I've been taking a nightly magnesium supplement for many months. Two pills before bed, sleep restfully through the night, wake up functional. For people in their 50s or older, magnesium is important. Though you can get enough simply through food, I'd been taking a magnesium oxide supplement to improve my sleep.

The arrangement worked perfectly until I ran out two weeks ago and made a fateful decision: instead of reordering the same thing, I would optimize! This is where people like me get into trouble.

We can't just replace what works. We have to research, compare, upgrade. Doing some homework online, I learned that not all magnesium supplements are created equal. There's magnesium oxide, magnesium citrate, magnesium glycinate, each with different properties and promises. After consulting the oracle of AI and reading several authoritative-sounding articles, I discovered that magnesium glycinate was widely considered a superior choice for sleep over my old Walgreens standby, magnesium oxide. Better yet, the glycinate version had higher bioavailability.

Bioavailability. You either love this word, or you immediately stop reading any op-ed that pretentiously uses it — as if the meaning is intuitive. Hardly.

For those of you still reading: Bioavailability means your body can actually absorb and use what you're swallowing rather than sending it directly through your digestive system. Magnesium glycinate, I learned, had significantly higher bioavailability than magnesium oxide.

I ordered magnesium glycinate with the satisfaction of someone who'd just solved a problem that may not exist.

When the bottle arrived, I did what seemed logical: took the same dose I'd been taking for months. Two 500-milligram pills before bed. Never mind that the recommended daily dose for men hovers around 400 milligrams. I'd been taking double or triple that amount of magnesium oxide without incident, so why change now?

Because bioavailability, that's why.

Within days, my abdomen developed what I can only describe as a gaseous, highly unattractive bulge that refused to recede. I looked like someone who'd consumed a porterhouse after a three-day fast. Standing before the mirror each night became an exercise in dismay. I'd promise myself to fix it tomorrow, then dutifully pop my two pills and collapse into bed.

More disturbing than the physical transformation was the mental fog that descended — subtle enough that I didn't immediately recognize it as acute rather than the ordinary rough patch we all occasionally navigate. After several days of feeling emotionally inert in a way I hadn't experienced in years, I began to suspect these symptoms weren't coincidental.

I started investigating. Was it increased tennis causing chronic inflammation? Delayed food poisoning from something I'd eaten? The cesspool of breaking news from Washington, D.C.? None of these explanations felt right.

Then, lying supine on my leather recliner Friday afternoon, staring blankly at the ceiling and wondering what fresh hell this was, it struck me: the new magnesium. And the idiotic 1,000-milligram doses.

I turned to that great repository of modern wisdom, Reddit, and discovered I wasn't alone. The supplements forum contained numerous accounts of magnesium glycinate excess producing exactly what I was experiencing. Further research revealed that overdosing magnesium can lead to considerably worse outcomes than bloating and brain fog. Extreme cases include kidney failure and death.

That night, I stopped taking that glycinate. Within about a day, the bloating had substantially decreased. My energy returned. The disturbing mental haze dissipated like morning fog under the sun.

The lessons here aren't revolutionary, but they merit stating, especially for those of us cautiously using supplements to fix big things like sleep, muscle loss or low energy levels: Before switching supplements, read the dosage instructions. And understand how bioavailability might affect your particular body.

Investigate potential interactions with other medications you take daily. And sometimes — radical thought here — instead of optimizing and overachieving, consider sticking with what's been working well.

I admit, I'd been taking more than double the recommended magnesium oxide dose for months without consequence, presumably because magnesium oxide's limited bioavailability protected me from my own excess. When I switched to a far more absorbable form while maintaining the same dose, I essentially began overdosing.

The pharmacological principle is straightforward: More bioavailable doesn't mean better if you're already taking too much. Yet I'd managed to miss this entirely while congratulating myself on being thorough.

I'm back on the original magnesium oxide now, sleeping fine, looking not like I'm hiding a balloon under my shirt.

Sometimes the best optimization advice is to recognize when you've already optimized enough.

To find out more about Paul Von Zielbauer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Natali Hordiiuk at Unsplash