Jul 28, 2019

What supplements do you use?

Cross-posted to LessWrong.

There's a rationalist tradition of thinking carefully about supplements & nootropics: 1, 2, 3

However, I haven't seen a record of what supplement regimens people end up using in practice.

I've been fooling around with supplement stacks for a few years now and feel pretty good about my current regimen (outlined below), but want to see if there's any low-hanging fruit I've missed.

So I'm curious... what supplements do you use? (Shoot me an email, or reply on the LessWrong version of this post.)

Also curious to hear about obvious mistakes and/or oddities in my current stack.


My supplement regimen –

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, this isn't medical advice, etc. etc.

Background: 27 years old, biological male, ~200 lbs, BMI of 25, pescatarian

Supplements I take:

Supplements I'm considering:

  • Apparently Tyrosine boosts cognitive performance during stress. There are noticeable subjective effects when I take 1.0 - 2.0 g on an empty stomach. I tried some recently and enjoyed it. It's safe, cheap, and legal so I may start using it regularly to complement my caffeine use.

  • Following this post, I may start taking Vitamin K2 in the morning to complement my Vitamin D3 supplementation.

  • Romeo has told me that Choline is a good daily supplement (apparently many people are deficient & deficiency is associated with depression). I haven't poked the literature on this yet.

Supplements I don't take any more:

  • I used to take fish oil daily. Gwern likes it, but I didn't notice any effect & was scared off by the potential negative effects. Also I eat sushi sometimes which probably does some of the work fish oil would do.

  • I used to take a small aspirin daily but stopped after a large RCT found that the downside risk probably negates the benefit.

  • For a while I took lithium to boost mood, but stopped after my replication of Gwern's RCT failed to show an effect.