Nearly 50% of older adults have insomnia, with difficulty in getting to sleep, early awakening, or feeling unrefreshed on waking.
A double-blind randomized clinical trial was conducted in 46 elderly subjects, randomly allocated into the magnesium or the placebo group and received 500 mg magnesium or placebo daily for 8 weeks. As compared to the placebo group, in the experimental group, dietary magnesium supplementation brought about statistically significant increases in sleep time, sleep efficiency, concentration of serum renin, and melatonin, and also resulted in significant decrease of ISI score, sleep onset latency and serum cortisol concentration. Supplementation also resulted in marginally between-group significant reduction in early morning awakening and serum magnesium concentration.
The researchers concluded:
“Supplementation of magnesium appears to improve subjective measures of insomnia such as ISI score, sleep efficiency, sleep time and sleep onset latency, early morning awakening, and likewise, insomnia.”
