“Take a chill pill, man!”
Ever wish that was a thing that really existed?
Guess what?! It does! I mean, basically. Well, you see, I kind of created it. It’s in gummy form, and it’s pretty amazing, and it also helps you sleep, too. For reals.
Also, it’s delicious.
I’ve been on a bit of a gummy kick lately. Last week I was all about the Vitamin C gummies, but then it hit me—why not turn my magnesium supplement into a tasty, chewable gummy with the goodness of gelatin, too?! Magnesium and gelatin are naturally calming nutrients, and when you add in a couple other ingredients and transform them into a sweet gummy that tastes like candy? It’s pretty much magic.
Because these gummies act as a natural calming and anti-anxiety remedy, and even a sleep aid!
How does this calm me down?
Magnesium acts as a natural muscle relaxant and is a powerful antidote to stress. It plays a role in hundreds of physiological functions, many of them having to do with your nervous system. Magnesium regulates overactive nervous impulses—it quite literally calms your nerves!
Magnesium supplementation can even as a natural anti-anxiety remedy. A study in France with patients with generalized anxiety disorder found that a statistically significant number of participants reported improvements on a magnesium supplementation regimen.
And because it stimulates muscle relaxation by mobilizing calcium out of muscle tissue, magnesium allows your body to activate the relaxation response—think, the opposite of the stress response. Your body naturally will want to relax itself to counteract stress, but without enough magnesium, muscles can stay too tense to allow that to happen. With adequate magnesium, the complete release of tension that your muscles need can be effectively enabled.
How does it help you sleep?
Magnesium is highly beneficial for sleep. Not only does it help your body physically relax, it’s vital for the function of your nervous system’s GABA receptors. GABA is a neurotransmitter that the brain uses to calm and shut off parts of your brain, which is necessary to enable the relaxation response, as well as sleep itself. Insomnia is actually a common symptom of magnesium deficiency, which makes sense when you understand all that magnesium does for your body.
And of course, homemade gummies provide you with a nice helping of gelatin—which contains highly beneficial amino acids that are very anti-inflammatory, anti-stress, and even act as inhibitory neurotransmitters—much like magnesium, they calm the nervous system. Glycine, the primary amino acid in gelatin, also stimulates the production of GABA, a calming amino acid which promotes restful sleep.
Additionally, these gummies contain natural sugars and salt—both nutrients are critical for hormone management related to sleep cycles. Adequate glucose sends the message to your body that there’s no need for excess stress hormones—so sugar will actually shut them down. When blood sugar gets too low, adrenaline can spike in order to seek out glycogen—a form of stored sugar—in the liver. If the supply of glycogen runs out, the stress response enacts the release of cortisol to help raise blood sugar back up. This process disrupts your sleep and can wake you up in the middle of the night. And high levels of stress hormones at bedtime can keep you from getting to sleep in the first place.
So having a small snack before bed with natural sugars and a little serving of salt (which allows your cells to process glucose effectively) may be just what you need to set yourself up for a good night sleep. Add in the benefits of magnesium and gelatin, and these gummies are pretty much the best homemade sleeping “pill” I could think of! Chew on a few of these and you’ll be in much better shape to have a great night’s sleep, without any of the terrible side effects of sleep meds!
Need more help getting to sleep?
OH—but before we get to the recipe—did you know that I actually used to suffer from insomnia? I wrote a whole book about what I learned to help me overcome it, so that I could share with everyone else.
Right now is your last chance to get The Sleep Solution: End Your Insomnia Naturally before it goes to Kindle! You can get The Sleep Solution PLUS my original ebook, Real Food for Real Life, for just 5 bucks, through the end of the month.
Recipe: Homemade Magnesium Gummies
Makes 3/4 cup’s worth of gummies—for me this was 35 gummies total in this silicone mold.
Note: You can adjust the recipe to have more or less magnesium powder if you’d like. See the information below after the instructions regarding magnesium dosage.
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup juice (I used an organic lemonade, which was really tasty and worked perfectly with the flavor of magnesium I used!)
- 3 T grass-fed kosher gelatin powder (you could just as easily use the porcine variety, if you’d like)
- 5 T magnesium citrate powder (I used this kind, with that specific flavor. Very tasty!)
- 1 T sweetener—organic cane sugar, honey, sucanat, whatever you’d like. (The magnesium powder does have stevia in it, but I recommend adding real sweetener)
- Pinch of sea salt (add in as much as you can stand, really. The more the better. But everyone’s tastes are different due to differences in hormonal balance.)
Equipment
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Directions
Alright, this is just a teensy bit tricky, so please pay attention!
In a medium-large mixing bowl, pour cold (refrigerated) juice, and whisk in the magnesium powder slowly. It will foam up quite a bit—so what I did was whisk in a tablespoon, then gave it a few minutes for the foam to die down. Whisk in another tablespoon, gave it another few minutes, etc., until it was all in there, with minimal foam.
In a small saucepan, pour in the juice/magnesium mixture. Now sprinkle the gelatin powder over the juice mixture in your saucepan, but leave it off the burner. We don’t need any heat yet. Allow it to sit for a couple minutes in order for the gelatin to “bloom”—this is a critical process of the gelatin powder absorbing the liquid. Without proper blooming, you will have a very icky, gritty texture to your gummies, and you will not be able to fully dissolve the gelatin once you heat your mixture. Very important to bloom! After a few minutes, you’ll see the mixture start to gel and form a weird, wrinkly mass. This is good! If there are still any bits of white powder sitting on top of the wrinkles, whisk them in while the mixture is still cold. When there’s no more white powder or visible white clumps, you’re okay to move onto the next step.
Now, you can go ahead and turn on the burner to a low-medium temp. As your mixture heats up, it will begin to liquify. Once it does, add in your sweetener and salt to dissolve. Avoid whisking it too much, or it’ll start to foam up just like it did when you added the magnesium powder. If it does, that’s okay, just let the foam sit for a few minutes and it’ll calm down. Kind of like a glass of beer with a thick foam head. If you’re patient, the foam goes away. And you probably don’t have to rub the oil on your nose and then stick your finger in the foam of your red solo cup like you did in college… I don’t think it works that way. 😉
Alright. Now, get yourself a glass liquid measuring cup with a spout, and pour the liquid gummy mixture into the measuring cup. Scrape the sides of the pan with your spatula to get it all in there. Is it 3/4 of a cup of liquid still? If it is, then it’ll fit exactly into the silicone mold I used, if you want to use that, too. And if it isn’t, that’s probably because some of the liquid evaporated, so you can just add in a little more juice if you’d like.
Set the silicone mold onto a large plate or a cutting board—any kind of hard and portable surface so you can get it into your fridge without spilling, since the silicone is soft. Pour the mixture very slowly and carefully into the silicone mold. If you’re not using a mold, you can pour it into a small baking dish instead, and then you’ll be able to cut out squares after it’s set.
Refrigerate your molds at least a half-hour, or until fully set. Then, carefully peel/wriggle/pop them out of the molds, or slice into squares if poured into a baking pan.
What’s the dosage? How many should I take?
If you use the exact amount of ingredients I did here, and used the same silicone mold which makes 35 gummies, it works out to about 69mg of magnesium per gummy. The RDA for magnesium is 400 mg, but that’s the RDA—which is generally a minimal guideline for the amount of a nutrient you should get to avoid illness. But, you would meet/slightly exceed the RDA if you took 6 gummies per day. I also sometimes take magnesium in the form of magnesium oil spray, epsom salt baths, and of course the magnesium in my diet.
*WARNING* – very important, my friends! Okay, if you’ve never taken any kind of magnesium supplement before, you need to start slow! Certain forms of magnesium, like magnesium citrate which is the powder used in this recipe, have a laxative effect that can be quite pronounced if you take more than your body can handle. So you gotta start slowly! I’d recommend only about one or two gummies per day, then work your way up to three, then four, etc. If you start slamming down tons of these gummies when you’re not used to taking that much magnesium (because they’re just delicious and you can’t stop eating them and you kind of have to eat them to taste-test for a blog post so you wind up downing like an entire batch before you consider that might actually be problematic), you will likely have some unpleasant pooping situations in the near future! (Ask me how I know.) But, go easy on them, introduce more magnesium to your body little by little—and you’ll be totally fine.
Where/how long can they be stored?
Homemade gummies with this much gelatin won’t melt if you stick them into a lunchbox for the day, but I recommend storing them mostly in the refrigerator, in an air-tight container. Foods with a lot of gelatin keep for a surprisingly long time, but you will probably eat all the gummies before they’d go bad, anyway.
Enjoy!
Any other questions? Ask in the comments!
What time of day do you take them?
OH OH OH! These are PERFECT!! My little one with constant insomnia won’t take Calm in a drink, but she’ll gladly put away a homemade gummy! So clever!!! Thank you soooo much!
I was wondering if I could use the liquid magnesium citrate instead of juice? I am on a clinical keto diet and fruit juice and sugared sweeteners are not an option. I already use the flavored liquid form on occasion and can somewhat deal with the taste (a bit tart, so I usually have to slug it down with a good bit of water). Since it contains citric acid (thus the tartness), would that affect the gel process? Thanks for the gummie idea, BTW… simply Brilliant!
I love this idea! I take natural calm nightly in a glass of lemonade, but this is a great idea! I wonder if there’s a vegetarian alternative to the gelatin that I could use.
Brilliant recipe – thank you.
Can you recommend a magnesium supplement without corn?
The unflavored natural calm is corn free
Does th “T” in the recipe as in 5 T Magnesium mean tablespoon or teaspoon? Thanks,
T in cooking is Tablespoon, t is teaspoon. 5 teaspoons would not even be two servings of Natural Calm so it’s probably safe to assume she’s referring to Tablespoons.
Capital T is always a tablespoon. Lower-case t is always a teaspoon.
The recipe standard is T=Tablespoon and t=teaspoon
any way to make this without Gelatin?
thanks!
It sounds like one more thing on the list…for me with 4 small children that won’t do. Is there anywhere I can find these already made with all the quality ingredients in your recipe?
T always means Tablespoon, small t always mean teaspoon.
Thank you SO much for explaining how to bloom the gelatin. I could never get my gelatin into solution, there were always clumps that wouldn’t dissolve, no matter how much I heated it. I will have to try this. 🙂
Any other choice for the( gelatin-made with animal bones) to make it vegetarian/vegan, Ty.
Thanks for the recipe. I’d like to use these with my daughter. I’ve read that magnesium in large doses (like over 80 mg per day)can be toxic for kids. Have you tried them with little ones? What about a half dose to start?
I am on thyroid medicine…can i still take these? can I just buy them from somewhere, I am not much into making all this stuff myself.
I just wanted to note that Natural Calm Magnesium requires HOT water to activate the magnesium into an Ionic for and make it properly absorbable, you don’t need a lot just about 25ml per teaspoon otherwise you will not get the full benefits of this AWESOME magnesium 🙂
Grand-daughters have fillings. Would need a non gummy product. They are 10 yrs. high anxiety at bedtime. Nervous kids due to a harsh home life. Could mag. Help them? Please help. A concerned Gramma
I made these last night and tried them. They are not like the gummies you buy (like gummy bears) they are more of a concentrated jello. No sticking to your teeth!
How do you get the gummies out of the mold so perfectly, i have used these molds before and they always stick!!
I, too, as a previous person asked, would like to know if you can use liquid Magnesium? I bought some, but can’t tolerate the taste, and it lingers on and on. I would love to use it in a recipe like this to gain the benefits of it without having to throw it away. The 2 bottles of Magnesium I have is low-sodium Mega-Mag 400 mg by Trace Minerals Research.
could we use xylitol as a sweetener replacement?
I don’t recommend it, but you’re free to experiment of course.
Yes – I also want to know how to adjust the recipe to use liquid mag citrate – I assume you just do 1/2 mag, 1/2 lemonade to the same amount of gelatin . . . Not sure though! Looking to get more mag in my daughter and she hates the taste of liquid mag!
I made a batch of these using the same brand magnesium except orange and used organic orange juice. I have had them in the fridge in an airtight container for 1 week and they now have white dot/balls on them. Are they no longer any good??????
Help.
I had a batch that started to do this too, oddly enough! It’s just the magnesium powder making its way to the surface. Kind of bizarre! But they are still perfectly fine. It almost tastes like they’re coated with sour sugar, like candies.
I’ve been experimenting with gummies from all the blogs out there and they never ever come out tasting good, these on the other hand were AMMMMMAAAAZing!!!! thank you so much for sharing the recipe, now I have to hold my self back from overdosing lool
Shortly after putting these gummies in the fridge, they began to develop a “salted” appearance–little white specks, resembling grains of salt began to form on the surface. Where they touched each other, the specks didn’t appear.
I ended up trashing them, because my grandson wouldn’t eat anything so strange looking.
Was the magnesium leaching to the surface? Any ideas? I don’t want to waste money by making more that will end up the same way.
Can I give these to my children 4 and 6 years of age. If not what would u suggest I give to them.
Please check with your pediatrician, but I would give them to my own kids if I had them. 🙂
I am making these with the raspberry lemon flavor and organic grape juice. it smells REALLY good, but I am still waiting for the foam to go away, it seems to be trying to take over my kitchen….
I’m reading this with interest, because several weeks ago I had a life threatening situation due to
magnesium deficiency. Certain medication (water pills in my case) can leech this mineral out of your
system over time-and your diet can’t override it! So a supplement is needed..or you need to get off the regular use of water pills! The heart can beat very
irraticly and if the magnesium level dips too low it
can kill you and/or cause a costy hospitalization. thanks for sharing you info~~Peace 🙂
Love this recipe. I went over to the fall into health site for the sale. The link will not click. This recipe is posted from today so I am assuming since the sale is for Black Friday it is still on. The date is Nov 10 on the page. However, the link to buy does not work. Cannot find a working link anywhere. I would like to get this. Please let me know when the link is fixed. I shared on FB so I hope the link is fixed soon.
Ok, I just realized I’m a month behind. Sorry.
I love this recipe AND it fits the paleo autoimmune protocol. So, thank you! I just started a weekly Paleo AIP Recipe Roundtable through my blog, and I would love it if you linked up this recipe. I’m trying to expand resources for the AIP community. Here’s the link: http://www.phoenixhelix.com/2013/12/04/paleo-aip-recipe-roundtable-5/
Can you add crystalline vit. C to this recipe?
I’ve only tried powdered C, but you’re welcome to experiment! Would love to hear back from anyone who tries an alternate form of it.
I made these yesterday using only three tablespoons of Raspberry Lemon flavored Calm. I used lemon juice as suggested. My reason for only using 3 instead of 5 tablespoons is I did not want to have the pooping problem that was mentioned. I am just starting to use this. I’m diabetic and some of my medicines already affect my digestive system – not in a good way.
My Gummies popped right out of the silicone molds – I left them in the ‘fridge before I went to work and came home to wonderful gummies! These do not stick to dental work (in my experience) and they sort of melt in your mouth if you leave them there long enough!
Great recipe, thanks for sharing. Now to experiment with other flavors and ingredients.
How big are each of your gummies? I used a space themed jello mold. They’re between 1 and 2 teaspoon sized. Is that similar to your’s? Just wanting to know for serving size comparison. BTW, these taste amazing!
Hello,
Your gummies look so good and I will be trying out your recipe. I really want to know please how you calculate the dosage per gummy? Do i multiply the dosage I want to the number of space in the mold in your recipe? I want to make 500 mg vit c gummies. Thanks
I just made these and they came out perfect! I used the raspberry-lemonade flavor with organic lemonade and honey. Considering that this was my first foray into homemade gummies, I’m pretty proud of myself 😉 Thank you so much for sharing the recipe! Do you have any others that you recommend?
Nice!! Well, I do have one other gummy recipe, a vitamin C version that’s pretty tasty! http://butterbeliever.com/homemade-vitamin-c-gummies/
Oh and then these, that are just a simple fruit snack made from frozen juice concentrate: http://butterbeliever.com/healthy-homemade-fruit-snacks-100-percent-juice/
Wow this is great. Just tried making them and found the detail of your directions to be precise and exquisite. Thank you for taking so much time to share this with us. I’m thinking to add some camu camu powder to the next batch as vitamin c helps to absorb magnesium 🙂
What a nice compliment! Thank you. So glad you liked them.
I actually have another recipe for vitamin C gummies! http://butterbeliever.com/homemade-vitamin-c-gummies/
But yes, you certainly could combine the two nutrients—great idea!
I know I am magnesium deficient because of diabetes. I have severe muscle cramps and am excited to find this recipe! However being a bad T2 diabetic I wonder if I could use liquid stevia instead of the sugar or honey? Would I have to adjust the liquid?
Blessings and thank you,
Bee
I’ve had great success in making these, but I’m perplexed with the “moldy” affect a few days sitting in the fridge! Is this just the magnesium leaking out or is it truly mold? I threw them away with a great sigh and am leary of making again. I followed your recipe to the T. Advice?
It is definitely NOT mold (that would not happen after only a few days), but I know it looks that way! I just eat them with the granulated magnesium that “leaked” to the surface, but another commenter noted that you can always re-melt and re-mold them if it bothers you.
If yours have developed the white spots of magnesium leeching onto the surface, don’t throw them out. They haven’t gone bad and an easy fix is to simply put them back in a pan on low heat and re-liquefy them. Then just pour into molds and refrigerate again.
Yes! Great advice, thank you.
Wouldn’t it be more like 75mg per gummy? Looks like your linked magnesium provides 175mg per teaspoon. 5T = 2,625mg. Divide that by the 35 gummies = 75mg per gummy.
I just checked the math and 5T = 2397.5 mg which equates 68.5 mg per gummy. According to the Mag bottle I have there are 325 mg in 2 tsp (rounded). I also added hot water as the magnesium instructions indicate to dissolve in hot water prior to adding any other liquid, I do believe this will aid the initiation of the magnesium thus the absorption level so I ended up with an entire cup of liquid, too much for the hex mold, so I’m assuming mine will have a little less of a magnesium content, though not by much. I left out the added sweetener, seems like an unnecessary addition on sugars as they smell plenty sweet between the juice and flavored magnesium.
Hi – I really love this recipe. Thanks for sharing it. One question – i have also noticed a weird white film developing on the gummies after a couple of days. And I am glad to see it’s not just me! I did increase the magnesium in the recipe by 1 tablespoon to make calculating the serving size easier with my mold. (I end up with 18 larger gummies that have 1 tsp of magnisium in each).
Glad to know that i don’t have to throw those out or worry about the white powdery film on the gummies.
Thanks
Mine always come out cloudy. I’ve tried lemon juice made into lemonade and grape juice (grape does not taste good). Am I doing something wrong?
I have been a very tightly wound up ball of stress and anxiety lately, it doesn’t help that I am
Oops,There has been so much going on in my lif right now, an I am just spread too thin. MY stress levels have been so high lately that my doctor gave me klonopin to take as needed,but it makes me feel like a zombie. I tried these gummies and I have not had to take anything else for my anxiety. They taste good too. I make mine with iced tea, smidgen of green stevia, and the lemon magnesium powder and they taste like Arnold Palmers! I want to make them into some savory type flavors too, I am thinking maybe gazpacho jelly bites for summer. Or maybe basil watermelon. Thanks so much for this!
I’ve made these twice,the first time just as you suggested (except I made the lemonade), and then made them with blueberry juice. The first time I loved them and they kept in the frig until they were gone. The second time I loved them when I first made them, but by day 2 they had a white powder covering them. Any ideas why?
Yes, if you scroll up you’ll see that others have had this experience. For some weird reason, the magnesium seeps out to the surface of the gummies over time. I think they still taste just fine that way, and it’s definitely nothing to worry about. Even though it looks a little scary!
I love sneaking magnesium into things. 🙂 Gummies, smoothies, popsicles… These look pretty tasty! Gonna have to give them a try. 🙂
Thank you! I have been having trouble with leg cramps at night, and have been told magnesium might help. Problem is I have a problem swallowing large pills; they get stuck in my throat and I end up coughing them up. I’ve tried buying magnesium pills, but they seem to always come in a bottle that you can’t see how big they are- and they are always HUGE. Although there are commercial products out there that contain magnesium in small amounts mixed with other vitamins, I have not been able to find a magnesium gummy.