Here’s my easy recipe for magnesium body butter! It’s soft and moisturizing, and delivers a healthy dose of magnesium. Great for sleep and muscle pain!

A jar with magnesium body butter inside and a mixer in the background.

Magnesium body butter is a sore muscle’s best friend. Not only is it great for hydrating the skin, it’s also an incredible way to help soothe aches and pains. While there are many different types of magnesium, I love applying this whipped magnesium body butter at night for sleep as a way to get in a healthy dose of magnesium. And the best part? It’s inexpensive and super easy to make.

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Supplementing with Magnesium

Magnesium is essential for health, and due to factors such as modern industrial processing and soil degradation, most people are deficient in magnesium and could benefit from adding some back in topically or orally.

Magnesium deficiency can cause muscle cramps or weakness, restless legs, migraines and cluster headaches, irritability and anxiety, fatigue, hypertension, and sleep problems—to name a few.

If you’re not supplementing with magnesium, there are a couple different ways you can get it into your system. First, you can apply it topically through the application of this magnesium body butter. Topical, or transdermal application, is a method of delivering minerals to the body through the skin. It’s incredibly effective, especially when applied directly to areas of muscle pain.

Quality does matter when it comes to oral supplementation with magnesium, so it’s important to know which types of magnesium are best. My favorite magnesium supplements are ones that are a collection of many different forms for optimal absorption, like this one.

Applying Magnesium Topically

The two main topical magnesium products are magnesium oil and magnesium flakes. Magnesium oil is not actually an oil, instead, its magnesium dissolved in water. To use magnesium flakes, you add them to the bath to dissolve them in water.

While I love magnesium oil, it has a watery consistency, and therefore is hard to apply to popular areas of soreness like the neck or lower back. Adding magnesium oil to nourishing oils makes it easier to apply directly to muscles, and has the bonus effect of nourishing the skin.

How Much Magnesium Do You Need to Take?

The typical daily dosing for magnesium is 3-4 mg per pound of body weight. For example, if you weigh 150 lbs, you’d need between 450-600 mg per day. You can get this orally or topically, or through a combination of both.

While there are quite a few different essential oils that help relieve muscle pain or soreness, including marjoram and lavender, peppermint oil is used in this recipe because it is analgesic, anti-inflammatory and antis-spasmodic, meaning it can help relieve pain and inflammation, and reduce muscle cramps. Peppermint contains menthol, an organic compound which provides a pain-relieving cooling sensation and naturally alleviates discomfort, making this whipped magnesium body butter a perfect partner to long work days or workouts.

Melting the ingredients in a bowl on the stove.

How to Make Magnesium Body Butter

Melt: Put two inches of water in a small pot, and place it over medium-high heat. Place a glass bowl on top of the pot so the water is just underneath the bowl, but not touching it. Add the coconut oil, shea butter, and jojoba oil to the bowl and stir until melted and combined.
Cool: Turn off the heat. Once glass bowl has cooled slightly, place it in fridge for about 1 hour until the mixture becomes translucent, and has hardened slightly. The oils should be soft to the touch, but not liquid.
Mix: Using a hand mixer, whip the ingredients in the bowl, and slowly begin to add in the magnesium oil, about 1 tablespoon at a time. Add peppermint essential oil. After about 2-3 minutes of whipping, the mixture should become light and fluffy, and have a lotion-like texture.
Set: Let the body butter set at room temperature overnight. The lotion will become hard, but will still be malleable. You can speed this up by putting it in the fridge for one hour. Remove promptly, or your body butter will become too hard.
Whip: Using a hand mixer, whip the lotion for 1-2 minutes until texture becomes light and fluffy. Use a spatula to transfer to a sealable glass jar for storage.

Whipping the body butter with a handheld mixer and adding body butter.

Recipe Tips and Tricks

This recipe uses pre-made magnesium oil, which typically has about 560 mg per tsp. This means, you’ll be getting around 100 mg of magnesium per tsp of whipped magnesium body butter.
Because magnesium body butter is great for sleep, I highly recommend applying it before bed. If you don’t have any specific muscle you’d like to apply it to, try rubbing some onto your feet.
If you’re not a fan of peppermint, feel free to swap it for lavender essential oil or marjoram essential oil.
This recipe is great for all skin types. Of course—I recommend testing it on a small patch of your skin first to make sure there you do not experience any reactions.

Storage Tips

This body butter is stable at room temperature. I recommend putting it in a jar that has a lid, which will help the body butter keep its whipped consistency. If the consistency changes, you can periodically re-whip the lotion using a small spoon.

Yield: 1 1/3 cups