DON’T WASTE MONEY! What health supplements are worth buying?

If you’ve ever visited a store and checked out the vitamin and supplement aisle, or browsed the various health related websites it’s easy to get lost in the dizzying number of pills, powders, liquids and tonics that are supposedly there to improve your health and build slabs of muscle and possibly lose a decent amount of fat too.

And while a great many of these various supplements and vitamins have the benefit of extensive research to back these claims up… well, quite frankly, many are not the best use of your limited budget. The purpose of this article is to serve as a great jumping off point for those who want to improve their health – perhaps you’re just starting out building a fitness routine and wondering what extra boost you can give yourself.

Before we get into the list, I want to stress the keyword here ‘supplement’. If your diet is terrible and you’re a couch potato then taking a multivitamin (for example) isn’t going to fix all your ills. The same general advice is applicable with supplements as with anything in health – try to tweak your diet and add in moderate exercise (such as resistance exercises, getting extra steps in or heck, just playing tennis with your buddy on a weekend).

I’ll cover diet in a series of articles – but for now use your best judgement. For carb sources – potatoes, oats, fruits and sprouted grain bread (assuming you’re able to eat gluten). Salads made from spinach, lettuice, tomatoes, peppers, veggies like carrots, peas.

I’d suggesting building your meal around the foundation of at least one good protein source – such as eggs, chicken breast or thighs, reasonably lean ground beef or turkey, steaks, salmon, cod, lentils – you get the idea.

That said – let’s jump in shall we?

Omega 3 Fish Oil

I could gush about the benefits of omega 3’s in a twenty minute video and I probably wouldn’t be able to cover all of their benefits. While I certainly wouldn’t call them a panacea, they do improve a host of issues.

Firstly, there’s been multiple studies to demonstrate fish oils improve the function of your heat and protects against cardiovascular diseases, reduce blood pressure and lower other general risk factors associated with these types of issues. Worth noting however – that supplementation hasn’t been as conclusive for preventing heart attacks – and most data here is from the diet itself (ie, from food).

Then there’s rather interesting studies to show that omega 3’s might improve a host of brain functions and reduce cognitive decline. The studies show promise from everything from improving / protecting against depression and dementia and cognotive decline, PTSD and goodness knows what else.

There’s so many other benefits that it’s quite frankly mind boggling – your skin can be bolstered with the medication, it’s great for pregnant women, reducing inflammation (such as joint pain) and maybe even raise testosterone levels in males and… well so on.

Now if your diet is already high in omega 3 (such as you regularly consume large amounts of say, salmon) then you might not need to supplement – but the RDNA for males of omega 3 is 1600 mg a day for males and around 1100 for females. I would also say that certain blood thinners and so if you’re in doubt do speak to your doctor.

I’ll also point to the elephant in the room – if you’re able to incorporate oily fish (Salmon being an obvious one), Chia Seeds and other such Omega 3 ladened heavy foods on a regular basis, the need for supplementation is considerably less.

Vitamin D

Vitamin D can be ingested from certain food sources (dairy, egg yolks, red meats, certain oily fish to name a few) and of course exposure to the sun allows the skin to ‘make’ vitamin D too. The problem is that there’s a good number of people who simply do not get enough sun exposure due to their life style (ie, if you work in an office 9-5).

It becomes even worse if you live in certain geographic locations such as say, London or say the West Coast in the US – with winter being particularly awful. Most office workers I know in either location commute to work during the winter as the sun is yet to rise, perhaps if they’re lucky ‘enjoy’ it for a ten minute walk before entering the office, then by the time they’re leaving work it’s already dark. Indeed, over 50 percent of the UK population doesn’t have enough vitamin D and this handy graph below helps illustrate this – Source

So – why is vitamin D so important? Well, it would be more accurate to call vitamin D a hormone and while as a kid you probably learn that vitamin D improves your bones and teeth (along with calcium) the actual list of benefits is pretty length.

Again, improving cardiovascular health seems to be a benefit of vitamin D, improving your immune system (helping ward off everything from coughs and colds to even autoimmune diseases), improving anxiety and depression and there’s also some (albeit inconclusive) reports that vitamin D helps shed extra pounds (though it might be due to the curving of appetite).  There’s even some studies which demonstrate it may reduce the chances of cancer.

While the recommended RDI for Vitamin D for adults is 800 IU, PERSONALLY I take between 4K IU a day. This is something that has benefited me – but I stress I’m not necessarily advocating you take the exact same dose and indeed, again, the RDI is only 800.

The Columbia Unversity Irving Medical Center has a write-up about this where they recommend 800IU. Again – speaking from my own personal experience here; I did notice my energy levels during the winter improve noticeably when I added in Vitamin D.

Whey Protein 

If you’re a vegan then you might prefer other types of protein such as Pea Protein, but I personally stick with Whey protein. Now, to be clear – Whey Protein isn’t anything magical – despite bodybuilding magazines (particularly in the early 2000s and 2010s) having huge jacked bodybuilders being associated with Whey Protein.

Whey protein can basically be thought of as ‘protein in powder form’. While there’s nothing magical about it, it is very handy and useful. For one, it digests pretty quickly – and if you’re finishing an intense workout, whey protein along with simple carbs can quickly replenish you (ie, let’s say you’ve had a heavy leg day at the gym. Drink a protein shake and eat a ripe banana at the gym, then get home and you can eat a full meal).

If it helps any – think of whey protein as no different from real food such as a chicken breast. So while again, it’s not magical and doesn’t offer some type of special benefits outside of what ‘regular’ food can offer, it does have some great practical uses and can make it easier for folks to hit their protein requirements.

Whey protein can easily be used to easily bring protein along with you – this is particularly handy if you’re traveling. Most small coffee shops (for example) will sell some type of carby snack, but they’re typically light on protein. Grab a coffee, a bagel and drink your protein shake and while not perfect, it’s certainly better than nothing.

Another great benefit of whey protein – cooking and making tasty food. It comes in a lot of different flavours – and can be added to a LOT of things. Cream of rice or oats for breakfast? Add a scoop or two (depending on your needs) of whey. 

Fancy a sweeter snack in the evening that’s reasonably healthy? My friend, I’ve got you covered. Take greek yogurt, throw in 1-2 scoops of whey protein and mix it, then add frozen fruit (ie, blueberries and mango, my fav). Then if you really want, plonk it into the freezer (covered in clingfilm) for 10 – 30 minutes (depending on how cold you want it). It’s a great desert like thing – and you can even add sugar free chocolate sprinkles, or a drizzle of maple syrup (sugar free) or what–have-you.

There’s a lot of other recipes too and you can easily google around, who knows I might add some myself on the website!

There’s no such thing as the ‘right’ dose for whey protein, it is basically food in powder form. Consume it as required for your diet and needs. Generally speaking, I would recommend for individuals who train regularly, 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight a great rough guide. If you are *VERY* serious in lifting / train extremely intensely then you can go more for certain.

If you don’t need the ease or benefits of whey protein then feel free to skip it, but again it can be nice to keep some in your cupboard if only for occasional use.

Creatine Monohydrate

Creatine is yet another of those ‘magical supplements’ you hear about, and while creatine itself can be snagged from natural food sources (such as beef) supplementing is a great idea if you want to ensure your muscles are consistently loaded.

There’s several types of creatine powders, including the standard monohydrate, ethyl-ester and hydrochloride. For a small percent of people, monohydrate causes upset stomachs – and so hydrochloride can be one way around that.

I’d not personally bother with Ethyl-ester. Personally I just generally stick to a cheap, no brand monohydrate. It’s kinda hard to ‘make it wrong’.

You can also take it in two ways – front load it or a consistent dose. The logic of front loading is that it takes 1 – 2 weeks for the creatine to ‘build up’ in your muscle cells. If you front load, you benefit faster. Typical dosing of creatine ranges, but I generally use 5g a day. With front loading you’d take 20g a day for a week, then drop back to the ‘normal’ 5g dose. Front loading is recommended on many creatine packets too. Bodybuilding.com have an extensive write-up regarding the logic behind the loading phase.

Personally, I do NOT front load as I’ve found it causes me a little water bloat. This does go down (creatine draws water into the cells of your muscle) but I personally just don’t bother to deal with that, and just prefer to stick to 5g.

So what exactly is creatine and how does it work? In essence, creatine allows your muscle to have more energy, and therefore ‘work harder’ and for longer. Examples would be do to perform more reps at a specific weight, or perhaps have more stamina if you’re running or doing another endurance sport. The chemistry on how this works is a bit complicated for the video, but basically it enhances the ability to store ATP which is energy stored in your muscle cells. 

Creatine is one of the safest and most well understood supplements out there and is also very safe too. Creatine draws water into the muscle, making it look bigger, likely improves the ability for the body to form new proteins in the muscle to gain more, and perhaps even other health benefits such as for the brain.

While the results of studies all slightly differ (based on caveats such as men vs women, whether the person was trained / untrained, what the exact activities were being measured) a few example stated that well trained individuals added almost 6lbs of muscle mass (though some of that likely from extra water drawn into the muscle) and added 70lbs to leg press (1RM). Source

Women also benefit significantly too, with one of the more impressive claims being a 60% increase in lean mass gained versus strength training alone. This study is published over at NIH.

According to a review of 150 studies, the average came just a smidgen over 2 percent lean mass gained and around 3 percent of loss of bodyfat too.

Ashwagandha

Well, ashwagandha has numerous studies citing a number of different benefits but, I personally take it for one specific purpose (aiding sleep). 

So ashwagandha is actually derived from a plant, and can be found either as a pill or powder on its own, or as one of several other ingredients in a plethora of different supplements. 

So firstly – there is some evidence that it does actually improve testosterone levels – there was a study conducted in 2019 on overweight males and it demonstrated that there was a 14.7 percent increase in testosterone. There have been a few other studies which also showed similar results – albeit the gain in testosterone and the conditions differed per study.

There are also some reports fertility rates in males go up (which… could be good, depending on your… errr.. circumstances). 

It is worth noting that the gains here in testosterone are yes, measurable but certainly not going to gain you massive slabs of extra muscle. It might however lead to small benefits in the long term – possibly. Having said that – there was another study from 2015 which indicated that men between 18-50 benefited in both increased strength and larger muscle size when they were conducting resistance training.

There are much better reasons to take this stuff though. Firstly, there’s some inconclusive data that it improves the conditions of neurodegenerative diseases and lessons the symptoms of arthritis.

But the big reasons to take this stuff are reductions in stress, anxiety, fatigue and sleep according to multiple studies. The National Institute of Health covered these extensively in an article detailing the studies. It also reduces cortisol – and that is kind of a big deal because it is a hormone caused by both physical stress (ie, lifting heavy stuff and exercise) plus of course general mental and emotional stress.

The primary reason I take ashwagandha are for its sleep benefits – and while I’m sure this isn’t going to be the case for everyone, personally I have noticed I tend to sleep deeper when using it, and wake up less during the night and drift off a little faster. There’s studies showing that ashwagandha does indeed benefit sleep, with 600 mg a day over 2 months starting to show the greatest results.

PERSONALLY, I take it maybe 30 – 60 minutes before bed. I don’t suffer from insomnia, but I do have sometimes a difficult time switching my brain off (even if I follow good sleep hygiene routines). So frankly, even a little helps – particularly due to the supplement being relatively cheap too. For the other benefits – I can’t really say I’ve noticed much; but having said that I started taking ashwagandha initially during a cut and so wasn’t in a strength phase for example, limiting my ability to experience gains in strength.

Multivitamin 

Depending on where you live in the world and your life style, you may not need the vitamin D supplements. But a good multivitamin is more like an insurance policy. Of course, in a perfect scenario you will do your best to eat a variety of different foods to get iron, vitamin A, C, D, calcium and everything else – but realistically it’s quite hard to do that on a daily basis.

The way I see it – a decent multi vitamin is a pretty cheap insurance policy to ‘top up’ my body on the various vitamins.

In a perfect world you would get a blood test potentially to see if you’re low on vitamin D or other vitamins, and you can also run something like cronometer and put ALL of your food in for about 1-2 weeks (literally everything from milk in your coffee, to salads, tomatoes, carrots, and the amounts of everything too) and this will give you a decent picture of the amount of the various micro nutrients you’re consuming. 

But, realistically if you’re just starting out on a fitness journey – at the least you might as well just take a decent multi vitamin. 

Wrapping things up

Your supplementation should certainly be somewhat tailored to your needs and shouldn’t be used as a replacement for a poor diet. With this said, if you hate the taste of fish and your omega 3 ingestion is rather low from other sources, then nudging it up with a pill is better than nothing.

My main cautionary tale is that I’ve had no shortage of newbies approach me at the gym asking for the ‘best protein powder’ or what they should be taking for creatine and so on. And I’m not faulting their desire to know the information – if you don’t know something, ask. That’s logical – but rather typically my response is often what they don’t want to hear.

“What’s your current diet like?” and I find out that their diet is… well, not the best. Again, we all need to start somewhere and I would *MUCH* rather someone just start their journey into fitness without having all the details and technical understanding and improve, rather than research forever and not actually start.

But instead – consider this article a starting point for making improvements – if you’re current protein intake is shockingly low, you’re not eating fruits and veggies – then frankly I’d encourage you guys on a limited budget to plonk extra cash into more eggs, beef and so on. BELIEVE ME, you will get better results in the longer term.

I would however say a few supplements – such as Vitamin D could be great for most folks if you’re living in less sunny climate and are say an office worker. Again – use your best judgement here.