Today we’re talking about magnesium water, also known as mag water or magnesium bicarbonate.
Magnesium water is a VERY useful way to gentle get magnesium into your body, but what is it? Why would you use it? What are your best tips on getting it to work without residue?
Watch the video and read below for details.
I’m Kristan Kershaw, Owner and Director of Supporting Balance. I was also the lead trainer of The Root Cause Protocol Institute alongside Morley Robbins from 2019 to 2024 and worked behind the scenes of the RCP between 2017 to 2024, including as the Operations Manager. Supporting Balance promotes the principles of this protocol.
Magnesium water is something I am quite passionate about as it’s such a cost-effective and easy magnesium to make and use. I’ve spent years optimising making it given that it is also a very biologically effective/easily absorbed option. In the following videos, you will learn about what ‘mag water’ is and how I personally use it in my day-to-day life.
To make mag water (magnesium bicarbonate), you need:
- Magnesium hydroxide powder (or milk of magnesia)
- COLD carbonated water (in Australia ‘soda water’) – use options with nothing else in it, not mineral water or flavoured options.
You can watch Kristan making mag water in 2 different videos.
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Ingredients
- 3/4 tsp magnesium hydroxide powder
- 1L COLD carbonated water (commercial or from a soda stream type carbonation option)
Method
- Add magnesium hydroxide to the carbonated water
- Shake vigourously for at least 20-30 minutes in total
You can start with 5-10 minutes of shaking and then have breaks in between shaking after that. Perhaps 5 minutes of shaking, 5 minutes of a break.
We have found that typically the best outcomes come the longer you shake at the start. A running joke in our house is ‘if you think you’re done shaking, but it’s still really cloudy, shake it some more!’.
Over time we have found that there can be residue leftover of unreacted magnesium hydroxide if you don’t shake enough in the initial 20-30 minutes.
If you see it’s going clear earlier than this, it may be enough, but cloudiness is a sign it’s not ready.
Tips
You can use less magnesium hydroxide to increase the speed of reaction and avoid having leftover unreacted magnesium in your bottle. You can alternatively use more soda water and keep the amount of magnesium the same.
If using a soda stream bottle to gas your water, it often is easiest to first gas the water, then use a larger bottle to tip the freshly carbonated water into. We put the powder in the bigger bottle and tip the carbonated water onto it to start the reaction.
Soda stream bottles may be a smaller volume – for the bottles Kristan’s family use, they are only approx 840ml of water, so using less magnesium hydroxide may help reduce the time needed to dissolve the final product and/or left over residue at the end.
Observations…
The bottle may suck inwards (if plastic) after a while. This is often when it starts to become clearer. It’s worth keeping shaking intermittently beyond this time to help all dissolve, though most will likely dissolve
The water to use could be any commercial carbonated water, or could be soda stream. We use a soda stream with our filtered water so we know what is in the water we drink!
The final product of this reaction will not be carbonated – it will be a concentrated magnesium liquid (maybe with a little bit of white sediment if not all reacted, this is fine and won’t harm you or the rest of the liquid).
Mag water is naturally alkaline, so drinking it (even watered down) is typically best kept away from meal time so as not to affect digestion.
The bicarbonate from the mag water can overall help digestion, so it’s beneficial to include in your routine away from food.
How to use
- Start with a small amount – perhaps 1 teaspoon or less within a cup (or more) of water, ideally spread out over time (eg in your water bottle over the day). Keep this amount consistent each day for 5-7 days.
- Build up slowly from there – it may be increasing by 1 teaspoon at a time, once a week for a while at least.
- Find the eventual concentration that feels best for you by slowly increasing.
Kristan’s experimentation
Kristan has found that her water tastes sweet when she has the right concentration for what her body needs – the amount varies depending on her activity, seasonally and under higher stress.
When she started mag water, Kristan drank it in some water before bed so she was having it away from water and when she knew she wasn’t going to be eating soon.
With time, she has increased how much she uses overall and at one point was using about 250mL of mag water per 1L water bottle she drank. That was a staple for a number of years, along with potassium bicarbonate in the water too.
In 2025 and 2026, Kristan has been experimenting with using it at different times of days and different strengths to suit the ‘here and now’ for her – just because the higher concentration was good previously, doesn’t mean it’s always going to be best.
Drinking too much of the higher concentration was actually leading to waking with a heavy head and feeling ‘slow’ and unable to get going in the morning, which is not typically how Kristan feels when she wakes!
It took some time, but it ended up that she felt best with using less mag water per day (and spreading it out at other times of the day was best). Particularly, she felt best not drinking as much in the evening as she had been doing.
Also, with higher overall activity load over those years, Kristan found she did better with adding some salt to her water bottle for drinking throughout the day with the magnesium and potassium.
How much mag…
Typically, magnesium hydroxide will have approximately 410mg of elemental magnesium, per 1/2 tsp of powder, or 615mg per 3/4 tsp.
If you use the above recipe with 3/4 of a teaspoon and all of your magnesium hydroxide powder reacts and goes into the final product, you would then have 615mg for 1 litre of liquid, or about 61mg of magnesium per 100mL. Our experience is, you’ll probably have some left behind.
If you use 1/2 tsp per litre, and all reacts, you would end up with 41mg per 100mL.
It’s hard to know exactly when there is some magnesium left over (the white powder at the bottom) that hasn’t reacted, so use these calculations as a guide.
You can then use these calculations to get an idea on how much you may have in your final product.
Example of how much to introduce
If you use the 3/4 tsp quantity of mag hydroxide per the recipe above, and most of it reacts (so there’s not too much in the bottom leftover), then you start with 1 tsp (5ml) of the concentrate, you’ll have somewhere around 2-3mg of magnesium.
It may seem pointless to go slowly, but, going too fast offers a much higher chance of your body having a strong reaction to it and you feeling like something is wrong with the product or it not being suitable for you… it can often just be, you need less at a time and to give your body time to initially adapt to it.
More isn’t always better (especially when starting out)
By being patient, you’re unlikely to cause any upset but your body can start to get used to the new introduction. You can trust your body’s feedback more easily and introducing other things becomes easier too, with that gained trust.
Maybe after a week you could go up to 2 teaspoons each day. An easy win! Your body will love the extra and you’ll find it easy to just be doing a small amount.
Keep adjusting slowly and you’ll blink and you’ll be doing 100mL into your larger volume water bottle and will be enjoying it because you’ve slowly adapted to it. It wasn’t overwhelming because you didn’t have 100 things to remember to do, just one.
Remember, ultimately, knowing EXACT amounts of magnesium do not need to be known that closely, and there will be some variation depending on how full the spoon is when you measured, how much reacts, etc. This is a guide.
Done is better than perfect, and listening to your body on how you are overall responding to something slowly introduced is far more important than tracking every single milligram of a nutrient you consume and aiming for a set number.
Your body is giving you feedback all the time – are you ready to listen? 😀
Need more tailored assistance?
If you’re ready to get tailored support for your body, then book a free 15-minute zoom call with one of our team. We’ll discuss your situation, what you’d like to achieve and point you in the right direction with our consult options.