I wanted to experiment with magnesium supplementation in spite of my heavy spinach intake since I was reading some things about oxalate blocking almost all of the calcium absorption and probably a lot of the magnesium as well during digestion. Anyway, I started taking 150mg of magnesium citrate in the morning and at night, which seems like a fairly reasonable dose. The result has been that I have gone from never feeling tired to having it hit me pretty hard in the afternoon like it did pre-paleo.

Heretofore, I was getting about 7 hours of sleep on average and always felt great, but now 8 hours seems to be too little. I could certainly increase it further, but I'm trying to understand the physiological mechanisms at work here and why sufficient intake of Mg would result in an increased need for sleep. If there's just an acclimation period of circadian rhythm repair or something, that might sort of make sense, but this was really not expected. My GF started taking the same dose at the same times and sleeps the same amount and has experienced an identical effect. After looking around online, this seems to be a common reaction to ZMA, which is a zinc/magnesium supplement that is popular among bodybuilders.

Before and after supplementation I would fall asleep immediately and usually wake up once in the middle of the night and then fall back asleep without too much difficulty, so I wasn't taking this to help with sleep, just to make sure I'm not deficient.