Can a mineral help you sleep?

Evidence thin of the sleep-inducing benefits of magnesium.

Magnesium is often touted as an antidote to poor sleep. But while some doctors say it is fine to take it in supplemental form for certain sleep disruptions, like those caused by restless legs syndrome, the evidence for its sleep-inducing benefits is thin.

Magnesium, an abundant mineral in the body, plays a critical role in many physiological functions. It helps support immune health, blood sugar regulation, and nerve and muscle function. Some scientists suspect that magnesium deficiencies can contribute to poor sleep by disrupting nerve signaling and altering levels of sleep-inducing hormones such as melatonin.

But most people have sufficient levels of magnesium, since the mineral is easy to get if you follow a relatively healthy diet. It’s found in a variety of plant and animal foods like nuts, greens, seeds, beans, yogurt and fish. And although many people fall short of the federal government’s recommended daily intake, true magnesium deficiencies are rare.

Over the years, studies have looked at whether supplementing with the mineral can improve sleep. Most of the studies have been small or poorly designed, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions. One systematic review published in April looked at three clinical trials that studied magnesium supplementation for insomnia in 151 older adults and concluded that they generally provided “low to very low quality of evidence.”

In one study published in 2012, researchers recruited 46 older adults with chronic insomnia and split them into two groups. One was assigned to take 500 milligrams of magnesium every day for eight weeks, and the other was given a placebo. At the end of the study, the researchers found that compared with the placebo group, the people taking magnesium were more likely to report improvements in “subjective” measures of insomnia, such as how quickly they fell asleep each night and the number of times they reported waking up in the early morning hours. But those taking magnesium did not show any difference in their total sleep time, the researchers reported.

In general, magnesium seems to have minimal side effects, and taking low doses is unlikely to cause much harm. According to the Institute of Medicine, healthy adults can safely take up to 350 milligrams of supplemental mag

eight years. Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I was there — working on my fluency and learning techniques to help me detect a stutter and navigate my way out of one. Being fluent always felt like catching the wind in your hands. You can feel it when you catch it, and it feels like it slips through your fingers just as easily. When I was younger, the more I was fluent, the more I was praised. I equated it to being the best, most thought-through, and prepared Joseph.

The “therapy” aspect of speech therapy helped me wade through the waters of K-12 madness. I simply cannot say enough good things about my speech-language pathologist. On days when we weren’t going over specific techniques, she was still helping me. She helped me work through the realization that I can’t communicate as well as most people. While I can’t pinpoint it exactly, this probably was when I fell in love with words. When I found a letter or sound that was making me stutter, it was extremely helpful to be able to pull out a backup word and get out of the stutter.

There is a specific kind of dysfluency we in the stuttering community call a “block.” That is when you are physically unable to utter a word. It can be demoralizing, especially when it comes out of nowhere. Working in speech therapy helped me understand blocks will happen. It just comes with the stutter. How I handle blocks is 100% up to me. It taught me the importance of understanding your situation and trying to make the best of it.

It’s not lost on me that part of my job is speaking publicly now. It’s not lost on me that The Atlanta Journal-constitution saw a kid who stuttered and still believed in me enough to take a chance. If you could see how many takes I do of a single sentence just to get it right for the In Context videos, you would know the only reason I do this is because I Iove it.

I say all that to say I would not be the same person without my stutter and the people who helped me through it. My parents, close friends, and speech therapist have helped me in ways I can’t really put into words. But naturally, there are days when I hate my stutter. There are days when I wish I could just say what I want to the first time and not have to go over it in my head. There are times when I embarrassingly struggle with a consonant sound in front of family, friends, or colleagues. But it makes me, me. And if there is anything I can tell a younger person, or anyone struggling with a stutter, it would be that. It doesn’t make you weak, unintelligent, or Porky the Pig. It makes you, you. And that’s something I need to hear every once in a while.