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Dr. Matt Ranks Longevity Supplements: The Winners and Total Scams

35m 46s

Dr. Matt Ranks Longevity Supplements: The Winners and Total Scams

The speaker evaluates 13 supplements in a "tier list" format, ranking them as strong, good, promising, overhyped, or avoid. Fucoidan is placed in "avoid" due to limited and unreplicated mouse data, impractically high human doses (around 50g daily), batch inconsistency, and contamination risks. Lithium orotate earns a "strong" rating based on epidemiological links to lower mortality and cognitive decline, plus preclinical support, though it is not definitively a longevity supplement. Other notable rankings include fisetin and CoQ10 as "overhyped" due to weak or mixed evidence, resveratrol as "avoid" for longevity (citing a meta-analysis showing no lifespan effect), and creatine as "strong" for enhancing resistance training outcomes with minimal risk. SS peptides are highlighted as prescription medications, not supplements, and are advised against for healthy individuals due to unproven benefits outside specific disorders like Barth syndrome. The overall approach emphasizes cautious interpretation of evidence, dose practicality, and safety over hype.

Transcription

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English
That's not a supplement, that's a prescription medication. Extracts themselves can be contaminated with heavy metals. Anything that is marketed under the term anti-aging goes in the avoid category. Hey guys, today we are going to do a supplementareless game. I'm going to flip them over and rank them from strong, good, promising, overhyped on the void. Lithium, creatine, omega-3, vitamin D, acoid, chisparadural, dietary blends, plus anti-aging. SS peptides, icidin, coq10, vatifyteen, NAD plus, uralythane. At the top is f***ing, I believe it works. The most overhyped longevity intervention. Ever. Hey everyone, welcome to the Optispand podcast. On today's show, I'm going to do sort of a moderate dive into 13 different supplements, or maybe more precisely 12 supplements in one, I don't know, gray area, therapeutic. This is in response to a social media post that we put out recently. It was an experiment that we tried based on tear lists. I keep being told that people love tear lists. I think they're fun, so we went ahead and did our little variation of it. In this case, what the team did was they wrote down 13 popular supplements on note cards. We put the note cards face down on a table. Then I was supposed to randomly turn them over and rank them on this tear list. That went pretty well. The post was well received. We had a couple of requests, though, for more information on why I ranked the supplements the way that I did. What we're going to do today is go through each of the supplements in that social media post. Then I'll spend a little bit of time extending my thoughts on why I had the gut reaction that I did. Hey, guys. Today we are going to do a supplement tear list game. The team here at Optuspan has picked 13 supplements, written them down on sticky pads, and turned them over in front of me. I'm going to flip them over and rank them from strong, good, promising, overhyped, or avoid in that order. I will say one of the challenges I have with tear lists is figuring out exactly what the tears are. My scientific mind wants this to be very, very precise and that's always a challenge. I'm not sure if these were the best categories we could have come up with, but that's what we have. Number one, Focoidon. I'm going to put Focoidon in the avoid category, both because the data for longevity is extremely weak and the purity from sourcing is pretty bad, or at least we don't know. That was my gut reaction. I will say maybe I was a little too harsh when I said the data for longevity is extremely weak. So let's take a step back and talk about what we actually know about Focoidon. First of all, Focoidon is not a single molecule. It's a collection of sulfated polysaccharides from usually brown seaweeds. There's cell culture data reporting that Focoidon has anti-inflammatory effects, can activate NF-capabee in cultured cells. These are at very, very high doses that are not reasonable to get through diet or supplementation. I think the longevity data is pretty much exclusive to a preprint from Viragorbanovas lab, where they reported lifespan extension in male but not female mice. And this is building on prior work from Viras lab, where they have reported that Focoidon is a Certisix activator. The best of my knowledge, that's the only evidence that we have that Focoidon might be beneficial in the context of aging. So there's a few things to unpack here. So we do have one mouse lifespan study. If we look at the dose they used in that study, and it's obviously hard to extrapolate perfectly from mice to people, my back of the envelope calculation is we're talking about 50 grams a day for a human. So that's a lot. And I can't really put my finger on it, but I've sort of followed this story over the last few years. And all I can really say is there's something about it that just feels off to me. And I know that's not particularly scientific. It's not really fair to Virra or her team. And I've been in this field long enough that I've just learned to follow my gut instincts with stuff like this. Not completely fair, but I just am really skeptical that this result is going to hold up if and when it gets tested by the intervention's testing program. If the ITP is able to reproduce this result, I'll come back on the podcast. I'll eat my words. I'll apologize. And I'll believe it for mice. So leaving that aside though, I think my ranking of a void still holds. And so there's a few reasons why I would even if we accept that the mouse data for 36 activation and lifespan is correct. So one is the dose issue that we already talked about. So 50 grams per day is so far off that it almost makes this whole exercise ridiculous. And it makes me wonder why, I mean, if you were interested in demonstrating that Fakoydin is in fact, you know, a potential longevity therapeutic, you would even test a dose so far off of the dose that people would ever consume. You know, yes, some people do eat seaweed. And so you can get Fakoydin from seaweed. Again, it's hard to know exactly. But back of the envelope calculation is that in order to get 50 grams of Fakoydin, you'd probably have to eat about 5 kilograms of dry seaweed. And so in wet seaweed, that would be even a lot more. That's a lot of seaweed. I don't think anybody's going to get that much Fakoydin from eating seaweed on a daily basis. So I think the dose is a non-starter if we're talking about, you know, doses that are reasonable for humans. There's also another problem with Fakoydin, which is what I was alluding to in my comments in the social media post that having to do with just batch effects, purification of Fakoydin. So I mentioned this briefly. Fakoydin is not a single molecule. It's an entire class of molecules. And there are huge batch effects based on the harvesting of the seaweed, how the Fakoydin is purified. We don't even know if the different batches contain the same active ingredient, because we really don't know what the active ingredient is. And so this makes it really problematic if you're thinking about either trying to consume 5 kilograms of dried seaweed or taking 50 grams of Fakoydin as a supplement. You just don't know from batch to batch if you're actually getting what you want to get if it even works at that dose that you're trying to take. In addition, the extracts themselves can be contaminated with heavy metals. So I think for now, my advice is just stay away from Fakoydin. Evidence for longevity is, you know, moderate, but pretty weak. One study, one lab, not replicated yet, sort of unreasonable dosing. Certainly weak for human consumption. So I would just stay away from it and sort of as a bonus recommendation, I would absolutely avoid buying any supplement from somebody who's marketing a supplement as a Certe Six activate. Fakoydin, I'm going to put in the overhyped category. Fakoydin, of course, is a punitive satellite. Fakoydin, overhyped. I feel pretty comfortable with that ranking. Fakoydin is a naturally occurring flavonol. It's found in small amounts in foods like strawberries and apples and cucumbers and it's structurally related to quesadine, which is another molecule that has centolytic properties. Centolytics are, of course, molecules that somewhat preferentially kill senescent cells over normal cells or non-senescent cells. So Fakoydin is talked about a lot as a centolytic. And of course, if we could selectively clear senescent cells, that is predicted to have benefits certainly for health span reducing inflammatory signaling potentially for lifespan, although the mouse data there for clearing of senescent cells is a bit mixed. So if we look at the real data for Fakoydin itself, the mouse lifespan effects have not been reproducible. So probably not, certainly not robust and reproducible, potentially not real at all. The human clinical trial data, I would say, is early, but with some weak indications of benefits for inflammatory markers. So I think we just kind of have to wait and see whether there's any strong signal from the human clinical trials before we draw any real conclusions about Fakoydin in people. And I'll just say my opinion is informed by talking to lots of people in the field. Just seems like there's very mixed opinions about Fakoydin in particular, maybe even more broadly senolytics, but Fakoydin in particular talking to lots of people who are in the weeds doing the research. So personally for me, I'm going to be putting it in the overhyped category. Lithium, I'm going to put in the strong category, but here I'm talking about lithium orotate, not the prescription strength lithium for psychiatric disorders. Probably five grams a day. I think the data there is looking pretty good. Lithium, strong. I may have been a little bit too enthusiastic about this one if we just look at the data alone. So the data in support of lithium, I think is pretty good. So very consistent, that surprisingly consistent epidemiology data for lithium in drinking water, lower all cosmortality, lower suicide rates, protection against dementia across multiple populations in multiple different geographic locations around. So that seems pretty good. It's correlative. It doesn't prove it's the lithium, but there's a consistent correlation. And then when you combine that with the preclinical literature, which again is pretty good. So multiple amateurs, We've got data for increasing lifespan. I think that's best documented and been most reproduced in C. elegans, along with the whole body of literature in rodents for different dementia models and age-related cognitive decline. So that looks pretty good. And then there's the recent study from the Yankner lab, which was published in Nature last year, 2025, reporting that in Alzheimer's disease patients lithium is depleted from certain regions of the brain. They've got a nice biochemical mechanism for that. Lithium oratate, that particular salt because of its dissociation kinetics, seems to be somewhat resistant to this depletion when supplemented in. And mice supplemented with lithium oratate seem to be protected against Alzheimer's disease models in mice and age-related cognitive decline. So multiple arrows preclinical and epidemiological pointing the right direction. We also know that lithium at doses a couple of orders of magnitude higher has been used in people for psychiatric reasons. We had John Berner on the podcast. He talked a lot about lithium. So all of that together, you know, makes me feel pretty good about lithium oratate as a potential supplement. Is it a longevity supplement? I don't know. I certainly wouldn't go that far. But I think there's a pretty good case for risk-reward favoring reward based on all of the evidence, particularly if you're concerned about Alzheimer's disease and other dimensions. So I take 10 grams per day of lithium oratate and I feel pretty good about putting this in my top tier. But certainly could have categorized this as good rather than strong evidence. Resveratrol. I'm going to put that in the avoid category, although if you want to take it, it's probably not going to do any harm. But the most overhyped longevity intervention ever. So maybe I should have put that one in the overhyped category. Resveratrol is pretty interesting, right? And so if any of you have followed the podcast, you probably know my history and my opinions on Resveratrol. Here I'm talking about Resveratrol for longevity. There is evidence out there that Resveratrol supplementation may have benefits for certain people under certain conditions. Part of me feels like this is probably cherry picking and selective interpretation of data. But I don't honestly care enough to go try to wade through all of the just Resveratrol literature that's out there to separate the signal from the noise. I will say for longevity, it's pretty simple. The original report of lifespan extension from Resveratrol in east was simply wrong. I think that's pretty indisputable at this point. And the meta analysis of all published Resveratrol experiments, more than 100 experiments across all organisms, says that Resveratrol does not have any effect on lifespan. So let's just put that all behind us. It's kind of sad. We're even still talking about it. But there's a certain longevity personality in the field who has no shame and keeps this topic alive. Creatine strong due resistance training with creatine. Yeah, I think that's about right. I take five grams per day of creatine. I've been doing it for a while. I think there's really, really solid evidence that three to five grams of creatine per day when combined with regular resistance training leads to incremental but statistically significant improvements in body composition over resistance training alone. There's also some evidence that creatine can be protective to the brain under certain conditions of energetic stress, such as chronic sleep deprivation, maybe chronic anxiety or acute anxiety. There's good reason to believe that creatine has benefits. The downsides pretty much non-existent. As far as I know, some people will get gastrointestinal upset. But outside of that, really no side effects that we know of. So, as I said, I do five grams per day. I don't really see any reason to go above five grams per day. I know there's sort of a fad among the influencer crowd right now to try to push mega doses of creatine. Not really any good evidence that 20 grams a day is any better than five grams a day over the long run. So, that's what I do and I feel pretty good about putting creatine in the strong category. CoQ10, I'm going to put in the overhyped category. Although I'm open to having my mind changed on that one. CoQ10, also known as Coenzyme Q, or ubiquinol. So, this has been around for a long time. Been talked about in the longevity circles for a long time. There were people who said that restricting CoQ could increase lifespan. That didn't really pan out. Haven't seen much evidence in the literature of boosting CoQ being beneficial for lifespan or health span. I think there's certainly some evidence for certain conditions of mitochondrial dysfunction or mitochondrial stress. I just personally haven't really seen anything that convinces me that CoQ10 supplementation is likely to provide sort of general health benefits for most people or any sorts of longevity benefits in people. I think the way I'd frame it is, you know, CoQ10 is absolutely an essential mitochondrial cofactor. Seems to be a useful therapy for certain types of heart failure, statin intolerance, maybe some mitochondrial disorders. Not a lot of strong evidence that supplementation, meaningfully, has any effect on aging or longevity in healthy people. So, I don't take CoQ10. That's why I put it in the overhyped category. SS peptides, I'm going to put in the avoid category unless you have mitochondrial disease. I don't think there's any evidence in healthy people. And by the way, that's not a supplement. That's a prescription medication. So, that's the one that I was saying doesn't really fit into the supplement category. A lot of people are excited about peptides in general. A lot of people are excited about SS peptides. I say avoid and I pretty strong on the avoid here. Again, not because I know anything dangerous about SS peptides, but I think there's a few reasons not to go out and start taking SS peptides from just from a purely risk-reward perspective. Unless you have some sort of mitochondrial disorder and then that's a different conversation. So, just to make sure everybody really understands what we're talking about here. SS peptides are in fact not a supplement. They are sort of a prescription medication. They land in this gray area where doctors can prescribe them. And as we'll talk about the SS peptide, most people are going to be taking is SS 31 or L-Ampertide. That was just recently granted accelerated FDA approval. And I'll talk about that in a second. So, a doctor can now prescribe SS 31. But it falls in this gray area of the peptides where some people are getting them from compounding pharmacies. Some people are getting research grade off the internet. It's just kind of ugly and messy right now. So, what do we know about SS peptides from a data perspective? They've been around for 20 plus years, SS 31 in particular. Actually, you know, was around a lot of the early SS peptide work at the University of Washington because Hazel Zito, one of the SS, collaborated extensively with my mentor, Peter Rabinovitch, on SS 31 work looking at mitochondrial function in mice. Peter, by the way, is one of the greatest people who I've ever had the opportunity to work with. He said he was a mentor of mine and I'm just super grateful for all of the support he gave me throughout the years. Also a fantastic scientist. And they did a lot of work in mice, treating mice with SS 31. And looking at where it is ago, how does it work, what are the effects on health spend and lifespan. And so, I think what we've learned through Peter's studies and lots of other studies that Hazel did is SS 31, indeed, localizes to mitochondria. So, you know, the idea that SS 31 or any of the SS peptides are general, you know, mitochondrial boosters, supporting mitochondrial function, is just sort of a massive oversimplification of the biology. And my recollection of the mouse data that Peter's lab and others did was that SS peptides can sort of remodel the mitochondrial protozoam, improve some aspects of mitochondrial energetics, potentially improve muscle function in aging mice, but didn't increase lifespan. So, again, it's one of these situations where maybe a few health spend metrics are improved, but it doesn't seem to be, at least in those experiments, a general longevity, drug or general, general protector. Having said that, if it had similar effects in people without any side effects, that might be something to consider. Maybe it would be beneficial for frailty in people as they're aging. So, what do we actually know, though, about SS peptides in people? So, as I mentioned, Elimipartide was recently approved by the FDA, that's SS 31, for Barth syndrome, but it wasn't a sort of full approval. It was this accelerated approval path. And that's because Barth syndrome is a rare childhood mitochondrial disorder where there really aren't any other treatments available. So, it got this accelerated approval based on the fact that it's for a severe disease without any alternative treatments, and there was a reasonable expectation that it might be. might work. So what hasn't been shown is that SS31 actually has efficacy for Barth syndrome or for anything else, at least not in the context of an FDA approval process. So we don't know. It's gotten this accelerated approval. We don't know whether it actually works for this indication or for any indication for that matter. There are some other ongoing studies in humans and I think we just have to kind of wait and see. And I know a lot of people are frustrated with the FDA clinical trial process. It takes too long. I get all that and you really want to know what the safety profile looks like and whether there's a reasonable expectation that this is going to work for what you want to use it for. Nonetheless, a lot of so-called self-proclaimed longevity doctors have started prescribing SS31 for use in their patients. And you know, I'm sure they're starting to get case reports, information about whether SS31 has benefits, what the side effects look like, but it's really hard to know what's real and what's not real at this point. So for that reason, I'd say the reward part is pretty questionable. Like maybe modest benefits for mitochondrial function. There was one study that I'm aware of in healthy older people where there were some indications of improved mitochondrial bioenergetics. That's kind of what we know, I think, for healthy older people in SS31 at this point. So that's the potential reward. Maybe modest impact on mitochondrial function. Maybe best case scenario, modest protection against frailty, maybe, but not a lot of indications. This is going to be a big effect size intervention. Certainly not compared to something like exercise. And then what is the risk? Again, we really don't know because we don't have as far as I know any long term studies in people. And there's a few reasons to think that there could be some risks. First of all, we don't really know the dosing for what we're trying to use it for. Again, not a lot of data in people and most of that comes from mitochondrial disease. So we don't know the dose. We know we are putting a foreign peptide into mitochondria. And so anybody who understands mitochondrial biology will recognize that there are some reasons to think you want to be careful about putting something into mitochondria that isn't normally there. Doesn't mean it's going to have detrimental effects. Doesn't mean it's going to cause problems. But often it is the case when you put foreign proteins or peptides into the mitochondria, it creates a stress response that can be net detrimental. So we want to be a little bit careful about that. And then I think outside of the SS peptide itself, and this is true for a lot of the peptides that are out there in general, there's real reasons to be careful about purity and contamination in the peptide preps themselves for reasons that somewhat due to lack of regulation, somewhat due to opportunism by people of questionable ethics, you might say. There's a lot of people selling peptides of uncertain purity. And so if you get it from a compounding pharmacy, it's better than buying it from a random person on the internet who's selling research grade peptides. But even peptides from compounding pharmacies have been sometimes found to have impurities that can lead to problems like allergic reactions. So I think you just want to be real careful when you think about the risk reward with peptides in general, especially peptides that are not FDA approved, especially peptides that are research grade. And with peptides that we don't have a ton of data, especially human data, like SS 31 to understand what the safety profile looks like. I feel pretty good about putting SS 31 and SS peptides in general in the avoid category for now. They are super interesting, super promising biologics. I'd just like to see a bit more data. Preparatory blends plus anti-aging definitely avoid. In fact, I would say anything that is marketed under the term anti-aging goes in the avoid category. If it's a proprietary blend, that means you don't know necessarily what's in there. And anyone who labels their supplement as anti-aging is lying to you. I generally recommend not buying products from people who lie to you. I think blends in particular are problematic on principle. And this goes back to what I was talking about with Fakoydin, because unless you know with certainty that the purity and activity are going to always be consistent across batches. And you know what the active ingredient is, you really don't know from pill to pill, bottle to bottle, whether it's going to be the same. So that makes that makes blends and extracts kind of difficult to really have a lot of confidence in. NAD plus. I'm going to put in the promising and overhyped categories. I couldn't be satisfied with one category. So I had to put NAD into because it's just that special. Any of you watch the podcast, we know we've talked a lot about NAD. It's a topic that comes up and up and up in the field. It's a complicated topic. I still am on the fence about NAD precursors. Here are really my take homes. And they really haven't changed a lot in the last year. So, you know, there's this myth that is unfortunately propagated by people who should know better that NAD universally declines with age. That's not true. There are lots of studies that have shown that NAD decline with age is at a minimum tissue specific and probably not seen across populations. Maybe NAD declines in some people in some tissues with age, but it's not a universal phenomenon. Having said that, regardless of whether NAD declines with age, boosting NAD might still be beneficial. The bioavailability, however, of the various NAD precursors or NAD itself is variable, but if you can boost NAD, then we can talk about what is the evidence there look like for successfully boosting NAD. And it's mixed, right? So, if you look in the preclinical literature and animal models, lots of reports that NAD boosting has positive effects on lifespan or health span metrics. Many of them, not all, many aren't reproducible, particularly when it comes to lifespan, particularly in rodents. None of it for lifespan is high quality. The various health span metrics is still mixed, but looking better, I do believe that in animal models, particularly under conditions where there is specific types of mitochondrial function that cause depletion of NAD, that boosting NAD does have beneficial effects. The question, of course, is does that translate through to people? And there, you know, the clinical trials are early, but interesting. I think particularly for things like Parkinson's disease, intriguing. There is some concern that very high levels, particularly of NMN, may be problematic in the context of kidney pathology, kidney disease, but otherwise the safety looks pretty good. Again, trying to think about this through the lens of a risk reward, you know, it's hard to say. There's some reason to think they might be beneficial. The risks are probably pretty low, except for, you know, what's going to cost you for the supplement or the NAD infusion or whatever, however you want to take your NAD. For me, personally, the likelihood of benefit just doesn't rise to the level where I want to take an NAD precursor, so I don't personally take any NAD product. Omega 3, strong, but there you want to measure it and move yourself into the optimal range. That's why I put it in both of those categories. Omega 3, that goes in the bucket of, you know, sort of obvious, tons of epidemiological data, plausible biochemical mechanisms for mortality, dementia, heart disease, etc. I recommend, as I said, measuring, and there are a couple of different fatty acid tests that you can get. LabCorp has their version, quest has their version. Really, what you want to look for is Omega index EPA plus DHA. I recommend taking the test, supplementing yourself into the optimal range. What is optimal? I wish we knew. Here we have to sort of be guided by the epidemiology and also what seems reasonable. So I personally shoot for an Omega index of greater than 8%. I take a 1300-megapurde omega 3 supplement that is about 3 to 1 EPA to DHA. It's a bit of guesswork, but that's sort of where I land to try to get my Omega index up into that optimal range. Vitamin D, same thing, strong, but you want to measure it and put yourself in the optimal range. Vitamin D, same story. I also sort of put this in the obvious category, measure, and then supplement if necessary to get yourself into the optimal range. What is optimal? I wish we knew for sure. There's lots of opinions here. I typically shoot for about 50 to 60 nanograms per deciliter, at least 40. If you're getting up near 100, you want to back off. A couple of things to know about vitamin D. It's going to take probably three months to achieve your steady state level. If you start supplementing with a different dose, it takes a while to get there. Don't expect to see where you're going to actually end up at that particular dose in the blood work for at least a couple of months. The amount needed to supplement to get to whatever the target is that you're shooting for is really individual. It's really variable. Some of that has to do with how much natural vitamin D you synthesize. That has to do with how much sunlight you get. Some of it has to do with how much dietary vitamin D you get. Some of it's probably just individual variation. So it's really hard to give a specific recommendation on the amount of vitamin D to supplement. I would suggest start slow and then gradually build up until you get yourself into the range that you want to be in. Fatty 15 definitely overhyped. Just not a lot of data yet might be promising. Fatty 15 overhyped. Not a lot of data yet might be promising. Again, I feel pretty good about that sort of gut reaction. So if that E 15 is pentodecinoic acid, honestly to me this just feels way more like a marketing thing than a science thing at this point. So what do we know? The serum levels of pentadecinoic acid correlate in people with lower risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, kind of inconsistent results with mortality, but there might be a signal there. It's associated with dairy intake. To the best of my knowledge, we don't have human clinical trials at this point on whether supplementation has any benefits. And the preclinical data, the animal data for longevity, again, as far as I know, are essentially non-existent. So maybe there's more here that I just don't know about, and I could see it as promising, but I just don't see a lot to support the hype and the marketing that is out there around fatty-15 right now. So maybe I'm off base, maybe I'm unaware, but I just haven't seen a signal yet that really makes me think that there's a whole lot here. Can't say there isn't. There very well might be. We just need some data to actually be able to draw any sort of confident conclusions about this supplement. You're a light than a. I'm going to put in the good and promising categories. I think the data here is intriguing. We just really don't know yet for sure which people this is going to be beneficial for. Last one. I put it in good, and then I also said promising. I may have been a little too optimistic about this one off the cuff, but I mean, I do think it follows pretty squarely in the promising category. So it's not as strong as some of the others that I put in the good category for sure. What do we know about your light than a? It's a thought to be a mitophagy activator. So mitophagy, of course, is the form of autophagy that degrades damaged or dysfunctional mitochondria. I'm sure your light than a has other functions as well. The animal data here looks pretty good. Seemingly reproducible lifespan extension in worms, health span benefits in mice have been published, and then Brian Kennedy at least has talked about unpublished data. I think their data is still unpublished in mice. He's talked about it at talks that they also see some health span benefits. So I tend to believe that's real. And there are some small early, you know, but directionally interesting effects seen in human clinical trials, especially around muscle function, mitochondrial function. I think it's probably real. I also think the effect is probably pretty small. I don't know that it's really going to move the needle for a lot of people. Certainly, again, not anywhere near the extent of exercise, probably not going to rise even to the level of creatine. We'll have to wait and see. But I think there's probably a signal there. I don't personally take your light than a at this point. I think as I mentioned, there are other levers that are likely to give larger effects. And that's where I'm focusing my attention right now. That's it for all 13 of the supplements. I thought what I do now is just give a sort of relative ranking of all 13. And it was interesting because when I did this, you know, they more or less lined up with the categories that I put them in. But there were a few that kind of came up or fell down a little bit compared to if you just looked at the tears, the way the tears organized. I kind of thought of this as, you know, through that risk reward lens, if somebody was like, you have to take eight of these. Take them from one to 13 on, you're going to put this in your body. How would you rank them? And so that's the way I sort of, I sort of put this list together. So at the top is creatine. I believe it works. A second is omega three, third is vitamin D. Those could easily be flipped. I don't have a strong feeling over those two. Fourth is lithium. So that pretty much matches my, you know, good category. Fifth is your light than a promising. NAD precursors came up a little bit here. So this is kind of where I would put NAD precursors. Again, I could see myself flipping your light than a and NAD precursors. So maybe that gives you a little bit more context in how I think about NAD precursors. There is some, there's plenty of smoke. There's probably kind of a smoldering fire, but we just don't know at this point, like how real, how broad, how big are the effects from NAD precursors likely to be. Next number seven is co-ins I'm Q 10 number eight is resveratrol. So for all the crap I give resveratrol, you know, it's kind of in the middle on this list of 13. Again, that's because there are some studies, even some meta analyses suggesting that supplementation with resveratrol may be beneficial for certain people in certain contexts. And again, it's very safe. So I think that's a reasonable place for resveratrol land. Fatty 15, this is really more of an absence of data. I'm doubtful there's going to be any harm from taking this particular fatty acid. So I think that's a reasonable place for it. Viceton comes in at number 10. I frankly don't trust Viceton proprietary anti-aging blends. I trust even less. And then the SS peptides, you know, this is interesting. So if I could be super confident about the purity of the peptides and I felt like I knew a little bit more about the dosing, I'd probably put SS peptides higher up on the list. But because of this real quality control and lack of data around safety at different doses in people, I just don't see the risk reward calculation, you know, at all in favor of taking SS 31 or other SS peptides at this time. That is my moderate dive into the 13 supplements of interest. We'll do maybe some more of this with another set of supplements or interventions if people like it. So if you do, be sure to leave your comments and likes below. If you're not yet a subscriber, please do hit that subscribe button. And I hope to see you next time on the Optuspan podcast.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Fucoidan is ranked "avoid" due to weak longevity evidence, unreasonably high effective doses (≈50g/day for humans), batch variability, and potential heavy metal contamination.
  2. Lithium orotate (not prescription lithium) is ranked "strong" based on consistent epidemiological correlations with reduced mortality and cognitive benefits, plus supportive preclinical data, though human longevity evidence is still emerging.
  3. Several popular supplements are categorized as overhyped (e.g., fisetin, CoQ10) or to be avoided (e.g., resveratrol for longevity, SS peptides as prescription drugs), while creatine is endorsed as "strong" for resistance training and brain protection.

Summary:

The speaker evaluates 13 supplements in a "tier list" format, ranking them as strong, good, promising, overhyped, or avoid. Fucoidan is placed in "avoid" due to limited and unreplicated mouse data, impractically high human doses (around 50g daily), batch inconsistency, and contamination risks. Lithium orotate earns a "strong" rating based on epidemiological links to lower mortality and cognitive decline, plus preclinical support, though it is not definitively a longevity supplement.

Other notable rankings include fisetin and CoQ10 as "overhyped" due to weak or mixed evidence, resveratrol as "avoid" for longevity (citing a meta-analysis showing no lifespan effect), and creatine as "strong" for enhancing resistance training outcomes with minimal risk. SS peptides are highlighted as prescription medications, not supplements, and are advised against for healthy individuals due to unproven benefits outside specific disorders like Barth syndrome. The overall approach emphasizes cautious interpretation of evidence, dose practicality, and safety over hype.

FAQs

Fucoidan is a collection of sulfated polysaccharides from brown seaweed, but evidence for longevity benefits is weak, based on one unreplicated mouse study with unrealistically high doses. Additionally, extracts can be contaminated with heavy metals and batch consistency is unreliable.

Yes, lithium orotate is placed in the 'strong' category due to consistent epidemiological data linking it to lower mortality and cognitive benefits, along with preclinical studies supporting its potential, especially for Alzheimer's disease risk reduction.

Creatine is recommended because 3-5 grams daily, combined with resistance training, reliably improves body composition and may protect the brain under energetic stress, with minimal side effects like occasional gastrointestinal upset.

Resveratrol is placed in the 'avoid' category as it is considered overhyped; meta-analyses show no lifespan extension across organisms, and initial promising results have not held up under scrutiny.

CoQ10 is categorized as 'overhyped' because while it is essential for mitochondrial function and may help specific conditions like heart failure, there is little evidence it benefits aging or longevity in healthy people.

SS peptides, such as SS-31, are prescription medications and should be avoided by healthy people; they lack evidence for longevity benefits in humans and are only approved under accelerated pathways for rare mitochondrial disorders like Barth syndrome.

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