Arithmetic
Trace amounts, and the one thing that is not a trace
Seven and a half milligrams, shared between five named ingredients. That is what is left of this blend once the magnesium chelate is accounted for, and the first half of this piece is about what a figure that size means. The second half is the part a trace-amount analysis usually leaves out, and it runs the other way.
Both halves are true and neither cancels the other. The five ingredients after the magnesium glycinate share about 7.5 mg between them, with ceilings of 7.5, 3.7, 2.5, 1.9 and 1.5 mg — ceilings, not amounts. The only one of the five with a published study range is L-carnitine: the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements records trials at “0.25 to 4 g/day”, or 250 to 4,000 mg, against a ceiling here of about 2.5 mg — a gap of roughly one hundred to one thousand six hundred times. And then the other half: 80 mg of magnesium is a real amount of a real nutrient with a genuine federal file on nerve function, at 19% of the Daily Value and about 23% of the published upper limit for supplemental magnesium. So this is not a product with nothing in it. It is a product with one thing in it.
- The remainder
- About 7.5 mg
- Ingredients sharing it
- Five
- Ceilings
- 7.5 / 3.7 / 2.5 / 1.9 / 1.5 mg
- With a published dose range
- One — L-carnitine
- That range
- 250 to 4,000 mg
- The gap
- About 100 to 1,600 times
- Magnesium declared
- 80 mg · 19% DV
- Against the 350 mg upper limit
- About 23%
What 7.5 mg actually is
The arithmetic that produces the figure is published in full elsewhere and is summarised in a sentence here. The panel declares 80 mg of elemental magnesium sourced from the magnesium glycinate inside the blend; magnesium bisglycinate is 14.1% magnesium by weight; 80 ÷ 0.141 is about 567.5 mg of chelate; the blend is 575 mg; and 575 − 567.5 leaves about 7.5 mg. The step-by-step derivation, with a sensitivity table, is here.
So five named ingredients share seven and a half milligrams. Applying the FDA’s descending-order rule inside that remainder caps them at 7.5, 3.7, 2.5, 1.9 and 1.5 mg respectively. Every one of those is a ceiling: the true quantity is at or below it, possibly far below, and nothing on the label narrows it further.
It is worth pausing on how small seven and a half milligrams is in the context of this very label, because the comparison is right there on the panel. The capsule shell and the excipients are declared on the Other Ingredients line: Hypromellose (Vegetable Capsule), Microcrystalline Cellulose, Magnesium Stearate, Stearic Acid, Silicon Dioxide. Those are not active ingredients and they are not quantified — but a capsule shell is measured in tens or hundreds of milligrams, and the five named actives after the magnesium share less than eight.
The one ingredient with a number to compare
A ceiling on its own is a number without a scale. It becomes informative when it is set against a published dose, and on this label exactly one of the five ingredients in the remainder has one.
The one ingredient on this label with a published study range, set against that range. NIH ODS records L-carnitine trials at “0.25 to 4 g/day”. The ceiling here is about 2.5 mg: between one hundred and one thousand six hundred times smaller. ODS also records that healthy adults do not need supplemental carnitine.
“Healthy children and adults do not need to consume carnitine from food or supplements … L-carnitine supplements at doses of 0.25 to 4 g/day for 2 to 52 weeks.”
NIH Office of Dietary Supplements — Carnitine: Fact Sheet for Health Professionals
Two sentences in one quotation, and both matter. The first is the dose range: “L-carnitine supplements at doses of 0.25 to 4 g/day for 2 to 52 weeks” — that is 250 to 4,000 mg a day. L-carnitine is fourth of six on this label, so its ceiling inside a 7.5 mg remainder is about 2.5 mg.
| Figure | Amount | Ratio to the ceiling here |
|---|---|---|
| Ceiling on this label | about 2.5 mg | — |
| Lowest dose in the trials ODS records | 250 mg | about 100× |
| Highest dose in those trials | 4,000 mg | about 1,600× |
A hundredfold to sixteen-hundredfold. That is not a judgement and it does not need to be dressed up as one; it is a division. And it is worth noting that the ceiling flatters the product — the true amount could be anywhere at or below 2.5 mg, which would widen the gap rather than narrow it.
The second sentence in the quotation cuts the other way and is printed here for that reason. ODS states that healthy children and adults “do not need to consume carnitine from food or supplements”, because the body makes enough. A trace of something nobody needs to supplement is a different kind of shortfall from a trace of something people are commonly short of. The fact sheet also does not mention peripheral neuropathy at all: its neurological content concerns Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, where results were mixed.
What cannot be compared, and why no figure is offered
Alpha lipoic acid and butcher’s broom have no fact sheet at NCCIH’s Herbs at a Glance index and none at the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements. So this piece publishes no dose, no effect and no comparison for either, and will not borrow one from a journal. Their ceilings are 7.5 mg and 3.7 mg and there is nothing published at either body to set those against. That is an absence of information rather than a small number, and it is reported as an absence.
Six questions to ask about any small figure
Trace-amount arguments are easy to make badly. These six questions are the discipline that keeps one honest, and the sixth is the one that produces the second half of this piece.
- 01Find out whether the figure is an amount or a ceilingAn amount is printed on the panel. A ceiling was calculated by somebody from a total and a rule. On this label exactly one per-ingredient quantity is printed — 80 mg of elemental magnesium — and every other figure published anywhere, including on this site, is derived.
- 02Look for a published dose to compare it againstNot a dose on a seller’s page and not one from a journal abstract chosen by a search ranking. A federal fact sheet, named and linked. Of these six ingredients, four have one and only one of those four records a dose range.
- 03Put the two figures in the same unit and divideThis is the whole arithmetic. 250 mg ÷ 2.5 mg = 100. 4,000 mg ÷ 2.5 mg = 1,600. A gap of two to three orders of magnitude does not need interpreting; it needs stating.
- 04Where no dose is published, say so and stopAlpha lipoic acid and butcher’s broom have no fact sheet at NCCIH or the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements. So no comparison is published for either, in either direction. An absence is not a small number and must not be dressed up as one.
- 05Check whether the nutrient is one anybody needs to supplementThis cuts both ways and it is often skipped. The carnitine fact sheet states that healthy children and adults “do not need to consume carnitine from food or supplements”, because the body makes enough. A trace amount of something nobody needs is a different complaint from a trace amount of something people are short of.
- 06Ask whether anything on the label is a real amount of a real nutrientThe most common failure of a trace-amount analysis is stopping once it has found a trace. Read the rows above the blend as carefully as the ones inside it. On this label there is 80 mg of magnesium at 19% of the Daily Value, and that is not a trace of anything.
Question four is the one most often skipped, and skipping it is how a careful analysis turns into a sales page in reverse. For two of these five ingredients there is simply nothing published at either federal body, and the correct output is not published rather than an implication that nothing published means nothing there.
What a trace means in practice
Four practical consequences follow from a 7.5 mg remainder, and they are worth setting out because they are what a buyer actually experiences.
The front of the bottle is not proportional to the panel
Six ingredients get roughly equal billing in a list and one of them has 98.7% of the weight. Nothing about that is unlawful, and nothing about the way the names are printed signals it. The only way to find out is the arithmetic, and the arithmetic needs a figure the label was not required to print.
A standardisation does not make an amount larger
The turmeric row is the best-specified ingredient name in this series — genus, species, plant part and 95% curcuminoids. Its ceiling is about 1.9 mg. A precisely named, highly standardised extract present in trace is still present in trace, and precision of naming is a separate credit from quantity.
Interaction notes change character at this size
NCCIH records that coenzyme Q10 “may interact with the anticoagulant (blood thinner) warfarin and the diabetes drug insulin”. At a ceiling near 1.5 mg that is context rather than an alarm. It is printed on this site because the word warfarin appears nowhere on the product, not because the figure is large.
The adverse-effect literature usually concerns larger doses
NCCIH records that oral turmeric can cause nausea, reflux, stomach upset, diarrhoea or constipation, and that highly bioavailable curcumin products have been linked to liver damage in some people. At about 1.9 mg this is not the dose that literature is about. Saying so is part of reporting it accurately.
Put together, the trace half of this label reads like this: five ingredients that are well named, four of which the front of the bottle gives prominence to, sharing less than eight milligrams, with one published comparison available and it is two to three orders of magnitude adverse. That is the finding, and it is the reason the editorial score gives formula transparency one out of five.
The other half: 80 mg of magnesium
Here is where a trace-amount piece usually stops, and stopping here would misdescribe this product. Because the thing that fills 98.7% of the blend is not a filler. It is magnesium, and magnesium is a real nutrient with a real federal file.
The panel declares 80 mg of elemental magnesium at 19% of the Daily Value, and the percentage is correct: the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements gives the Daily Value as 420 mg, and 80 ÷ 420 = 19.05%. Nothing about that row is derived, bounded or inferred. It is printed, it is checkable, and it checks out.
The magnesium figure against the two numbers the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements publishes: a Daily Value of 420 mg, and a Tolerable Upper Intake Level of 350 mg for magnesium taken as a supplement. At 80 mg a capsule this product is at about 23% of that upper limit, which is a point in its favour.
Two things in that chart are credits and are recorded as such. The first is that 80 mg is a meaningful fraction of a daily reference intake rather than a dusting. The second is that it is about 23% of the 350 mg Tolerable Upper Intake Level ODS sets for supplemental magnesium — comfortably below the level at which ODS records that high doses “often result in diarrhea”. Glycinate is also among the better tolerated forms.
Neither of those is a claim that the product works. They are statements that the one quantified ingredient on this label is a recognised nutrient, present at a sensible amount, in a reasonable form, with correct arithmetic beside it. On a page that is otherwise about ceilings and absences, that paragraph belongs at the same size as the rest.
Magnesium has a real nerve file
And it is specifically a nerve file, which on a product positioned for nerve comfort is the strongest ingredient-level support any product in this series has had for its own positioning.
“Magnesium … helps move calcium and potassium ions across cell membranes, a process that is important to nerve impulse conduction, muscle contraction, and normal heart rhythm … As magnesium deficiency worsens, numbness, tingling, muscle contractions and cramps, seizures … can occur.”
NIH Office of Dietary Supplements — Magnesium: Fact Sheet for Health Professionals — nerve function
Read what that actually says. Magnesium helps move calcium and potassium ions across cell membranes, and that process is “important to nerve impulse conduction, muscle contraction, and normal heart rhythm”. As magnesium deficiency worsens, “numbness, tingling, muscle contractions and cramps, seizures” can occur.
That is a federal body, quoted directly, describing a role for this exact nutrient in the exact physiology the product is sold around. No other ingredient on this label comes close to it, and no other product this desk has read in this series has had a sentence like it available. It is published here in full, at length, because it is the best thing on the label.
And it is a file about deficiency
Now the qualification, which is as important as the quotation and is the thing a sales page will always blur.
The ODS passage describes what happens when a person does not have enough magnesium. It does not say that taking magnesium relieves numbness or tingling in somebody whose magnesium is adequate. Those are different claims and only the first is supported by the text quoted above.
The distinction is not a technicality. If your magnesium intake is adequate, the sentence about numbness and tingling is not a sentence about you; it is a description of a deficiency state. If your intake is low, correcting it is a reasonable thing to do and 80 mg is a reasonable contribution towards it. Which of those two situations you are in is not a question a label can answer and not one this desk can answer either.
Which is why the appointment comes before the bottle
Nerve symptoms that have not been explained by a clinician are a reason to see one. Numbness and tingling have many causes; magnesium deficiency is one of them and it is not the commonest. A clinician can find out which you have, and a supplement cannot. The product’s own caution block says in terms to consult a physician if you take a medication or have a medical condition, and that sentence is doing more work on this label than any claim on the front of it.
One arithmetical note belongs here too, because it is the practical risk in this direction rather than the other. ODS sets the upper limit for supplemental magnesium at 350 mg a day. If you already take a magnesium supplement, a multivitamin containing magnesium, or a magnesium-containing antacid or laxative, this capsule’s 80 mg adds to them, and the total is the figure that matters.
One thing in it, not nothing in it
Both halves of this piece are findings and the honest description of the product needs both of them in the same sentence.
The trace half
- About 7.5 mg is left for five named ingredients once the magnesium chelate is accounted for — together, not each.
- Ceilings of 7.5, 3.7, 2.5, 1.9 and 1.5 mg, and every one of those is a ceiling rather than an amount.
- L-carnitine at about 2.5 mg against a published trial range of 250 to 4,000 mg: a gap of roughly 100 to 1,600 times.
- Alpha lipoic acid and butcher’s broom return nothing at either federal body, so no dose and no effect is published for either here.
- The front of the bottle gives six names roughly equal billing and one of them holds 98.7% of the weight.
The magnesium half
- 80 mg of elemental magnesium is printed, not derived, and the 19% of the Daily Value beside it is arithmetically correct.
- Magnesium has a federal fact sheet that speaks to nerves — ion transport across cell membranes, important to nerve impulse conduction.
- It sits at about 23% of the 350 mg upper limit for supplemental magnesium, which is a sensible place for a capsule to sit.
- Glycinate is among the better tolerated forms, and the label names the compound rather than leaving it open.
- The file is about deficiency, not about relieving a symptom in somebody who has enough — which is a limit, and it is the label’s limit rather than a fault in the nutrient.
So the accurate sentence is neither of the two easy ones. It is not a bottle with nothing in it: there is 80 mg of a well-documented nutrient in it, in a well-chosen form, with correct arithmetic printed beside it. And it is not a six-ingredient nerve formula: five of the six are inside a 7.5 mg remainder and one of them is a hundred to sixteen hundred times below the only published dose range available. It is a product with one thing in it.
What a buyer does with that depends on what they were buying. If the magnesium is what you want, the panel tells you exactly what you are getting and the figure is reasonable. If any of the other five is the reason the bottle looked interesting, the arithmetic on this page is the answer, and no price is published anywhere for comparison — the checkout is the only place one exists.
Weighing any label the same way
Seven steps, written to be run on any supplement rather than on this one. The last two are what separate a reading from a verdict.
- 01Separate the declared nutrients from the blendThey are different kinds of row. A declared nutrient carries an amount and usually a percentage; a blend carries a total and a list. Reading them as one list is how a reader ends up either dismissing a real nutrient or crediting a trace.
- 02Account for every milligram of the blend you canOn a label where a declared nutrient is sourced from inside the blend, the blend can be resolved: here about 567.5 mg of magnesium glycinate out of 575 mg, leaving about 7.5 mg. Do that before judging anything, because the remainder is the number that matters.
- 03Rank the remainder by position and write down each ceiling7.5, 3.7, 2.5, 1.9 and 1.5 mg. Five ceilings for five ingredients. Write each one as at most, every time, because these figures travel and the qualifier is what keeps them honest.
- 04Take each ceiling to a federal fact sheet and compareFour of these six ingredients have one. One of the four records a dose range. That single comparison — 2.5 mg against 250 to 4,000 mg — does more work than any other sentence available about this formula.
- 05Then do the same for the declared nutrient, fairly80 mg of magnesium against a 420 mg Daily Value is 19%, which the label prints correctly, and against a 350 mg upper limit for supplemental magnesium is about 23%. Both of those are reasonable places for a capsule to sit and both are recorded on this site as credits.
- 06Read what the fact sheet actually claims, not what it impliesThe magnesium file is about deficiency. ODS records that deficiency can bring numbness and tingling; it does not say that supplementing relieves numbness in somebody who has enough. The distinction is the single most important one on this page and it is the one a sales page will always blur.
- 07Write both halves down and let the reader weigh themA product with one real ingredient and five traces is not the same thing as a product with nothing in it, and it is not the same thing as a product that does what six names on a front panel imply. Publish the trace finding and the magnesium finding together, in the same piece, at the same length.
Step seven is the method and the ethic at once. A reader is entitled to both halves at the same length, in the same piece, without having to go looking for the one that cuts against the headline. On this product the two halves are a 7.5 mg remainder and 80 mg of magnesium, and leaving either out would be a worse description of the bottle than printing both.
References
Five sources carry this piece, all opened and read: the carnitine fact sheet for the dose range, the two magnesium fact sheets for the Daily Value, the upper limit and the nerve-function passage, the NCCIH pages for the turmeric and CoQ10 notes, and the FDA labelling guidance for the descending-order rule behind every ceiling.
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration (2026). Dietary Supplement Labeling Guide: Chapter IV. Nutrition Labeling.
- NIH Office of Dietary Supplements (2026). Magnesium: Fact Sheet for Health Professionals.
- NIH Office of Dietary Supplements (2026). Magnesium: Fact Sheet for Health Professionals — nerve function.
- NIH Office of Dietary Supplements (2023). Carnitine: Fact Sheet for Health Professionals.
- National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (2025). Turmeric: Usefulness and Safety.
None of the five mentions Neuralisse and none was written about it. They are quoted for what they say about the ingredients this label names, which is the only thing a fact sheet can be quoted for. Each of the six ingredients has its own entry with its ceiling and the full quotation that applies to it.
Read the blend row before you decide
Thirty capsules, one a day. The panel declares 80 mg of magnesium at 19% of the Daily Value, and a 575 mg blend of six ingredients. The magnesium declaration fixes the weight of the first ingredient at about 567.5 mg, which leaves roughly 7.5 mg for the other five together. No price appears anywhere but the checkout.
- Guarantee as printed at checkout
- 80 mg magnesium, 19% of the Daily Value
- Returns to 4 Times Square, Floor 22, New York, NY 10036, USA
No price appears in any document supplied to this desk, as of October 11, 2026, so none is printed here. The checkout screen is the only place a price exists. Questions first? Every published contact route is here.
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Authorship and review
Who wrote and checked this page
What this page was checked against
- The label artwork, read at 2× and transcribed character for character. Where the label and the marketing disagree, the label is printed.
- The seller pack, quoted rather than paraphrased, and identified as marketing wherever it is used.
- The published sources listed in the references on this page. Every one was opened and read; none is cited from memory.
- The arithmetic, shown in full. Every per-ingredient figure other than the magnesium is a ceiling derived from one printed number, never a measured amount.
- Nothing else. Any fact that was not supplied is recorded as not published rather than filled in.
Last updated October 11, 2026. A highlighted slot is a value no human has supplied yet. Who reviews these pages?