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Not medical advice. The Atlas is not a substitute for a clinician who can examine you.

ZMA (Optimum Nutrition & the category)

Zinc Monomethionine Aspartate + Magnesium + B6

Evidence grade 2 of 5, Thin. Read how the Atlas grades evidence.

The written rationale for this grade is still being prepared.

FDA
Dietary supplement (not FDA-evaluated for efficacy)

Reference only. Not medical advice.

What can go wrong

Generally well tolerated. The marketing implies a testosterone boost that the evidence supports only in deficient individuals. Taking zinc 30 mg chronically can impair copper status.

This is something to take to a clinician. The Atlas can tell you what is known about zma (optimum nutrition & the category) in general. It cannot tell you what is happening in your body, and the difference matters most for exactly the symptoms that bring people to this page.

ZMA is a patented combination of zinc monomethionine aspartate, magnesium aspartate, and vitamin B6, sold by Optimum Nutrition and many others. It was popularized by a late-1990s study in zinc/magnesium-deficient athletes. The honest read: ZMA can help correct deficiency (and deficiency does suppress testosterone), but controlled trials in non-deficient men have largely failed to show a testosterone increase.

The original 'bodybuilder T mineral', mostly a deficiency-correction story.

What people take it for

These are the reasons people give for taking it. They are not effects it has been shown to have.

  • Marketed for testosterone, sleep, recovery

What people get wrong

  • Often saidZMA raises testosterone

    ActuallyIn zinc/magnesium-deficient athletes, correcting the deficiency can normalize testosterone. In already-replete men, controlled trials generally show no testosterone increase.

Who profits, and who pushes back

Nobody is named here yet, because we have not done that work on this entry. Read that as unfinished. Somebody almost certainly sells this, and somebody almost certainly disputes it. Assume both until we have checked.

Low-margin commodity mineral sales across many brands.

At a glance

Composition
Zinc 30 mg / Magnesium 450 mg / B6
Origin
Patented (Lorenzo / SNAC) late 1990s
Best use
Correcting zinc/magnesium deficiency

What this entry does not yet cover

What follows is unfinished work on our side, not a finding about ZMA (Optimum Nutrition & the category). A short entry is not a safe entry.

  • Timeline. We have not built the dated record of research and regulatory events.
  • Cost and market. We have not documented what it sells for or who sells it.
  • Supply chain. We have not mapped where it is made.
  • Who uses it. We have not documented the user groups.
  • What could change. No forward-looking summary yet.
  • How it compares. We have not set it against the alternatives.
  • Children and teenagers. We have not checked what is known about younger people.
  • Where we land. We have not taken a position on this yet.

Sources

The studies below are named and described, but not linked. You cannot open them from here and check our reading against them, which means this page is our summary of the literature rather than a document you can verify. Weigh it accordingly until the links exist.

The studies that matter

  • ZMA in non-deficient trained men,

    Multiple controlled trials found no significant testosterone increase when baseline status was adequate