Tag: magnesium

Hempz “Calming Magnesium” Lotion: Magnesium Is the 16th Ingredient

Hempz Beauty Actives Serene Waters is sold as a “Soothing & Relaxing Magnesium Body Lotion,” but on its own INCI list the magnesium — listed as Magnesium Sulfate, which is Epsom salt — appears at position 16, below water, two silicone-and-emollient skin-feel agents, fragrance and eleven others. The name is on the front; the mineral is well down the back.

Walk any drugstore body-lotion aisle and one bottle keeps its promise right in the product name: Hempz Beauty Actives Serene Waters Body Moisturizer with Magnesium, 17 fl oz for around $19.99. The brand subtitles it “Soothing & Relaxing Magnesium Body Lotion” and calls out “Magnesium & Arnica” as the key ingredients that “help replenish moisture and soothe.” Magnesium lotion for calm is having a moment — NPR covered the trend in September 2025 and cited one estimate putting the 2024 topical-magnesium market north of $400 million. So it is a fair question to ask the label: where is the magnesium, actually?

Nib, a small round pencil-sketched creature with a magnifier loupe pushed up on his head, holds an unlabeled tub in both hands, looking bright and eager to read it. — Nib picks up another bottle promising something on the front. Time to turn it around.

What does the Serene Waters ingredient list actually say?

Here is the full INCI list, quoted verbatim. Source: the Ulta product listing for Serene Waters Body Moisturizer with Magnesium (ulta.com), page fetched 2026-09-22. The same list appears on the brand’s own hempz.com page and the major-retailer listing — three sources in agreement.

Water/Aqua/Eau, Isopropyl Palmitate, Butylene Glycol, Propanediol, Fragrance (Parfum), Cetyl Alcohol, Glycerin, Dimethicone, Sorbitan Stearate, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter, Stearic Acid, Glyceryl Stearate, PEG-100 Stearate, Cetearyl Alcohol, Cannabis Sativa Seed Oil, Magnesium Sulfate, Lavandula Angustifolia (Lavender) Oil, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice, Panthenol, Arnica Montana Flower Extract, Phenoxyethanol, Polysorbate 40, Aminomethyl Propanol, Acrylates/C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer, Nylon-12, Xanthan Gum, Ethylhexylglycerin, Chlorphenesin, Hexamethylindanopyran, Trisodium Ethylenediamine Disuccinate, Tetramethyl Acetyloctahydronaphthalenes, Linalyl Acetate, Hydroxycitronellal, Geranyl Acetate, Pinene, Alpha-Isomethyl Ionone, Terpineol, Citral, Isoeugenyl Acetate, Ascorbic Acid, Calcium Pantothenate, Potassium Chloride, Tocopheryl Acetate, Citric Acid, Potassium Sorbate, Benzoic Acid, Sodium Benzoate, Sorbic Acid, Rose Ketones, Linalool, Limonene.

INCI lists are ordered by concentration down to 1%, so position is a rough proxy for how much of something is in the pot. Count from the top and the marketed hero, Magnesium Sulfate, lands at position 16. Everything above it — the water base, isopropyl palmitate and the glycols, the fragrance, cetyl alcohol, glycerin, dimethicone, the shea and the emulsifier stack — is present in greater quantity than the magnesium the bottle is named after.

Nib holds a glass jar with a small handwritten label of squiggly text, his eyes half-lidded and mouth flat with skeptical, unimpressed suspicion. — “Calming magnesium,” says the front. Nib has learned to be suspicious of a front.

Where does the magnesium actually sit — and what is it?

Two details are worth saying plainly. First, the magnesium here is Magnesium Sulfate, which is the chemical name for Epsom salt — the same compound sold as a bath soak for a few dollars a bag. It is not a novel, patented, better-absorbed form of magnesium. Second, it is listed at position 16, one slot below Cannabis Sativa Seed Oil (the hemp-seed oil the brand is known for) and above Lavender Oil and the preservatives.

The other headlined active, Arnica Montana Flower Extract, is called out on the product page as a key ingredient too. It appears at position 20 — four spots behind the magnesium, and behind the preservative-and-thickener machinery that makes a lotion a lotion. Both of the actives on the front of the bottle are deep in the second half of the list.

This is the whole trick of reading an INCI list: the front of the bottle chooses the story, and the back of the bottle tells you the order. When the two disagree, the order is the one with the receipts.

Nib peers through a round magnifying loupe flipped down over one eye, which looms hugely through the lens, scrutinizing a tall glass jar covered in tiny handwritten label text. — The magnifying glass comes out. On an INCI list, order is everything, and the small print is the whole story.

Does magnesium at position 16 even matter for absorption?

Here is where the label question meets the evidence question, and honestly the evidence is thin either way. The idea behind “calming” magnesium lotion is that magnesium crosses the skin and does something systemic — relaxation, sleep, sore muscles. The published record does not really support that.

The outermost skin layer, the stratum corneum, is oily and repels water-loving, charged molecules. Magnesium in solution is an ion (Mg²⁺), and in its hydrated form it is bulky and struggles to passively diffuse through intact skin. A 2017 review in Nutrients (Gröber et al., “Myth or Reality—Transdermal Magnesium?”, DOI: 10.3390/nu9080813, PMC5579607) concluded that the case for transdermal magnesium is, in their words, scientifically unsupported, with hair follicles and sweat glands — roughly 0.1–1% of the skin’s surface — as the only real route in.

Even the most favorable human trial is small. A 2017 pilot RCT in PLoS ONE (Kass et al., DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0174817) tested a 56 mg/day magnesium cream in 25 people over two weeks and found no statistically significant change in serum or urinary magnesium for the group as a whole (p = 0.29 for serum). Only a subgroup reached significance, and the authors themselves called it a pilot that needs replication at higher doses. When NPR covered the trend, dermatologist Nicholas Theodosakis put the main risk succinctly: except in the pocketbook.

None of that means the lotion is bad at being a lotion — there is glycerin, shea butter and dimethicone up top, and those genuinely moisturize. It means the specific promise the name leans on, magnesium doing something calming through your skin, rests on small and mostly non-significant studies. If you want a fuller walk-through of that literature, Evil Goods (the team behind this site — we say so openly) collected it here: Does Magnesium Lotion Work?, on the Evil Goods blog.

Nib sits at a small wooden desk with a pencil, mouth open in an 'o' of dismay as an enormous paper ingredient list unspools off the desk and coils into a spiral on the floor. — The list runs on and on. The hero of the label finally turns up at position number sixteen.

How should you read a “magnesium” lotion label?

You do not need a chemistry degree, just a rule: find the hero ingredient from the front of the bottle in the list on the back, and see how far down it is. Anything named a “magnesium lotion,” “vitamin C serum” or “retinol cream” is making a claim you can check against its own INCI in ten seconds.

The name on the front: Serene Waters “Soothing & Relaxing Magnesium Body Lotion” — magnesium and arnica marketed as the key ingredients.
The magnesium on the back: Magnesium Sulfate (Epsom salt), position 16 of ~49, below fragrance, dimethicone and the emollient stack.
The second active on the back: Arnica Montana Flower Extract, position 20, behind the preservatives.
The evidence: Transdermal magnesium absorption is supported mainly by small, mostly non-significant pilot studies; a 2017 review called it scientifically unsupported.

Marketed hero	INCI name	List position	What that suggests
Magnesium	Magnesium Sulfate	16 of ~49	Present, but below the base, fragrance, silicone and shea
Arnica	Arnica Montana Flower Extract	20 of ~49	Below magnesium and the preservative system
Hemp seed oil	Cannabis Sativa Seed Oil	15 of ~49	Just ahead of the magnesium it shares the label with

For reference, if you want the mineral itself and nothing else, a bag of Epsom salt in a warm bath is the same compound as the “magnesium” in this lotion, for a fraction of the price — and it makes no claim about crossing your skin. If you specifically want a tallow-based balm that names magnesium sulfate on its own label, Evil Goods makes one: the Grass-Fed Tallow Magnesium Balm (that is ours). We would rather you know what any of them can and can’t do than pick by the front of the jar.

Nib tips a small glass jar upside down over a spoon, deadpan and half-lidded, as a single drop drips out — a dry visual joke about how little of the promised ingredient is really there. — How much magnesium actually made it into the pot? The list puts it below fragrance, silicone and thirteen other things.

September 22, 2026

Schmidt’s Charcoal + Magnesium: Charcoal Is the Last Ingredient
On the label EWG recorded from the packaging of Schmidt’s Signature Charcoal & Magnesium deodorant (data dated February 2024), charcoal powder is the very last ingredient — number 13 of 13. Magnesium hydroxide is number 1. Both names are on the front of the stick, but only one of them is present at a meaningful amount. The ingredient doing most of the deodorising work, by label position, is one Schmidt’s doesn’t put in the name at all: baking soda, at number 6.

Schmidt’s is one of the most widely stocked “natural” deodorants in American retail — it’s on shelves in the big drug and grocery chains and near the top of the aluminum-free category online. Its whole pitch is right there on the front of the pack: Charcoal + Magnesium. Two named actives, both fashionable, both easy to picture doing something. So it’s a good one to actually read.

We did what the desk always does: found the real INCI list — the full one on the back, not the two words on the front — quoted it verbatim, and located each marketed hero on it. Here is where those two words actually sit.

Reading top to bottom: magnesium first, and charcoal all the way down at the bottom.

What is on the Schmidt’s Signature label, in order?

Here is the list as EWG’s Skin Deep database recorded it “from packaging,” with data dated February 2024, corroborated line-for-line by a grocery retailer’s product listing. INCI lists are ordered by weight down to 1%, so position is a rough proxy for how much of each thing is in the stick. Thirteen positions on the main list:
1. Magnesium Hydroxide
2. Cocos Nucifera Oil (coconut oil)
3. Maranta Arundinacea Powder (arrowroot)
4. Butyrospermum Parkii Butter (shea butter)
5. Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride (fractionated coconut oil)
6. Sodium Bicarbonate (baking soda)
7. Euphorbia Cerifera Wax (candelilla wax)
8. Simmondsia Chinensis Esters (jojoba)
9. Fragrance (Parfum) (Natural Fragrance)
10. Tocopherol (vitamin E, sunflower-derived)
11. Beta-Sitosterol (sunflower-derived)
12. Squalene (sunflower-derived)
13. Charcoal Powder
After that come eight fragrance-allergen names — Amyl Cinnamal, Benzyl Salicylate, Citral, Citronellol, Geraniol, Hydroxycitronellal, Limonene and Linalool — labelled as naturally occurring components of the essential oils, not separate ingredients by volume.

One honest caveat up front: we could not put a physical stick under the magnifying glass for this one. Every ingredient list here is secondary. EWG is the strongest of them because it is explicitly “from packaging” and recently dated, and it matched a grocery listing exactly, but the desk’s gold standard is always a label in hand. Treat the positions below as sourced and dated, not as something we read off the pack ourselves. There is also an older, differently ordered formula floating around (see the last section), so the stick you own may not read like this one.

One hero weighs a lot. The other is a speck at the end of the line.

Where do charcoal and magnesium actually sit?

This is the whole story in two lines. Magnesium hydroxide is genuinely first — that half of the name is supportable. Charcoal powder is dead last, the thirteenth of thirteen, present in less quantity than everything else on the list including the vitamin E and its trace sunflower-derived cousins.

Magnesium Hydroxide — position 1

The primary ingredient by weight. It’s a low-solubility alkaline powder that raises local skin pH, which is the mechanism “natural” deodorants lean on to make the skin surface less hospitable to the bacteria that turn sweat into odor. As deodorising actives go, this one earning top billing is fair.

Charcoal Powder — position 13 (last)

The other word on the front, and the least abundant thing in the stick. It shares the name with the product; it does not share the front of the ingredient list.

Sodium Bicarbonate (baking soda) — position 6

Not named on the front at all, sitting mid-list. In the older formula (below) it’s much higher. It’s the ingredient with the most documented skin-tolerance discussion of anything in the stick — and it’s the one the marketing is quietest about.

So the front of the pack sells you two heroes. One of them is real. The other is a trace. That’s not unusual and it isn’t against any rule — a front-of-pack name only has to appear somewhere on the label — but it’s exactly the gap this desk exists to point at.

The quiet workhorse nobody put on the front: sodium bicarbonate, sitting at number six.

Does charcoal do anything in a leave-on stick?

Here the honest answer is: the evidence is thin, and it’s thinner still for this format. Most of charcoal’s reputation comes from rinse-off products, where it adsorbs oils and is then washed away. A deodorant stick is leave-on — the charcoal stays put on the skin. Whether that does anything useful for odor over a day is not something the published literature settles.

A 2020 dermatology review in Clinics in Dermatology (PubMed) put it bluntly: brands attach the usual skincare promises to charcoal — clearer skin, fewer breakouts and the rest — but the review concludes “clinical evidence does not support these claims.” A 2021 review in the International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health (read it here) reached the same place — “little to no clinical evidence” behind cosmetic charcoal claims. None of that means charcoal is a problem to have in the formula. It means the word on the front of a leave-on deodorant is carrying more marketing weight than its position — or the science — supports.

Nib turns the pack over. The front says Charcoal + Magnesium; the label has other ideas.

What about the baking soda nobody put on the front?

The ingredient with the most real-world tolerance conversation around it isn’t either named hero — it’s the sodium bicarbonate at position 6. Baking soda is alkaline, and underarm skin is often freshly shaved, so it’s a common thing people report reacting to.

The nuance matters, and the formal data cuts against the internet’s louder version. The Cosmetic Ingredient Review’s safety assessment of sodium carbonates (PDF) concludes that sodium bicarbonate specifically is not a primary skin irritant at the dilute concentrations tested. But a 2024 review in the Journal of Integrative Dermatology (“Baking Soda and the Skin”) notes that case reports of local irritation do exist with topical baking soda used in excess, and that “the exact safe concentration for topical use is not clear.” A deodorant stick is not a diluted lab sample — and that gap between the lab number and daily use on shaved skin is where the user complaints tend to live. Worth knowing which formula you have, because the older one puts far more baking soda in the stick.

Is there a version without the baking soda?

If baking soda is the thing you’re trying to avoid, the useful move is to read for it directly rather than trust a front-of-pack word. Some “natural” deodorants are built around it; others leave it out and lean on other ingredients. Our own Evil Goods Tallow Deodorant — and yes, this site is published by the team behind Evil Goods, so weigh that accordingly — is a tallow-based, aluminum-free option; read its ingredient list the same way you’d read Schmidt’s and decide for yourself. The point of this desk isn’t “buy ours,” it’s “turn the pack over first.”

Why does Schmidt’s own website list magnesium first?

Because a brand’s website and a regulatory label are two different documents. Schmidt’s product page presents ingredients in a story order that opens on the hero names to match the product title — that’s an editorial choice, not the INCI order. The INCI list, ordered by weight, is the one on the back of the physical pack. When the two disagree, the back of the pack is the document that’s regulated.

One caveat: there is more than one formula out there

An older ingredient order, uploaded to Incidecoder in 2020, reads differently: arrowroot first, coconut oil second, baking soda fourth, with magnesium and charcoal both down in the tail (magnesium around 8th, charcoal 9th of 11). That predates the “Signature” reformulation and may be a discontinued SKU, so treat it as history rather than the current stick. Either way, the two named heroes have never both been near the top of the list, and the honest test is the same: read the panel on the stick in your hand.

Frequently asked questions

Where does charcoal sit on the Schmidt’s Charcoal + Magnesium label?
On the Signature formula EWG recorded from packaging (February 2024), charcoal powder is in the last position on the label — the thirteenth and final line, the least abundant thing in the stick.

Is the magnesium claim accurate?
On that same list, magnesium hydroxide is the first ingredient by weight, so the “magnesium” half of the name is supportable. The “charcoal” half sits at the very bottom.

Does charcoal deodorise in a leave-on stick?
The published evidence is weak, and mostly comes from rinse-off products. Dermatology reviews say clinical evidence doesn’t support charcoal’s cosmetic claims generally, and the rinse-off mechanism doesn’t transfer cleanly to a stick that stays on the skin.

Does Schmidt’s contain baking soda?
Yes. Sodium bicarbonate is at position 6 on the Signature list and higher on the older formula, even though it isn’t named on the front. It’s the ingredient with the most documented skin-tolerance discussion in the stick.

Why doesn’t the website order match the label?
The website uses a brand-story order that opens on the hero names; the regulatory INCI list on the back of the pack is ordered by weight. They are different documents, and the label is the one that’s regulated.

The desk’s whole job: read the line at the bottom, not the word on the front.
September 12, 2026
“Pure Epsom Salt” Is the Brand Name. Epsom Salt Is the 9th Ingredient.
On Dr. Teal’s Body Wash with Pure Epsom Salt (Vanilla Comfort), magnesium sulfate — the “Epsom Salt” in the brand name — is the 9th ingredient of 23. It sits after three surfactants, table salt, fragrance and two botanical extracts. In this kind of rinse-off formula, cosmetic ingredient databases list magnesium sulfate’s job as viscosity control, not a skin-benefit active.

The bottle leads with two words: Pure Epsom Salt. It’s the name of the product. So the reasonable assumption is that Epsom salt — magnesium sulfate — is the thing doing the work. The label tells a quieter story, and it’s worth reading before you decide what this body wash is to you.

INCI read from the Ulta.com product listing (SKU 2654160) on 2026-08-31. Dr. Teal’s reformulates scents from time to time, so an older bottle in your cabinet may differ from this list.

Nib reads the front of the bottle first, like everyone does. “Pure Epsom Salt” — in the brand name, no less.

Where does magnesium sulfate actually sit on the label?

Here is the full ingredient list, quoted verbatim from the retailer page:

Water (Aqua, Eau), Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Sodium Chloride, Fragrance (Parfum), Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Zingiber Officinale (Ginger) Root Extract, Elettaria Cardamomum Seed Extract, Magnesium Sulfate (Epsom Salt), Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice (Decolorized), Tocopheryl Acetate (Vitamin E), Peg-4 Rapeseedamide, Glycerin, Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose, Sodium Peg-7 Olive Oil Carboxylate, Tetrasodium Edta, Polyquaternium-7, Citric Acid, Methylchloroisothiazolinone, Methylisothiazolinone, Sodium Hydroxide, Peg/Ppg-18/18 Dimethicone.

Magnesium sulfate is ninth on that list, of twenty-three lines in total. Under the standard INCI convention, ingredients are listed in descending order of concentration down to the 1% mark, after which they may appear in any order. A useful rule of thumb: in a rinse-off product, fragrance usually runs somewhere between 0.01% and 1%. Fragrance is fifth here. Everything below it — including the magnesium sulfate at position nine — is very likely present at or below one percent. We can’t state the exact figure without a certificate of analysis, and we won’t pretend to; position is all the label lets us read.

Then Nib flips it over. The real story is always on the back, in the type nobody reads.

What is magnesium sulfate doing in a body wash?

This is the part that surprises people. In a surfactant system like a body wash, magnesium sulfate isn’t classified as a skin-benefit active at all. Independent ingredient databases describe its cosmetic function as bulking and viscosity control — it helps set the texture of the wash, the same practical job that Sodium Chloride (table salt, fourth on this list) is doing.

COSMILE Europe (EU cosmetic ingredient database)

Lists magnesium sulfate’s functions as bulking and viscosity controlling only — not as an active. This is the EU regulatory reference source.

The Skin Formulary

Classifies it as a viscosity controller / emulsion stabiliser.

Incidecoder (this product line)

Tags magnesium sulfate as viscosity controlling on Dr. Teal’s own body wash.

None of that means the ingredient is bad, or that the product is bad. It means the mineral on the front of the bottle is, on the evidence of the label, most plausibly there in a texture-and-formula role rather than as the star of the show.

Counting down the list with a pencil: one surfactant, two, table salt, fragrance… and still no magnesium.

Does topical magnesium even get into the skin?

Set the body wash aside and ask the bigger question, because it’s the one shoppers are really chasing: can magnesium applied to skin actually be absorbed? The honest answer is that the evidence is mixed and mostly built on small studies.
- A 2017 systematic review in Nutrients concluded that transdermal magnesium is not well supported by the science: magnesium ions are water-loving and don’t readily cross the skin’s oily outer layer, and hair follicles (a possible shortcut) cover only about 0.1–1% of the skin’s surface.
- A newer 2026 ex vivo study found minimal magnesium permeation across intact skin, rising only when the skin barrier had been deliberately disrupted — the authors note that delivery from simple water-based solutions is unlikely under normal conditions.
- For balance, it’s not all one way: a 2016 human-skin study did find some magnesium passing through, facilitated by hair follicles, in a time- and concentration-dependent way. The effect appears real; the open question is at what scale it matters.
A rinse-off body wash is the hardest case for that already-thin evidence, for a pair of practical reasons: skin contact is brief, and then you rinse it down the drain. We couldn’t find a single study looking specifically at magnesium delivered from a rinse-off wash. That’s not a knock on the product — it’s just the reality of what’s been tested.

There it is — ninth. The hero mineral, sitting below the fragrance line.

So is the body wash worth buying?

If you want a pleasant, fragranced body wash, this is one — the surfactants at the top of the list are what clean, and the vanilla scent is what most reviews are actually responding to. Just buy it for what it is. If your reason for reaching for it is the magnesium on the front, the label suggests that reason is doing more work in the marketing than in the bottle.

If it’s genuinely topical magnesium you’re after, a leave-on format keeps the ingredient on your skin instead of rinsing it away, which is the more sensible way to give the (still-modest) evidence a chance to apply. Evil Goods — the team behind this site — wrote up the safety question on our own blog if you want to read where the science lands before spending anything.

Frequently asked questions

Is there really any Epsom salt in Dr. Teal’s body wash?

Yes — magnesium sulfate (Epsom salt) is genuinely on the ingredient list. It appears ninth of 23, after the fragrance line, which on standard INCI reading suggests it’s present at roughly one percent or less.

Why is magnesium sulfate so far down the list?

In a body wash it functions mainly as a bulking / viscosity-control ingredient rather than an active, so it’s used at the small level that job requires. Table salt, a few lines above it, is doing a similar texture job.

Does the magnesium in a body wash absorb into my skin?

The evidence for topical magnesium absorption is limited and mostly from small studies, and it’s weakest for a rinse-off product with brief skin contact. No study has tested magnesium delivery from a body wash specifically.

Is a leave-on magnesium product better for this?

For keeping the ingredient in contact with skin, yes — a balm or lotion stays on rather than being rinsed off. Whether that translates to a meaningful effect is still an open scientific question.

Where did you read this ingredient list?

From the Ulta.com listing for SKU 2654160 on 2026-08-31. We always date our reads because formulas change.

Nib isn’t cross about it. It’s just useful to know where the headline ingredient actually lives before you decide what it’s worth to you.
August 31, 2026