The Night I Finally Slept: How Magnesium Oil Changed Everything
After menopause stole my sleep, I became a vampire. Awake all night. Sleeping through my day. Without the murder and the lost soul - but only barely. My doctor wanted to prescribe pharmaceuticals. I went looking for another way. Then I discovered magnesium oil. The night I used it, I slept. Saving my health an my soul.
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Insomnia
Let me tell you about the insomnia.
Not the polite version where you toss and turn for an hour. The REAL version. The menopause version where 3am becomes your most intimate companion. The kind where you spend your days in a fog so thick you can barely remember your own name and what it felt like to wake up rested.
I became a vampire.
Awake all night, every night, watching the darkness. Sleeping — when sleep finally came at all —- during the day, at hours that made no sense and served no purpose. Without the murder or the lost soul. But barely, on both counts, because the exhaustion of true insomnia does something to a person that is hard to describe to someone who hasn’t experienced it. It hollows you out. It makes everything harder and grayer and less. And it goes on, and on, and on.
What Menopause Did To My Sleep
My menopause journey began in my 40s with peri-menopause. Oh joy. As if life as a woman isn’t hard enough. By 50 I completed the phase. No more menstruation. What a beautiful milestone. Even with all the hormonal shifts, I was a sleeper. A good, reliable, grateful sleeper who got into be and woke up feeling like a million bucks. By 60 menopause decided all that was over. If you are currently sleeping well, stop and appreciate it. You don’t really know how much miss something until it’s gone.
The hormonal changes of menopause affect sleep in ways that feel almost personally targeted. Falling asleep became a chore - something to negotiate - rather than simply do. Staying asleep became a fantasy. And 3am - that particular cruel hour when the night is too far gone to feel like even trying.
3am thoughts are their own special category of terrible. Everything is worse at 3am. Every worry is larger. Every problem is unsolvable. Every decision you’ve ever made comes up for review and scrutiny at 3am.
I would lie there, wide awake, exhausted beyond reason, completely unable to do the one thing my body and mind so desperately needed. Tears became the norm, and begging was my regular routine. Trust me I tried everything. The sleep hygiene routines, melatonin, no-screens-before-bed rule, breathing techniques. Nothing worked. So I did what any sensible woman does, I went to my doctor.
The Doctor’s Appointment Wasn’t What I’d Hoped For
I sat in the office exhausted but hopeful. I described by months long broken sleep, waking up at 3am, the daytime fog, all of it. I was looking for answers. I was hoping for something that would help.
My doctor listened carefully and then said “I’m going to give you prescription.”
‘ I want to say here that I have enormous respect for my doctor and for medicine. I take a stain. I take medication for hypothyroidism. These are pharmaceutical drugs I cannot and won’t avoid - they are managing real conditions and I’m grateful they exist. I’m not anti-medicine. I am pro-being-thoughtful-about-what-I-put-in-my-body.’
And sitting in that office, being offered a pharmaceutical sleep aid for what felt to me like a natural hormonal transition, something in me said: not yet. Let me look at another way first.
I left without the prescription. I want home and researched. I asked questions. I talked to women who had been where I was. And that’s how I found magnesium oil.
Rebel tip: When sleep eludes you in menopause got to your doctor and get every option.
What Even in Magnesium Oil?
Magnesium is an essential mineral the body uses for over 300 biochemical functions - including regulating the nervous system and supporting the production of melatonin, the hormone that controls your sleep-wake cycle.
According to the National Institutes of Health, 80% of Americans are deficient in magnesium. That blew my mind when I read it. Not just some of us. Eighty percent. It turns out that sleepless, anxious, exhausted new version of yourself doesn’t mean you’re crazy. It’s a mineral deficiency hiding in plain sight. Not only does it affect your sleep, it exacerbates conditions like Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and osteoporosis (and that’s another post for later). Highly processed foods are a culprit for foods lack magnesium content. Big surprise there huh?
Magnesium oil is not actually an oil. It’s a solution of magnesium chloride and water that feels slightly oily when applied. It absorbs directly through the skin and into the bloodstream, bypassing the digestive system. Oral supplements have as little as 4-10% absorption rate, while the spray delivers magnesium directly to the cellular level through the skin. That makes it more efficient and more effective. Whatever your body doesn’t need gets flushed out naturally. You also don’t suffer from the digestive side effects oral supplements can cause.
The First Night
I sprayed it on, rubbed it in. Waited for the slight tingling that I had been warned about - a sign the magnesium is absorbing and an indicator that you’re deficient. Don’t worry it’s slight and it goes away after regular use. I went to sleep - right away.
‘I want to be precise about this because I think that matters here: I, a woman who had not fallen asleep easily in many many months, I feel asleep. That night. The first night.’
I woke up at 3am - because the 3am waking was so deeply established by that point that it took a few nights to resolve - but I fell back asleep easily. Something I had not done in longer than I could remember. In the morning my husband said - '‘did you sleep all night”? We were both so happy we hugged and I cried a few tears of joy.
By the end of the first week the pattern had shifted completely. I was falling asleep. I was staying asleep. The 3am visits became occasional rather than nightly and then gradually rare. I felt for the first time in what seemed like forever, rested. One year later and I can proudly say I sleep 7 to 8 hours nightly.
The Product I Use and Recommend
I use Seven Minerals - Magnesium Oil Spray and I want to be transparent: this is a genuine personal recommendation born entirely from my own experience. No one paid me to say this. Nobody sent me a free bottle. I found it myself, in the middle of my own desperate search for sleep, and it changed my life.
It has over 23,000 five star reviews on Amazon. Here’s why I chose Seven Minerals specifically.
USP Grade - purified and tested by PhD chemists to exceed United States Pharmacopeia Standards.
Manufactured in The USA
Not Tested On Animals
Around $19 a bottle that lasts me 4 months. That a bargain to get my sleep back.
Important Safety Information
Please read this before starting magnesium oil. I’m not a doctor. This is personal experience, not medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider before starting any new supplement especially if you are on medication.
Anyone with kidney failure should not use any magnesium products.
If you are on dialysis or your doctor has warned against supplements, avoid magnesium oil.
Those with low heart rates should consult their doctor before use as magnesium relaxes the body.
Magnesium can interact with certain medications - always check with your healthcare provider.
Always continue with any prescribed medication you are taking - natural options work alongside medical care, not instead of it.
A Final Word to The Vampires
If you are in the insomnia chapter now - if 3am has become your lover and you’ve forgotten what it feels like to wake up rested - I want you to know that it does not have to be permanent.
I sat in a doctor’s office exhausted and left without a prescription because something told me to keep looking. I found magnesium oil. The first night I used it, I slept.
You deserve to sleep too Dear Rebel. Deeply. Restoratively. The way your body needs and your life deserves.
Try magnesium oil. And if you wake up at 3am tomorrow night, know that somewhere out there is a graying woman in Georgia who once referred to herself as a vampire is now sleeping soundly.
There is hope.
It comes in a spray bottle.
Did you doctor reach for the prescription pad too? Have you found a natural solution that changed something for you? This is the conversation I want to have - tell me everything in the comments. Every woman reading this at 3am needs to know she is not alone,
With Rebel Love - Jeannie
