Two of the most common types you’ll find are the mighty M’s: melatonin and magnesium. While melatonin can help you fall asleep at a certain time, it doesn’t do much in the way of improving sleep quality or quantity.* Magnesium, on the other hand, shows promise in helping people fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and wake up feeling more refreshed and energized*. In a study, magnesium glycinate supplementation subjectively improved sleep quality2.* Research shows that magnesium can also help us stay asleep longer by reducing the stress of the nervous system and promoting a steady state of relaxation.* There are many types of magnesium supplements on the market, with magnesium bisglycinate (a chelate of magnesium and the amino acid glycine) being one of the most bioavailable and the form most well-designed for sleep.* Both magnesium3 and glycine4 have been shown to help enhance sleep quality in clinical trials.* As long as you don’t have impaired kidney function, taking slightly more magnesium than this won’t necessarily be harmful, but it might cause unpleasant side effects (as a result of magnesium naturally making your bowels move) like diarrhea and abdominal cramping—though these are more much common with other forms of magnesium, like carbonate, chloride, gluconate, and oxide than they are with magnesium bisglycinate. After multiple rounds of testing, we found this to be a sweet spot: Enough to help the body and mind slow down but not too much to cause a groggy morning.* Emma received her B.A. in Environmental Science & Policy with a specialty in environmental communications from Duke University. In addition to penning over 1,000 mbg articles on topics from the water crisis in California to the rise of urban beekeeping, her work has appeared on Grist, Bloomberg News, Bustle, and Forbes. She’s spoken about the intersection of self-care and sustainability on podcasts and live events alongside environmental thought leaders like Marci Zaroff, Gay Browne, and Summer Rayne Oakes.
