People often ask me how long something should take to work. Usually, it’s an adjustment or a supplement like magnesium. They’ve been taking it for a fortnight, and they’re not sure it’s doing anything.
I understand the question. We’re used to things that work quickly. You take a painkiller, and half an hour later the headache is gone. So when something doesn’t do that, it’s easy to assume it isn’t working at all.
Magnesium doesn’t work like that. Neither does what we do here.
Magnesium turns up almost everywhere in the body.
Your muscles need it to contract and relax. Your nerves need it to send signals properly. It’s part of how your cells make energy from the food you eat, and it’s involved in building new tissue.
You get it from greens, nuts, seeds, wholegrains, and yes, dark chocolate, which is the one everyone remembers.
About half of the magnesium in your body is held in your bones, drawn on constantly, and replaced from what you eat. So your level isn’t really about any single meal or any single tablet. It’s about what you’ve been consuming over months.
If most of your magnesium is stored in bone, then your level today reflects months of eating, not this week’s tablets.
That’s the part people find frustrating. You can’t take a large dose and simply catch up. And your body absorbs a smaller amount way more efficiently than a large one, so there’s no shortcut.
In other words, what changes your magnesium status is the ordinary, unremarkable business of taking it in every day and letting the weeks add up.
This is why I rarely give people a straight answer about how many visits they’ll need before they notice a difference.
Your body is adapting to what it’s asked to do repeatedly.
One adjustment gives it new information. What matters is whether that information keeps arriving while the tissue has time to respond.
The change happens gradually, between appointments as much as during them, which is exactly why we work to a schedule rather than seeing people whenever something flares up.
If you can’t judge these things by how you feel on any given day, judge them over a longer stretch.
Look back over a month rather than a morning. Are you sleeping better than you were? Moving more easily? Getting through the day with something left over? Those are slow measures, and they’re the honest ones.
The things worth having usually arrive that way. Quietly, over time, while you’re busy doing something else.
Take care,
Tom
