I agree. I think the product that @Husband has ordered could be counter-productive, and uses what I call the minor kitchen sink approach, meaning that it includes things other than mag that have been identified as having sleep-inducing effects. This would include Passion Flower and 5HTP, which is converted from the amino acid tryptophan, after which it’s converted to serotonin. Magnesium is critical to this conversion, as it is to approximately 350 other conversions in our systems .... and a proportion of the magnesium in the compound could be funneled of into that conversion, leaving less magnesium for uptake into your system for other actions.
I tried 5 HTP and Passion Flower, among a lot of others, in my attempt to get any kind of sleep at all, and any relief from the ripping, battering anxiety attacks I was suffering. They both made them worse.
5 HT at a cellular level can increase glutamate-induced excitability in spinal motoneurons, and too much 5-HTP can cause a spike in serotonin levels, resulting in side effects such like anxiety, shivering, and sometimes serious heart problems.
Passion Flower attaches to the same GABAa receptors that benzos use, and can increase the down-regulating of those receptors. It made me want to jump out of my skin and knit it into a tea cozy.
Tart Cherry juice is an age-old calmant and sleep-inducer, working thru its natural melatonin and tryptophan, and taken separately, it could be helpful.
As a footnote, I tend to avoid ANY product that has multiple constituents, for a lot of reasons, including the fact that some of them may work against, potentiate, or eliminate the action of others, but the primary reason is that if I have a negative reaction to it, it’s hard to know which of the multiple factors in it is causing that reaction, and it might put me off of a different constituent, something that, taken separately, could be extremely helpful.