by Emily Sanders, Pharm.D. Candidate
Anxiety is a complicated condition that makes you worry a lot, feel restless, and uneasy.
It can vary in intensity and affect both our mind and body. Getting help from professionals is crucial, but there are also natural ways to manage anxiety. One of these is magnesium, a mineral that's really important for our overall health. In this blog post, we'll explore how magnesium can help ease anxiety and make us feel calmer. In a previous post we explored the need for Folate to help reduce anxiety. You can check that out here.
Magnesium is involved in over 300 chemical reactions in our bodies. One of its main jobs is to calm our nervous system by controlling stress hormones like cortisol. When we're anxious, our bodies make too much cortisol, making us feel even more tense and uneasy. Magnesium helps balance the production of cortisol, which helps us relax and reduces anxiety. Magnesium acts as a natural relaxant by keeping our nervous system in check. Having enough magnesium helps produce serotonin, a chemical in our brain that makes us feel good and improves our mood. It also helps GABA, another chemical in our brain, do its job better. GABA tells our brain to calm down, so when it works better, anxiety is reduced, and we feel more at ease.
Anxiety and sleep problems often go together, with one making the other worse. Magnesium is important for regulating our sleep because it helps make melatonin, a hormone that controls our sleep schedule. If we have enough magnesium, our sleep quality improves, we have fewer sleep problems related to anxiety, and we wake up feeling more refreshed.
Luckily, there are many ways to get more magnesium into your daily routine. Foods like dark leafy greens, nuts, seeds, whole grains, and legumes are rich in magnesium. Currently, we offer Magnesium Glycinate to help you get enough magnesium every day.
Anxiety can really affect our lives, but adding magnesium to our daily routine might be a natural and helpful solution. It relaxes us, improves how our brain works, and supports better sleep. With the calming power of magnesium on your side, you can make big steps toward a calmer and more balanced life.