Right, so. I want to be upfront that I'm not a scientist or a doctor. I'm just someone who was really struggling to sleep, had restless legs most nights, and went down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to figure out if magnesium could help.

What I found was genuinely interesting — and it's a big part of why I ended up making the Audere Pure Magnesium Body Butter. So I thought I'd share it, in plain language, in case it's useful to anyone else.

So what actually
is magnesium?

It's an essential mineral — meaning your body needs it but can't make it itself, so it has to come from food or supplements. Most of us know vaguely that it's good for us, but I honestly had no idea just how much it does until I started reading about it.

It's involved in over 300 processes in the body. The ones that matter most for this conversation are nerve function, muscle function, and sleep.

And the thing is — magnesium deficiency is really common, especially in women. Stress, poor sleep, not eating brilliantly — all of these can deplete it. So a lot of people are running low without even knowing it.

Magnesium and
restless legs

This is what started it all for me. Restless leg syndrome is thought to be linked to how the brain regulates dopamine, which controls muscle movement. When that goes wrong you get that horrible, relentless urge to move your legs — usually right when you're trying to rest.

Magnesium is involved in how nerves fire and how muscles relax after contracting. When levels are low, nerves can get overactive and muscles struggle to fully release — which is widely thought to contribute to restless legs. It's also why night cramps are so common in people who are low in magnesium. That cramping feeling is essentially the muscle not being able to let go properly.

Magnesium and
sleep

This was the bit that really got me. It's not just about the physical stuff — magnesium has a direct relationship with how well you sleep, and here's roughly why:

• Parasympathetic system It activates your body's "rest and digest" mode — which is what you need to actually fall asleep. A lot of us spend too much time in fight-or-flight, and magnesium helps bring you back down.
• Melatonin It helps regulate your natural sleep hormone. Without enough magnesium, your body can struggle to produce it properly.
• GABA receptors GABA is basically your brain's off switch — it quietens nerve activity. Magnesium helps activate it, which is why it can ease that buzzy, busy-brain feeling that keeps so many of us awake.

It's not a magic fix and everyone's different. But for a lot of people, low magnesium is a genuinely missing piece.

So why use it on your skin
rather than a supplement?

Honestly this is the question I get asked most. And the answer is — you can absolutely take oral supplements and plenty of people do. But they're not always well absorbed in the gut, and higher doses can cause digestive issues.

Applying it to the skin means it absorbs more directly and skips all of that. That's why magnesium oils and body products became so popular.

The problem for me was that everything I tried felt awful — thick, sticky, left a residue I couldn't stand. So I ended up making my own. Something that had all the magnesium but actually felt nice on skin. Light, absorbent, and something I actually wanted to use every night.

That's the body butter. And through a lot of trial and error — and some very patient friends and family who tried it along the way — I got there.

One more thing —
preservatives

A bit of a tangent but I get asked about this too. Every water-based product needs a preservative or it goes off. Most use parabens, which a lot of people (me included) prefer to avoid, especially around children.