My Top Supplements For General Health

I get asked quite often which are my top supplements for general health, so here they are. In general, my philosophy is to take the minimum amount of supplements necessary as I try to optimize my health and performance mostly through nutrition and lifestyle. However, the compounds I recommend here are either difficult to get through nutrition and lifestyle, or simply have such great benefits to me I consider them almost essential as long as I can afford them.

I’ll start with providing a quick summary/overview, and if you scroll further down I’ll give a condensed explanation on why I think these supplements are so good.

Overview

  • Magnesium
    • Supplement forms: Malate, Bisglycinate, Glycinate, Taurate, L-Threonate
    • Natural forms: Bicarbonate, Chloride/Sulfate
    • Dosage: 400-800 mg/day half in the morning, half in the evening
  • Vitamin E
    • D-Alpha-Tocopherol form – Other tocopherols or tocotrienols are good, but not essential if they are not included
    • Find one that doesn’t use sunflower or soybean oil as carrier oil.
    • Dosage: supplement dosages vary greatly, from the RDA of 15 mg up to 20x RDA. I take softgels with around 200 mg once daily with a meal.
  • Vitamin K2
    • MK7 form is my preference, MK4 is good too, best is a mix of both.
    • Once again, make sure the carrier oil isn’t soybean, sunflower, or any other vegetable oil.
    • Dosage: the RDA is 150 mcg/day, I have been supplementing 200 mcg / day, taken with a meal. But 150 mcg – 400 mcg / day is a good range.
  • Glycine
    • Dosage: I take up 5-10 grams straight or in my tea 1/2 hours before bed, Glycine tastes like sugar so it’s a treat honestly.
  • Creatine
    • Form: I use Creatine Monohydrate. It’s the most researched form, and the other forms are not superior, just more expensive.
    • Dosage: I take 5 gram in my breakfast yoghurt every morning. Timing is irrelevant, dosage should be 5 gram daily.
  • Shilajit
    • Form: I used resin, drops, and tablets. All of them felt the same to me, but the drops and tablets were far easier to use.
    • Dosage: I typically take about 400 mg a day (2 tablets) in the morning with breakfast, or with my post workout meal.

Where To Buy

Feel free to get the supplements at a local store or an online store you are familiar with, these are some of the brands that I recommend. I will add to this list once I found good brands in other parts of the world.

Why I Use Them

The first 3 mentions are nutrients that are difficult to obtain through a modern diet, and also require extra attention because of our modern lifestyle. If you ever analyzed the vitamins and minerals in your day-to-day diet, you will typically see a shortage in these nutrients: Vitamin E, Magnesium, and Vitamin K2.

Magnesium

It’s difficult to obtain your RDA of Magnesium (~400 mg) through diet (see here). Especially if you take into account that Magnesium from plant sources is probably poorly absorbed due to the anti-nutrient content. Moreover, Magnesium is easily depleted in the body through 2 mechanisms.

Firstly, you lose Magnesium through sweating [study]. If you do sports regularly, or if you live in a hot climate, you’ll be losing a lot of Magnesium through this way. Secondly, Magnesium is depleted by stress [study]. God knows that many people are stressed out these days, including me sometimes. All-in-all, our modern diet is low in supply of Magnesium, but we’re using up a lot of it.

Magnesium is essential in over 600 processes in the body, including processes related to:

  • Energy creation
  • Gene maintenance
  • Stress management
  • Muscle function
  • Protein formation
  • Nerve function

Supplementing Magnesium has a calming effect, and increases my stress tolerance. I have also seen benefits in physical recovery and my muscle cramps are completely gone.

The best forms of Magnesium in my opinion are Magnesium (Bis-)Glycinate, Magnesium Taurate, and Magnesium Malate.

Magnesium Citrate is OK. It is equally bioavailable as the other forms, but causes digestive upset for some.

Other ways Magnesium can be obtained is through Magnesium Chloride (sprays), Magnesium Bicarbonate (mixing Magnesium Hydroxide with sparkling water), or by bathing with Magnesium salts such as Epsom salt.

Vitamin E

Vitamin E is another nutrient people rarely get enough of through diet, since it is only found in significant quantities in small selection of foods (see here). Most people don’t eat these foods on a daily basis.

Moreover, our need for vitamin E is arguably much higher these days than the RDA (which we already fail to meet). The reason is that vitamin E is the vitamin that counters the negative effects of PUFA’s, the fatty acids found in vegetable oils. Vegetable oils are extremely abundant in food products these days, and most restaurants cook their foods in them. For a more thorough explanation on vitamin E and PUFA’s, check this post.

“The requirement for vitamin E is closely related to the dietary intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA). By the protective mechanism to prevent PUFA from being peroxidized, vitamin E is metabolically consumed. In addition, PUFA impair the intestinal absorption of vitamin E.”

Bassler (1991) – On the problematic nature of vitamin E requirements.

Knowing it is already hard to reach the RDA of vitamin E, and realizing our needs probably exceed the RDA, I think supplementing vitamin E is a wise choice for your general health.

Vitamin K2

Only since recently, people have started to pay attention to vitamin K2. Whenever you see recommendations for vitamin intake, they typically mention vitamin K. What they don’t often tell you is that there are two major kinds of vitamin K (K1 and K2), and they do have distinct effects.

Vitamin K1 is easily obtainable, mostly through plant foods, and plays an important role in clotting and healthy blood. While vitamin K2 has similar benefits, it also has some important distinct benefits from K1.

Vitamin K2 is essential in the regulation of Calcium in the body. Without getting into the deep details of it all, vitamin K2 makes sure that Calcium gets to the tissues that need it (bones, teeth, nerves) and removes it from the places it shouldn’t be (e.g. clogging up your arteries).

But it doesn’t stop there, vitamin K2 has shown to:

  • Lower risk of heart disease
  • Improve bone and teeth health
  • Lower risk of diabetes
  • Lower risk of cancer
  • Improve liver health
  • Improve kidney health
  • Lower the risk of neurodegenerative disease

For details, be sure to consult this study.

Just like the other compounds mentioned, it is very difficult to obtain the RDA of vitamin K2 through diet alone. The main sources of vitamin K2 are hard cheeses and natto (fermented soy beans), and it is found in lower amounts in meat and eggs (see table 2 in this study for a full breakdown).

I personally find it near impossible to get my K2 through food alone, and think therefore supplementation is a great choice for general health.

Other compounds

The above mentioned compounds play an important role in my regimen because they address deficiencies I think I might develop if I rely on diet alone.

The next compounds are not essential in that sense, but I do believe they can be very valuable additions for general health and wellbeing, and I personally felt great benefits from them.

Glycine

Glycine is an amino-acid mostly found in collagen (33%), a key protein in connective tissue such as cartilage, skin, and bone. Besides that, it is an ingredient for the body to create important compounds such as creatine, glutathione, and bile salts, and it functions as an important neurotransmitter similar to GABA (gives a calming effect). A great paper going more in depth on some of these benefits can be read here.

Since Glycine is found in collagen, the best way to get it in is through eating meat or fish with skin on, or tough cuts of meat with a lot of cartilage and connective tissue. Meat from the bone also typically has a lot of collagen, and therefore bone broth is also a great source of collagen and Glycine.

These days however, people typically only eat skinless boneless meat and fish, therefore not getting in a lot of collagen and Glycine.

As neatly outlined in this article, the body requires about 15 grams of Glycine per day, but is only able to synthesize about 2.5 grams by itself. As a result, it is optimal to get about 12 grams per day from diet.

On top of that, muscle meats contain high levels of the amino acid Methionine which converts into Homocysteine. The body naturally tries to keep the levels of Homocysteine in check, and this entire balancing act requires Glycine at several stages. This can mean that by eating lots of muscle meat, a lot of Glycine is used up in this process. For more on this topic, read this blog.

For these reasons, many people are running low on Glycine in their body, and could see benefit from eating more Glycine rich food, or supplementing.

Supplementing Glycine has three main benefits:

  1. It supports collagen production, which will strengthen and speed up the recovery of skin, tendons, and ligaments. [study]
  2. Because of its effect as a calming neurotransmitter, it has been shown to be a great sleep-supporting supplement. [article]
  3. Higher dosages (22.5 grams) have been shown to naturally elevate Growth Hormone for several hours. [article]

I supplement it mainly for reason 1 and 2, and use smaller dosages. Even though I try to eat collagen rich meat when I can, I definitely don’t eat it very often. When you do a lot of weightlifting, the joints, ligaments, and tendons can definitely use some extra strength and recovery. The benefits to my sleep are very noticeable too. I supplement about 10 grams daily, which should be enough to meet my body’s glycine needs, and is more than the dosage used in the sleep studies (~ 3 grams).

Creatine

Creatine is one of the most researched supplements in the world, and has many well-established positive effects. The main effects are twofold:

  1. It increases the available ATP in cells (more cellular energy!) [article]
  2. It increases intra and extra-cellular hydration [article]

Most people think this only applies to muscles, because it is sold mainly as a performance supplement. However, it actually has this effect over the entire body, including the brain.

The increase in available ATP and hydration results in higher strength, hypertrophy, and endurance, making it an all-round amazing supplement for sports performance.

But, the increase in available ATP also benefits your brain, improving cognitive performance, and energy levels overall. Cells that have more energy available can do their work better, regardless of where they are located and what their function is.

Some people think creatine will lead to hair loss, or kidney damage. Both of these claims are not supported by literature, and because it has been researched so often without issues, it is known as one of the safest supplements as well. This scientific article addresses all misconceptions on creatine in great detail, I highly recommend you read it if you have worries.

I have been taking this supplement daily for several year (5 gram / day of Creatine Monohydrate).

Shilajit

Shilajit is a relatively obscure supplement in the modern world, but it has been known in the cultures around the Himalayas for centuries.

It’s is a tar-like substance, rich in a large variety of trace minerals. It is found in the mountains where, over decades, lots of plant matter has broken down and composted. When moisture condenses on or runs down the mountain slopes, it seeps through these organic deposits, collecting many minerals, organic acids and other beneficial nutrients along it way until it forms a resin at its final resting point. In Ayurverdic (ancient Indian) medicine, shilajit is known as “the destroyer of weakness”.

The benefits of shilajit are many, and most of them are described well in this scientific article. Among these effects are:

  • Help the transportation of nutrients into deep tissues
  • Remove deep-seated toxins from the body
  • Improve mitochondrial function and increase energy
  • Increase testosterone, and improve sperm count & quality [study][study]

Shilajit is also rich in trace minerals, including the known ones such as Magnesium, Copper and Selenium, but also a lot of other less known ones that nevertheless can have benefits in the body but are difficult to obtain through the typically clean foods we get from our grocery stores. See an overview of the minerals inside of Shilajit by clicking one of the pdf’s on this website (website).

I have been supplementing Shilajit for about a year, and saw a great increase in energy when taking it. I think the minerals and acids in Shilajit are very difficult to obtain through other ways in such a concentrated form, and believe the many benefits will support my overall health and longevity.

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