The 10 Supplements Women Over 40 Actually Need (Stop Wasting Money)

One of the things I've seen over the years, and I still remember back when I was seeing a lot of people one-on-one, one of the things I'd have them bring in is the supplements they were currently on. And literally people would walk in with like grocery bags full of stuff. I'm like, what is this? And why are you taking this? No clue. Supplements for women 40+. What you should be taking. What are the foundational supplements? What are the must-haves? What are the nice-to-haves? What are the don't? It's a waste of money. And how do we simplify this, uh, not complicate things, but really get the best bang for your buck? I think the bigger high-level question here is how do you put together a— the right supplement regimen for you? Here's the foundational supplements I want you to think about, the things that your body needs that you should be getting in either from diet and lifestyle, right? So let's say vitamin D, we should be getting that from the sun. Some of us genetically are not good vitamin D makers, And a lot of us are not getting out in the sun like, like we should, because we're trying to protect our skin. I think that we all likely need to supplement with it because I've looked at a lot of 25-hydroxy vitamin D tests and without supplementation, I've actually never seen someone in the optimal range, which is somewhere in the 50 to 80 ng/mL. Sometimes I hear people going up to as high as 100. When you take vitamin D3, which is the active form, you also want to take K2 with it because K2 makes sure that, you know, as D3 helps you absorb calcium, that it's going to the right places. So that's the first thing, vitamin D based on lab tests. Next one would be omega-3s. So omega-3s, you know, if you are eating a lot of clean, wild, cold-water fish, I'm talking 5 times a week, then you're fine. But likely you're not. And we also have struggled to get clean fish. I will tell you, Switzerland was so clean, I couldn't believe it. But we're struggling to get that. I mean, in Switzerland, your grass-fed beef and your cheese also have omega-3s, which is pretty amazing. But still, most of us would benefit from taking 1 to 2 grams of a EPA/DHA supplement, clean, pure. I like a 1:1 ratio. How do you know? You can get an omega-3 index test. If you're a Function Health member, they actually test this number so that you can see if you're in the optimal range, right? That means that you've got a good balance between inflammation and anti-inflammation. Next one is magnesium. This is just one we tend to be deficient in. You need it for so many different things. So many different enzymes are dependent on magnesium, even creating ATP. You've gotta have magnesium. So to get your hormones To make your hormones, you need magnesium. So magnesium, you can do an RBC for red blood cell magnesium test. I find most people need anywhere from 300 milligrams and up. I take about 1,000 milligrams of magnesium a day. The next one is creatine because our body makes about a gram of creatine a day and we need about another gram or 2 a day. If you were eating high meat-based diet, you would be getting it, but it's about a pound of rare or 2 pounds of cooked meat or fish or chicken. Most of us are not getting that, and boy, I hope you're not eating rare chicken. This is one you're going to want to supplement with. I created chiatine with taurine and magnesium and creatine HCL. You don't need to use anywhere near the dose of H C of creatine that you do with monohydrate because monohydrate is poorly absorbed. Creatine HCL is is like seven times more absorbed. You need a microdose compared to monohydrate. Here's why you want to supplement with creatine. First of all, women have less muscle stores, muscle tissue than men, so we have less creatine stores than men. That's number one. Number two, when our body makes creatine, which it does from arginine, methionine, and glycine, it's a very methylation-dependent process. It's going to use your methylating B vitamins, B12, B6, B9. That's folic, folate. If you give yourself more creatine, you don't need to worry, oh my gosh, I'm overloading on creatine. Your body will shut down its own production, not permanently, but just temporarily. What does that mean? That your body can then take the methylation and use it elsewhere. So we don't have to use up all our methylators for making creatine. We can use them to detox estrogen, for example. So this is a really great thing and one thing I don't think we talk about enough. So that's another reason to be taking creatine. So those are my foundational ones, and then likely enzymes as well. I use a protein digestive enzyme that also helps with fat. So a protein fat digestive enzyme, super important. Those are my foundationals. Then I build up from that. Now, what else? I think most of us 40+ would benefit from amino acids. If you're in a caloric deficit, if you're on a GLP-1, if you're working out hard, if you're not getting enough protein in, if you're anabolically resistant, if you're insulin resistant, amino acids make a ton of sense. I personally take them when I go to the gym every day. They go in that big old— this big old bottle, and with my creatine and my electrolytes. And they can help you recover better from the gym. So that's super cool. And then the other things that I would look at is I like electrolytes, and I'll tell you why. If you're doing sauna or sweating a lot, I think it makes sense. But the other reason I think it makes sense is because of this. I think a serving or 2 of electrolytes a day makes sense because we have basically killed our water. Like, one of the things that was really clear being over in Switzerland— you can tell I'm a little bit fascinated by it— but it was so clean. The water, you could drink it out of the tap. The air was clean, the food was clean. And you know, we filter our water. And when we filter our water, which we need to do because gosh, there's all sorts of pharmaceuticals in there, all sorts of heavy metals. But when you filter water, you filter out the minerals too. And so it makes a ton of sense to remineralize your water. So I think that's where electrolytes come in as well. Now the other things, protein powder, and I have 2 different ones. I have a plant-based and a bone broth based. I did both of these where I spiked them to have the amino acid profile of whey. I think whey is an amazing protein powder. However, right now there is such a run on it, it's gotten super expensive. But the reason that I don't have a whey protein powder is because there's a lot of great wheys out there, and whey, for a lot of people, if they have leaky gut, it can be problematic, you know, because of the dairy. I like to do things that I could do every day and it wouldn't create a problem, and that's where the bone broth protein powder or the plant-based protein powder come in. And what I did was I spiked them with amino acids. I boosted them to mimic the amino acid profile of whey because it is the best profile for building muscle, and that's long been established. So that's there. So how would you use that? Well, it's great to take with you to use in your— let's say you can make a mocha coffee, another way to boost your protein. You could put it into— I make like all sorts of desserts where I use protein powder in it to make different types of cheesecakes, both dairy-free and regular, and and Greek or cottage cheese. You can add it into oatmeal. So you can add it into things, or you can make a smoothie. And we have a great smoothie guide which we'll put into the chat and into the show notes that you can use. So got that. Now what about collagen? So bone broth has some collagen, but our collagen is different than that because it's got specific peptides called Verisol and Fortigel. And these have been clinically proven to support your bones and to support your skin. So that's why they're in there along with vitamin C that can help boost— your body needs it to make collagen. I like to take collagen before I go to the gym with my coffee. I like to do coffee before I go to the gym and then I put collagen in with it because I'm getting more blood flow to my joints. And really collagen's not gonna help you build muscle. I saw someone, I saw someone online talking about that the other day and I'm like, collagen does not help you build muscle. Collagen does not have leucine in it. It doesn't have the branched-chain amino acids. It's not gonna help you build muscle. But what it is going to help you build is probably even more important. It's going to help support your connective tissue. And when you think of the limiting force to how hard you're going to be able to work out, it's your connective tissue, right? It's 2 things. It's your mitochondria, it's your ATP, which— Mm-hmm. Sheatine's built to support that. The creatine HCL plus taurine plus magnesium is all there to help your body recycle, regenerate ATP. It's going to help your body work out harder. So you need energy to work out, but you also need good connective tissue. And that's collagen comes in. So that's what's so important with collagen. Now, if depending on how much magnesium I had during the day in my creatine, um, likely I might do a little hit at night before bed. I saw a question about magnesium citrate versus glycinate. I use a glycinate-malate combo because malic acid can be good for reducing inflammation. Glycine is very calming, so it's a great before-bed body calming thing. Citrate, ascorbate, Aspartate oxide. They're the poopy magnesiums. They are gonna— they're harder to absorb. They make— they can make you, um, if you're constipated, they can be great because they can help you poop. But most of us are really trying to absorb our calcium or our magnesium and not have that happen. Other thing I use before bed is I travel with our Sleep Candy and I take it every night. I actually do a dose and a half of that. Big thing here is you— your foundation is good sleep, movement, great relationships, belief in something bigger than yourself, having a purpose, and having Dogs and eating well. And then of course the next level up is that tier 1 of supplements, those foundational ones. And then you go from there based on what things you're trying to accomplish. Do I need to fix my sleep? Am I addressing stress, uh, stress, blood sugar balance, you know, muscle, etc.? And then you use supplements there to fill those gaps. They're here to support what you're already doing. And hopefully if you've been overwhelmed, this helped you be less so. And really what I like to do is I think you get on the core foundational ones, and then I'll just add one thing at a time so I can really tell what it's doing for me. I did that with Timeline's Mitopure. I was— I went to Timeline when I was in Geneva, which was really fun. But I know when I did that, like, my workouts improved. I know when I added Myos Yolked, I added some fat-free mass on. So I do things one by one. Like the Shea Team, when I started that, blew my mind. Like The difference in my jet lag of how I can travel now. I don't even worry about traveling and changing time zones anymore because of that. So I try to do things that way so I can really judge, is this helping me? Obviously something like a multi, you, you're not gonna notice that, but the rest of the stuff you will. That's it. Thanks for hanging out. All right. Bye-bye.