Hey all,

I learned something that helped me a lot with muscle-building and wondering if others had the same experience.

I was lifting 3x/weekly and doing Pilates 2x/wk. Sore for 2+ days afterwards, which meant every day 😅 (After rockclimbing it'd be 5 days!) Seeing modest muscle gains but felt like it could be going faster.

Then someone told me about the leucine threshold. It's an amino acid, but the particular one that triggers muscle protein synthesis (MPS). You need 3g to meet the threshold, otherwise the body mostly burns the AAs instead of using them to build muscle. (The 3g is calculated for a 180lb man, for me it's 2.2g leucine.) This amount is found in 25g+ of protein in a single sitting. (You can Google all this, there's studies.)

Once I started supplementing 25g protein powder to hit the leucine threshold after workouts, the soreness greatly relieved and muscle started growing quickly. (I'd get sleepy from the tryptophan.) It seemed all the days of soreness was my body ready to build and asking for more protein. What's more, you can hit the leucine threshold for up to 4 meals in the recovery window, afterwards it's diminishing returns.

(Bonus: getting enough tryptophan and tyrosine also supports serotonin, melatonin, dopamine and norepinephrine, the neurotransmitters that regulate mood & sleep. I’m still beginning to notice this, curious others’ experience.)

Learning this nutrition key helped me a lot to make the most of my workouts, and especially relieve the chronic soreness! Wondering if others had experience with this. Barely seen anyone talk about this in fitness social media, despite the space blowing up now! Feels like gains are only 50% working out, the other 50% is nutrition & timing!

Is it placebo? Is there any study relating this two? I notice my hair getting thinner after starting creatine but i dont know if its because of creatine or stress.

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I'm a 47-year-old male, a little overweight, and I've been struggling with sleep. I'm looking to improve my overall health, energy levels, sleep quality and general well-being as I get older.

I'm considering starting some supplements but don't want to waste money taking things I don't actually need.

A few questions for those with experience or knowledge in this area:

- Is taking a daily multivitamin worthwhile? If so, which brand would you recommend?

- Are there any supplements you'd consider essential for a man in his late 40s?

- Is magnesium worth taking for sleep? If so, which type?

- Are vitamin D, omega-3 or anything else worth considering?

- What would you recommend for general health, energy, healthy ageing and feeling better overall?

I'm based in the UK, so recommendations for brands readily available here would be appreciated.

I'm not looking for a cupboard full of supplements or miracle cures just the basics that are genuinely worthwhile and good value for money.

What has actually worked for you, and what would you recommend?

Hi guys, I’m 23 and live a pretty active lifestyle. I work 3–4 days a week, averaging around 20,000 steps each day at work. I also go to the gym 3–4 times a week and run a 5K around 3–4 times a week.
I used to weigh around 107 kg at 6’2”, but I’m now down to about 86 kg and plan to lose the last bit of excess fat.
Anyway, onto the problem. I feel like I might be suffering from low libido or low testosterone. I rarely wake up with morning wood, and I don’t think about sex as much as I’d like to.
About two months ago, I started taking black maca, and it seemed to work wonders for a while. I felt great, my libido was through the roof, and my energy levels were amazing. I was constantly waking up with morning wood and finally felt how I imagine I should feel at 23.
However, the effects seem to have worn off, and I’m back to feeling the way I did before.
Has anyone experienced anything similar or have any advice on what might be going on?
Thanks in advance for the advice! 👍

I do multiple sports and I may have found out that I’ve been depriving myself of salt lol. Anyone else felt this way? I’ve always thought of avoiding salt due to increased kidney/blood pressure/heart conditions. I recently got a pink Himalayan sea salt from winners and I’ve been very generous putting them on my meals.

Last time I checked my BP was two months ago, fasted, in the morning @ 114/70.

My main supplements are creatine, vit d3 + k2, and zinc.

I've been looking at these "ultra" multivitamins lately, and I'm starting to feel like the ingredient lists are getting ridiculous. They brag about having 30 different fruits, veggies, and mushrooms, but when you look at the actual dosage on the back, it's like 10mg of a proprietary blend.

I know a lot of this stuff just ends up as expensive urine, but it got me wondering: which parts of a complex multi actually matter, and which parts are pure filler?

For example, if I see a multi with Magnesium Oxide instead of Magnesium Glycinate, I know it's probably cheap filler. But what about all those added "superfood" extracts? Are there any specific added ingredients (like certain forms of B vitamins, zinc, etc.) that you actually look for because you know they'll be absorbed? And which ones do you immediately recognize as a red flag that the company is just padding the label?

I'm trying to separate the genuinely useful compounds from the fairy dust. What are your personal "dealbreaker" or "must-have" ingredients when reading a multi label?

Anybody else take 400mg of it? Doctor has me on it now! BTW 3 capsules = 210 I take this brand also

I am amazed by Opti nutrition ZMA, ..

But I doubt if it contains real zinc. It says in label zinc monothionine. Don't know if it is real or fake .

Hello so as the title says,I m a 24yo male,I m pretty active,going to the gym 4/5 times a week and doing minimum 10k steps daily and once a week I play football for 2 hours at maximum intensity.I went on a weight loss journey and got from 93kg s to 76 in about a year maybe less. I ate in a pretty aggresive cut for some time but lately more than ever my libido is so low,I barely get any erections and I m always kind of tired (I say kind of cause I m not like super tired but If I lay down a bit I can sleep anywhere anytime).I did some tests recently and my Testosterone is on average levels and nothing else out of the ordinary.Did a spermogram too and nothing was wrong.I found out I have a defficit in Vitamin D so I started supplimenting it.I take Magnesium Bisglycinate and Creatine too.

What else should I check? I should mention I m kind of struggling with the mental health side of things.I m in a strange place in my life and I feel really "numb".Not feeling many things lately but I don t consider myself as a "sad" individiual,hard to explain how I feel or better said how I don't.

Short version: vitamin B6 is the cofactor that turns homocysteine into cysteine, and cysteine forms the disulfide bonds in hair keratin. That part is textbook biochemistry. The human hair data I could find are one small Polish study of 46 women given B6 injections, whose English abstract describes no placebo-controlled comparison. B6 also has a well-established harm at high intake, which matters more than any hair claim.

I went looking because "B6 for hair growth" shows up in a lot of hair-stack recommendations, usually with the keratin explanation and nothing else.

The mechanism (textbook biochemistry, no hair outcome)

Homocysteine sits at a fork. Remethylation sends it back to methionine and needs folate and B12. Transsulfuration turns it into cysteine, with B6 (as PLP) as the cofactor. Two cysteines join into cystine through a disulfide bond, which is the bond a perm has to break to reshape hair. So B6 is upstream of one of hair's raw materials.

My read: that's a reason to be curious, not evidence. Cysteine is used all over the body, and nothing in the pathway shows that extra B6, in someone who already has enough, sends more cysteine to hair.

The human study (Brzezińska-Wcisło 2001, 46 women, before-and-after assessments)

Women from puberty to 30 with diffuse hair loss. The abstract describes daily intramuscular B6 for 20-30 days, repeated after six months, and oral calcium pantothenate (B5), 100 mg twice daily for 4-5 months. It doesn't say how participants were split between the two treatments. Injected B6 reportedly improved hair "in a number of women", especially telogen-type shedding; B5 "did not show clearly the positive effect."

The paper is in Polish and I could only read the abstract. No B6 dose, no count of who improved, no statistics, no baseline B6 levels. And injections bypass the gut entirely, so it says nothing direct about oral B6.

The lab study (Hu 2022, mouse whisker follicles, organ culture)

A combination of panthenyl ethyl ether, tocopherol acetate and pyridoxine lengthened hair shafts ex vivo and raised matrix cell proliferation 1.9-fold. Three ingredients at once, in a dish, designed around topical hair products, from a company that makes them. You can't pull pyridoxine's contribution out of that.

The regulator (EFSA 2012, health-claim review)

A company asked EFSA to approve "contributes to reduce hair loss" and "increases the number of hair" for a B-vitamin combination with pyridoxine and pumpkin seed oil. The single study submitted didn't use that combination. EFSA's conclusion: "a cause and effect relationship has not been established."

What a hair-loss review says (Almohanna 2019, narrative review)

"Only riboflavin, biotin, folate, and vitamin B12 deficiencies have been associated with hair loss." B6 isn't on that list. That reflects how little has been studied, not proof that B6 can never matter. The NIH list of B6 deficiency signs (anemia, cracked lips, a swollen tongue, depression, confusion) doesn't include hair loss either, and isolated B6 deficiency is uncommon.

What the evidence does NOT show

• That oral B6 improves hair growth or reduces shedding in people with adequate B6. I found no placebo-controlled trial.
• That the injection result came from B6 rather than the B5 or the natural course of shedding. The abstract doesn't let you separate them.
• That a B-complex "for hair" works. The one regulatory review of such a claim found it unsupported.

The part I'd actually pay attention to: the upper limit

Peripheral neuropathy from high B6 intake is well established. In 2023 EFSA set the adult tolerable upper intake level at 12 mg/day. Human data gave 12.5 mg (a 50 mg/day reference point divided by an uncertainty factor of 4), a beagle study gave 11.7 mg, and EFSA rounded down. The US upper limit, set earlier by the Food and Nutrition Board, is 100 mg/day. Both cover total intake from food and supplements together; neither is a recommended dose. For context, the adult RDA is 1.3 mg.

Neurologic symptoms often improve or stop progressing when B6 is stopped promptly, but EFSA's case reviews include one where symptoms improved only mildly three months later and motor weakness persisted. A multivitamin, a B-complex and a hair product can each carry B6. The thing I'd check first is the total across all three.

References

1. Brzezińska-Wcisło L. Wiad Lek 2001. PMID 11344694
2. Hu L et al. J Dermatol Sci 2022. PMID 36210234
3. EFSA NDA Panel. EFSA J 2012. PMID 42016079
4. Almohanna HM et al. Dermatol Ther (Heidelb) 2019. PMID 30547302
5. EFSA NDA Panel. Tolerable upper intake level for vitamin B6. EFSA J 2023. PMID 37207271
6. González-Lamuño D et al. Nutrients 2023. PMID 38201964

Has anyone ever noticed an ammonia smell from their sweat or pores after starting MSM supplements? I’m using a little less than a teaspoon of Bulk Supplements brand for joint pain. It seems to help but I notice my sweat smells stronger. Thank you.

Checking for my mom : 54F.

Earlier this year she was advised to take longevity blends by a friend of hers taking tmrw. I was bombarded by ads from these brands, could not choose so went ahead with what she was taking.

She's overall quite satisfied with the experience with tmrw so far but I wanted to know if the other two are better options. Money isn’t an issue if it get’s me a quality product; my research tells me to stick to tmrw, please share your experience.

Quick correction for a statistic that still shows up in supplement threads and brand copy.

The claim that 59% of herbal products contain plant species not on the label comes from one 2013 DNA barcoding paper. That paper was retracted in July 2024. The retraction notice says a University of Guelph investigation found evidence of data fabrication, and the editor no longer has confidence in the data.

That does not mean bottles are fine. Separate labs using chemistry (not that barcoding study) still find real label failures in melatonin gummies, some NMN products, and botanical plant-part mismatches. What it does mean is narrower: nobody should keep citing a market-wide 59% rate from that paper, and under US rules there is no mandatory product listing that could support a true market-wide rate anyway.

I really like saffron. I have taken it on and off for years. AI says that it can cause lower blood pressure, but I am not too worried about that although I just started amlodipine on top of other bp meds. . I just started to take Mounjaro and it appears that there is a danger of hypoglycemia although the starting dose of Mounjaro is low. What do you think about continuing the saffron? Thank you!

I am taking 37.5 mg (soon to be upped to 75) of Effexor (venlafaxine) and 15mg of Mirtazapine a day. I feel very anxious and irritable. Is it safe to take theanine or is there a risk of serotonine syndrome?

I came across this B-complex and wanted to get some opinions on the formula.

Here’s the composition per capsule.

I’ve heard that B1 doesn’t work well when taken together with other B vitamins. Is there any truth to that, or is taking them together in a B-complex perfectly fine?

Hi all! Wondering if there are any supplements that can make your skin glow or give your face a healthier, more radiant appearance?

Due to a family history of dementia, I’m wondering if there are any vitamins that help slow down the progression/onset?

By ”pure” I mean without any bulking or recomp.

context I’m currently 195lbs 11% fat currently focusing on deadlift and stuck at 465x5 (conventional, No straps, mixed grip). I do know if I wanted to pull 500x5 I’d simply need to pack on 10-20lbs bc mass move mass. However I have precisely 0 interest in changing body comp. I’m not taking a single supplement rn. Sleeping good, limited time to train more than 2x ideally 3x per week Upper-Lower-Upper. I’m just exploring options.

Any recommendations? was thinking creatine for a start. Caffeine? Idk

As above. Funny supp story.