Supplements
the 4 supplements i'd actually defend buying
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the 4 supplements i'd actually defend buying
after years of trying 20+ things, the ones i always come back to: - creatine monohydrate (5g, muscle + cognition) - vitamin D (if your levels are low, confirm with labs) - magnesium glycinate at night (sleep + muscle) - omega-3 fish oil (if you don't eat fatty fish 2x/wk) everything else was situational or didn't move my bloodwork. save your money.
magnesium glycinate vs citrate vs l-threonate - my n=1
rotated each for 4 weeks: - citrate: pooped on time every day, didn't feel different otherwise - glycinate: slept deeper, woke less during the night - l-threonate: maybe slightly clearer head in the morning? subjective. glycinate won for me. but honestly magnesium in any form seems to do something useful if you're deficient.
ashwagandha made me feel weirdly flat, anyone else?
took KSM-66 600mg daily for 6 weeks. stress went down. also my motivation went down. felt emotionally muted, not in a good way. stopped it, came back within a week. not all adaptogens are for all people. how did it go for you?
creatine HCL vs monohydrate - the HCL premium is a scam
tried HCL for 3 months because of the 'less bloating' hype. went back to good old mono. my gains and recovery were identical and HCL costs like 4x. if you bloat on mono try a smaller dose more often, don't pay extra for a fancier label.
stop buying multivitamins, a thread
most multis are under-dosed on the things you actually need and over-dosed on stuff you don't. you're better off identifying the 1-3 things your bloodwork actually shows low and supplementing those specifically. i cut my supplement cabinet from 11 bottles to 3 and feel exactly the same.
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the case for getting most of it from food
boring advice but here we go. i tried to optimize with capsules for years. when i just ate an actual varied diet with fatty fish twice a week, leafy greens daily, enough red meat for iron, legumes, fruit — most of my marker improvements happened there. supplements fill gaps. they're not the main show. my pantry is cheaper and my gut is happier.
peri supplement stack — what i landed on after a year
for me at 48: - magnesium glycinate nightly - omega-3 - vitamin D3 + K2 (D was 22 on my labs) - b-complex (doc suggested after a fatigue workup) - creatine (started for strength, kept for the cognitive boost) things i tried and dropped: ashwagandha, maca, evening primrose oil (subjective nothing for me). HRT is doing the heavy lifting honestly, supplements are supporting cast.
read the back of your vitamin D bottle carefully
D3 absorbs way better than D2. and both need fat to absorb properly. taking a dry D capsule with a bowl of cereal is kind of a waste. take it with eggs or olive oil or a meal with some fat in it. also check the cofactors — D loves to be taken with K2 if you're going high dose.
LDN for hashimotos + fatigue — 6 month check in
low dose naltrexone 4.5mg at bedtime prescribed off-label for autoimmune. the first month my sleep was weird (vivid dreams). by month 3 my fatigue was the lowest it had been in years. not a miracle. maybe 30-40% better. brain fog is the big one that lifted. not a supplement technically but adjacent. worth asking your doc about if you're in autoimmune world.
zinc for acne - did it do anything?
15mg zinc picolinate daily for 3 months during my pre-accutane era. slight improvement in breakouts maybe? hard to say. kept it going as a 'just in case' because it's cheap. don't go over 40mg/day without labs, can mess with copper.