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[–]unptitdej 4 points5 points  (0 children)

"The final question is: since I was taking an overdose, how did I mess up? I thought I was making sure I got at least the right RDA of elemental magnesium by aiming for 800mg of elemental magnesium and carefully converting from raw powder weight. So I went back to the original references, and scrutinizing them closely, they really were talking about elemental magnesium and indicating I should be getting 400mg elemental a day, but I did notice something: I got the dose wrong for the Solgar pills, it wasn’t 800mg elemental, it was 800mg of citrate - I misread the label. So I went from taking ~130mg of elemental magnesium in the first period to ~800mg in the second; I don’t think it is an accident that the second period seems to have been much worse (between the plot and the time trend)."

Pretty annoying detail indeed. I also think 800mg elemental might be too much. Magnesium is something your body can store so maybe you can load up with transdermal magnesium or magnesium supplements and then additional magnesium stops being useful?

[–]AtomikPi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for this post. You're one of the few people out there doing statistical analyses of nootropics, even if with n=1. I think I will reduce my mg citrate supplementation from 400 mg elemental to 200 mg elemental.

[–]KyleStannings 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Gwern, I'm having a bit of trouble reading your graphs. Did you experience a decrease in your productivity on the both the 130mg and 800mg dosage or just the 800mg? I've been taking 200mg of elemental mag for the past 18 months so this is a cause for concern for me.

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Did you experience a decrease in your productivity on the both the 130mg and 800mg dosage or just the 800mg?

If you look at the LOESS moving average, it looks like the 800m was simply harmful/decreasing but the 130mg started off helpful and then after 20 days or so became harmful.

I've been taking 200mg of elemental mag for the past 18 months so this is a cause for concern for me.

Do you have any data you could check against, like quantified-mind.com scores or something?

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (2 children)

This isn't a difficult thing to get right. If you take too much magnesium, eat some calcium; if you take too much calcium, eat some magnesium.

[–]androo87 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure I agree with that take-away.

But your comment did remind me of this great bit by Hyperbole and a Half.

[–]gwerngwern.net[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Since I get 220mg of calcium from my multivitamin and I enjoy dairy products daily, I'm not sure calcium could be an issue. Do you have any instances of people taking these doses with calcium and seeing only benefits?