I Changed My Body by Taking These 8 Supplements Every Day

Hey, it's J.J. here.

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Hey JJ here.

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I'm JJ Virgin PhD dropout.

Sorry, mom turned four time New York Times bestselling author.

Yes, I'm a Certified Nutrition Specialist, Fitness hall of Famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe. But I'm driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers, and sharing the.

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And that's why I created the well Beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive.

In each episode, we'll talk about what's.

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Health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full full out at 100.

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I'm betting the skincare that you used in your teens and twenties is not the same thing that you're doing in your 50s and 60s, right? And same with your supplements. The supplements that I was taking in my 20s are not the same ones as I'm taking now in my 60s. In fact, I revisited a bunch of stuff a few years ago when I decided it was time to get in the best shape of my life at 60. And I made a guide that you can grab for the supplements you should be taking at 40 plus. It's@jjvirgin.com over 40. So first off, before I get into the ones that I think really make a big difference, I'm going to talk foundational because there's three things that I think are super important for foundation and they are vitamin D3 with K2, magnesium and omega 3 fish oils. So couple things here. Do a 25 hydroxy vitamin D test and you'll want to optimize your vitamin D to be between 50 and 80 mgs per ML. Then for the fish oil, what I like to Recommend is an omega 3 index test because that will help you dose your fish oil correctly because depending on how much fish you eat, that will help vary how much fish oil you need to take. And then with magnesium you can do a red blood cell magnesium test. So that's how I look at the foundation and this is one that I wish I'd thought of as foundational. In fact, this is one that I would have started in my teens and twenties because turns out like, and you've heard me say this, Starting around age 30, we are losing muscle, we're losing strength and we're losing power. Gosh, we can lose 5 to 8% of our muscle every decade. And what we also know is that when we are working out, it's a lot harder to recover. In fact, one of the first signs that I was in perimenopause is I just couldn't recover from from my workouts like I used to. I just had this overall inflammatory effect. The other thing that starts to happen, especially in perimenopause and when estrogen goes down is we start to lose bone. In fact, it starts to come and fall off the cliff, really. And we also start to lose it a bit, meaning our cognition. You know that feeling when you walk into a room, you're like, why am I in this room? What was I coming in here for? Hopefully that's not just me, but I've got the solution for that. And by the way, beyond your muscles and your. Your bones and your cognition, skin. I still remember doing a downward dog in my 30s going, whose skin is that? What is going on with that creepiness on my thighs? So all of these things, believe it or not, there is one supplement that we can also get from our food that helps with all of this. Now, you can get this from fish, you can get this from meat, although about 30 to 40% of it's degraded, depending on how you cook it, because heat degrades it. And by the way, I'm talking creatine. You can get 2 grams per each pound of beef, pork or pork, and 1 gram per pound of chicken and 1.8 grams per pound of tuna. And I'm stressing that because in order for you to get what you need, you would be having to eat a lot of protein. And I eat a lot of protein and I can't possibly get enough. Plus, you know, with the cooking, you're not even getting half of that. So I'm talking about creatine. And the deal is, for us women, we tend to have 70 to 80% less tissue stores of creatine than men. Now, maybe it's due to our diet, maybe it's because we have less muscle mass than. Than men. Either which way we have lower creatine stores to begin with. And this is problematic because creatine helps regenerate ATP. That's our energy currency. That's what's going to help you work out harder, that's going to help you work out longer, and it's going to help you recover. F. What's that mean? That means that you're going to have better muscle development and you're going to have better bone mass. Plus, creatine's been shown to help preserve muscle. And because it helps with muscle recovery, you know what else that means? It can help with that? Muscle soreness. What's cool about this supplement? Because, you know, to be honest, you might feel magnesium a little bit. It can help with, you know, sleep and relaxation, etc. And omega 3s. You might be able to feel in with your mood, but I highly doubt you're going to feel vitamin D with K. Right? Most of the things that I'm going to say to take, you're not going to go, wow, I feel amazing. But this one, oh my gosh, you will actually notice the ability to work out harder and recover better. And this is another cool use for it because that energy that I'm talking about, the energy in your brain, the energy in your body, this can also help if you're low in sleep, either because you had a crappy night's sleep the night before or you're jet lagged. Last summer I had a crazy travel schedule. Super fun, but it was a little bit nuts because I literally went from Florida to Lendan to Boston, to Spain, to Lisbon, to Florida to British Columbia to back to Florida. It was like jet lag jumping back and forth. And I used to have this whole story in my head that I suffered from jet lag. And this time I used creatine. Zero issues, like easy peasy. Creatine helps with better energy and stamina overall. So it's not just in the gym. And you know, I talked about most of this is in our muscles, like 95% in our muscles, but there's 5% in our brains. So I mentioned that it can help with cognition. Remember, you need optimal amounts. If you don't have enough creatine in your muscles, you're not having any in your brain. But if you do have enough creatine and ideally you have optimal creatine levels, then you can notice that what it's doing for your brain, better cognition, better mood. They did a study on postmenopausal women finding that it was great antidepressant benefits too. So hopefully I've convinced you. Creatine for the win. Now, I have two different types of creatine that I use and recommend creatine monohydrates. The one that you've heard about, it's the most studied, it's been around the longest. And because of that, everyone's like, this is one you use. It's the most studied, it's been around the longest. But it's kind of like saying, well, you should continue to use your rotary dial phone because it's been around the longest. There's another type of creatine now, creatine monohydrates. One I've been recommending having people use. But what I got back was about, gosh, I don't know, 25% of the people complained about GI issues and fluid retention. And it turns out that while Creatine monohydrates, the most studied. What's misinformation out there is that it's completely absorbed. It actually isn't. Only about 15% of it's absorbed. And the rest of it is what's causing the GI issues and that extracellular fluid retention. So if that's you, if you're struggling, if you've tried creatine, you went, oh, nope, I got. I gained weight. And, you know, I had all this gut stuff, forget it, I'm out. And I kept hearing from people, I've got another solution for you. And it's the new product I just made called Chioteneur Non bloating creatine for women. And it is creatine HCl combined with taurine and magnesium. And you need a seventh of what you'd need from creatine monohydrate because it is all absorbed. So you won't get those other issues. Now, for a lot of people, they don't get those issues, and it's no biggie. And they can take 3 to 5 grams of creatine each day, no problem. If that's not you, then try my chiotine. And what I like to do with creatine is I like to take two doses a day. I'll take my foundational dose, and then I'll take another dose with me when I'm going to work out, or if I've got jet lag or I had a poor night's sleep, then I use additional creatine there, too. And again, you will totally notice a difference. Next up, collagen. Now, as we age, collagen production is naturally declining. I talked about the downward dog and seeing the weird crepey skin. That's it. It's things like the wrinkles and the dryness and the sagging skin. So collagen is the most abundant protein in our body. This is what helps us maintain our skin elasticity and our skin moisture and helps reduce all those visible signs of aging. But what you can't see is what it does for your joint health. It acts as a cushion between bones and for women over 40, collagen. Supplemental collagen can help reduce joint discomfort and improve mobility. And it can also help with muscle repair and maintenance. So it can help support muscle strength and recovery. Plus, of course, it's a major component of bones. Now, as we age, we know that we are losing bone mineral density. Especially if you are postmenopausal and not taking hormones, your bone density can fall off a cliff. And collagen can help support bone structure and help reduce the risk of osteoporosis and on a more superficial thing. But hey, this is important. It's also good for your hair and your skin and your nails because it boosts keratin production, which means stronger hair and stronger nails. In fact, in taking collagen, what I hear most often is that people's nails aren't breaking, their hair isn't breaking, and they've got better hair growth and thickness. But I'll tell you, my favorite of all reason to take collagen and I take twice a day, is for gut health. Now, my very first book I wrote was the Virgin Diet. It was all about leaky gut and how, you know, leaky gut can happen due to a variety of factors like stress and diet and gluten and fructose. And when it does, food can get out into circulation, can hit your immune system and get out and wreak havoc and create a lot of inflammation, weight gain, all sorts of problems. One of the fastest ways to start to heal your gut is collagen. In fact, if I Write Virgin Diet 2.0, which I'm tempted to do, this will be a huge part of the healing plan. So there's two different ways, actually three different ways that I get collagen into my diet. First of all, whenever I can, I use real bone broth and I'll cook with it. If I'm making a soup or a stew. If I'm making rice, I will use bone broth. But I don't do that all the time. And I want to make sure that I'm getting collagen in every day. So I do collagen intake two different ways. One in my all in one paleo shake, which is a bone broth shake, which is about 80% collagen. So that's one way I get it. But then I also do supplemental collagen with my collagen peptides powder. And that's something that I add in. I'll add it into my coffee or my Greek style yogurt. So I like to get in minimally a scoop a day, but I really like to get in more like two scoops a day. Super important. Now, I have been for the last decade struggling with leg cramps. I don't know if you've ever had anything like this. These are these things that will wake me up. It's like your calf is a rock and you have to get up and walk it out. It is the worst feeling at all. I've tried to mentally Kind of walk myself through it and relax and it just. Nothing would cut it. And so, you know, I was taking magnesium and I would take Epsom salts baths. I was even using a magnesium cream. It's just like nothing was working. And then last year, I don't know why this took me so long. Darn it. But at least I know now. So now you know too. This is you. I started taking electrolytes. I started. I created a product called electroreplenish and I started taking it and you know, when you don't have something horrible happening and hurting, you forget about it. And then all of a sudden one day I went, I was somewhere and I'd forgotten to bring my electrolytes. And it came back and I was like, oh, yeah, electrolytes. So electrolytes are things like sodium, potassium, magnesium, and they help regulate fluid balance. And that is so important for women over 40 because we are prone to dehydration due to hormonal changes. Plus, I was drinking a lot of different fluids and maybe I was actually creating more of an imbalance because I didn't have those electrolytes. If you're drinking a lot of fluid, not doing any electrolytes, you might actually create a problem as well. So what I do is I go to the gym and I take in my little gym bottle. Actually, my big, big gym bottle is 64 ounces with green tea. I use my electro replenish. I put in some creatine or I'll use my chiatine and I use my amino acids. I put all of this into my gym bottle. And it's really important when you're working out because electrolytes play a big role in muscle contraction and they help you replenish what's lost in sweat. You know, I live in Florida. I don't know why I wasn't thinking, you know, when I first moved here. Oh, sweating a lot more than usual. Now, there's another place that they can help, and that is with adrenal function, which can help balance hormones like cortisol and prevent stress related fatigue. So besides taking them with me to the gym, I usually do a second dose too. Especially if, like, I had a little wine the night before or anything else that was dehydrated. Now, I mentioned that I put essential amino acids into my gym drink concoction. As we age, we start to have something called anabolic resistance. Anabolic resistance is the reduced stimulation of muscle protein synthesis to a given dose of protein or amino acids, and it contributes to loss of skeletal muscle mass. Now, you couple with that, with the fact that often women struggle to get in the optimal amount of quality protein. This is why. Which, by the way, optimal amount of quality protein for a woman, 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of target body weight. And also having challenges digesting it. Which, by the way, is why I created protein first. Digestive enzymes. This is where essential amino acids can help. Now, notice I said essential amino acids, not branch chain amino acids. Branched chain amino acids are leucine, isoleucine, and valine. They are the most anabolic, or thought to be the most anabolic of the nine essentials. But there are only three. And what we now know is that we need all nine of them. So don't just take the branch chains. Take all nine of these essential amino acids. And what it's going to do when you're eating protein, you're eating it for those essential amino acids. These are the building blocks of protein that your body can't produce on its own. You have to get this through diet and supplementation. Here's why you need them. They're going to help preserve muscle mass. Remember I talked about leucine? So essential amino acids and especially leucine help stimulate muscle protein synthesis. And this is vital for maintaining and rebuilding muscle tissue, especially when you're doing resistance training and after exercise or after a big, heavy day of lots of movement, the body needs essential amino acids to repair tissue and recover efficiently. Muscle mass plays a key role in metabolism. When you preserve muscle mass through adequate essential amino acid intake, that means you're going to have a better metabolism. And remember, if you're losing muscle, your metabolism is slowing down, so you want to avoid this. So this can help you with maintaining that body composition and preventing that weight gain. Because if you're losing muscle and you're gaining weight, you're shifting and gaining more fat and slowing down your metabolism. Plus, essential amino acids are critical for producing energy at the cellular level. They can actually enhance endurance during workouts and help with quicker recovery, reducing fatigue and muscle soreness. And I just talked about collagen. Essential amino acids are involved in producing collagen. And you need that collagen for those strong bones and strong joints. And also you need essential amino acids to support the synthesis of hormones. And of course, we need those hormones for good energy, mood, and sleep. And of course, all that goes sideways during perimenopause. Beyond that, there are some essential amino acids like tryptophan and tyrosine, that are precursors to neurotransmitters. Serotonin and dopamine that are critical for your mood, for your cognitive function and for your mental clarity and can help with that brain fog or the mood swings that you might get as you're getting into perimenopause. So essential amino acids, here's the thing too. If you're in caloric restriction at all, if you're doing any kind of a restrictive diet, you're going to need more, not less. I take them at least once a day, sometimes twice. And they're also my travel insurance. Like if I'm, I'm out on the road, I'm going to work out first thing in the morning. I haven't been able to eat yet. This is definitely something that I do. Or if I know that maybe I'm somewhere where I'm not going to get what I need in terms of protein at breakfast and I can supplement with my essential amino acids. So it's something I travel with. It's great post surgery. So they are a great tool to have. Speaking of exercise, I'm going to talk about something that when I first heard about it, I called it exercise in a bottle. Now I'm just saying this, don't think that this is exercise in a bottle and you can take this and not exercise. Okay, deal. What I'm talking about is might appear from timeline. Now this is the science backed urolith and a product that I've literally been taking for two years. Now if you are a lucky human and you've got the gut bacteria that can produce urolithin A from the metabolism of these Elijah tannins that you can get from foods like pomegranates and raspberry and walnuts. Yay for you. However, only about 40% of us can actually do this and you'd have to be eating a lot of pomegranates and walnuts and raspberries, which don't tend to be big mainstays of the diet. So I'm not one of those 40%. I'm betting you're probably not either. And I'm also not a big pomegranate eater. So I supplement because I want to make sure I'm getting all that urolithin A has to do. Now what is it that urolithin A does? Well, the biggest thing that it does is something called mitophagy. You've been hearing about autophagy the last couple years. All the intermittent fasting conversation was about autophagy, where your body is taking out the cellular trash. Well, mitophagy is doing that in the mitochondria. So mitophagy is clearing out damaged mitochondria and producing new, healthier ones. Recycling some of those old ones, getting rid of some of the old ones, recycling some of the old ones to produce new ones. Here's the deal. As we age, our mitochondrial function tends to decline. This, when you look at all those hallmarks of aging that they talk about, mitochondria is kind of like in the center of all of this. Urolithin A helps support cellular energy and vitality. It literally slows the aging process at the cellular level. Timeline's been doing a lot of research and what the studies are suggesting is that urolithin A can improve muscle function by enhan enhancing mitochondrial health. That means it is easier to stay active, recover from workouts and maintain or build strength as you age. Plus, urolithin A may enhance endurance by improving the efficiency of mitochondria, which means your cells produce energy more efficiently and effectively. And this is super important. If you are looking like, how do I manage to improve my exercise performance as I age? This was a big question I was asking myself as I was turning 60. I'm like, I want to get in the best shape of my life. I don't want to, you know, just kind of hang in there. Urolithin A has also been shown to reduce inflammation and oxidative stress. And both of these contribute to age, all the aging and age related diseases. Now when I talked about creatine earlier, I said, this is one you'll feel. Well, same with urolithin A. It's one of those ones that you feel you go to the gym, you're like, wow. Like, I feel, felt like I could work out about 30% harder because of it. And it's also one that I credit with being lean and strong. After 60 creatine and neurolithin a what allowed me to really go and kick it at the gym. So I take it every single day I travel with the capsules. And there's also these little sachets that you can put into like a Greek style yogurt or add into a smoothie. So this one's really easy to take. And again, you are going to feel this one. Now the final one you only have to take twice a month. So I think it was about two years ago my husband heard about this. We were at at a conference. He saw it. I'd been buddies with the founders of Qualia since it started when it was neurohacker. Collective. So he brings it home. I'm like, oh, I love these guys. Let's try it. And here's what I'll tell you. This is, it's called qualia senolytic. And what so often is when you get rid of something that's been nagging at you, you often forget that you ever had it right. So Tim and I used to like joke about this because we'd sit down or get up from like a chair or couch and go, oomph. You know that noise when you like are like sore or achy? And, and you know, the deal was when I was in my teens, I was what I call an inappropriate athlete because I did all the wrong sports for someone who's six foot tall. I did acrobatics, point, ballet, gymnastics, and I blew out my knee, blew out my acl, I broke a foot, like all sorts of stuff. So I mean, I got all, all this old athlete stuff. And so I was always aching. And not aching is a big deal. And I'm not aching because qualiacinolytic literally goes out and targets and eliminates these senescent cells that tend to, they call them zombie cells actually, that accumulate as we age. These cells can actually contribute to things like osteoarthritis. These are the cells that no longer function properly and they just contribute to aging and age related diseases and by releasing inflammatory factors. And of course, one of the places is in your joint and muscle tissues. So that means stiffness and pain and reduced mobility. So I start taking these and about three months in, no more oomph. So again, you take them every two months, they go in, they clear out these senescent cells that are accumulating with age, and they're improving your cellular function. They have better now, your tissue's repairing better, you have better energy production, better overall, better overall cellular longevity, like all this stuff. But the cool thing is you can actually tell the difference. Now I mentioned that senescent cells release pro inflammatory signals that contribute to all this chronic inflammation that's linked to many age related diseases. And again, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis. Well, qualia senolytics helps lower the inflammation and improves your immune function and it reduces the risk of developing chronic diseases. And here's what's cool, besides that it can help your skin too, because senescent cells in the skin lead to reduced collagen production, which then of course leads to skin aging. So when you remove these zombie cells, which, you know, these zombie cells can go create more problems throughout your body and make good cells bad. By removing these cells, you support skin regeneration and help maintain elasticity and firmness. And again, the great part, you only have to take it twice a month. We literally do it every month. The first two days of the month we take our senolytic so we don't forget. Now I know I've gone through a bunch of different supplements, so I created a guide for you@jjvirgin.com over 40. That's over four zero so that you can get all of this in writing. Be sure sure to join me next time for more tools, tips and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to.

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