Also, posts like yours show up in /r/nootropics every day. "Taking supplement X changed my life!" Almost always sound like placebo, especially when it's a medication that takes weeks to have an effect and the user claims it fixed their life in a day.

Trying to fix Potassiun alone wont work because Magnesium is required to absorb it, or something like that; can't remember the full details now.

And obviously if your symptoms are actually from a Potassium deficiency, trying to fix Magnesium alone won't work either, if you're still not getting enough Potassium.

So, your best bet is magnesium supplements and lots of bananas :p

I don't disagree with the rest but talking from my own personal experience, taking magnesium had almost an immediate effect on me but perhaps it's not the same for everyone.

Totally agree that there are other factors that may contribute to muscle soreness but I think taking magnesium is a good, harmless experiment if you have not tried. Also perhaps you may find other potential answers reading through some of the responses here :) Good luck mate!

Sure the people that claim it fixed their problem in a day, it's probably a placebo, but I suspect for some people things really do help them.

If you eat a "balanced diet" (whatever that means), then you probably don't need any supplements. I noticed after I was drinking Huel for breakfast for a few months, I felt much better in general.

Sadly, this phase is also when most people write their reviews of supplements.

But the thing is: it helps only if the cramp, or the muscle soreness, is caused but a magnesium deficiency. There can be many causes; if the cause is something else and your body already has enough magnesium, taking extra magnesium won't help. I guess in the case of magnesium it doesn't really hurt if you take somewhat more than you need, so it's probably fine to experiment within reason.

I used to get 'charley horses' every so often which are extremely painful for a short time, and figured out I wasn't getting enough potassium. Eat your greens!

I am not a medical professional, but after talking with a lot of scientists about this topic, the most often repeated advice was that a person using dietary supplements should get a blood test of the nutrients and minerals in their body. This can be done through your doctor or through a wide variety of retail lab companies.

What I'm saying is, if tablets help, you should also look into your diet and determine what (if anything) is missing.

Almonds, cashews and peanuts not too bad either.

Otherwise green leafy veg like spinach or avocado.

There's some in rolled oats, brown rice and milk too.

I usually track my diet and nutrients and find it fairly hard to get the meet the daily RDI for magnesium even when eating a lot of these magnesium containing foods, so it's one of the few things I supplement with regularly.

I seem to build a kind of tolerance to it so only take it when I need it, perhaps due to my levels getting low.

I think I take 200-400mg of Magenesium Glycate. I’m told it’s worth getting a good brand.

You can also get a magnesium spray which works really well for sleep if you spray it on the soles of your feet! I was skeptical but I’ve tried it a few times and slept like a baby so I’ll save that for times when I really need a lie in.

Another potentially life changing supplement is Ashwagandha. But crucially I only take one if I feel too stressed, not every day, as that could reduce stress levels too low.

Good thing to do is look up the contraindications of the things you take. Vitamins and minerals very rarely have any but when you get into mood altering things like Ashwaganda or St Johns Wort you wanna really know what your getting into as there can be dangerous combinations sneakily hidden.

There are studies that uncovered users of Ashwagandha with: - Liver injury - Itching - No major benefit

[1] https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/96066/Slutsky...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=Magnesium-L-threonate+site%3...

Caffeine for focus.

Magnesium and CoQ10 helps me for energy.

Creatine monohydrate for exercise and memory.

Vitamin E for skin and itchiness. I don't take it but my wife does.

Yes, most of these were recommended by a doctor. I'm not a doctor. This is not medical advice.

I suspect this special sickness due to the imbalanced food consumption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiamine_deficiency

But reading online... I see why Glycinate maybe better for some XD:

> "This form of magnesium is less likely to have a laxative effect than magnesium citrate"

From Google...:

    pumpkin seeds, 30g — 156mg.
    chia seeds, 30g — 111mg.
    almonds, 30g — 80mg.
    spinach, boiled, ½ cup — 78mg.
    cashews, 30g — 74mg.
    peanuts, ¼ cup — 63mg.
    soymilk, 1 cup — 61mg.
    rolled oats, cooked in unsalted water, 100g — 29mg.

I know Holger Rune (Worlds nr 8 in Tennis) was dealing a lot with cramps in his earlier career. Based on some blood tests, he started taking magnesium recently which resolved the issues he had.

https://nutritionfacts.org/optimum-nutrient-recommendations/

The Explain Like You Were 5:

1. That phrase refers to the fact that pure cacao gets the acid treatment in processing instead of the heat and acid treatments which tends to severely reduce the good ingredients of raw chocolate in the first place.

Bias: It's part of my ADHD treatment.

Has it had a noticeable effect on you from eating it?

Here are some other vitamins and minerals that are worth trying, but not well known about. All of them address potential deficiencies you might realize you’re laboring under. If they work for you, you should see pretty immediate results - well before you finish the first bottle, so they’re all low investment.

Creatine. Not just for working out! It helps you store ATP, which helps with physical but also mental fatigue (i.e. brain fog). We get a small amount from meat and our body can synthesize enough to keep us operational, but the body’s standards for “operational” are pretty dismal. If you are a vegetarian or vegan, creatine is mandatory.

Tryptophan, L-Phenylalanine, Tyrosine, and GABA. Four precursor aminos to major neurotransmitter types. It costs less than a daily coffee to give your body a blank biochemical check to manufacture optimal amounts of neurotransmitters.

Methylated forms of vitamin B. Particularly methylfolate and methyl B12. Your body has to methylate most forms of most B vitamins to use them. If this methylation process is interrupted or slowed, it bottlenecks your usable B vitamin amount no matter how much regular stuff you take. But you can just take the already-methylated form instead! If you are autistic or have chronic fatigue, definitely check these out. (Autism is correlated with MTHFR gene dysfunction among other things, and MTHFR gene dysfunction makes you unable to methylate regular forms of B vitamins, in fact in some cases the regular B vitamins going un-methylated will actually jam up that process and cause lots of other problems too. At least some fraction of chronic fatigue is exactly this problem, a group of biological cycles in your body grinding to a halt because they’re jammed up. Potentially this is also part of the health benefit of cutting out bread from your diet, as most bread is fortified with folic acid for dietary purposes, and folic acid is one potential source of jams.) This one has risks, you should actively research the doses and what symptoms to be prepared for

Choline. CDP choline, or alpha-GPC specifically, as those cross the blood brain barrier. Precursor to acetylcholine, which is heavily used in the brain for many things, memory in particular seems to be highly dependent on it. (Diphenhydramine is a common OTC drug for allergies that makes you sleepy; many people use it long term as a sleeping aid, and since it is anti-cholinergic, long-term use will actually suppress your memory.) Similar principle as the group of four above, give your body all the precursors it could want.

Glycine. As we got better at farming meat animals, we stopped having to make use of the bones, skin, sinews, etc., of animals. This inadvertently cut collagen, the major source of glycine, out of our diets. Has a lot to do with muscle repair and muscle pain, as well as sleep. (The single best night of sleep I have ever had in my entire life was the first night I took a bunch of glycine, in the form of hydrolysed beef collagen.)

Zinc. A common deficiency and one that interrupts testosterone production. Apart from all the things you probably know it for, testosterone is also really important in both genders for motivation.

Potassium. Compatriot to magnesium, sodium, calcium, phosphorus. Body has excellent regulation of calcium and phosphorus and can tap into large stores of those in your bones, sodium is generally plentiful in the diet, it’s magnesium and potassium that we are likely to have mild deficiencies of. Coconut water (low sugar variety) is a convenient and safe source, but note that direct potassium supplementation carries risks.

And lastly, if you’re taking a multivitamin, pick it up and look at the RDAs on the back. RDAs are hilariously bad*, if your multivitamin manufacturer is just putting close to 100% RDA of everything in, they are just ticking boxes and don’t care about making a product that gives you the benefits you are taking it hoping to receive. Look for another multivitamin. The RDAs should be all over the place, that’s an indication they’re analyzing the research themselves. I happen to use Thorne Research.

* So, this claim is extreme enough that it does require a citation. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4210929/ explains how they screwed up their statistical analysis of vitamin D. They recommended 600 IU, saying it would achieve the desired levels in 97.5% of the population. But actually that would achieve desired levels in 97.5% of the study averages in their meta-analysis pool. That is, if you took all the studies they reviewed and turned each into a human person with vit D levels equal that study’s average level, their RDA would be enough for 97.5% of those 32 synthetic people to reach the desired level. The actual RDA to achieve the result they claimed (acceptable levels in 97.5% of the population at large) is nearly 9000 IU, 15x higher.