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Supplements: what works, what doesn't, and what's a waste of money · No Forking Nonsense - The Nutritionist UK

• 0:00
  @paulthenutritionist: Hello, and welcome to another episode. It's Friday. And today, we are winding back to Supplements. It's an episode that I have to be quite careful of. And the reason for that is that as a registered nutritionist, they're a little bit funny about you talking about supplements.
• 0:16
  It's a bit of a gray area. When I write nutrition plans for my clients, I always write a supplement section. A, because people like supplements and, like, knowing what can they I'll say it's easy because you you start off, you go to a shop, and you can buy them right away and etcetera, etcetera. And what I always do is I will write a supplement section based purely on the individual. The reason why that's so important is because there is no supplement that applies to everybody.
• 0:46
  None at all. There are supplements which are very well researched and, you know, many people can benefit from, but there certainly isn't, you know, a set guide of perfect supplements for everybody. That said, in this episode, I go through the supplements that have the strongest amount of research. I get contacted all the time to push this supplement, do a brand post for this supplement, and I just never do it. And one day, if I do do it, it will be because they have offered me such a disgraceful amount of money, I would be insane not to.
• 1:24
  So if you ever see that happen, it's not because the supplement is actually good. It's because they have more money than sense. But yeah. So if you're unsure what supplements to be taking once you've listened to this episode, then it might be worth you doing a little bit of homework on yourself. But I can confidently say that you probably don't need most of the supplements you're getting.
• 1:51
  The other thing to say that I didn't say in this episode is that in terms of supplements, if they're really cheap, they're probably not much use for you, unfortunately. For example, multivitamins. Multivitamins is a decent insurance policy, but if you're getting the ones from, like, Tesco that cost £3, they're probably not too good. I spend £40 on a multivitamin, and it is the best on the market that I can find. If you wanna know which one that is, send me a message on Instagram at pool nutritionist.
• 2:23
  Anyway, that's that. That's today's episode, so I hope you find it really helpful. This was recorded, I think, a year ago, and I can't remember whether the research about creatine and memory loss was out. So there's a lot of research at the moment about creatine being really good for cognition, and it's becoming stronger and stronger. So you should be taking most people should probably I mean, just take five grams a day for concentration, for cognition, and maybe ten grams a day if you struggle with a bit of short term memory loss or if you're tired.
• 3:01
  The irony of me saying most people have to say, there isn't one supplement that benefits everyone. But that one's that one's a good one, and there's a lot of research about that at the moment. But then there's certain caveats to everything. So yeah. If you are gonna buy a new supplement based on what I've said here, I have to say, speak to your practitioner, whether that's your doctor, your own nutritionist, your dietitian, your postman, whatever it might be, but speak to an expert.
• 3:28
  Hope you found this helpful. If you would like to have a little chat about your own supplement routine and if you've been taking supplements, they haven't really been doing too much for you. Click the top link below, and we can have a little chat about your health, your supplements, your energy, and all those bits and pieces. It'd be really, really pleasure to to spend some time with you and just unpick things. I love talking to listeners because you spend so much time with me in your ears, so it's good for me to spend time asking you some questions.
• 4:00
  So and I feel like we're friends. If you listen to more than three episodes, you you probably, you know, we're friends. So click the link below. It'll be great to have a chat to just hear where you're at and see if I can help you further. Anyway, enjoy this on Supplements.
• 4:16
  Ciao. Hello, and welcome to another episode. And this episode is one that probably will be my most listened to podcast. Why? Because it is about supplements.
• 4:29
  It's the the kind of the the shortcut that people are after regardless of your goal. Most people wanna know what a registered nutritionist takes, what he thinks about when it comes to supplements, what works, what's the hype, what's dangerous. So we're gonna unpick that. Everyone wants a magic pill for energy, fat loss, focus, muscle gain, even sleep these days. But the Supplement Isle is a minefield for marketing claims and very little science.
• 5:01
  So I'm gonna cut through all of this shite and talk about why it actually works, what's pointless, and why the market sells fantasies. Okay. So firstly, I wanna preface this with I am a scientist in terms of the way that I look at things. Everything I say backed up with research. I try not to recommend anything unless I've got receipts for it.
• 5:22
  So hopefully, you find this really helpful. And we need to start by saying that the word supplement actually has a a meaning that we probably need to consider when we buy supplements. Supplements are exactly that. They supplement ideally a decent diet. They don't replace one.
• 5:46
  So most people think that supplements will fix poor eating, sleep, stress or training when actually it's not going to do that. And I often talk about this when we talk about kind of multivitamins. So I have a high quality multivitamin as an insurance policy, but taking just that is probably not gonna make too much of a difference. Marketing will of these types of things are very clever. There's a reason why it's like a multibillion pound industry.
• 6:13
  So the marketing will sell outcomes, whereas the research measures the mechanisms. Because marketing will say, it'll boost testosterone, will maximize fat loss, will make your brain, like, limitless, and it's a super supplement or whatever. Whereas the research will tell us that some nutrients will have modest, well studied effects or many have no meaningful benefit or some are very context dependent or only help if you're deficient in something. So what we want to do is we want to make sure that there is a clear correlation to strong scientific evidence, those which are really well backed, and then we need to ensure that we kind of park those with very limited evidence or perhaps no evidence at all or evidence which has since been debunked. I think of oh, is that one by CLA and BCAAs, which we might talk about later.
• 7:13
  So let's start with the most researched supplements with strong evidence. I did a video on this on Instagram at Paul Nutritionist whereby I spoke about creatine monohydrate. And the research with creatine, we know that it's good for strength and power. So multiple meta analysis shows that creatine increases maximal strength and power versus placebo reset resistance training. We know that it's good for muscle mass, safe and effective for increasing lean mass when combined with resistance training.
• 7:47
  But perhaps more significantly and probably more relevant to everybody is that creatine, there are lot of recent research tells us that it may improve short term memory and intelligence tasks performed under stress, especially in tasks requiring high demand. There's also research recently about those who are sleep deprived are taking about ten grams of creatine and their focus and alertness increases as well. Creatine increases our phosphocreatine stores in muscles in your brain, supporting what's called ATP regeneration under high demand. So what that means is that we ideally want to be taking about three to five grams daily for maintenance. No need to load like a lot of people say.
• 8:37
  Can speed saturation, but it's probably not necessary. The marketing often adds kind of odd blends, so, like, you know, like performance complexes or caffeine stacks, and I wouldn't go for those. Creatine's really cheap, really accessible. Get the powder, not the tablets because the tablets are about as big as your head. You just need creatine, monohydrate, nothing else.
• 8:59
  The second one, caffeine. So you're probably taking caffeine anyway, but perhaps you don't know why caffeine is probably one of the most well, it is the most second most researched supplement, if you like, and why it is a supplement. So it increases cognitive performance. So acute caffeine improves alertness, attention, reaction time in multiple, multiple placebo versus controlled trials. But it also can improve exercise performance, enhances endurance and short term high intensity performance, but only if your bloodstream isn't saturated by caffeine anyway.
• 9:36
  What caffeine does is blocks the endocene receptors, reducing the perceived feeling of effort and fatigue. The research tells us that you probably if you're taking it for activity, you want about three meg per kilogram of body weight, about thirty to sixty minutes preactivity. But the problem is that if you're taking it from preworkers, they usually chuck a load of shit in it, like, in, you know, energy blend. So it's usually the caffeine alone that has the best research and the best impact. So you are taking caffeine preworkout.
• 10:10
  Be mindful not to take it, you know, within seven hours of bedtime and just have an espresso. You don't need really expensive preworkouts. Vitamin d three. It amazes me how many people find themselves really miserable, depressed, low between, I don't know, about October, November until about April. And they're surprised when I say that's because you're low in vitamin d three that we get from the sun.
• 10:39
  And, of course, we have very little sun in this country. I am, as I speak to you here, going to The Middle East for some winter sun that I do every year because although I take vitamin d three, I need heat, I need sun. I also have on my desk now a daylight lamp, which again is simulating daylight because I'm so conscious of getting enough light in my eyes. But what the research also tells is that vitamin d three is essential for bone health and calcium homeostasis. There's strong evidence throughout lifespan, linking immune function and mood.
• 11:22
  As I said, observational links to reduce respiratory infection risk as well. I remember over COVID, there's a lot of research about how symptoms can reduce with increased vitamin D. Low vitamin D status is associated with poorer cognitive performance in studies as well. And vitamin d, what it does is it modulates calcium absorption, immune cell function, and gene expression. I would recommend most people take a minimum of two thousand international units.
• 11:49
  I take four thousand international units, and I'm seventy eight kilograms. And it's super important because it's fat soluble that you take it with food. Otherwise, largely pointless. Some products advertise megadoses, but without proper testing, this risks kind of sometimes toxicity and can be unnecessary. But if you are in England, you're probably safe to take about four thousand international units.
• 12:14
  Omega threes and fatty acids. Do you want EPA and DHA here? So many, many, many of us don't eat enough fish. I certainly don't have enough oily fish. So I take four grams of omega three fish with fatty acids.
• 12:31
  I have cardiovascular health. What you don't want is shit cod liver oil from Tesco. It will do very little for you. Make sure you're getting the high quality omega three fatty acids with EPA and DHA. The research tells us it's great for cardiovascular health associated with reduced triglycerides and reduced risks of sudden cardiac death in high doses.
• 12:53
  That research is really clear. Cognition as well, some evidence for benefits in mild cognitive impairment or age related decline. Although the results kind of vary depending on the study you're looking at. I take it primarily for those things, but also super, super, super important. I have arthritis really badly in my family.
• 13:15
  I actually have arthritis. So I once injured my ankle playing rugby. Went for an X-ray, and although I had a little crack in my ankle, I remember the the footman, what they called the foot doctor, he said, I'm not worried about your ankle. I'm worried about your feet because you have the feet of a 90 year old man. And he said, I recommend all you do is swim and walk.
• 13:37
  I said, well, obviously, that's not gonna happen. But I looked into a lot of research, and I genuinely feel if I don't take four grams of fish oil for three days in a row, my feet and my hands just, like, they're just unbearable. And I have really low flexibility in my feet as well. So really good for inflammation. EPA and DHA can modulate inflammatory markers.
• 14:00
  So that's why they're strong links between arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, and taking fish oil or having oily fish within your diet. Evidence tells us about one to two thousand mg combined EPA and DHA daily typical for general health, but four grams daily may be used for triglyceride management or for inflammation markers. Again, take it with food because you'll get fish burps otherwise. With regards to market the marketing, so there's many kind of fish oil blends, but they contain tiny amounts of EPA and DHA, so always check the label there. So other moderately supported supplements, so those are the those three are probably the most researched, but we're dropping down now into the moderately supported supplements.
• 14:53
  So it's a difficult one, and I've kind of toyed with whether we talk about protein powder. Because although it's a supplement, it's also a food as well. And we know that we we probably don't consume enough protein. And protein obviously improves recovery and growth when combined with any resistance training, but it's so important for appetite. It's so important for our hair, for our skin, and all these things.
• 15:18
  And really, protein powders are just, I guess, an effective and efficient way to just reach your protein targets. I'd say I have vanilla whey in my smoothies first thing in the morning, but I don't I don't ever really drink protein shakes. But it, you know, it works because it is quite literally a food and that's, you know, that's the bottom line to it. So it's a it helps you hit your protein need. It's not inherently better than old foods because it is a food.
• 15:55
  So I'd recommend it, but I'd recommend it because it's a food and it can help if you're short of protein. And I certainly aren't someone who avoids it. Beta aniline. So for those of you who work out, betraniline is you will find that in most preworkouts paired with caffeine. It's that thing if you've ever had a preworkout, it gives you an itchy, tingly face, and I quite like that.
• 16:18
  I haven't feeling can't remember what it's called. It's called, like, para bloody hell. Para, can't remember, but it gives you an itchy face. But what it does do is it improves high intensity performance lasting for sixty to two hundred and forty seconds. It cuts through acidosis by increasing what's called a cardinocene levels, and it can be really effective kind of explosive power that you might need if you're resistance training, if you're a sprinter, if you do anything that requires kind of express sensitivity.
• 16:50
  So taking it for anything from three to six grams daily, spit it throughout the day. And as I said, it causes that kind of harmless tingling at higher doses. But people seem to put it in in preworkouts because you get, a physical sensation. People think, oh, must be working, but I don't know. It's it's good, well researched, but, you know, it's it's unless you're doing unless you have, like, specific athletic goals, it's there's no benefit for, like, general cognition or health.
• 17:22
  So then we move to the little or zero evidence. So pay attention, my friends, because branched chain amino acids do absolutely alcohol. So there is absolutely no added muscle growth benefits when total protein intake is adequate. And most people taking BCAAs are probably consuming too many protein shakes anyway. The marketing I mean, it's died off a little bit now, but I remember back in the day, marketing position, BCAAs is, like, muscle sparing, but all the research disagrees if you already have enough dietary protein.
• 17:57
  Because all BCAAs do are just trying to fill the gap is what they were saying of not getting enough kind of branched chain amino acids, but you will do. Because if you have a whole protein, protein is quite literally made if you have complete protein, they're made up of all their amino acids, so you should be alright. Fat burners are absolutely pointless. Systematic reviews show that minimal effects on weight loss and often rely on stimulants for transient effects rather than having some magic. But I remember back in the day, fat burners were massive.
• 18:33
  So that's CLA. I remember Grenade. They started with their fat burners, and it was basically just green tea. Like, how they got away with it, have no idea because they're basically marketers like these metabolism boosters when actually there's, like, negligible long term impacts on fat loss. And it's like it might have, like, a point 5% impact on your body fat levels, but the reality is if you just probably ate a little bit less, it'll probably be cheaper and easier.
• 19:07
  Testosterone based blend, so herbal blends, tribulus. I remember that tribulus what was it called? Tribulus test or something like that back in the day. Fenugreek. They show really inconsistent results results and rarely produce meaningful increases in testosterone in nondeficient adults.
• 19:26
  So the marketing claims are much stronger than any evidence there. Norotropic. So L theanine. So to be fair, individual ingredients like L theanine or caffeine, they have modest effects in their own right, but this kind of stacks of norotropics, they have, like, loads of, like, other ingredients in there which rarely have robust human trial backing. So you're often paying for a lot of noise and not really an effect.
• 19:56
  There's a lot of research, and I'm not suggesting this, but there's a lot of research for nonsmokers taking nicotine paired with perhaps some caffeine and some alfronin that can help concentration. Again, I'm not recommending this or any of the things I'm talking about here, but there's research on nicotine having an impact on cognition and concentration at low doses. But, yeah, in terms of, like, neurotropics, which are, like, those limitless drugs, there's very, very little evidence turning us set. The best neurotropic is just good sleep and a good diet, if I'm honest, which is boring, and ways people don't wanna hear about that. So that's pretty much it.
• 20:37
  We could talk about collagen, which, again, waste time. There's very little evidence to support that that has anywhere close to the claims that it seemed to have last year. There was a lot of a lot of shite out there. Greens powders, again, very expensive, especially athletic greens, very expensive, but it's mostly spirulina, which you can get a lot cheaper. So I wouldn't worry about that.
• 21:01
  I think the most important thing here to say is that supplements are regulated as foods. Companies do not have to prove effectiveness before selling them, and that's the problem because marketing departments can make structure and function claims without kind of human trials, and that's why you see words like supports energy, helps cognitive function, which are quite vague because meaningful claims require actual science, which they often don't have. If you want to evaluate supplements, I would probably firstly go to examine.com, which is like a it's a independent resource base where I get all of my research when it comes to supplements, and they basically collate every nutrition sorry, every supplement research that exists, and it's fantastic. But you can ask yourself, is there human data with meaningful endpoints? Is the dose in the product what the research used?
• 22:03
  Is the mechanism plausible? Does the ingredient have safety data? Am I actually deficient, or is this improving my baseline performance? If you can't answer yes to these, then probably be skeptical. I'd say some practical takeaways are, as I said, supplements supplement.
• 22:19
  They don't fix anything. They support your good habits. Creatine, caffeine, which you probably have in vitamin d, omega threes, have the best evidence for real outcomes. Protein supplements can help as a food, and they help meet your protein targets. But many products on shelves have very little evidence, so just be mindful of that.
• 22:39
  I hope you found that episode useful. Remember, if you want to update your algorithm so that you're only getting factual information, information from experts, information that is not misinformation, information that's clean and from people who know what they're talking about, just engage with this podcast. Like, it's so simple. If you spend some time, which you have done listening to this, but you also perhaps click a like or click a rating or follow me on Instagram. What you're basically doing is you're showing your algorithms on your phone that you are interested in this type of information.
• 23:14
  So it's a hack that I learned, and it really, really does work. You can update your algorithm so that you're not gonna be given shite. Anyway, click the top link in the description. Follow me on Instagram at pool nutritionist, and I'll speak to you Wednesday, ciao.