Magnesium Glycinate vs Citrate

Magnesium glycinate and magnesium citrate are two salts of the same mineral. The NIH ODS magnesium fact sheet names citrate and does not name glycinate. It reports small studies in which citrate, aspartate, lactate, and chloride were absorbed more completely than oxide and sulfate. This page does not add a healthy-adult randomized comparison of glycinate with citrate, because it does not have one.

Which magnesium, glycinate or citrate?

ODS cannot answer that pairing. It never uses the word glycinate. For citrate, it offers only the grouped finding above: soluble organic salts absorbed more completely than oxide and sulfate in small studies.

Both products should be read by elemental magnesium, not by compound weight. ODS says the Supplement Facts panel declares elemental magnesium.

Adult RDAs on that sheet are 310 to 420 mg a day. The adult upper level for supplemental magnesium is 350 mg a day.

What does ODS say about digestive effects?

ODS says high supplemental doses can cause diarrhea, nausea, and abdominal cramping. The forms it lists as most commonly reported to cause diarrhea are carbonate, chloride, gluconate, and oxide. Citrate is not in that short list. Glycinate is not discussed.

ODS attributes laxative effects of magnesium salts to unabsorbed salt in the intestine and to stimulated motility. That mechanism is about unabsorbed mineral, not about a branded chelate.

Is there a healthy-adult glycinate-versus-citrate RCT?

Not on the ODS fact sheet, and not added from memory. A page that invented one would be a different site.

The held /types-of-magnesium page would have been the wider form table. It is not published.

How should a comparison column be read?

Use the comparisons picker to place sourced notes from two first-wave entries side by side. Those columns repeat facts already footnoted on each entry. They do not create a trial that was not run.