Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Magnesia carbonica is a homeopathic single remedy. Its Latin name is Magnesii carbonas. It is also called magnesium carbonate, a white mineral salt.
Homeopaths pick it for sour burps, an acid stomach, green watery stools in babies, teething pain and some nerve pains. Those uses come from old homeopathic texts, not from tests.
The remedy is made by diluting the mineral again and again, with hard shaking at each step. At 30C the dilution is so deep that no molecule of the starting mineral is likely to be left. What you swallow is a plain sugar pellet or water and alcohol.
Good trials do not show this remedy doing more than a dummy pill (a placebo). Long use in one tradition is not proof that a thing works, so we score the two things apart: how old the use is, and what trials show. That point is made here once and not repeated below.
There is no known way for it to work in the body. At 30C no source mineral is left, so there is nothing to act on your cells.
Homeopathy rests on two old ideas. The first is "like cures like": a thing that causes a symptom in a well person is given, very dilute, to a sick person with that symptom.
The second idea is that shaking at each step leaves an "imprint" of the mineral in the water. Neither idea is backed by lab work or by trials.
Low potencies are a different case. A 3X or 6X still holds real magnesium carbonate. That amount can soak up stomach acid and loosen the bowel, the same way an antacid does.
Sugar pellets or small round pills. These are the most common form.
Liquid drops in water and alcohol.
Soft tablets that melt on the tongue.
Common strengths are 6C, 12C, 30C and 200C. Lower strengths are written 3X, 6X or 12X. The lower ones still hold real mineral; the C strengths on a shop shelf do not.
Samuel Hahnemann, the German doctor who started homeopathy, tested magnesium carbonate on healthy people in the early 1800s. He wrote up the picture in his Materia Medica Pura.
Since then it has stayed a standard remedy in homeopathic texts and kits, mostly for children with sour stomachs and for teething. It has no place in Ayurveda, Chinese medicine or Western herbal practice.
Plain magnesium carbonate, in normal amounts, has a separate life as an antacid, a laxative and a baking and grip powder.
See a doctor if your symptoms are still there after 3 days, or if they get worse at any point.
Get care the same day if a baby or young child has ongoing diarrhoea or vomiting, dry lips, few wet nappies, or is floppy and hard to wake.
Get care the same day for bad belly pain, black or bloody stools, vomiting blood, ongoing chest pain, trouble swallowing, or weight loss you cannot explain.
Go to an emergency department for a slow or uneven heartbeat, deep weakness, confusion or trouble breathing after taking any magnesium product, above all if you have kidney disease.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
Reviewed by the HealisticMD editorial team How we grade evidence →
The published evidence for Magnesia carbonica is weak or absent. That usually means no controlled trial has tested it, not that a trial found it ineffective — the two are different, and we grade only what has been published.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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