My Exact Supplement Routine to Stay Strong, Lean, and Energized After 50

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I get asked all the time which supplements do I take, and I will tell you that what I'm taking now has shifted from, say, what I was taking in my 20s and 30s. And yes, I have been taking supplements for that long. So as you listen to this, remember, this is what I'm taking. This is not necessarily what you need to be taking. And that's what's most important. And I'll talk about at the end of this video why I'm taking what I'm taking, but how you can think about what you would need to take as well. So hope this serves. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing that I take is my desiccated thyroid and my T3. These are dosed based on a complete thyroid panel, including not just a TSH, but also a free T3. And that's what shows that I, even though I'm getting desiccated thyroid, I'm still a little low in T3. So I take some extra T3. Then I also take something else that I'm excited about. I go to a lot of conferences. I will tell you the big challenge with going to a conference is not coming out of the conference taking 20 more supplements. So again, at the end of this video, I'll give you a thought process as to how I go through what I should be taking. One of the conferences that I went to, I met the founder of Healthgevity. I thought this was really exciting, and I'd heard about this from another supplement company owner who told me about a specific ingredient that they use called PeptiStrong. And PeptiStrong is this really cool peptide. So Healthgevity uses all of these different oral peptides, bioactives, and these are really amazing because they can do a variety of different things. And when you go to the site, which include in the show notes, you'll see things like something for inflammation, something for fat loss, something for brain health. So I, of course, was very excited about the one that was called PeptiStrong. And PeptiStrong is there to support muscle health. And so it does it in a variety of ways. And it actually has clinical research to show all of this as well, which is even more exciting. And again, I'd heard about this. I'd heard that they were using AI to put together these peptides that could do these things. And I was I was excited about it because I don't have to take an injection. So what PeptiStrong does is increases muscle protein synthesis because it supports mTOR. It reduces muscle loss by downregulating muscle atrophy-related genes and improves muscle health by reducing inflammation. And again, there were two peer-reviewed clinical studies about this that showed promoting muscle strength, improving recovery after intense exercise, boosting energy, and supporting muscle protein synthesis. It also addresses muscle homeostasis So it helps kind of with the control between muscle breakdown and muscle buildup. So I take that in the morning as well, and then I have my coffee. Now, if I'm going to go work out fasted, I put some collagen or some of my bone broth protein in my coffee. Otherwise, I do it black. And my favorite coffees— clean coffee. When I'm traveling, I've been traveling with— Purity has created the Sacred Cups, and these actually are powdered coffees that do not taste like— remember the old powdered coffee? And you still get it syrup sometimes that you put in water and it's absolutely vile. It doesn't taste like that. It tastes amazing. I just met the founder of Purity Coffee, so, and she is obsessed with purity, hence the name. And so I've been using that and that has been my travel solution. We generally have been traveling with a coffee pot and now I've found a way to do it, especially when I'm not traveling with Tim, where I can travel with these little Sacred Cups packets. Wow. The other coffees I love, and mainly because I now, I know the founders, so I know how crazy they are about quality. I love Happy Gut by my buddy Dr. Vincent Pedre, and I love Danger Coffee by none other than Dave Asprey. I don't use Bulletproof Coffee anymore because it's no longer Dave's domain. So I really use coffees from people I trust who I know are testing them for mold, because coffee tends to be a very, very moldy crop, and also one that's sprayed with a lot of pesticides. So that is my coffee. And again, I do it black unless I am going to the gym fast, in which case I throw in some collagen. If not, I then go and have my— I do my sauna. Generally in the sauna, I'm drinking electrolytes in the sauna. And then I have my smoothie. And I like to do my smoothie. I like to do either a combo of my plant-based and my bone broth proteins, or I do my plant-based with my collagen. I throw in my extra fiber and then I throw in something else. That I am really fired up about, kind of obsessed with. So yet at another medical conference where I was speaking about muscle and its role in metabolic health, I got contacted by someone because everyone went to his booth and said, you need to talk to JJ Virgin. And I'd heard about this, and actually even before I talked to him, I started trying this product. And this product is, um, Fortetropin. And Fortetropin is fertilized egg yolk protein. And they have clinical research showing that it increases muscle protein synthesis 18% in 3 weeks. Crazy. Okay, so I'll have information on this one on the show notes too. But here's the reality. Now I like to do one thing at a time and I don't change other stuff. I just was listening to a podcast where they talked about how to hack your deck set. It'll look like you have more muscle mass. I go, what is the point? The point is to do what you normally do and see where you're at, not to do the things you know are going to jack up your you know, make you look like you have more than what you do. Like, come on. So I didn't change a thing, and I went in to do a DEXA. We did a DEXA fairly quickly, two fairly quickly, mainly because Tim had lost some muscle when he had his hip replacement a little bit, and we wanted to make sure he was getting it back. And so what I discovered is over 2 months, I put on 2.5 pounds of fat-free mass. So most that would have been skeletal muscle mass, and I lost a pound of fat. I call that a major win, especially with how much I've worked out for how long to be able to make a change like that. Like, I was beyond excited. So that's what I do with my smoothie. I will put in my extra fiber. I generally do 2 scoops of that, by the way, but build up to that. And then I put in— the reason I use my extra fiber supplement is because of the variety that I'm getting there. And then I use my pea protein shake plus either my bone broth shake or collagen, and then that Yoked. And this Yoked stuff's amazing, by the way. So it's called myos— There's a professional one and a consumer one, and we'll put the info on that in the show notes. So if you're a practitioner looking for ways to support your patients and help them not be sarcopenic, amazing. I also have one for your pets. So we have our 19-year-old Chihuahua Daisy on it as well. Then I take my supplements. So the supplements that I take, I take might appear by timeline. Sometimes I'll do the gummies. Usually I take the capsules. Every once in a while I'll use the powder and put it into my smoothie. And again, I'm doing that to trigger mitophagy, to keep my mitochondria healthy. I take 2 Qualia NAD+. I make sure I take that in the morning. I've learned my lesson. Super energizing. I really like to do that before I go to the gym. I take Qualia Joint. That has been a game changer for me with severe osteoarthritis from an old broken foot. I take 1 to 2 of my Omega Plus. Really depends on how much fish I've actually been eating. And then I take 1 of my Vitamin D Plus. That's a vitamin D3 with K2 product. And I take 3 chiotene caps because I do 2 servings of that a day usually. Plus I take something called phosphatidylcholine, and I do the by BodyBio because BodyBio has a phospholipid complex. It's got PC, PE, PI, and PS, all sorts of phospholipids in this nice complex that are the building blocks of your cell membranes. They protect your cell membranes, they facilitate cell-to-cell communication. And I'm taking this, and this is a new one, because I did a Vibrant Wellness toxicity test and showed some issues, which we then discovered, um, what they were with some mold in the house. So I am doing what I can big time to support the detox pathways. And one of those things is really supporting my cell membranes with that BodyBio PC. Then I go to the gym. I put my chiotene powder, my amino acid power powder, my Electro Replenish, and then I use Peak Tea, either their matcha or their fermented pure green tea. I love doing green tea. I used to just fill it up from like, you know, wherever I was getting it, but I like the Peak Tea. I'll tell you why. And I'm gonna do it for the theanine, the EGCG, all the polyphenols. So I try to get in 1 to 2 servings of green tea each day, and I do it from Peak because I fell in love with the founders, Simon Cheng and Amanda Wee. I met them early in their Peak Tea journey, and they are like obsessive. They're exactly who you want to buy your, your tea from because they're totally obsessive with the quality. And then they use this patented cold extraction technology to— so as it extracts the tea, it preserves all the active compounds and phytonutrients, which is super important because that's why doing it, right? And then it also uses this full-spectrum isolate synthesis to synthesize the most bioactive isolates so that you get all of those polyphenols that you're looking to get from your green tea. And what's cool, it's just a little powder, just kind of like I was talking about with the Purity Coffee's new Sacred Cups. There's a little powder you just— I just pour it into my big water bottle. Plus, it's triple toxin screened for purity and bioactivity, because I'm sure you've heard about like like teas and plastics and pesticides. So you're safe. Come back from the gym, have lunch. By the way, with both lunch and dinner, I'm having 2 of my Protein First digestive enzymes. I don't do it with my shake, but I do it with food— with not food, I mean shakes are food, but with like when I'm eating animal protein like that. In the afternoon, I do generally do another ElectroReplenish. It really depends on what I've done with saunas and sweating. I may do a little Qualia Mind if I'm like, Need a little extra brain power. Then before bed, I've been really working on this. I admit I've been kind of forgetting this, but what I've been trying to do is a little Amino Acid Power powder before bed. I'll tell you why in a moment. Then it's 3 Magnesium Body Calm, 3 Sleep Candy, and then 1 week out of the month I take progesterone. 2 weeks, 2 days out of the month I do the Qualia Synalytic. That helps you get rid of those zombie cells. Every week I do a testosterone shot, and twice a week I change an estradiol patch. I said I would tell you why I was doing that little Essential Aminos at night. I'm really testing out what they do with athletes, which is give them a little extra hit of protein at night to help with muscle protein synthesis as they sleep. So I'm just testing it out. But here's my philosophy overall. Number 1, you want to first fix the deficiencies. Where would your deficiencies be? Your enzymes, D3 and K2, your omega-3s— that's fish oil— creatine, magnesium, and of course hormone replacement therapy, and NAD+. Those are the ones that you'd really see having some deficiencies in. And of course, things like the essential amino acids come into play there as well, protein powder, and electrolytes. So my very first thing, and you heard me talk about it, was I take my enzymes, I do D3 with K2, I do fish oil, and I kind of dose it around how much fish I'm eating. They say if you're eating 3 servings of fish a week, you're probably getting what you need. But when you really look at what fish oil helps with in terms of brain, anti-inflammation, etc., I think the best way to deal with your omega-3s is to do an omega-3 index test. It's called an OmegaQuant. We will put the info in the show notes and find out your omega-6 to 3 ratio. You want it 4 to 1. And find out your omega-3 index and then dose it based on that. As far as, as enzymes go, if you feel that kind of full feeling when you eat where you just feel like food's sitting around, that's where enzymes come to the rescue. So I would say start with 2 of the protein digestive enzymes, see how you feel. You might have to pump it up a little bit more from that. Hot for a little bit and then bring it back down. Stress, aging are big hits to your ability to digest well into your stomach acid, so this can be really important. Of course, women have less creatine stores than men, especially if you're more plant-based. So that's why creatine's on my, like, the basics— correct the deficiencies first. Way you can test for magnesium is something called a red blood cell magnesium. Don't do just a regular blood test, it's a red blood cell test, and see where you're at. That's one of the ones people tend to be deficient in, and As far as NAD+ levels go, we plummet as we age. It's like something like when you're 50, your NAD+ levels are half of what they were when you were 20, which means your energy is— you'll feel it in your energy. Then of course hormone replacement therapy. I'm using that to bring my hormones to a— I, I believe with hormone replacement therapy that you optimize everything and then you use the least amount that you need to feel great and get your numbers like your cardiovascular health numbers, bone mineral density, etc., in good shape. Essential aminos— if you are not getting what you need in terms of your protein, that's a little hack to help you get to where you need to be. Protein powder is another one that you can use there. And again, with electrolytes, think about it. If you are filtering your water, which I would hope you are, right? One of the things that I've made a promise to myself is no more plastic bottles. It's a rare case now where I will drink out of a plastic bottle, like I'd have to be really stuck somewhere. So I'm drinking filtered water, and usually it's filtered reverse osmosis, so the minerals are out too. So this is where electrolytes come into handy. Plus I also sauna every day I'm home and sweat a lot with the workout, so that's where electrolytes can come in really well. So first I think of what do I need to replete, what could I be deficient in, right? And then I think, all right, what are the things that I really want to do to support aging powerfully. I mean, obviously sleep's probably one of the single most important things there, so that's where my Sleep Candy fits in. In order to age powerfully, your joints have to feel good, so that's where Qualia Joint comes in. You want to be able to think well, so if I'm struggling with that at all, I do another dose of shiitake. If I've got any sleep deprivation, I do Qualia Mind. And then Qualia Synalytic also falls into there because it helps get rid of the zombie cells. Same with Mitopure, is super helpful there because it helps with mitophagy and also can help with OA, with osteoarthritis. Arthritis. So I look at all of those as the ways that I support my longevity, along with that Healthgevity longevity supplement and the Fortetropin for muscle mass. So those, those are how I think of it. First, let's fix the deficiencies. So always think of that first. Like, if you're thinking about, well, I can only— I'm only going to take 3 things, because that's often what I'll ask. Okay, you know, what are your top priorities? If your top priority was, like, you had sarcopenia, I might say, you know, the Fortetropin from Myos was the most important. But likely the place you're going to look first is fish oil, magnesium, vitamin D3 with K, right? And then you start to look at, okay, what do I want to do to really optimize my healthspan and strengthspan? I'm not convinced anything's helping our lifespan at this point. Like, I haven't seen anything except, you know, not eating a lot. I think it used to be called caloric restriction with optimal nutrition. So I don't know that one, and I don't know how we really do the studies with humans. We only really have it with rats. But with healthspan, And more importantly, strength span. I think these are the things I'm focusing on. And I'd say strength span most of all, like feeling great as we age and aging powerfully, not gracefully. And here's the reality. I like the term test, don't guess. I will periodically do something. I like, I like the Vibrant Labs. Vibrant Wellness has some great tests. I just did their GI test and their tox test and their basic panel. I also like the organic acids test. So I will look through those along with some lab tests for things like D and RBC magnesium. And then I will modify based on that. So, you know, with a lot of these things, it actually is cheaper in the long run to test rather than to just throw a bunch of supplements at it. And that new Function Health Test, which we'll put info on the show notes on that one as well, because I have to skip the line code from my buddy Dr. Mark Hyman— I mean, $499 a year to get 2 rounds of very extensive lab testing can be super duper helpful as well.. So we have all of that information in the show notes along with a link to my Over 40 Powerful Aging Supplement Guide. So where I went through a lot of the things I just shared with you. So that is all in there as well to help you get started on your path, not my path. But what's really important is what, what are the things that work best for you? And a little hint, I really like to start with just 1 to 2 things at a time, not throw in a bunch of stuff. Because then if something, if you don't feel well, you have no clue what happened. But if things are working, you also don't know what was going on. So I like to kind of start with repleting, like I would start fish oil, vitamin D3 with K, and magnesium right away, and then maybe add in the creatine, then add in another thing, right? And just start adding, adding, adding. Okay, if you loved this information, be sure to subscribe. It helps so much. It also— if you're listening on a podcast player, it helps a ton to leave a review too, and I really appreciate that. And of course, if you've got a friend who's wondering what the heck to take supplement-wise, feel free to share this with them too. Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can use to look and feel your best and be built to last. Would you prefer an ad-free experience? Join my VIP podcast at subscribe2jj.com for just $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year to unlock uninterrupted ad-free access to all the episodes and insights you love. Also, I'd love to connect with you and hear your thoughts on the podcast. Here's how. First, subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest review. Second, take a screenshot of your review. And third, text to 2-813-565-2627. That's 813-565-2627. When you do, I'll reply using my brand new Virtual JJ. It's my on-demand virtual self built from my books, talks, and years of experience so I can interact with you directly. You'll make my day and I can't wait to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next episode. Hey, JJ Virgin here. And just a reminder that the Well Beyond 40 Podcast offers health, wellness, wellness, fitness, and nutritional information that's designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional. Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid, or delay obtaining medical or health-related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes. The use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk.

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