Dr. Teal’s is, more than any other drugstore brand, “the magnesium brand” — Epsom salt is its whole identity. So it is worth turning its Sleep Body Lotion over and reading the back. On the label, Magnesium Sulfate (Epsom salt) is the 15th entry, and Melatonin, the other hero named on the front, is the 16th. Both sit in the bottom half of the list, below water, glycerin, the emulsifiers, shea butter, cocoa butter and vitamin E. Fragrance appears at position 8 — higher than either active. By INCI convention the list runs heaviest-first, so the two actives the product is sold on are among the least of it by weight.
This desk runs the same exercise on everything: quote the real ingredient list, then point at where the thing on the front of the bottle actually lands. Dr. Teal’s Sleep Body Lotion is an unusually clean case to run it on, because the brand-promise and the label are so easy to line up. The brand is named for Epsom salt. The lotion is marketed on magnesium and melatonin for a better night’s sleep. And both of those named ingredients turn up in the back third of the list, after the product is, in effect, already a finished moisturizer.
What is actually in Dr. Teal’s Sleep Body Lotion?
Here is the full ingredient list, quoted verbatim. I read it on a major retailer’s listing (TCIN 1011645107) on 17 October 2026, and cross-checked the identical list on Wegmans’ first-party listing the same day, because the first listing was a marketplace seller and I wanted a second source that was not:
Water (Aqua, Eau), Glycerin, Isopropyl Palmitate, Glyceryl Stearate, PEG-100 Stearate, Aluminum Starch Octenylsuccinate, Cetyl Alcohol, Fragrance (Parfum), Ormenis Multicaulis Extract (Chamomile), Lavandula Hybrida Oil, Lavandula Angustifolia (Lavender) Oil, Pogostemon Cablin Oil (Patchouli), Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter, Theobroma Cacao (Cocoa) Seed Butter, Tocopheryl Acetate (Vitamin E), Magnesium Sulfate (Epsom Salt), Melatonin, Stearic Acid, Phenoxyethanol, Ethylhexylglycerin, Zea Mays (Corn) Starch, Magnesium Aluminum Silicate, Xanthan Gum, Dimethicone, Disodium EDTA, Chlorphenesin, Sodium Hydroxide, Benzyl Alcohol.
Source: the retailer listing, TCIN 1011645107, and Wegmans.com, both read 17 October 2026. I’ll number the entries from the top, with the two lavender oils sharing slots 10 and 11. One standing note on this product: formulas get revised, and ingredient lists on retailer pages lag the bottle. If you are checking your own jar, read the panel printed on it. This is the formula those two listings showed on the date above.
Where does the magnesium actually sit?
At position 15 of 26. That puts Magnesium Sulfate — the Epsom salt this entire brand is built on — below water, glycerin, isopropyl palmitate, two emulsifiers, an absorbent, cetyl alcohol, the fragrance, chamomile, both lavender oils, patchouli, shea butter, cocoa butter and vitamin E. In other words, by the time you reach the magnesium on this label, the product is already a complete moisturizer with a scent. The magnesium is added after all of that.
Under US labeling rules (21 CFR 701.3), ingredients above 1% must be listed in descending order of weight; anything at 1% or less can be listed in any order after them. You cannot read exact percentages off a label. But preservatives are a useful landmark, because they are used at a fraction of a percent. Here Phenoxyethanol sits at position 18 — only three slots below the magnesium. That places magnesium sulfate close to the sub-1% tail of the formula. The position cannot give you a precise number, but it tells you plainly the magnesium is a small part of the bottle by weight, not the bulk of it. This is the same pattern other magnesium lotions show — this desk found magnesium at position 16 in a Hempz lotion and dead last in a Schmidt’s bar — but it lands differently here, because no other brand has staked its name on the mineral the way Dr. Teal’s has.
There is a second “magnesium” further down the list, and it is worth separating out so nobody double-counts. Magnesium Aluminum Silicate at position 21 is a clay-mineral thickener (sold under names like Veegum). It is not Epsom salt, it is not there for any sleep or relaxation reason, and it does not add to the “magnesium” story on the front of the bottle. It is in the formula to help control texture. If you scan the list and clock “two magnesiums,” only one of them is the one being marketed.
And the melatonin — where is that?
One slot below the magnesium, at position 16 of 26. By the descending-order convention that means it sits even lower in the formula by weight than the Epsom salt does — which is already down at 15. Melatonin is the second ingredient Dr. Teal’s names on the front of this bottle; on the back it is the 16th thing in it, below the fragrance, below both butters, below vitamin E.
I want to be careful about what that does and does not mean. A position on a label tells you about relative weight; it does not tell you a dose is “too low to work,” and I am not going to claim it does — that would be a statement about a therapeutic effect, which is exactly the kind of claim this desk doesn’t make. What the label shows is where melatonin sits in the order: 16th of 26, in the lower half. There is also a small internal mismatch worth noting for a label-reader. The front of the bottle bills this as a blend of “Melatonin, Lavender & Chamomile.” On the back, chamomile (position 9) and both lavender oils (10 and 11) appear well above the melatonin at 16 — so of the three named botanicals-and-actives, the one in the product’s own name arguably lands lowest.
- Fragrance / Parfum (#8)
- Higher up the list than either marketed active — there is more fragrance by weight than magnesium or melatonin.
- Shea butter (#13), Cocoa butter (#14)
- The emollients doing much of the moisturizing, both above the magnesium.
- Magnesium Sulfate / Epsom salt (#15)
- The brand’s signature ingredient, sitting in the bottom half, three slots above the preservative line.
- Melatonin (#16)
- The second named hero, one slot lower again.
- Magnesium Aluminum Silicate (#21)
- A clay thickener — a different “magnesium,” not the Epsom salt, and not part of the sleep story.
Does magnesium even cross intact skin?
This is the open question behind every magnesium lotion, and the honest answer is that the evidence is thin — not zero, but thin, and mostly pointing one way. Magnesium is an ionized, water-loving ion with a large hydrated radius, and the skin’s outer layer is built to keep exactly that kind of molecule out. A 2017 systematic review in Nutrients concluded that the case for meaningful transdermal magnesium is “scientifically unsupported,” noting that passive diffusion through intact skin is limited and that the follicle-and-sweat-gland route covers only a tiny fraction of skin surface. A 2026 European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics study using Franz diffusion cells on skin found minimal permeation across intact skin, with no significant difference from the control — though it did see more getting through when the skin barrier was deliberately disrupted, which is a real nuance.
To be fair to the other side: a 2017 PLoS ONE pilot study (n=25, not blinded) reported a rise in serum magnesium after two weeks of topical use, but the group-level change was not statistically significant and only held up in a subgroup. The authors themselves called it a pilot and asked for larger trials. And in September 2025, NPR interviewed a dermatologist and a Harvard sleep physician who both landed in the same place: there is little proof magnesium absorbs through skin in a way that matters, and whatever people feel from a bedtime lotion may owe more to the massage and the moisturizing base than to the mineral. NPR also cited a market-research figure putting topical magnesium north of $400M a year — so a lot of money is riding on an effect the published science has not yet pinned down. None of that says the lotion harms anyone or fails to moisturize. It says the specific promise — magnesium, through the skin, for sleep — rests on weak ground, and the label puts that magnesium at position 15 regardless.
So is Dr. Teal’s Sleep Lotion a bad product?
No — and that isn’t the point of reading the label. As a body lotion it is perfectly reasonable: glycerin at position 2 is doing real humectant work, shea and cocoa butter and vitamin E sit comfortably in the top half, and it will leave most people’s skin feeling soft and smelling of lavender. The narrower, checkable point is this: the two actives Dr. Teal’s puts on the front of the bottle, from the brand that is synonymous with Epsom salt, are the 15th and 16th entries on the back of the label — behind the fragrance. If you are buying it for the magnesium, you are mostly buying a scented moisturizer with a little Epsom salt added near the end.
If what you actually want is a magnesium product where the magnesium is near the front of the list rather than the back, that is a different kind of formula — and it is the thing we make. Our own magnesium balm guide at Evil Goods walks through a tallow-and-magnesium-sulfate balm that leads with those rather than water and fragrance (Ingredient Desk is published by the team behind Evil Goods, and I point to it here because this whole piece is about which ingredient sits where). To be straight with you, the transdermal-magnesium science above applies to our balm too — a higher position on the list means more magnesium by weight, not a proven route through the skin. What a short, magnesium-forward formula changes is what you are paying for and where the hero ingredient sits, not the open question of absorption. Whatever you choose, the back of the bottle is the honest document, and the front is the advertisement.
FAQ
Where does magnesium sit in Dr. Teal’s Sleep Body Lotion?
Magnesium Sulfate (Epsom salt) is the 15th ingredient of 26 on the label read in October 2026. It sits below water, glycerin, the emulsifiers, fragrance, shea butter, cocoa butter and vitamin E, and three slots above the preservative — placing it in the lower, sub-1% region of the formula.
Where is the melatonin in the list?
Melatonin is at position 16, one slot below the magnesium sulfate. By the descending-weight convention of INCI lists, that means it is present at an even smaller amount by weight than the Epsom salt. A label position describes relative weight, not whether a dose does anything.
Why is there fragrance above the magnesium?
Fragrance (Parfum) appears at position 8, higher than both marketed actives. By INCI ordering that means the product contains more fragrance by weight than it does magnesium sulfate or melatonin.
There are two magnesiums in the list — are they the same?
No. Magnesium Sulfate (position 15) is Epsom salt, the marketed ingredient. Magnesium Aluminum Silicate (position 21) is a clay-mineral thickener used for texture; it is unrelated to the sleep claim and should not be counted as part of the “magnesium” story.
Does magnesium absorb through the skin?
The published evidence is weak. A 2017 systematic review called transdermal magnesium “scientifically unsupported,” a 2026 diffusion-cell study found minimal permeation across intact skin, and NPR in 2025 quoted a dermatologist and a sleep physician saying much the same. A small 2017 pilot was more hopeful but was not statistically significant at the group level. The science is thin, not settled.
