Magnesium Oxide 420mg

What Is Magnesium Oxide?

Magnesium oxide is the simplest magnesium compound there is: one magnesium ion, one oxide ion, MgO. It is a white powder, the same material used in furnace brick and in laboratory chemistry. There are 420 mg of elemental magnesium per serving, from 750 mg of magnesium oxide.

How It Works in the Body

Because the pairing is so small, a high share of the compound's weight is the mineral itself rather than a carrier molecule. Oxide dissolves in acid rather than water, and it meets that acid in the stomach, where it becomes a dissolved magnesium salt the small intestine can take up.

What is not taken up stays in the gut, where magnesium draws water toward it by osmosis. The magnesium that does cross goes to work with ATP: enzymes that spend ATP act on the magnesium-ATP pair rather than on ATP alone.

What It Supports

• Enzyme cofactor work: Magnesium is required by hundreds of enzymes, among them every enzyme that spends ATP.
• Muscle and nerve signaling: Magnesium supports normal muscle function and the electrical signaling nerve cells run on.
• Bone mineral: More than half the body's magnesium sits in bone, where it supports the mineral lattice.
• Water in the gut: Magnesium that stays in the gut holds water there, which supports regularity.

Who It May Suit

People whose meals are light on greens, beans, nuts and seeds, the foods magnesium concentrates in. This is a short formula: the mineral, a cellulose filler, the shell. That shell is gelatin, so it does not fit vegetarian or vegan eating.

Good To Know

Magnesium pulls water into the gut, and larger servings loosen stools. Talk with your provider before use if you have kidney disease, since the kidneys clear magnesium. Mention it too if you take an acid-lowering medication, since oxide depends on stomach acid to dissolve, or a thyroid medicine, antibiotic or bisphosphonate that magnesium can bind in the gut.