I spent a year making an electrolyte. Here's why.

Advertisement, Garrett, founder of Great Lakes Hydration

There's a tub of electrolyte powder in the back of your cabinet right now. You bought it, used it four or five times, and stopped. Maybe it tasted like drinking seawater. Maybe it was so sweet it felt like you were cheating on the reason you bought it.

I had three of them. That's actually how this started.

But when I finally flipped one over and read the label properly, the thing that stopped me wasn't the sweetener. It was that the magnesium line said 0mg. So did the next one. The third had magnesium, but one form of it, and not much.

Here's the part I wish someone had just told me.

Magnesium is never just magnesium

It doesn't exist on its own in a supplement. It's always bound to something else, and that something else changes how much of it you actually absorb and how it sits in your stomach. There are around seven forms you'll run into. They are not interchangeable.

Magnesium oxide is the one most supplements use. It's the cheapest by a wide margin, a lot of it passes straight through, pulling water into the intestine on the way. If you've ever heard someone say magnesium wrecked their stomach, this is almost always the form they took.

Magnesium citrate is bound to citric acid. Better absorbed than oxide, very common, middle of the pack.

Magnesium malate is bound to malic acid, a compound your cells already use in energy metabolism.

Magnesium glycinate is bound to glycine, an amino acid. This is the one formulators reach for when stomach tolerance is the priority.

Magnesium L-threonate is newer, developed by researchers studying how magnesium moves into the brain. It's dramatically more expensive than the rest, which is why you rarely see it outside of standalone magnesium supplements.

Magnesium BHB is bound to beta-hydroxybutyrate, which gives it a different absorption route than the four above.

Go look at whatever's in your cabinet. If it lists magnesium at all, it's probably oxide, and it's probably the only one.

The four I ended up using

Each form binds to a different carrier and absorbs through a different pathway. Using one form means everything competes for the same route. Splitting the same total across four costs meaningfully more than filling the line with oxide — which is exactly why almost nobody does it.

Great Lakes Hydration has 135mg of magnesium per serving. Here's precisely where every milligram comes from:

No proprietary blend. No "magnesium complex" hiding the ratio. If a label won't tell you the split, there's usually a reason.

What people say once they've tried it

The other half of the problem

Formulation is only half of why that tub ended up in the back of your cabinet. The other half is that it tasted like a chore.

I'm from the Midwest. The Great Lakes aren't salty, and neither is this. Never too sweet, never too salty — light enough that you finish the glass without thinking about it. That sounds like a small thing. It's the entire difference between a product you use and a product you don't.

Will it upset my stomach? Not the way oxide does. There's no oxide in it. Glycinate is specifically the form chosen for tolerability.

What if I don't like it? Returns accepted within 15 days of delivery. Just reach out.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.