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Magnesium vs. Zinc: Which Is Better for Sleep?



Medically reviewed by Alex Yampolsky, PharmD

Credit: elenaleonova / Getty Images
Credit: elenaleonova / Getty Images
  • Magnesium and zinc are popular supplements that may help improve sleep quality.
  • If it is difficult for you to rest or fall asleep, magnesium may be the best option. If you have no problem falling asleep, but do not feel well rested, zinc may be the most useful.
  • Taking a zinc or magnesium supplement for sleep will likely be most effective if your levels for either mineral are low.

Magnesium and zinc are both common supplements that may help with sleep and relaxation. Depending on what sleep issues you are having, one may be more useful than the other.

Magnesium for Sleep

Magnesium is a mineral needed for many body processes, including sleep. The mineral helps improve sleep in many ways, such as:

  • Regulates the production and release of stress- and sleep-related hormones and neurotransmitters, like melatonin and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)
  • Promotes relaxation through your body by calming your nervous system and lowering stress and anxiety
  • Relaxes your muscles from contraction, which also helps you rest physically

Research has found that magnesium can improve sleep in many ways, including helping you sleep for longer, fall asleep quicker, and improve the overall quality of sleep. This is especially true for people who have low magnesium levels. However, studies also show that magnesium may not be helpful for everyone, especially for people with normal magnesium levels.

Zinc for Sleep

Zinc is a mineral that also plays a role in regulating sleep. Zinc helps create and regulate the sleep and mood hormones serotonin and melatonin. There is also proof that zinc helps with the sleep-wake cycle of your brain by affecting GABA.

Studies have found that people taking zinc supplements or eating zinc-rich diets report falling asleep more quickly, feeling more refreshed after deep sleep, and noticing overall improvements in their sleep quality. People with normal or high zinc levels are more likely to report good sleep health and that they get 7 to 9 hours of sleep every night.

However, other studies have found that zinc supplements do not improve sleep quality. More studies are needed to understand the ideal dose and role of zinc in sleep.

Which Is Better for Sleep?

Both magnesium and zinc play different roles in the biological processes that affect sleep. Magnesium helps you physically and mentally relax. Zinc helps more with "deep" sleep and improving your sleep-wake cycle, similar to melatonin. While studies have shown that both minerals can help you fall asleep quicker, there have not been any studies directly comparing the two.

It's best to understand how your sleep is affected to decide which mineral may be best for you. If you find it difficult to rest or fall asleep, magnesium may be the best option for you. If you have no problem falling asleep but do not feel well-rested when you wake up, zinc may be the most useful.

If you have low levels of either magnesium or zinc, this can also help you choose which supplement may be best for you. Normal magnesium levels in adults range from 0.75-0.95 millimoles per liter (mmol/L) of blood, while a normal zinc level is between 80-120 micrograms per deciliter (mcg/dL) of blood. Your healthcare provider can check these levels for you through routine lab work. If you learn that either your magnesium or zinc levels are low, consider taking a supplement or eating foods high in zinc or magnesium.

Possible Magnesium and Zinc Side Effects

Magnesium supplements are considered safe when taken at the recommended dose. Most side effects reported with magnesium are gastrointestinal (GI), including nausea, diarrhea, and stomach cramps. The tolerable upper intake level for magnesium supplements in adults is 350 milligrams daily. Very high doses of magnesium can cause serious side effects, like low blood pressure (hypotension) and abnormal heart rate (arrhythmias).

Zinc is also considered safe when taken at the recommended dose. Possible side effects from zinc include nausea, vomiting, and stomach pain. Very high doses of zinc can lead to immune function issues and lower the amount of iron in your body. The tolerable upper intake level of zinc in adults is 40 milligrams per day. Doses above 40 milligrams can raise your risk for the mentioned side effects.

Magnesium and zinc are safe to take together. However, they can both cause GI side effects. If taking both, be sure to watch for side effects and consider only taking one if you notice any.

Other Useful Sleep Aids

Sleep plays an important role in overall health. For people experiencing insomnia and other sleep issues, other supplements may also help improve rest. Popular examples include melatonin, L-theanine, tart cherry, and valerian root.

You can also take steps to improve your sleep without medication or supplements. Some lifestyle tips for better sleep include:

  • Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day
  • Exercise regularly, but avoid exercise right before bed
  • Maintain a nutritious, well-rounded diet
  • Create a relaxing bedtime routine that you follow every day
  • Limit or avoid screens or electronic devices for at least 30 minutes before bed
  • Keep your bedroom quiet and at a cool temperature at all times
  • Limit or avoid caffeine in the afternoon and evening
  • Limit or avoid large meals and alcohol before bedtime

Talk with a healthcare provider if you have questions about ways you can help improve your sleep.



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Azure Traffic Manager – Table of Content

What is Azure Traffic Manager?

Azure Traffic Manager distributes traffic to services across the Azure regions. It is a DNS-based traffic load balancer that provides responsiveness and high availability of the services. The Traffic Manager considers the health of all the endpoints and uses DNS to route client requests to a service endpoint based on a traffic-routing method.

A service endpoint might be an application hosted on Azure or an internet-facing application outside of Azure. To suit the needs of different applications, the Azure Traffic Manager offers several endpoint monitoring options and traffic routing methods. It balances the traffic load on services according to set policies. 

Features of Traffic Manager

Here are the features that the Traffic Manager offers.

  • The Traffic Manager continuously monitors endpoints. If, in any case, an endpoint goes down, then it provides automatic failover, which results in increased application availability.
  • The services hosted on Azure run in data centres located around the world. The traffic manager routes traffic to the endpoint with the lowest latency. This improves application responsiveness.
  • If you plan for service maintenance of your applications, then the traffic at the time of service maintenance will be routed to the next best locations, which are alternative endpoints. So, users can perform operations without downtime.
  • The Traffic Manager also supports non-Azure endpoints, which might be on-premise or on hybrid cloud scenarios. These scenarios include burst-to-cloud, migrate-to-cloud, and failover-to-cloud scenarios.
  • It provides various traffic routing methods. We can combine the routing methods to create a nested Traffic Manager profile for more complex deployments.
  • Based on user traffic volumes and patterns, it provides actionable insights. You can get a view of where the users are interacting with the application and the quality of their digital experience.
  • It adheres to the applications of data sovereignty regulations by using geographic fencing.

How does Traffic Manager work?

The key benefits of the Traffic Manager are,

  • The traffic distribution is based on one of the traffic-routing methods provided by Azure.
  • It continuously monitors the health of the endpoints and implements automatic failover.

A client connects to a service using a DNS name. The Traffic Manager will first resolve the DNS name of the service to the IP address. The client is then connected to the IP address of the service to access it. The Traffic Manager works at the DNS level, where it routes traffic to a specific endpoint based on a selected traffic routing method. It is neither a proxy nor a gateway. Clients will directly connect to the selected endpoint. The Traffic Manager will not see the data passing between the client and the service.

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How does a client connect to the Traffic Manager?

When a client wants to connect to a service, a DNS query will be sent to the configured recursive DNS service. A recursive DNS service, which is also known as local DNS, does not host the domains directly. It rather encompasses the process of contacting authoritative DNS services to resolve the DNS name. The recursive DNS finds the name server across the internet for the domain in the DNS query sent by the client.

It then contacts the name server to request the DNS record. It then returns the record that points to the traffic manager of the server. The DNS then sends a request for the traffic manager. Upon receiving the request, the traffic manager chooses an endpoint. The chosen endpoint is sent back as a DNS name record. The recursive DNS service finds the domain name server. The IP address of the service endpoint will be returned. The recursive DSN consolidates and gives a single DNS response. The client then connects to the IP address. 

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Routing methods in Traffic Manager

To route traffic to different endpoints, Azure Traffic Manager supports six types of traffic-routing methods. The routing method specifies which endpoint is returned through DNS.

  • Priority – When you want to send primary service endpoints for all traffic, you can use the priority method. It provides backup if the primary endpoint is unavailable.
  • Weighted – When you want to distribute traffic across endpoints based on some pre-defined weights or evenly, use the weighted method.
  • Performance – When you want the users to interact with the lowest latency endpoint, then you can use the performance method. In this scenario, the endpoints are located in different geographic locations.
  • Geographic – When you want to route users to a specific endpoint based on the geographic location of the user, use the geographic methods. It employs data sovereignty based on different regions.
  • Multivalue – You can use multivalue when you only have IPv4/IPv6 addresses as endpoints. When a query is received, all the healthy endpoints are returned.
  • Subnet – If you want to map a set of user IP addresses to a specific endpoint, use the subnet method. When a request is received, the endpoint mapped to the source IP address will be returned.

Endpoints in Traffic Manager

An endpoint is referred to as application deployment. When the Traffic Manager receives a DNS request, it checks for all the endpoints and chooses an available one, and returns it as a DNS response. Traffic Manager supports the below 3 types of endpoints.

  • Azure endpoints – These are the services hosted in the Azure cloud.
  • External endpoints – These are the services hosted outside of the Azure cloud like on-premise or a different hosting cloud. These are used for IPv4/IPv6 addresses.
  • Nested endpoints – When you want to create more flexible routing schemes, you can use nested endpoints to combine Traffic Manager profiles for complex deployments. A single Traffic Manager profile can have any type of endpoints in it.
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Creating a Traffic Manager for an application

Let us create a Traffic Manager profile that provides high availability for your application. Navigate to https://portal.azure.com/ and log in to your Azure account. You have to deploy your web application in two different Azure regions. So, one will act as a primary endpoint and the other acts as a failover endpoint.

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Deploy the web application

Click on the ‘Create a resource’ button on the top-left corner. Click on ‘Web’ and click on ‘Web App’. You will get a Basics tab where you can fill in the web application details. Create a resource group and give a name for it. Give a name for your web application. Select ‘Code’ for the ‘Publish’ field. Give ‘ASP.NET V4.7’ for ‘Runtime stack’, select Windows for ‘Operating System’, select ‘East US’ for the ‘Region’ field. Create a new service plan and give a name for it. Select ‘Standard S1’ for the ‘SKU and size’ field.

Go to the Monitoring tab, select no for the ‘Enable application insight’s option. Click on ‘Review and create’. You will get a review page where you can view all the settings. Click on ‘Create’ to create a website. Follow the same steps to deploy the web application in a different Azure region.

Creating a Traffic Manager profile

Click on ‘Create a resource on the top-left corner. Click on ‘Networking’ and then click on the ‘Traffic Manager profile’. Click on ‘Create Traffic Manager profile’ and a settings page appear. Give a name for the Traffic Manager profile, Select ‘Priority’ for the ‘Routing method’ field, select a subscription method, select your existing resource group, and give the location of the resource group for the ‘Location’ field. Click on ‘Create’ to complete the process.

Add endpoints to Traffic Manager

Give the Traffic Manager profile name in the search bar and select your profile from the results. Click on ‘Settings’ in the Traffic Manager profile. Click on ‘Endpoints’ and then click on ‘Add’. Select ‘Azure endpoint’ for the ‘Type’ field. For the ‘Name’ field, enter the endpoint that you want to set as the primary one. Select ‘App Service’ for ‘Target resource type’, select ‘Choose an app service > East US’ for ‘Target resource’, choose 1 for ‘Priority’ field, and click on ‘OK’. Repeat the same steps for the other endpoint and set the priority as 2.

Testing the Traffic Manager profile

You can find the DNS name of your web application in the overview of your Traffic Manager profile. Enter the DNS name in a browser, and you will get the default website of your web application. Now, disable your primary site in the Traffic Manager profile. Select your primary endpoint in the overview section. Click on ‘Disabled’, and then click on ‘Save’. You can observe the status as disabled when you close the primary endpoint. Check the same DNS name in a different browser, you can see that your web application is still available. You are routed to the failover endpoint.

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Conclusion

Now that you know how to create a Traffic Manager profile, deploy your web application, create multiple endpoints, and try setting up a Traffic Manager profile. It widely improves website response. To reference an Azure Traffic Manager profile, you can also create an alias record name. You can create a Traffic Manager profile through the Azure portal, Azure CLI, and Azure PowerShell. It follows a pay per use pricing plan.

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