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I want to tell you something that I still find hard to believe even though I have lived it.
I did not start taking magnesium glycinate for my periods. I started taking it because I had just discovered I had the MTHFR gene mutation and my research told me that magnesium deficiency is incredibly common, especially in people with MTHFR, and that supporting your body with the right supplements was a critical part of addressing the mutation. So I added it alongside my methylfolate, B12 and liposomal glutathione and moved on.
I was not thinking about my endometriosis when I did that. I had already made a kind of quiet peace with the fact that the pain was just going to be part of my life. I had accepted it. Made room for it in my calendar, in my wardrobe, in my plans. I had spent years fighting it and getting nowhere and at some point you stop fighting what you believe is permanent.
I had no idea what was about to happen.
What My Periods Were Actually Like
Before I tell you what changed I want to paint you a picture of what I was living with so the rest of this post lands the way it deserves to.
My periods were not painful. Painful is not the right word. They were life stopping. Body stopping. The kind of experience that reorganized every part of my existence around managing something that was completely unmanageable.
The first sign was always my right thigh. Before a single cramp arrived, before any bleeding started, my right thigh would fill up with this deep heavy aching sensation that sat right on what I believe to be the sciatic nerve and just stayed there. Dense and relentless. Like something had taken up residence inside the bone itself. I would press into it, rub it, try to move it around, and when none of that worked I would punch it. Hard enough to bruise. Not because I wanted to hurt myself but because my mind needed something else to pay attention to, something with edges and a location, instead of the internal chaos that had no shape and no address and no way to reach it.
Once the period actually started the pain spread out and got creative. My pelvis felt like it was being compressed from the inside, heavy and full of pressure, like everything inside me was trying to find a way out that did not exist. My lower back joined in. Then would come the shooting sensations, sudden and electric, starting somewhere in my lower abdomen and traveling upward through my chest or sideways across my body with absolutely no predictability. There was no bracing for them. They came when they wanted, lasted as long as they wanted, and left when they felt like it.
There was also a specific pulling sensation in my lower left side that came every time I bent forward and straightened back up. A tight sharp tugging that felt like something inside was attached to something it was not supposed to be attached to and every normal movement was testing that connection. I am fairly certain endometriosis had attached itself to my abdominal wall and an organ and was making its presence known every time I dared to move like a regular person.
And then there were the rectal electric shocks. I am saying it directly because it deserves to be said directly. A sudden sharp completely unannounced electric jolt with no warning and no pattern and absolutely no regard for where I was or what I was doing when it decided to show up. Standing in a store. Mid conversation. Hands full of groceries. It did not care. I had to learn to keep my face neutral and my body moving and hope nobody noticed what was happening because there was no way to explain it in real time and no way to stop it from happening.
The swelling itself was its own ongoing indignity. My abdomen would bloat so severely that I looked visibly pregnant, which carried its own complicated grief given everything I had already lost to this disease. Finding clothes that did not dig into my stomach or cause pain just from the pressure of fabric became its own project. Jeans were out. Most waistbands were out. I eventually started wearing maternity clothes because nothing else fit without hurting me. I never wore white. Not during my period, not in the days before, not ever, because my body had made it very clear that it could not be trusted to give me any notice before it decided to hemorrhage.
The hemorrhaging deserves its own paragraph because it was its own separate catastrophe layered on top of everything else. A super tampon and period underwear and sweatpants and I would still bleed through all of it within a couple of hours. Not occasionally. Routinely. I stopped going places. I stopped making plans. I kept my world very small because I could not afford the humiliation of being somewhere public when my body decided it was time.
Before I really understood what was happening to me I was working a cashier job, just me and a coworker on shift, when it happened at the register. Black pants saved me from the worst of it being visible but I had soaked through everything. I asked my coworker to cover so I could go home and change. She said no. I told her I had blood on my clothes. She told me to grab pants off the rack and hang them back up after my shift.
I took the pants. I threw them away. I stayed the whole shift because I was young and quiet and terrified of getting in trouble. I have thought about that version of me many times since. She deserved so much better than that moment and so does every person reading this who has ever had to make themselves smaller because of something their body was doing that was entirely outside their control.
The mood piece is something I talk about with a lot of guilt even now. The anger that arrived before I could even identify what triggered it. The tears that showed up right behind it without warning. The whiplash of feeling completely out of control of my own emotional responses no matter how hard I tried to manage them. The people I love most bore the weight of that and I carry that knowledge quietly. The pain fed the depression and the depression fed the pain and I was caught in a loop that felt like it had no exit. There were entire periods where I just stayed in bed, not sleeping, not doing anything, just existing in the lowest possible way and waiting for it to be over.
That was my normal. That was what I had stopped trying to fix because I genuinely believed it was permanent.
I was wrong.
Why I Was Not Even Trying to Fix It
By the time I started taking magnesium glycinate I had already made a decision that I do not talk about lightly.
I had told myself that if I was still at this level of pain and suffering by the time I turned 50, only 15 years from where I was, I was going to force a shutdown. Check myself out of this life. I was not going to continue living in this body at this level of pain with this level of depression and suffering for another 15 years. I simply was not. And at the rate the pain was progressing I genuinely was not sure I would make it to 50 before I gave up anyway.
That is not a dramatic statement. That is the truth of what chronic unmanaged pain does to a person over years and decades. It wears down the will to continue in ways that are very hard to explain to someone who has not lived inside it.
I am telling you this so that what I am about to say lands with the full weight it deserves.
What Happened With My Periods
The first period after I started magnesium glycinate was noticeably less painful. But I was not thinking about the magnesium. I just thought I was having an easier period and I tensed up waiting for the real pain to arrive, because in my experience if a period started easy it was saving up for something terrible in a few days. I waited. The terrible never came.
The second period was even less painful than the first.
By the third and fourth period I had no pain. None. I remember lying there waiting for it to start and thinking something had to be wrong because this was not how my body worked. How was this possible. I always had pain. I ALWAYS had pain.
I noticed I was not bleeding through everything anymore. Significantly less laundry. I was waking up to dry sheets. I had been sleeping on towels for so long that sleeping on dry clean sheets felt like something to be suspicious of.
I still was not connecting it to the magnesium.
Then I had a few weeks where I fell off my supplement routine. I am not great at routines and I will fully admit that. A few days before my next period that familiar ache started building in my right thigh, that dense heavy pain I knew better than I wanted to. I remember thinking great, I knew it was too good to be true. And then I remembered I had not taken my supplements in weeks. I got back on the magnesium and within an hour or two the pain was gone.
That was when I knew.
I have accidentally confirmed this theory a few more times since then because I still sometimes forget my supplements for a stretch of days. Every single time without fail the thigh pain starts creeping back. Every single time I take the magnesium and within a short while it is gone again. I have been sad and grumpy in bed convinced my pain was back only to realize I just forgot to take my supplements for the last week and then be back on my feet within hours of taking them.
It sounds dramatic. But this magnesium saved my life. Not metaphorically. Literally. I had a plan and a timeline and an intention and a supplement I started for completely unrelated reasons came in like a wrecking ball and took that plan apart without me even realizing it was happening.
Why Magnesium Works for Period Pain
This is the part most articles skip and I want to make sure you have it.
Most people are deficient in magnesium. Estimates suggest up to 75% of adults do not get enough from diet alone. For people with MTHFR the deficiency tends to be even more pronounced because impaired methylation affects how efficiently your body absorbs and uses nutrients including magnesium.
Here is what magnesium actually does in the context of period pain specifically. Magnesium is a natural muscle relaxant. Menstrual cramps are caused by uterine muscle contractions triggered by prostaglandins, hormone-like compounds that signal the uterus to contract and shed its lining. When magnesium levels are adequate muscle contractions are regulated and controlled. When magnesium is deficient those contractions can become excessive, severe and far more painful than they need to be.
Magnesium also regulates prostaglandin synthesis directly, meaning adequate magnesium levels can reduce the production of the very compounds causing the excessive cramping in the first place.
For people with endometriosis this matters even more because endo tissue outside the uterus also responds to prostaglandins, contributing to the widespread pelvic pain, back pain and referred pain in the thighs and legs that makes endo so much more complex than a standard painful period.
Beyond period pain magnesium plays a role in regulating mood through its effect on neurotransmitter function, which is why magnesium deficiency is strongly linked to anxiety, mood swings and irritability. The mood swings I lived with for years were not just a personality flaw or a hormonal imbalance. They were at least in part a magnesium deficiency my body had been screaming about for years.
What I Take and How Much
I take Optimal Magnesium by Seeking Health — 150mg in the morning and 150mg at night. Seeking Health formulates specifically for people with MTHFR which is why I trust their products above other brands. You can find it on my Supplements and Wellness page.
I also want to mention something I do not talk about enough. I take Magnesium Citrate by Life Extension every other night because I have severe chronic constipation. We are talking twice a month without intervention. I know that is not the most glamorous detail but I am including it because chronic constipation is incredibly common in people with MTHFR and endometriosis and nobody talks about it, and magnesium citrate is a gentle natural way to support regularity without harsh laxatives.
Different forms of magnesium do different things in the body. Magnesium glycinate is best absorbed and gentlest on digestion, ideal for muscle relaxation, sleep, anxiety and period pain benefits. Magnesium citrate has a mild laxative effect making it useful for constipation support. Using both strategically has made a meaningful difference in my daily life in ways I wish someone had told me about sooner.
The Other Things That Changed
Beyond my periods the magnesium glycinate changed my sleep in a way I am still a little emotional about.
I had never in my life woken up feeling refreshed. Not once. I woke up more exhausted than when I went to sleep, groggy and heavy, waking up five to ten times a night and never feeling like I actually rested. I genuinely thought people who said they woke up feeling good were either lying or built differently than me.
Now I wake up naturally before my alarm. I sleep through the night. I open my eyes and I feel okay. Sometimes I feel good. This is still something I find slightly miraculous.
My anxiety is gone. Not managed. Not reduced. Gone. I walk into stores without the deep breath I used to need to take at the door. Stressful things still happen in my life but they do not derail my whole week the way they used to. I feel calm in a way that used to feel completely out of reach.
The charlie horses I used to get in my legs at least every few months have not happened since. Leg cramps are one of the most classic signs of magnesium deficiency and when I think about how often I used to get them it makes complete sense.
What I Want You to Know
If you have painful periods, if you have endometriosis, if you have been told there is nothing that will help short of surgery or hormonal treatment, please just try the magnesium first.
150mg in the morning and 150mg at night. Magnesium glycinate specifically, not magnesium oxide which is poorly absorbed and causes digestive upset, not a random magnesium supplement from a convenience store. A quality magnesium glycinate from a brand that takes formulation seriously.
You do not have to get your hopes up. You do not have to believe it will work. You just have to try one more thing.
I had a plan and a timeline for ending my suffering one way or another. The magnesium found a different way.
I hope it finds one for you too. 🌿
— Ashley
Find the magnesium I personally use and trust along with all my other supplement recommendations at lowtoxliving.carrd.co
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