GAL Magnesium Bisglycinate

Our company does not attribute any disease-prevention, treatment, or curative properties to our products, nor do we imply any such properties. That said, in the interest of transparency we provide the following information about the health effects of this product's active ingredients and their scientific background. We aim to present the latest, independent, and authoritative research to give interested readers a clear picture of the evidence. This is not intended to encourage a purchase. If our customers return to us with repeat orders, we hope it is only because they have experienced GAL's benefits for themselves, that is what we believe in, and why we do this work.

Why Is Magnesium So Important?

Magnesium is a particularly important mineral, and one that's genuinely hard to get enough of through diet alone. Many processed foods contain no magnesium at all, and stress, exercise, and coffee and tea consumption all increase how much magnesium the body loses. As a result, magnesium deficiency has become widespread today, and supplementing it benefits nearly everyone.

Who Should Consider Supplementing Magnesium?

Since most people don't get enough magnesium from food, it's worth supplementing, depending on your diet, enough to reach at least 400mg of elemental magnesium a day. A higher magnesium intake comes with a range of health benefits, briefly:

• Improves athletic performance
• Helps prevent muscle cramps and speeds muscle recovery
• Has a calming, stress-reducing effect
• Supports immune function
• Helps guard against cardiovascular problems
• Improves blood sugar levels and insulin sensitivity
• Leads to better sleep, clearer thinking, and more energy
• Makes vitamin D work more effectively

How Do You Choose the Right Type of Magnesium?

Absorption varies enormously between different magnesium preparations, and this has a big impact on the unpleasant symptoms that can come with magnesium supplementation. Certain magnesium products can cause diarrhea, loose stools, or other digestive issues, caused, in these cases, by the magnesium that wasn't absorbed.

The inorganic forms of magnesium, such as sulfate, oxide, carbonate, and hydroxide, are barely absorbed at all, yet are still capable of causing the unpleasant symptoms described above. Among the inorganic forms, only chloride is considered to have decent absorption.

The organic (chelated) forms of magnesium are generally well absorbed, so they rarely cause digestive symptoms. These include magnesium bisglycinate, lactate, and taurate, among others. The exception is magnesium citrate, this is magnesium's salt with citric acid, and a high citric acid content tends to cause loose stools: while it's genuinely well absorbed in small amounts, at the doses most people actually need, it still tends to cause diarrhea.

What Should You Watch Out for When Choosing a Product?

Many organic magnesium products on the market aren't really what the label claims. Most manufacturers use magnesium compounds that are only partially reacted, or not reacted (activated) at all. This means a product's label might say “magnesium malate,” while what it actually contains is just a mixture of magnesium oxide/carbonate and malic acid. A common example is a box labeled “magnesium citrate” that in reality contains nothing more than a mixture of magnesium oxide and citric acid.

It's possible the reaction happened partially, but even then, most of the magnesium it contains still isn't in the labeled form. This is exactly why even the “organic” forms so often cause diarrhea, in reality, they only partially contain the organic form stated on the label. Non-“fully reacted” versions always have a higher elemental magnesium content on paper, and use cheaper raw materials too, making them considerably more cost-effective to produce.

Naturally, we use only “fully reacted” forms of everything, magnesium included.

What Are the Benefits of Magnesium Bisglycinate?

Magnesium bisglycinate is magnesium's salt with the amino acid glycine, so alongside magnesium, it also helps supply the body with glycine. You can read more about glycine's many benefits in its own product description, but it's worth mentioning here too that it improves insulin's effectiveness, significantly softens the blood-sugar-raising effect of glucose (and carbohydrates generally), and contributes to more restful sleep.

Some people experience loose stools even with magnesium's well-absorbed (organic/chelated) forms. For them, magnesium bisglycinate is the form we recommend most, since it's the gentlest version of magnesium available, likely because it has the best absorption of all (this is clearly the case for anyone who gets diarrhea from other forms). We also recommend this magnesium product to anyone who prefers a capsule over a powder dissolved in liquid.