Text below is extracted from our podcast by the same name.
Hello everyone. I wanted to talk about different forms of magnesium today because this has been covered in some ways, but I get asked about it so often that I think there’s a lot of confusion out there. So maybe I’ll put this back on the burner.
Magnesium chloride is the major magnesium found in the ocean. There’s a little sulfate, but in general it’s magnesium chloride. It is also one of the major magnesium sources used as the base to make other forms of magnesium. So they’re not really other magnesiums; they’re just names we’ve come to associate with magnesium—glycinate, citrate, malate, threonate, and so on. These are not magnesiums per se; they are processes or compounds that have been added or combined to make the magnesium more assimilable or to assist in different types of applications in the body.
Assimilation is the key here. It’s not that these are powerful tools the body “needs”; it’s that they are different ways to get you to take pills. Pills are not something the body is naturally meant to take, in some ways. If you took magnesium chloride in pill form without all these processes—acidification, association with fat, association with sugar, and so on—the result would simply be a laxative. And not a healthy one, but a kidney-straining laxative, similar to saltwater, which is why you almost want to throw up when you swallow it. Your body is saying, “Don’t do this.” We don’t want to push past those systems, because then you lose kidney life, and so on. That’s not a healthy laxative.
What I’m saying is that the pill form has to fool the body into accepting something it would not normally take. If you took chloride flakes, put them in a pill, swallowed a few, you’d be off to the toilet. The body would be trying to flush it out. That’s why manufacturers figured out that they have to associate magnesium with other processes—break it down, acidify it, add fats or sugars, or whatever else—to get the body to accept this entirely new paradigm of magnesium pills, which never existed in history and was developed during the war. It’s a “pinch method” that works for certain things; it can also help when we’re deficient—and we’re all deficient. There’s no need to run off and get a blood test asking, “How do I know if I’m deficient?”
If you study history—especially through Weston Price or people who go deep into ancestral diets—you’ll see that the vitamin analysis of those cultures, averaged out, reveals that we’re deficient in almost everything by comparison. Only 1% of magnesium is stored in the blood anyway. So what is a blood test going to tell you? How is it going to reflect decades of low magnesium structure across the body—from bones to nerves to muscles—all the latticework where magnesium combines with calcium?
Think of your teeth. They would be brittle if they were only calcium. Magnesium is the flexibilizing agent, allowing for strength through flexibility. If you removed all the magnesium from a tooth, it would tighten, lose oxygen, and “breathe” less structurally. That reduction of flexibility reduces oxygenation, which relates to the cancer paradigm: long-term, low-oxygen structural conditions that we haven’t fully understood. We keep thinking a few pills, a couple bananas, and a blood test make everything fine—but we remain 95% deficient. And that’s just the basic deficiency, not even touching the deeper long-term structural issues.
We’re not being guided toward these deeper understandings; we’re being kept on the surface. I tell people: skip all the studies, skip the research that is funded in predictable ways, and go to history—not doctors, but history. Look at Weston Price and others who studied what our ancestors actually did. And stop using Google or the equivalents—DuckDuckGo, etc.—which now produce curated results. Use a true search engine that actually searches, instead of delivering repackaged WebMD-style content.
Magnesium chloride is the master molecule. When you eat almonds and your stomach acid breaks them down, the magnesium inside is re-chlorified. Everything in the body returns to a chloride base. This is the real form of magnesium in the human body. When they ran out of blood plasma during the wars, they used a sea-plasma substitute because of the similarity. That means there is a primordial connection between the human body and oceanic minerals. This shouldn’t be overlooked.
It also connects to the skin and the ability to get higher doses topically through surface area. It’s an oceanic method, you could say—though not only oceanic. Mineral-rich waters, spa waters, hot springs, limestone basins—all those traditional mineral sources work similarly.
But we never hear about chloride because it’s both the base for all the forms they manufacture and the cheapest one to extract. They pull it from seawater, salt mines, brines, etc., but they have to use chemicals to pull out bromine, mercury, and other contaminants. They “upgrade” it, clean it, and sell a supposedly pure substance—but chemical residues remain, causing itching and changing the molecular structure.
What we’re doing is different: a single high-level ingredient from one natural stone, Bischofite—similar to how Epsom salt originally came from a stone near the city of Epsom. It’s a return to natural, God-made sources rather than chemically extracted industrial material.
And it only costs about three dollars a week. Use it for at least a year—five to ten bottles. Don’t be one of those people who uses a little bottle here and there. It takes about a year of that intensity; at least six bottles. After that, you may not need much, and yes, that makes it a bad business model for us because the most important year is the first.
I’m just trying to help people see through the whole glycinate / citrate / malate phenomenon. They’re not necessary. Pills can be helpful in certain emergency-like situations—just like surgery—but long term, 30–40 years down the road, they lead to kidney issues. And more importantly, they don’t solve deficiency because deficiency requires abundance. You can’t achieve abundance with pills because of the laxative effect at higher doses.
Topical bypasses this entirely. The skin absorbs magnesium; every cell in the body is selectively permeable and has magnesium transporters—every cell. That means we’re built for this. Through the skin, chloride hits the first acidic layer and becomes a citrate. Then it reaches the fatty layer and becomes a glycinate. The body creates the very same forms they’re selling you, naturally, if you use magnesium properly.
The detoxification side of magnesium is also barely covered in mainstream literature because pills never allow high enough abundance to trigger detox. You need enough magnesium to “waste” some of it on detoxing heavy metals, plastics, and other contaminants. The Greeks understood this; magnesium was central to their culture. Their bath culture wasn’t about hygiene—it was magnesium-centered, in the region of Magnesia, using magnesium-rich waters like Lutraci and stones like dolomite (50% magnesium) in their heated bath structures.
We’re rediscovering their techniques—recreating natural limestone, sulfur, and magnesium waters. So don’t be fooled by all the “forms.” Drop the noise and return to topical use, in glass, with true oceanic or natural mineral sources.
You can learn more at theheartoftradition.com. Yes, each form—citrate, malate, etc.—has certain specificities, and these effects are real. But chloride is converted into these forms naturally in the body. The pill forms may speed certain effects but at the cost of kidney strain. It’s better to step out of that paradigm and move toward something slower but safer, with higher surface area and deeper long-term effects.
There’s a reason women are attracted to surfers—they’re in the water constantly; it shapes the body and calms. The Greeks maintained our genetics whereas with all our technology we have dropped the ball here. Time for a change.
Come check us out at theheartoftradition.com.
