP, it has to be bound to a magnesium molecule in the MgATP complex. Without this MgATP complex being readily available, you simply don't produce as much usable ATP Adenosine triphosphate, which is that end energetic byproduct that your body uses as energetic currency. So along with that, we have a bunch of other foundational factors of your body produces things by using not just the magnesium with that ATP, but the magnesium as a foundational synthesizer or enzyme or cofactor for those enzymes for producing things. So if your body wants to create one thing and turn it to another, magnesium's required. If your body wants to take food and turn it to muscle, magnesium is required. Take food, turn it to energy, magnesium is required. So it's just this currency that everyone's kind of running out of. The RDA is around 420 milligrams at the higher end for like bigger people. But we also need to keep in mind that like our thoughts really do impact our magnesium burn. So stress burns magnesium, right? And that's why I'm like, well, I'm— I've been so stressed out this whole year because my brain is shot and I have Functional brain damage from mold, which is crazy that that happens. And I'm still working through that whole hypothesis because it's way deeper than just, you know, a fungus. But anyway, try not to get distracted. Type A people burn significantly more magnesium than Type B people. There's this book called The Magnesium Factor that I read, and it really shone like a light. It shone a light on how How much of who we are is actually just how our body utilizes nutrients and how our body synthesizes chemicals. But Type A people burn way more magnesium. Anyone who's stressed out, anyone who's overstimulated, they'll burn more magnesium. The less stressed out you are, the more you utilize magnesium more effectively. So we create this vicious cycle where you get stressed, You burn through all of your magnesium, you run out of magnesium as a cofactor, and now you're more stressed because of that. And most importantly, you lose that shock absorber, which is magnesium, right? So magnesium acts as that shock absorber, and that's why I started this hypersaturation protocol, is because everything stressed me out. And when I say stressed me out, I don't mean like, oh, I'm so stressed. I mean I would have that sympathetic nervous system response. Bright lights, dark noise, or loud noises, fragrances. All these things were just immediately setting my nervous system off, and it put me into cell danger response, which I think you guys find really interesting. I'm currently working on my research on cell danger response, which I think is a core component of a lot of this. But anyway, yeah, so I'd grind my teeth every night, get overstimulated by every light, sound, and general disturbance. Too tired to work, but too wired to relax. I needed this derp. I needed this deep. Nervous system reset. So why may magnesium hypersaturation— can't speak this morning— why may magnesium hypersaturation be the move? So it's quite simple really. We're not getting enough. As I posted a little bit about magnesium, a lot of people were saying things like, but my serum magnesium's great, you know, my serum magnesium shows that there's no problem. And quite frankly, this is the biggest gripe that I have with traditional serum labs, right? The labs that you get when you go to the doctor is that they give you false positives. Like serum magnesium reflects about 0.3% of your total body magnesium. Most of your magnesium stored in your tissues, right? That's the point is like we're trying to saturate your tissues. Some people argue they're like, well, like it'll show representatively how much magnesium is in there given like the confines of the ranges. But you got to understand your body puts a lot of effort into keeping circulating magnesium at that threshold level. So it's going to be pulling magnesium from your bones, it's going to be pulling magnesium from your tissues to keep that serum magnesium at that threshold that it's going for. So I think I mentioned that in the article, you know, your body is aggressively stripping magnesium from your bone and muscle to keep you stable. Now moving forward, I want to talk about upper limits because I'm always very concerned about that. I'm always wanting to make sure that I'm not reaching upper level limits, that I'm not creating more problems. than solutions. And this is why I really focused on the compounds that you should be taking with magnesium when doing this protocol. One, for efficiency, for increasing the actual utilization and absorption of magnesium. But 2, I just really wanted to go deep and look at the potential pitfalls that we may have if we're taking a supraphysiological dose of something, because that's just, you know, common etiquette. So the upper limit, if we look up, you know, tolerable upper intake level at 350 milligrams elemental a day, That is based around gastrointestinal stress. That's pretty much like how much magnesium can you take before you shit your brains out. Now we got to keep in mind that different magnesium sources have different absorption rates and they have different impacts on your gastrointestinal system. So when we're looking at magnesium, we're specifically using forms that are very well tolerated and are not going to give you side effects. And I've kind of looked all over in terms of what magnesium sources are not going to destroy your gut because we don't want that osmotic response where you're pulling water into your intestines. That can happen with magnesium, especially magnesium citrate. And what it comes down to really is what is that magnesium molecule bound to via chelation. So the best one that I've personally found for gastrointestinal support is a fully dual-chelated magnesium glycinate. You have 1 magnesium bound to 2 glycine molecules, and we find that this compound really increases its absorption. It increases its tolerance, but I personally like it because if we can have that magnesium ride those glycine molecules and become absorbed potentially through those amino acid transport chains, we know how relaxing We know how good glycine is for regulating your nervous system. Why not give it a one-two punch and get some magnesium in there? And this really is like, this is the same thing as the Trojan horse, right? The Trojan horse of, you know, biology is just finding out how we can take molecules and piggyback them onto other molecules and get them into places that would otherwise make them very difficult to get into. And that's why magnesium L-threonate is a really popular one because they're like, it's only one that can pass the blood-brain barrier and saturate those cells. I just find that, you know, it's great as a short-term nootropic compound. Like, I'll occasionally take it as a nootropic compound. A lot of people get headaches from it, but given the fact that magnesium glycinate exists, I'm not gonna spend up to get it. Another really cool form is sucrosomal magnesium. It's oftentimes called MicroMag. And the difference with sucrosomal magnesium compared to Dead Sea magnesium— or sorry, magnesium glycinate— that's Or Neuromag, which is magnesium L-threonate, Magtein, is that instead of binding a magnesium or chelating a magnesium to some novel amino acid and using that as its transport differential and using that as its gastrointestinal tolerance differential, we're actually creating a sucrosomal structure around the magnesium, right? So it changes the delivery by effectively protecting it from the gut, right? It's like an enteric coating of a magnesium molecule. So if you really have impaired absorption, that's when magnesium or sucrosomal magnesium actually really makes sense. Another one too is magnesium malate. And magnesium malate is magnesium combined to malic acid. And malic acid is a Krebs cycle intermediate, right? So the Krebs cycle, we're talking about ATP production, that is the cycle by which your body or the citric acid cycle is what it's also oftentimes called, which your body produces ATP. So if we're using something that interjects itself in this cylinder of ATP production, there is a theory that we could potentially interject some magnesium in there. And remember, magnesium is involved at multiple enzymatic turning points within that ATP production as well as the finished product. So the more magnesium we can saturate in there, it's like saturating A piston valve with oil, right? If we can inject more fuel into that, you know, the better it's going to combust and produce. A big thing to watch out for is magnesium oxide. There is a role for this special form of like O7 oxygenated magnesium, and that's for being a laxative. But there's many laxatives on the market, and that's not what we're going for here. We're going for the opposite. Magnesium oxide has like 4% bioavailability. 500 milligram oxide capsule delivers about 20 milligrams of usable magnesium. There's a reason it's super cheap. Really, what I recommend is just going through and choosing the one that vibes the most with you, right? And then doing that for about 80% of your intake and then using the other 20% to cover your bases. And I really apply that to most things, right? It's like we want that 20% novelty factor just because we don't know what we don't know and because there is benefits of interjecting new things. It's no different than, you know, fat or meat, right? 80% of my diet at any given time will be one form of meat, typically red meat. And then I'll be interjecting that with, you know, bison, venison, chicken. So 80/20, as always, how you do one thing is how you do all things. And if you can create frameworks for your life that apply everywhere, that really saves you a lot of time. We as humans have a finite amount of reality comprehension, we're always just projecting. And that's why we love frameworks and mental models is because that allows us to just make decisions. So magnesium taurate, I really like magnesium taurate as well. Once again, favorite amino acid taurine, bind magnesium to it, allow that taurine to effectively direct that magnesium to where you're going. Double relaxing effect, double cardiovascular in particular relaxing effect. So this one's really good for people who want cardiovascular support, maybe have palpitations or have stress with the cardiovascular component where you really notice your stress physiologically. So anyway, let's talk about how to actually take it. I think this is the most important nuance. So as I mentioned, we're not megadosing, we're hypersaturating because absorption efficiency drops so rapidly when we're talking about magnesium. If you take 100 milligrams of magnesium right now, about 40 to 70% is being absorbed. And with the other compounds that I include in this protocol, That will increase that up to hopefully 70%. That's the goal. We want maximum magnesium absorption per milligram consumed. So, assuming that we're doing well, let's say 65% is absorbed at 100 milligrams. At 200 milligrams, 35 to 60%. 400 milligrams, 25 to 50%. At 1,000 milligrams, we have 10 to 30% absorption. So, you're probably reaching that gastrointestinal threshold and you are hitting that absorption threshold. So, You're kind of just burning through magnesium for no reason at all. And I'm a pretty savvy guy, I don't like wasting. Additionally, we have to look at how magnesium is actually utilized. It's not like one of these fat-soluble vitamins where it can be stored for extended periods of time. Magnesium is constantly being used. As I mentioned, a lot of it's being shuttled to your tissues and it— your body constantly needs a circulating amount of magnesium to go and effectively donate to every single one of these functions that it's constantly doing in the body. So we want to mimic that in our supplementation. We don't want to just blow your stomach up with magnesium once a day. That's just nonsensical. We want to do the magnesium drip method. I call it magnesium drip because what I used to do is I would take like a 1-liter glass bottle and I'd put all of my magnesium in it for the day as well as with other minerals. And I called it like a mineral drip. And throughout the day, all I had to do was finish that. Now obviously, the more minerals you have, the more it's gonna taste like minerals and it's gonna become unpalatable pretty quickly. But I would just mix it with juice. I would mix it with yerba mate. Put it in anything that I'd be taking or I'd take a swig of it throughout the day. Now what I do is I'll typically just keep like a blister pack of magnesium on me and like once an hour, I'll just take 80 milligrams. 80 milligrams, 80 milligrams, 80 milligrams, 80 milligrams. I do that literally 10 times a day and I'm at 800 milligrams of Elemental. So that's one way to do it. And really, if you do that properly, you can maintain 60% plus absorption rate, which is really impressive. So I wouldn't do big single doses. And the second reason why I wouldn't do big single doses is because if you have sensitive neurochemistry like me, if I take magnesium glycinate before bed, I used to, At least before my body acclimated to it, I would become almost a little bit groggy in the morning. It would be like a little bit weird just because of the GABAergic effect it has. It was almost like paradoxical at times. And that happens to me if I take lemon balm, that happens to me if I take just about anything GABAergic. So circling, cycling throughout the day avoids this spiking of your neurochemistry a little bit. Given, I mean, like it's not a spike, it's more of a blunt. And this is kind of what I mentioned in terms of side effects. To look out for, right? Because everyone's gonna respond differently. One of those side effects is like a paradoxical anxiety response. So if you do get that paradoxical anxiety response, you can expect it for a few days. If it gets really bad, chill out. If it's like unsavory after a few days, lower your dose and reapproach. We kind of wanna like ease our way up. It's always about keeping in that Goldilocks zone. Now, in terms of keeping in that Goldilocks zone and avoiding problems, there are some that we can and probably should take. The first one is vitamin B6. Pyroxidine 5-phosphate specifically is a form that will be less problematic and better absorption. It's required for magnesium transport into cells, right? So we don't want magnesium sitting in the gut. We don't want magnesium sitting in your serum. We want magnesium to cross cell membranes effectively, and P5P is pretty essential for that. The problem with high-dose B6 is is that too much can create a certain level of peripheral nerve damage, which we really don't want. So I'm pretty cautious about this, at least when I'm telling people about it, just because, you know, that is a risk that is involved. I haven't seen anyone personally get it, but we know that it, it is a, a risk. So I keep that to 25 milligrams a day exclusively when in this protocol. Now, one way to look at this too is a lot of people, they just take supplement every single day and they think that they're being good and consistent, which I applaud them for, but it's actually good to miss out on days. I purposefully miss out on days when I'm taking stuff. Like, I don't wake up and I'm like, I gotta take my supplements. I wake up and I'm like, it will benefit me to not take this a few days a week. It'll benefit me to forget to take this for a few days. So always be cycling. You know what they say, ABC, always be cycling. Vitamin D3. I mean, this is kind of just one of those things where it's like, Magnesium is required to activate vitamin D3. D3 in turn enhances magnesium absorption. If we have this synergistic component, let's make sure that we are getting some vitamin D3 in there. Get it from sunlight if you can, full-body sunlight preferably. I'm actually not opposed to vitamin D3 supplementation. People are like, oh, cholecalciferol is rat poisoning. And I'm like, yeah, but water is nuclear reactor coolant. So, just because it's used for something, doesn't mean that it's bad. I just think that that's really sophomoric thinking. And also, just look at the literature and look at the outcomes. Even if we were using the worst form of vitamin D3 and the literature is still showing that it's this beneficial, maybe something's there. I think it's the same with ascorbic acid. Everyone's like, oh, ascorbic acid isn't even vitamin C. It's like, okay, cool. But all the literature actually shows that high-dose vitamin C really does seem to have some pretty revolutionary therapeutic implications. So even if it is the shittiest form, that's a pretty good sign. So honestly, like, get your serum D3 25 vitamin D checked. Target kind of 50 to 70 nanograms over milliliter. Really, like, that 60 ng/mL mark is ideal. If you're taking vitamin D3, you probably want to take vitamin K2, preferably as MK-7. This is going to stop soft tissue calcification that may come with vitamin D3 supplementation. Boron, super underrated in general, but when we're talking about increasing absorption, boron might be the GOAT here. Boron cut urinary magnesium excretion by roughly 40%. Not a huge study, it was a pretty narrow population, but the downside is basically zero. Worst-case scenario, you decalcify your pineal gland and you get stronger bones and And you get a little bit of a free testosterone boost from its SHBG-lowering effects. I love boron, I'm not gonna lie. You're putting a lot of effort into loading your magnesium in, so we're trying to plug those drains. And then finally, if you're taking an electrolyte, you wanna be taking all the electrolytes. So electrolytes are like legs on a table. So we have sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium. If we're taking magnesium, we're raising this table leg, everything else on top is gonna be imbalanced. So we wanna keep that balance. Anyway, my phone's about to die, so let's talk about how I'm actually doing it. I'm pretty much doing it by every morning I wake up and I have a salted coconut water with a good amount of magnesium in it, and I sip that for like 30 minutes in the morning while I'm eating a bunch of fruit. And quite frankly, I'm front-loading a lot of sodium with it. And like realistically, I typically take magnesium malate. Like sometimes I'll just go and I'll take magnesium glycinate just because I prefer the capsule form. Midday, once again, I'm doing magnesium glycinate again. Like I said, I just keep that blister pack on me. And to make it easy, I kind of broke it down morning, midday, evening. In reality, like, I'm taking 80 milligrams as opposed to what I have on the protocol, which is 160. I'm just taking 80 milligrams twice. So I'm just taking it throughout the day. I typically have my boron in the morning. I usually just have like that one mineral drip water in the morning, and I have that like throughout the day. So first few days, I'm hitting 600 milligrams elemental. That's actually like easy work if you're spreading it out. Days 4 to 7, 900 milligrams elemental. And then days 8 to 21 is full loading. I've gone up to 1.2 grams. Some people can go up more. Some people would actually be better off just staying at 900 and 800. That's up to you to decide. Remember, like, don't just do things because people say so. Use your gut and use your intuition on this one. But yeah, I'm literally just taking magnesium all day. It's quite easy. Let's talk about the adjuncts, right? These are high ROI adjuncts. Magnesium chloride spray, number 1. Just grab some magnesium chloride, put it in a spray bottle, shake it up with some distilled water, spray that shit everywhere. I hate it because it's sticky, but I'll do it before I work out outside or go for a run, and I'll do it when I go in the sauna. And man, it's, it's the best. Like, talk about real physiological relaxation. It's incredible. Spray it everywhere. Like, literally everywhere. You know what I'm saying? Spray it literally everywhere. We want to specifically focus on areas that have a lot of sweat glands or hair follicles because those are the The entryways, right? Like transdermal absorption is kind of meh, but those entryways are undisputed. So spray underarms, down there, back of the neck, top of your scalp too. Really, really solid. Coconut water daily. Like let's get that potassium in. Coconut water, cream of tartar is pretty much just like a potassium supplement. So that's an option. I drink a liter of Gerolsteiner every day. That also has like 20% of your RDA of magnesium and calcium. That's 6 milligrams of boron. And then some salt baths if you're really feeling it. If you're a bath guy, I'm not a huge bath guy. Just because I find it relatively— it takes a long time and it's kind of wasteful in my opinion. But sometimes I'll find like good deals on just a boatload of Epsom salt and I'll be like, okay, well I have so much, I might as well use it. But anyway, those are kind of the adjuncts. And then the saturation and hold, which is the phase 2, I find it beneficial to just find like your Goldilocks zones. For me, it's about 600 to 800 milligrams of Elemental, and I'll just kind of ride that for a few weeks. You know, I'll ride that for a few weeks, I'll ride it for a month. I'll taper off for a few days, but I've kind of been enjoying just hitting that 600 milligram mark. Like I said, I come back to glycinate for simplicity. It's up to you. Some people are not going to respond to glycinate well. So anyway, guys, my phone's about to die, but hopefully this was cool or beneficial or at the very least enjoyable. But anyway, bye.