Ask the Pharmacist: Pure Magnesium Glycinate

Cyrus Kuhzarani R.Phm. Owner 30 Dec 2020

Ask the Pharmacist: Pure Magnesium Glycinate

Welcome to our new Q&A blog series with Cyrus, called 'Ask the Pharmacist'. In this first blog, Cyrus answers a customer question about why some companies do not disclose the amount of Magnesium Oxide in their Magnesium Glycinate products.

Today we have a question from Virginia in Peterborough. She asks:

I checked the label of your Magnesium Glycinate, and 30% of the Mag is coming from Magnesium Oxide. Why does your company include any Magnesium Oxide in the product at all? Could you not make a pure Magnesium Glycinate product?

Thank you, Virginia, this is a quite common question we get.

My ongoing research on the varieties of Magnesium Glycinate in the market over the last 20 years, has brought up a whole lot of misleading information between the many raw ingredient providers, manufacturers and brands.

Magnesium Glycinate is, no doubt, a very successful supplement - so it is no surprise that some companies take advantage. Pure Lab Vitamins has been using the same raw ingredient manufacturer and quality since 2002, at a time when there were only two manufacturers of Magnesium Glycinate globally - and we will not change our source or quality, because of the success we have with this product since then.

Today we could purchase this raw ingredient from approximately 50 different vendors worldwide, with oftentimes very questionable quality. "Fully reacted" means that one magnesium is truly bound to two molecules of L-glycine. "Bis" is the nomenclature term for "two" - glycine's.

But many products contain NO Magnesium Glycinate at all, but rather pure magnesium oxide, blended with L-Glycine in various ratio's. This is, to my knowledge, the case with most of those products containing 200mg magnesium elemental per capsule.

By using exclusively fully reacted MgGly, you can barely fit 100mg of Magnesium elemental into the 00 capsule size. And such a dose per capsule is from my point of view sub-therapeutic and would also be quite expensive, especially if you were trying to replenish a deficient or even depleted body.

I have done my own trials with the fully reacted kind of Magnesium Glycinate and could not see a therapeutic benefit compared to our form. Similar feed back is coming from customers that have tried these products and turned right back to our magnesium in the brown bottle.

In fact, I believe that the specific ratio of Magnesium Glycinate, Magnesium Oxide and L-Glycine Chelate we have in our formula has intrinsic benefit with regards to bowel tolerance and bioavailability. Furthermore, SOME of the Raw Material manufacturers of fully reacted Magnesium Glycinate state that their product would pass through the gastro intestinal lining as 'bound Magnesium Glycinate', which is ludicrous and very easily to proof as false. When you open one of the "fully reacted" caps or powder or use our capsules or powder, and mix the content into just regular water (not even acidic stomach juices) it dissolves instantly. Magnesium Glycinate salts always dissolve and go ionic, that means magnesium is now present in cationic form - Mg2+ and glycine in its anionic form - as Gly-.

"Bioavailability" (which is absorption from the GI tract into the blood) depends on the ideal ratio of Mg2+ to Gly-, and I believe our formula hits a home run in this regard. Our formula provides : Magnesium at 165mg per caps. (70 % Magnesium Glycinate + only 30 % Magnesium Oxide-LGlycine Dry Chelate) A Dry Chelate is a powder blend, where the needed ratio is controlled, so that bioavailability is ideal. Instead of hiding the Magnesium Oxide portion, we decided to make it transparent, compared to most other vendors out there, who do not.

I hope this provides a bit more clarity. Thanks for your question, and I look forward to answering many more!