Over the weekend, I put all my monthly supplements into my “old man’s monthly pill box,” and got to thinking about how necessary all of this stuff is. People have their opinions, which vary from “supplements keep me out of the doctor’s office,” to “supplements just make for expensive urine.”
I land somewhere in the middle–there are clearly a lot of supplements that don’t do what they advertise, or, even worse, have the opposite of their intended effects. Also, the quality of the supplement is highly suspect. It’s pretty much the wild west out there when it comes to getting what’s on the label. Of course, there are clearly some more reputable brands.
One thing I’ve noticed is that different practitioners rely more heavily on supplements than others. I’ve never known anyone to see a functional medicine doctor who didn’t come away with a $500 list of supplements to take. On the flip side, a lot of MDs think supplements are a total waste of money.
I’ve always tried to take a more nuanced approach and recommend only things that have plenty of evidence behind them. I have a lifetime membership to Examine.com, so I have a convenient platform to look things up (it comes in handy in my world). Examine only sells information about supplements, so they have a vested interest in telling the truth about this stuff.
But I’ve also experienced the positive effects of adding a supplement to my own personal regimen. For instance, for only about, let’s say, FIVE YEARS, I had something called Benign Fasciculation Syndrome (BFS) in my right arm. If you’ve ever had a twitchy eyelid, that’s BFS. It’s annoying and can make you paranoid that something worse underlies the symptoms.
I had just learned to live with the twitch, but I stumbled across an article that said a combination of supplements has been shown to help with BFS: Magnesium (which I was already taking), Ashwagandha, and L-theanine. I’d heard of ashwagandha before, but knew nothing about it (this video breaks down the current state of the evidence), and I knew L-theanine was often used for anxiety.
So, I said, “Why not?” And ordered something Pure Encapsulations (one of the few supplement companies I sell here at the office) makes called Cortisol Calm that has both Ashwagandha and L-theanine in it. Here’s a five-second video of what was happening with my arm before then (feel free to follow us on Facebook while you’re there). 30 minutes after taking my first dose of Cortisol Calm, the twitching stopped. Like, totally, completely stopped.
It was like a miracle. I still take Cortisol Calm today because it helps me chill and keeps the twitch away, and there are several other benefits mentioned in the video above.
Another area where supplementation has clearly helped is creatine. I’m at an age where I can’t expect to get much stronger because I’ve been pushing the weights pretty hard since my 20s. But a little over a year ago, I started adding creatine to my Poor Man’s Ozempic concoction, and saw my raw bench press numbers jump up considerably, even as I dropped several pounds. Here’s me putting up some decent weight in the ol’ garage gym.
So, I have my staples — K2-D3, Magnesium, the Poor Man’s Ozempic, and a few others (the complete list is available on my Fullscript Store under the name “Dog G’s Monthly Supplement List”). And, by the way, I quit taking Vitamin D on its own in favor of adding it with K2, since those two work together to direct calcium ions where you want them (teeth and bones instead of arterial walls).
At the end of the day, supplements should be, well, supplements to a diet and exercise routine that handles the basics. For most people, getting the basics going will do a lot more than adding a few pills. But the occasional addition can help fill a gap here and there, as my now non-twitchy triceps show.
Ok, back to writing this book, which will have an entire section on supplements, peptides, and more.
