---
title: 'Why Your Magnesium ISN''T WORKING (3 Nighttime Mistakes)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=68p6H0Kw7lY'
video_id: '68p6H0Kw7lY'
date: 2026-10-22
duration_sec: 1207
channel: 'Dr. Mindy Pelz'
---

# Why Your Magnesium ISN'T WORKING (3 Nighttime Mistakes)

> Source: [Why Your Magnesium ISN'T WORKING (3 Nighttime Mistakes)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=68p6H0Kw7lY)

## Summary

This video discusses a 2025 study on magnesium bisglycinate for sleep, which showed only a modest benefit over placebo. The creator argues that magnesium alone is not a cure-all and presents three nighttime mistakes that undermine its effectiveness, along with five lifestyle steps to improve sleep quality.

### Key Points

- **Study Overview** [00:03] — A 2025 study in the Journal of Nature and Science of Sleep with 155 healthy adults (ages 18-65) split into two groups: one received 250 mg of magnesium bisglycinate, the other a placebo, over 4 weeks.
- **Study Results** [00:46] — The magnesium group's insomnia scores dropped by 28%, while the placebo group's dropped by 18%. The difference is not considered impressive, suggesting magnesium is a nudge, not a knockout punch.
- **Magnesium and GABA** [02:54] — Magnesium helps produce GABA, a calming neurotransmitter. Loss of progesterone (especially after age 35) reduces GABA, making magnesium potentially important for calming the brain.
- **Placebo Effect and Nervous System** [04:08] — The placebo group's 18% improvement indicates a nervous system component to sleep issues. The act of taking a pill can trigger relaxation, preparing the body for sleep.
- **Biggest Responders** [04:51] — The people who benefited most from magnesium were those who ate the least magnesium-rich foods, highlighting the importance of dietary intake.
- **Mistake 1: Stimulating Nighttime Habits** [05:07] — TV, social media, and late-night meals agitate the nervous system. Bright light (like LED) suppresses melatonin. A Harvard study found ordinary room light delayed melatonin rise in 99% of people and shortened melatonin duration by 90 minutes.
- **Mistake 2: Eating Right Before Bed** [06:46] — A small study of 13 young women found that eating dinner 1 hour before sleep led to nearly double the awake time at night compared to eating 5 hours before, causing broken sleep.
- **Mistake 3: Using Magnesium to Cover Up Caffeine and Stress** [07:23] — Caffeine cuts 45 minutes off sleep cycles (based on 24 studies). Magnesium cannot compensate for high caffeine intake or chronic stress.
- **Step 1: Morning Light** [08:16] — Sleep begins at wake-up. Morning light turns off melatonin and turns on cortisol. Getting natural sunlight (or warm light) within the first hour helps set the body's clock and melatonin timer.
- **Step 2: Dim Light at Night** [09:31] — As the sun sets, your eyes register the change and signal melatonin production. Walking the dog at sunset without sunglasses can help. Dimming indoor lights in the evening supports this natural rhythm.
- **Step 3: Food Timing** [10:39] — Close the kitchen 3 hours before bedtime. Eating too close to bed keeps the body in a state of activation, disrupting sleep.
- **Step 4: Caffeine Curfew** [11:38] — Caffeine has a half-life of 6-7 hours. To avoid sleep disruption, allow about 9 hours between your last sip of coffee and bedtime. For a 10 p.m. bedtime, that means no coffee after 1 p.m.
- **Step 5: Build a Daily Protocol** [12:26] — The goal is to train the body to rest, not to rely on supplements. A review of 22 trials found yoga, tai chi, walking, or jogging are best for insomnia. Incorporate magnesium-rich foods like pumpkin seeds, leafy greens, almonds, beans, and avocado.
- **Supplement Timing and Consistency** [16:27] — The study used magnesium 30-60 minutes before bed for 4 weeks. Consistency is key. The creator challenges viewers to follow the full protocol for 4 weeks.
- **Immediate Actions** [17:43] — Tonight: dim lights 2 hours before bed. Close the kitchen 3 hours before bed. Tomorrow morning: get 5-10 minutes of natural light.

### Conclusion

Magnesium can be a helpful part of a sleep routine, but it is not a standalone cure. The key to better sleep is a holistic lifestyle protocol that includes light management, food timing, caffeine curfew, daily movement, and a consistent routine.

## Transcript

which might be why you're not getting such a great night's sleep. Let me tell you about a really interesting study I found. It was a 2025 study out of the Journal of Nature and Science of Sleep. It was 155
healthy adults that it ranged in age between 18 and 65. They split them into two groups. One group was given 250
group was given 250 mg of magnesium. Specifically, bisglycinate was the magnesium type that they looked at. I know many of you know all the different magnesium types types. That was the one. And the other group
was given a placebo. And they were told to do this over 4 weeks. And here's what to do this over 4 weeks. And here's what they found. The magnesium group, their they found. The magnesium group, their insomnia scores went down by 28%.
The placebo group, their insomnia scores went down by 18%. Now, magnesium has a lot of incredible qualities that we're going to discuss in this video. And there are a lot of ways
that you can pair your nightly routine with your magnesium to be able to get yourself into a deeper sleep. But from a research standpoint, this is not an research standpoint, this is not an impressive amount of difference from
placebo to magnesium. So, I want to show you three nighttime mistakes that could be absolutely destroying your magnesium. You may even be wasting your money on this magnesium. I want you to avoid these three mistakes at night. And I
want to show you five things you can be doing that will help to improve your overall sleep scores and really give you a good night's sleep. So, here we go.
Now, first, if you all have been following me for a while, you know that I am a big fan of regulating your nervous system. So, if you have an nervous system. So, if you have an incredibly dysregulated nervous system,
you could lather yourself with all the magnesium that you that you could find in your cabinet and you're still going to struggle to sleep. So, if you don't know your nervous system state, I now have a free tool you can use to see
have a free tool you can use to see where you are in your nervous system experience. Are you stuck in fight or flight, or do you have a very balanced nervous system? It's very appropriate for this video. Just go down into the
notes, and there's a link there for that free resource. magnesium, and this is what the study found, is that it helps GABA production.
Now, GABA is a neurotransmitter that calms us. So, many of you that have gone through menopause, you have experienced the loss of GABA because progesterone
the loss of GABA because progesterone actually starts to upregulate GABA, and actually starts to upregulate GABA, and at the age of 35, you start to lose progesterone. And when you lose progesterone, you are
starting to lose GABA. And GABA is the brain's calming signal. You need lots of brain's calming signal. You need lots of it. So, it's like if you don't have the brakes to stop your mind from spinning, from your body feeling overly
stimulated, this is why GABA is so important, and magnesium is really critical for that. So, in this study, what they found was that, yeah, magnesium helps. It's sort of like a nudge to the nervous
system to say, "Hey, go ahead. It's time to wind down." But, it is not a knockout punch, which is why I want you to pair it with the five things I'm going to The other thing I want to point out in this study is we cannot turn away from
the fact that the placebo group did fairly well. They saw a decrease in 18%. fairly well. They saw a decrease in 18%. That tells me that we do have a nervous system issue when we go to sleep because you may be one of those people you take
a pill and your brain goes, "Oh, I'm going to relax now." And when I start to relax, then all of a sudden the your body prepares itself for sleep. And I also want to point out that this study said magne- magnesium didn't fix
study said magne- magnesium didn't fix sleep or stress all on its own. And the biggest responders in this study, check this out because we're going to dive into food here, the biggest responders in this study um were
the people who ate the least amount of magnesium-rich foods. So much to unpack here. So, here are the three mistakes that I want you to stop right now. First, is we have to look at things that
First, is we have to look at things that stimulate us at night like TV. stimulate us at night like TV. So, what we know is TV, our social our social media, late-night meals, all of that can start to actually agitate the
that can start to actually agitate the nervous system. It revs us up. So, if magnesium you're wanting it to act like you are like a like a sleeping pill, we need to change your nighttime routine. So, the first thing I would change is
So, the first thing I would change is your light, the light inside your house. Light when like I'm in LED lights right now, when you have bright light, you are flooding your brain and telling it to turn off melatonin.
In a Harvard lab study, ordinary room light before bed delayed melatonin rise in 99% of people. And it shortened melatonin
of people. And it shortened melatonin time by 90 minutes. So, I first want to point out if you are struggling to go to sleep and you're hoping magnesium will be the cure-all, I want to make sure you are adding your
magnesium to a dimming of your light. there. You can find them very inexpensively. You can do an orange hue, you want to just do a warm light, you can do red
light. In my house, I have one specific room that I used to prepare me to sleep and it has a red light bulb in it so that I don't have bright lights on. The other mistake that a lot of people make is eating right before bed and this
study was really interesting. It was a small study on 13 young women and they compared having dinner an hour before sleep and having dinner 5 hours before
sleep. And what they found is that the women that had dinner an hour before sleep, they had nearly double the awake time at night.
So, it didn't necessarily stop them from falling asleep, but they had a very interrupted, broken type of sleep. Those of you who are wearing an Oura Ring or a Whoop band, you may notice that. You have a big meal before you go to bed,
you don't get a restful sleep. And then the mistake third mistake that And then the mistake third mistake that a lot of magnesium makers do is they use magnesium to cover up caffeine and stress.
stress. So, 24 studies show that caffeine cut 45 So, 24 studies show that caffeine cut 45 minutes off of your sleep cycle. So, when I say we need to be able to pair magnesium with the right rituals,
let's start by taking those three habits out. I'm not telling you to throw your magnesium out. I take it every single night. My favorite, by the way, is Qualia. I'll leave links down below. But, I want to make sure you don't take
that magnesium in hopes that it'll put you to sleep and you're still doing those three things I told you. Here are the five steps I want you to do. the five steps I want you to do. So, first, sleep is a mindset.
So, first, sleep is a mindset. So, it sleep begins when you wake up. Let's talk about this. Let's walk through this here for a second. When you through this here for a second. When you wake up and your eyes see light, what
your brain does is it turns off melatonin and it turns on cortisol. melatonin and it turns on cortisol. That whole process takes about an hour. So, the first thing that you need to focus on for a good night's sleep at at
the end of the day is are you getting good light in the morning? This is where, again, we're back at some kind of warm light. This isn't like turn on all have a red light? Do you have some orange light? So, just kind of slowly
wake yourself up. The best thing you can do is actually go outside. If you had a cup of coffee, go sit out in your backyard or off on your deck so that you're getting natural light. Morning sunlight tells your body
light. Morning sunlight tells your body clock that the day has started. So, research research is showing that it helps to set the melatonin timer. So, make sure you get a warm light within the morning when you first wake up.
the morning when you first wake up. Second step is that when we are at the end of the day, when the the light goes down at night, we want to make sure the down at night, we want to make sure the light is going down in your house.
So, this one's really interesting because sometimes in the summertime, we what the light and depending on where you live, light will start to it'll start to get dark at 9:00, 10:00 at night.
night. So, when the outside sun is setting, what's happening is your eyes are seeing, oh, we're going to night. But, seeing, oh, we're going to night. But, you have receptor sites in your eyes
that will register that sunlight and tell the brain, hey, it's time to start to make melatonin. One of the tools that I used to give my my patients all the time was I would tell them if they had trouble sleeping
to walk the dog at sunset. Because without sunglasses, so that your eyes could start to see that hey, the day is ending. And when your eyes register that light, what ends up happening is the melatonin
what ends up happening is the melatonin pro- production starts to come up. Step number three. I want you to start to think about your food timing. Ideally, in a perfect world, you would close the kitchen 3
hours before bedtime. Now, in the world we all live in, it's a very rushed world, and everybody seems to be in some kind of urgency. But, if you are really wanting to dedicate yourself to a good night's
sleep, you're wanting your magnesium to work, then we've got to make sure that not only do we have your night your your light rhythm down, but we have your food rhythm down. And what I just explained is that the
group that ate a that ate an hour before going to bed, the body is still digesting food. It's still in a state of activation. Whereas, if you give it three at least three hours from a meal, that stimulation of food has now gone
down. So and what we want to make sure you're not eating three at least three hours before you go to sleep. Step number four is to have a caffeine curfew. So caffeine blocks your sleep and
caffeine has a half-life of somewhere between six and seven hours. between six and seven hours. So in a review that looked at these 24 different studies that I mentioned before, if you were to try to get over
your coffee, a typical runway that you would need from the last sip of coffee until you go to bed would be nine hours. So if you are having a 10:00 p.m. bedtime, the last cup of coffee is sip
of coffee going into you needs to be at 1:00 p.m. Step number five, you want to 1:00 p.m. Step number five, you want to build a protocol, a daily protocol that you can follow so that your body knows when to be awake and it knows when to be
asleep. So the goal, I I bring you this study on magnesium because I found it interesting and I also want to make sure you never waste money on supplements. you never waste money on supplements. But the goal of better sleep isn't more
supplements. I mean, how many of us will actually start taking melatonin and we take magnesium and maybe we take phosphatidylserine is another one that brings cortisol down or ashwagandha and we're having taking
all these supplements hoping that it is going to put us to sleep. That is not the goal of optimal health. The goal is to train the body to know how to rest.
So here is a really good protocol in order to do that. And it was based off of several studies. So, the first in this protocol is I want you moving every
single day. If you're sitting all the time, that is not training the body when it needs to be up and when it needs to be down. A review of 22 trials found be down. A review of 22 trials found that things like yoga, tai chi, walking,
or jogging stood out as the best resources for insomnia. So, every single day, let's be doing some kind of gentle movement of the ones that I just spoke
Second, remember how I said that the study showed that people who were not eating magnesium-rich foods were the ones that actually got the best benefit from the magnesium supplement? Well, we want to prepare a body that knows how to
rest. So, how about we look at foods that are high in magnesium? One of my that are high in magnesium? One of my favorite foods is pumpkin seeds. So, can you I put pumpkin seeds all the time on my salad. So, can you add pumpkin seeds
to every meal? Second magnesium-rich food are leafy greens. I've talked a lot food are leafy greens. I've talked a lot in on my videos here about um using more fiber in your diet because it really helps to break down a lot of the
hormones for both men and women, but leafy greens, specially if you want to go more towards some of those bitter greens like collard greens or chard, those are really high in magnesium. The third favorite magnesium-rich food is
are almonds. And if you can get your almonds sprouted, so those enzymes are still in there, they're not dry roasted, that's going to have a higher magnesium content. Beans are another incredible
Beans are another incredible magnesium-rich food. So, lentils, black magnesium-rich food. So, lentils, black beans, big white beans, they're all any kind of bean, lentils are my personal favorite, is going to be packed with
magnesium and avocado is another incredible magnesium-rich meal. So, when I look at that, that could even be dinner. That could be a a salad with beans in it and pumpkin seeds and avocado. Um you might even be able
almonds in there, and you've got yourself a a magnesium dinner that you eat 3 hours before you go to bed. Now, a lot of you know that chocolate is
really high in magnesium. Chocolate is great, but we got to treat it like a cup of coffee, have it earlier in the day because it has caffeine in it. And especially for my women going through menopause, we become much more sensitive
to caffeine as we go through the menopausal experience. So, even a little chunk of healthy chocolate at the end of the day could even though it has tons of magnesium could have too much caffeine and stimulate you too much.
Now, the other piece of the magnesium supplement that I want to point out is that the study was done off of 4 weeks. So, and the people who took magnesium took it 30 to 60 minutes before they
went to bed. So, if you are going to apply this protocol, get off of those three things I told you, make sure you've added in the five steps I just gave you. Go back and watch it again if you want to write
them all down. And let's do it consistently. So, for those of you who are struggling to to sleep, I challenge you to do this for 4 weeks. In fact, put in the comments if you're going to do it for 4 weeks. You're going to make sure
to make sure you turn the lights dim the lights at night. You're going to move your body during the day. You're going to eat um with enough time between your dinner and your bedtime. You're going to lean into the magnesium-rich foods, and
you take magnesium. Now, we have a complete protocol that doesn't say, "Here's a supplement that's going to save you." It's actually a whole system when done over time that is going to have the greatest impact on you.
Here are the three steps you can take immediately outside of what I just told Tonight, depending on when you're watching this, I hope you're not You can do it tomorrow night if you are. But, if you're watching this at like
3:00 in the afternoon or the morning, let's just start to dim our lights tonight. 2 hours before bed is a good little um gauge. Second, you're going to close the kitchen tonight 3 hours before you go to
bed. This one can be a little more trickier if you have a family, but we want to make sure that the kitchen is closed, and tomorrow morning you are going to wake up, and you are going to focus on 5 to 10 minutes every morning
of getting natural light. If all of that is not working, please take my nervous system questionnaire. I have a ton of protocols and resources that I'm offering you at free so that you can start to make sure you're
eating, fasting, moving, doing all of the right steps for your current nervous the right steps for your current nervous system state. People who are in yellow, which is a fight or flight nervous system, or red, which is a frozen
system, or red, which is a frozen nervous system, you are going to really improve your overall experience of sleep by following the tips that I showed you in this video. Those of you that are in green, you may notice that sometimes you
have a good night's sleep, and sometimes you don't. But, we live in a world where everybody thinks a pill is going to save them. And I'm I'm here to tell you you are going to save you, not a pill, not a doctor, not a health guru, not a YouTube
doctor, not a health guru, not a YouTube specialist. You are going to save you. So, let's be smart at how we take magnesium and don't anticipate that just throwing it in our mouth is going to be the cure-all. You need it amongst a
the cure-all. You need it amongst a whole lifestyle protocol, and I hope I just gave you the best protocol you've ever heard. Let me know if you're going to do a 4-week challenge. Let me know if you've tried some of these things and
you've gotten great results. Most importantly, don't give up on yourself. You can train your body to get a good night's sleep, and magnesium can be a part of that. Hope that helps. If this helped, don't stop here.
Click on the next video and let's see what you find there.