I've not heard of magnesium gel. That might do me a lot of good. I have IBS and my stomach just will not tolerate me taking any supplement magnesium. I'll have to get some and try that. My Gabapentin is at 600 mg, 3 times a day. As far as I know, no side effects. I was on Lyrica before this and for me Gabapentin is really better for me. I was going to say I take it on rising in the morning, but that's not always true. I do a medset, which means I lay out all my medications for a week at a time. I bought a nice and sturdy case to do this a couple years back. Each day can then be taken out and I put that next to my bed. If I wake in extra pain, and it's like 6 am or later, I just take my morning set of pills in there. It has my Tylenol, and Losartan, everything in pill form. I do the same when I go to bed, or if I am staying up real late, by 10 pm, to try and keep it all balanced. My midday is at 1 or 2 p.m, unless I took it early that day, then about Noon. I've been real lucky to not have much side effects with the Gabapentin but until recently I was max NSAIDs, and some steroid injections too. Both of those are nixed now. My kidney's can't take NSAIDs unless it's maybe one dose per week as rescue medicine. And it turns out even the steroid injections are causing me troubles. my spine is growing fat inside it and that's both rare and a problem. I'm looking for a neurosurgeon next for that and stenosis there.