 In this episode of Mind Pump, we tackle a topic that a lot of people approach us on a regular basis. People want to know what are the best supplements? What should I take? What is worth investing in? And what is a total waste of money? So what we did is we made it easy for you. We actually listed the top five most important supplements to take. We broke them all down for you. We broke them down into vitamins and minerals, common deficiencies. Filling vitamin and mineral deficiencies is easily the most important thing you could possibly do with supplements with profound effects on your health, performance, fat loss, and muscle building. We talk about protein and protein supplements, creatine and its effects. Talk about caffeine. And then we mentioned adaptogens. Now adaptogens is a category of compounds that help the body deal with stress. Corticeps, for example, is an adaptogenic mushroom that helps the body deal with stress. What does that mean? It means you burn more body fat, build more muscle, you improve your performance because your body adapts better to the stress of exercise and of course to the stresses of everyday life. Now one of our favorite companies that covers lots of adaptogenic compounds. In fact, they have adaptogenic mixes with multiple adaptogenic compounds. It's four-sigmatic. Now four-sigmatic specializes in mushroom-based supplements, in particular adaptogens, like I just mentioned, and they are having a massive, massive winter sale. Literally everything on their store is between 20% to 50% off. Here's the best part. If you use the code MINEPOMP or you click on the link in the show notes. So if you're listening to us on your phone, scroll down, click on the four-sigmatic link. You'll get an additional 15% off on top of that. Now the website is foursigmatic.com forward slash MINEPOMP, code MINEPOMP or click on that special link. Also, this month, all month long, MAPS SPLIT is 50% off. Now MAPS SPLIT is our workout program designed by bodybuilders, physique competitors, and bikini competitors. If your goal is to shape and sculpt your body, if there's specific areas of your body that you want to focus on in the gym. If you love working out, this is a six-day a week routine. It is advanced, but it's extremely effective. MAPS SPLIT is for you. It's half off. Here's how you get that discount. Go to MAPS SPLIT.com. That's M-A-P-S-S-P-L-I-T dot com. And use the code SPLIT50. That's S-P-L-I-T-5-0. No space for the discount. I'm really excited to get into this topic. I think, God, it was probably a couple of years ago when I shared with you guys a guide that I wanted to make. I got around to doing it. Of course, it just didn't hit the top 10. This will be better though. The title of this episode, Things We Wanted To Do But Didn't. We're going to make up for it here. That is not. The title is going to be the five most important supplements to take. But really the theme of the guide, what I wanted to do because this is what I found the most value in later on. I think we've shared openly on the podcast many times that we probably took every supplement under the sun as young teenage guys in early 20s trying to reach our goals faster. And later on, the more that I learned about nutrient deficiencies and performance supplements and what really moved the needle for not only me but all the hundreds of clients that I trained, I realized that I was wasting a lot of my money. If I was going to spend it on supplements, I probably should have geared it in another direction. So I'm really excited to talk about this subject. And I think the first thing that we always address when we talk about supplementation and no matter who we're sponsored by, we will always recommend whole foods first. Well, that's where supplements come from. So what are supplements? Supplements are products that you take that are designed to supplement your current diet. And they typically come in the form of pills, you know, tablets, capsules, powders. Sometimes they come in liquid form. You can make them into teas. There's a lot of different ways to take supplements, but the idea is to supplement. You can actually supplement that way. Not the way you do it though, Justin. It doesn't work that way. I'm advanced. But that's what supplements are now. Humans have been taking supplements for a very, very long time. They exist in Chinese medicine, which is thousands of years old. And even in Western medicine, in the early days of Western medicine, people have taken lots of different supplements. In fact, some of the very first fat loss supplements, you can actually look these up on Google. You can actually Google these pictures of some of the first advertisements for fat loss supplements. And some of the most popular ones in the early days were tapeworm eggs. You could actually buy tapeworm eggs in capsule form. What was the idea of that again? Weight loss. It eats all your food. Take this parasite, put a little friend in your body, help you eat your food. And people would take them and actually lose weight. What bad could happen? Supplements have been around for a very long period of time. And you're right, Adam, food is always best. All supplements initially got discovered in food and in food products. There it is right there. Look at that fat-banished tapeworms. That's so great. Isn't that funny? So they all came from things that we discovered that were in food. And once we discovered what they did, we saw, oh, you should supplement with this because it could give you those benefits. That's not really how a lot of supplements work. So I want to kind of get into that. Before that we talk about what supplements and what they do and the ones that we think are best. There are certain populations, certain segments of the population who tend to need supplements more than other people. And the reason for this is because there are certain segments of the population that either A, the risk of a deficiency, or the risk of having a deficiency is high, or B, you don't want to take a chance of having a deficiency if you're in a particular population. So for example, for that one, people who are women who are trying to conceive or are pregnant, this is a great example of that, right? Are pregnant women or women who are trying to conceive, are there a greater percentage of them with deficiencies versus the average person? Probably not, but their stakes are a little bit higher. For example, if your folate intake is a little low and you're not having a baby, not that big of a deal, if you are having a baby, not having it a folate can result in some serious issues. In fact, I can't remember off the top of the head what the number one, maybe Doug can look that up, one of the number one issues are related to a folate deficiency in pregnant women, but I know that it has declined significantly since pregnant women and women who are trying to conceive have been given advice to take folate. Right, I think that, I'm pretty sure if I remember correctly, that was one of the supplements in Katrina's, they make pregnant multi-vitamins. Oh, prenatals. Prenatal, excuse me, prenatal, right? So I know that had, I know it had folate in it for sure. Yes, neural tube defects and they've gone down significantly since pregnant women and women who are trying to conceive have been given, have been told to take folate or prenatal vitamins have been, because that's a staple now in Western medicine. If you're trying to conceive or you're pregnant, your doctor's like, here's, in fact, it's prenatal vitamins oftentimes are prescription, which you don't need to have a prescription to get them, but oftentimes they will prescribe these vitamins because of that. So that's one category, right? Well, another example would be people on specialty diets. You know, that's one of the reasons why I don't care for diets that much is because when we tend to follow, and the more strict diet is, the more limiting it is nutrient-wise. If you follow a carnivore, ketogenic, a vegan type of diet and you eliminate food groups completely out of your diet, maybe for fat loss, it is great for you. But what ends up happening a lot of times with those people is because they don't do the homework and research of, okay, now that I've completely eliminated this category of foods, what nutrients was I getting previously from that? And these things don't tend to show themselves right away. You tend to see this after months or even years sometimes of consistently eating a certain way or eliminating certain foods in the diet. And sometimes the symptoms are general. They're not like extreme, like, oh my God, I'm dying. It can get to that point. Oftentimes people go to the doctor and they'll test and be like, whoa, your vitamin B, you know, 12 is super low or whatever. But sometimes people are just like, I'm tired. My skin is rashy or dry. I have cracks at the corners of my mouth. My hair is brittle. Hair is brittle, nails are weak. Constant bloat. Yeah, like these kind of subtle symptoms that can come from these nutrient deficiencies. I'm glad you said what you said, Adam, because it's 100% true. And the number one category of specialty diets that tends to result in deficiencies, not always, but it's a higher percentage are vegans. This is, by the way, this is not an anti-vegan thing to say. This is an objective fact. This is true. You can look it up yourself. But vegans are at higher risk of nutrient deficiencies, in particular iron and B12. And if you are a vegan and you go to a doctor, the odds are that they will recommend that you take supplements to supplement your diet because meat does provide certain essential nutrients that are very difficult and sometimes even impossible to get from plant sources. Another one are people who have food intolerances. The reason why this can cause nutrient deficiencies, I'll give you a great example. I'm one of these people, right? I have a bad food intolerance to dairy. I don't have a food allergy, but I do have an intolerance to dairy. Dairy just so happens to be one of the best sources or the greatest sources of calcium. So someone like myself would run a higher risk of having a calcium deficiency because I'm not eating any dairy. You may be one of these people. You may have an intolerance to a food category. Let's say you're allergic to fish. The odds that you may have a deficiency in omega-3 fatty acids are just higher because one of the richest sources of omega-3 fatty acids happens to be fish. So if you're a person who has to avoid entire categories of food because of intolerances, then supplementing may be very, very valuable to you. Another category, autoimmune people with autoimmune issues. People with certain autoimmune issues, in particular the digestive ones like Crohn's disease, they just don't absorb as much nutrients from their food as they do in comparison to other people. Now, is it more common that they have an autoimmune like that and then that's caused or that they were lacking the nutrients therefore it caused these autoimmune issues? What's more? Chicken array, right? So like your example, for example, you have psoriasis you've had for a while. We know that low vitamin D is connected to psoriasis and you've said this yourself, when you supplement with vitamin D you get lots of sunlight. Psoriasis goes down. Now, are your vitamin D levels hard to keep up because you have malabsorption and then of course it's psoriasis worse because you have low vitamin D? It's hard to say. Sometimes it's one versus it's one or the other. Sometimes it doesn't matter. For example, if you have Crohn's disease and you're having nutrient deficiencies and you're trying to eat good foods and it's not working, that person may benefit from supplementing with a high dose vitamin or mineral that they're lacking. My theory for myself personally and after understanding psoriasis as an autoimmune, understanding how much the vitamin D has helped me, it makes a lot of sense to me and this is a great example of what we were talking about how it takes a long time to reveal itself. Psoriasis didn't pop up on me until I was about 25. It was somewhere between 24 and 26. I'm going to guess 25 is when it first revealed itself and when I found out later on after we met Sal that there's a good chance that I had a vitamin D deficiency and when I started supplementing I saw a drastic difference in how bad my psoriasis was. What makes the most sense for me because sunlight is one of the great sources of vitamin D for us is I was a kid who grew up in the sun literally seven days a week, hours on every single day all of my life until I hit 19. At 19 years old I moved to San Jose, got a job inside of a gym and fell in love with it and began working underneath fluorescent lights from literally 5 a.m. till 10 p.m. at night religiously and very rarely got sun. Now, I didn't see anything. No psoriasis came up, no problems, but years of consistently not getting the sunlight like I believe my body had adapted to intaking that much over my childhood then all of a sudden I go cold turkey almost and cut it off and then my body's resilient, didn't show anything, didn't show anything. Yeah, because you store vitamin D in your system so I'm sure you had a nice store of vitamin D. And you still get it from some foods, right? Like mushrooms and things like that. So I'm sure that I was still getting some but what I was used to getting, it took a while for it to reveal itself. All of a sudden at 25 it pops up but what I feel like is out of nowhere and years I go on to battling that and then years later it wasn't till I connected that until we met with vitamin D. So I think what happens a lot of times and that's why this is difficult, this is also why I love companies that test and peer into this a little bit. Yeah, because you were able to test your vitamin D and you were supplementing and it bumped it a little bit but not much. But you know I need to take way more. I was taking 5,000 IUs and I was still testing low. I have to be about 10,000 IUs a day for me to hit that range. And again I just think that my body adapted to getting so much vitamin D for the first half of my life now the back half. Of course just like we say go whole foods or I want to try and supplement with vitamin D my goal is always to get in front of my Juvelite or get outside and get the real sunlight. Like that number one real sunlight, second option red light, third option take my vitamin D or I'm using both. This is another part to consider is as your circumstances change so do potentially your nutrient demands. So here's a circumstance right away. Now we talked about diets. So we said oh if you're vegan or whatever and you're cutting out a whole segment of food, what about if you just cut your calories? Here's something to consider. The vast majority of the nutrients that you get come from your food. What if you cut your calories you're eating 1200 calories a day. You didn't just lower your calories you also lowered your nutrient intake. So it's probably maybe more important for people who are dieting to supplement that people are eating 1200 calories it consists of nutrients, micronutrients as well and here's the thing people have a tough enough time looking at macronutrients proteins, fats, carbohydrates and tracking calories right nobody's talking about micronutrients so when you look at your food and you enter it into your my fitness pal or fat secret or your macro tracker and you're like cool I'm eating enough calories to get my body to burn body fat I don't know if you're hitting the right amount of nutrients that your body in your specific body needs and different circumstances also change the demands exercise changes the demands of certain nutrients how much you sweat changes the demands if you're a female and you're menstruating that can also change your nutrient demands and there are certain nutrients that are more important for women to take when they're menstruating than when they're not Dr. Jolene Brighton talked quite a bit about the value of supplementing just like B vitamins for women who are menstruating so that's something else you want to look at and consider also talked about sunlight if you're not in the sun very often yes look at that I'm never out in the sun you might need to supplement with something like vitamin D I was immediately thinking of I don't know that Viking documentary where they're talking about having to get cod liver oil because they just didn't see enough for the sun and it started to generations would go and you'd see that in you know the next generation like all these deficiencies what they would lead to in terms of like their height or like their bone structure and all these things oh yeah it was one of the some historians think that's one of the advantages they have why they were so strong and able to defeat so many people as they were cruising around and people were deficient and weak and they were eating cod liver oil which was very high indeed there was no sunlight in the northern hemisphere and they were doing you know quite well so now why is food best because I know I think some people like okay I've had people ask me this like what's the difference whether I get my vitamin B6 from food or I get it from a vitamin what's the difference chemically you look at them under a microscope they're the exact same thing in fact often times vitamins and nutrients and whatever are taken from food so what's the difference why is food best there's a couple reasons one it's much harder to overdose on nutrients and vitamins and minerals from food than it is from supplements it's very easy for example to sub to overdose on vitamin A with vitamin A supplements and that can be very very toxic very difficult to do through food you'd have to eat a ton and ton of organ meats like I mean way more than anybody would ever eat in order to have problems like that happen also whole foods tend to come with cofactors that improve absorption things like vitamin K2 for vitamin D3 or bioflavonoids with vitamin C or other nutrients that help with the absorption of the main nutrients that the food provides food is the ideal source and these are the things that perfect shuttle like nature's already figured it out like you know it's funny to see all these like slow absorption rate like it's like in the marketing of like certain pills and things where you know you could get that from real food and just like the fiber and everything else like involved with the food it helps with the whole digest and this is what we know the thing that it annoys me about these types of conversations especially with like scientist friends of ours that like to your point sell like you're you could look under a microscope and this has this much B12 so does this food therefore they're equivalent well that's what we know so far you've thrown out some other cofactors but there's still things that we're learning about the gut and what when the digestive system that is still we're unsure about so you can't tell me that we know everything about the difference of getting it the way and it's really crazy how when it's found in nature I mean I love to give the example with sugar like you know you talk about overdosing on supplements well you know it's because it's a concentrated form of whatever is from a food well same thing goes for something like sugar like we if we took sugar and it's raw form you would never over eat it it would be impossible to get like what's in a soda can you'd have to eat eight feet of sugar cane which it just unless you've got you know jaws like a freaking gorilla or like a panda bear you're not going to be able to get through that so I mean the same thing goes for sugar is obviously demonized but it's the same concept it's the way it's found in nature and raw it was intended to be consumed that way the same thing goes for when we talk about vitamins and supplements always ideally you know targeting through whole foods and so when I coach and teach clients when they find out oh I have this deficiency instead of us just automatically going okay let's just start supplementing for vitamin D or A or K or whatever it is let's educate them on what foods that's rich in that and then let's try and target that and this is even how so vitamin D is is a common one in mind omega three's are common in my cover and though I try and pay attention like if I had a week where which is rare now but it still happens occasionally where I go up to like the lake and I'm spending a week on the lake and in the sun like I'm not also stressing about supplementing with my vitamin D that week if there's a week I'm going to not supplement it that's the week if I had a great week of eating fish maybe we just went fishing and we caught tons of fish so the whole week we're in mecca we do this when we go down to Cabo for the beginning of the week we live off of the fish for an entire week I probably don't need to be supplementing with my omega three during that week so learning to try and target the whole foods first supplement it when you need it I'll give you a great example okay you guys have all heard of the mercury content in fish right mercury builds up in the system if you have too much of it it can totally become toxic okay fish contains mercury does that mean I gotta be careful if I eat too much fish and for the most part no and here's why because fish most fish also contains a high amount of selenium and selenium binds to mercury so eating most fish even though they may have mercury the natural selenium that's found the fish offsets it and makes it okay now there are a few fish that this where the mercury outweighs the selenium a good example will be like swordfish way more mercury than selenium but most fish that you would eat that you that's not like the few that are where there's mercury so high selenium selenium is high enough to where you can eat it and you're okay and you see this you see this in cultures around the world that have a high consumption of fish yet mercury poisoning is very very low even though paradoxically they have a high intake of mercury it's the natural selenium and this is important to consider too like I said earlier with supplements taking too much is just as bad as not having enough so having a deficiency is bad having too much of certain nutrients can cause problems as well so food naturally makes this it much it makes it much harder to overdose and it tends to improve the absorption of certain things food is always best but that being said if you have a deficiency supplements can can have a huge impact well we we took the time to list with the the top 10 most common deficiencies like nutrient deficiencies found and I'm this is why we're starting here in this supplement conversation because the most common thing that I see as far as misusing supplements is I get clients and they you know somebody sold them on some muscle building stack or some fat burning stack you know they've got all these bottles and jugs and shakes that they're taking meanwhile they've got all these deficiencies because their diet is all yeah you could break this supplement category into there's really two ways that I would recommend supplements to someone and it's either to fill a deficiency which trumps anything else right so that's number one if you have an actual actual micronutrient deficiency filling that deficiency will have a massive impact yeah a massive profound beneficial impact the set the and not having not filling that deficiency can cause you lots of problems the other half is improving performance building muscle and burning body fat which is far less important than making sure you don't have a deficiency I'm glad you said that though because this is what I see is you're deficient in all these areas yet you're taking the performance supplements to get to build muscle it's like having a little sports car drag racing car and you're throwing a spoiler on it meanwhile you have two front flat tires it's you're getting a little bit of edge by throwing the spoiler on there to help win resistance but you ain't moving but you're moving really slow because you've got two flat tires like fix the flat tires the obvious thing that's going to make your the machine operate and run faster before throwing a fucking spoiler or an exhaust system on it and that's the same concept when you when you we look at supplementation is you know this the stuff that's over glamorized with the all the sexy bodies and the burning the fat and all every everybody gravitates to that meanwhile their diets are all fucking whack and they're spending two three hundred dollars in supplements that was really what when we first started the podcast was a lot of our messaging was around that was trying to help people save you know hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month you know falling into these gimmicks that they need to buy these supplements to get to their results when if they actually just started to hone in on their programming and their diet they would see more results than they've ever seen in their life totally now you you can test you can get efficiencies if you ask your doctor they could probably run a test for you there are at home tests I know Everly well does does one as well so I'm going to go through them the will I think we should go through the more common right like you said the more common deficiencies that we find in modern western societies these are ones that are just more often than not or or just more common than others in terms of when we test people here's where we start to see the deficiencies but after you do that also give what foods that you would find totally totally 100% so the first one's vitamin B6 B6 is a of the of the nutrient deficiencies it's it's kind of up there and you start to see this and this one's an important one for women I know Dr. Jolene Brighton says that a lot of women are more more women are deficient in B6 than men may have to do with with they're changing hormones and menstruation places you could get vitamin B6 poultry meat and if you want a non-animal source chickpeas chickpeas are actually high in B6 here's something you're going to notice as a theme as we go through these okay the the nutrients typically or more readily absorbed through animal sources than they are through vegan sources not always but generally speaking again this is not an anti-vegan thing that we're trying to do here this is just a fact that when they do test on people they find that oh you're low in B6 it tends to get raised up higher when they consume more poultry for example than eating more and this is to the point that you've made multiple times about talking about the vegan diet is that it's not that it's not possible it just takes a lot more planning so if you're automatically going to cut me which in what infuriates me this trend that we see because of the Netflix documentaries is you know I've got my my teenage nieces that see it and they go like oh they just stop eating meat now they're just eating fucking salads all day long it's like okay if you're going to cut poultry out of your diet you are you eating chickpeas you know how often are you doing that like you need to do your homework if you're going to do a diet like that because as soon as you cut meat out you cut out one of the most nutrient dense food groups that you like you said there's going to be a theme oh you'll see yeah you'll see as we go through alright so the next one iron iron deficiencies these this one again more common in women and you know symptoms of this are just feeling weak malaise low energy of course meat very high in iron that's the best source of iron it's extremely absorbable will raise your iron levels faster than anything else eggs are another source spinach you can get iron from spinach but you have to eat a lot of it to raise your iron levels if you have an iron deficiency as identified by a doctor you can try raising it with your vegan sources but they may recommend you have to take supplements or eat meat I've had a few clients that this happened to where their iron levels are low they were vegan and at some point the doctors like you need to either eat meat or you need to take this pill of iron iron supplements can cause constipation in some people but iron containing foods do not again another example of why foods are the best sources of nutrients vitamin D this one's becoming more common nowadays just because nobody's outside anymore all inside some people I've actually read articles where they've said that vitamin D is like an epidemic of low D levels vitamin D extremely important for the immune system it's a some scientists would consider vitamin D a hormone just by the way it acts in the body low D levels can affect your hormones for sure and manic lower testosterone that's a big one I talked about the immune system it is believed that one of the reasons why there's a flu season is because of low vitamin D levels if you in fact look at the peak levels of infection of flu and the rhinovirus which is the cold you'll notice it happens in February which is a good three months after we're starting to get less sunlight so it's like D levels decline boom we get this explosion of infections and they think this may be one of the main reasons why we get these you know we get more ill in the winter so D a very common one of course the best way to raise vitamin D sunlight there's nothing that'll raise vitamin D more effectively than sunlight but there are foods that are high in vitamin D we talked about cod liver oil that's more of a supplement although it is one of the supplements I think is more like a food because it literally is an oil from you could eat cod livers exactly and that's going to be just you know the same exactly and it contains a decent amount of vitamin A2 which is complementary but egg yolks and then for vegans or if you're looking for a non animal source mushrooms but mushrooms contain a form of vitamin D called D2 D2 does not raise vitamin D levels in the blood nearly as effectively as D3 so if you're a vegan and your D levels are low get lots of sunlight if that's not working I suggest supplementing with a D3 supplement that you can find at your health food store whatever iodine you guys know iodine was such a problem for a long time that it became mandatory to infuse salt with iodine you guys ever use more salt you ever notice that yeah they put that on there yes it also they it became like I believe it was government enforced at one point to add iodine to salt because we were noticing all these effects of iodine deficiencies especially in children and it worked it worked for a while is kale a main source of that too because I saw like from people eating too much of say kale or was seaweed that might have been seaweed yes seaweed is very high in iodine fish fish is also high in iodine and of course table salt it's infused with iodine but believe it or not that's where most people will get their iodine vitamin C is another one now vitamin C tends to be infused in everything I don't know about you guys but anytime you buy a food that's in a wrapper or a box it always like you know added vitamin C or whatever which is kind of funny but if you if you need more vitamin C citrus foods are a very very good source B12 is another good now B12 is one that vegans pretty much can't get from vegetable sources unless they're fortified so if you're a vegan and you eat like fortified cereals for example oh great source yeah then you'll get your B12 but the best natural that's some Cheerios the best source of B12 naturally is meat there is no natural really natural you know vegan source of B12 that you can find so you'll have to supplement that calcium tends to be low also dairy leafy greens and tofu will have that magnesium is another one you can find that in beef and then avocados and nuts are pretty high here's a big one omega 3 fatty acids this one's really important low omega 3 fatty acids intake has been connected to heart issues heart disease you know certain cancers inflammatory issues low cognitive function and brain impaired brain development among children the best form hands down of omega 3 fatty acids are fish you cannot get omega 3 fatty acids from vegan sources you can get a a type of fatty acid from flax seeds that your body has to convert to omega 3 so you could you could take flaxseed oil or eat flaxseeds and you could raise your omega 3 fat uh blood levels but you'd have it's it's a lot harder it's it's not nearly as effective so if you're really deficient um and you're vegan you may have to supplement with an animal source and these aren't in order because I believe that omega 3 is like one of the top omega 3s and in vitamin D you're probably the biggest yeah are probably top two one and two right there I remember there was a time where like doctors just automatically just prescribe that to everybody yeah if you come into doctor oh get on omega 3s omega 3s almost all my clients in the last decade oh yeah of training I was a big boom oh I remember they would sit down with them they're like oh I take my omega 3 so that was a big message for for few decades there because of how deficient everybody was right right uh folate is another big one folate is found in egg yolks and a vegan source would be asparagus although again um it's far it doesn't raise blood levels as well um as egg yolks do that's one of the best sources of folate if you're trying to conceive or you're pregnant this is a very important nutrient but you're probably supplementing with it at that point um like we talked about earlier potassium um sometimes we see deficiencies there beef salmon and then of course bananas we know about bananas everybody that's like all the credit bananas get is that they're high in potassium yeah yeah it loaded with 40 grams of sugar that's a lot of glucose vitamin a organ meats are some of the highest sources of vitamin a um uh fish um and then the vegan sources sweet potato carrots or orange foods that are orange vegan foods that are orange it typically means it's got you know vitamin a or beta carotene uh which you know raises vitamin a level so those are the more common ones but here's the thing you know we just went through this list that doesn't mean you go to the store buy all these and take them because you heard on mind pump that they're common because some of these are not water soluble many of them are right uh water soluble vitamins you can I can take 10,000 milligrams of vitamin c and I might get some indigestion but I'll excrete what I don't use if I overdid it on a fat soluble vitamin like vitamin a vitamin d or on a mineral uh like calcium I can cause myself a lot of problems in fact uh with calcium they were finding uh artery deposits uh in people because they thought oh calcium strengthens bones I'm just gonna take a ton of calcium yeah and it was causing it can cause some serious problems so go get tested I mean go to go get go to your doctor get blood work done uh you know you're what you're gonna find is that your most people have are pretty calm that you have their their basic diet or basic foods they eat and when you go get it it'll tell you a lot it'll tell you a lot of probably what you lack in and when you get when you find out it'll probably be kind of obvious to you too like oh wow I need omega 3 so I never eat fish like okay or oh vitamin d I work inside all the time and I don't ever have mushrooms or I don't ever have egg yolks okay that makes sense like you know do the do the the the test do the work um at least one time I think it's it's that I mean I would tell all my clients before uh things like everly well and at home test came around because even with everly well you have to do a lot of these individually um that could get really expensive to going through each one individually I like what I prefer and what I recommend is get the blood work find out all the places you may be deficient and then I follow up with everly well so for example if I go to my blood work find out that I am I'm deficient in vitamin D now I don't need to go in and spend the two hundred something dollars every single time I want to get my blood work done with my doctor I just do my fifty or hundred dollar at home test just to kind of check up on it to make sure that when I make the adjustments in my diet that I'm I'm keeping it up where it needs to be put to me before you go invest in spending hundreds of dollars on performance supplements this is the place that you start you start here and figure out if you have a flat tie or not or your timing belt is off fix and address that before you even think about investing in other supplements we're going to go and then and then you keep track here's the thing you want to consider there are levels of nutrients that when they do your testing that they have a threshold and you don't want to go below the threshold because you run the risk of having you know nutrient deficient related disorders and diseases but that doesn't mean that just because you're above the threshold during the optimal range there are optimal ranges and then there's minimums okay so do your research so if you do get a vitamin D test and you find like oh I'm within range look up optimal vitamin D levels optimal vitamin A levels look up these things functional medicine doctors and there are some sites that will talk about these because optimal is a typically higher a little bit higher than the minimum amount that will prevent you know nutrient deficient related diseases so that's it those are the those are all the ones that are common but that doesn't mean that you don't have a potential deficiency to other nutrients also doesn't mean that you you have one a deficiency related to the ones I just talked about the key here is to get to get tested and if you find a deficiency supplement for it that is a hundred percent most important way to supplement and they're a lot cheaper it's a lot cheaper to put some air in your tires than it is to buy a brand new spoiler brand new spoiler way more expensive breaks all the time that you pull up your tires you're good to go like literally just invest in that and then taking a vitamin D vitamin K see all the ones that we went through those aren't that expensive you get them for relatively cheap and yeah and it's not it's not that big of a deal and then again it should last you a long time if you try and use it the way I was explaining where you're targeting whole foods you know your deficient there so you know it's an area that you you want to have that at your disposal inside your covered but then my goal always is to try and you know up my fish intake but hey there's weeks where a lot of beef and chicken was ate but very little of fish was eaten okay so this is a day that I'm gonna make sure that I get my omega-3 yeah I don't want one of those pill cases where you got Monday Tuesday Wednesday and you have all these huge horse pills you got to like ingest all day long yeah I don't want to end up like I'm always looking for whole food sources and incorporating that more whatever I am deficient and it's you know it's funny Jessica is really good at this right like so we're in the process of you know we just got married we're in the process of trying to to get pregnant and so she's looking at all the important nutrients so I see her now I see her eating three to four egg yolks every morning to make sure she gets the full I also saw her before when she would you know get on it when she would have her period she would we would be eating way more red meat and ask her well how come she's like well I need more of these beef items and it works phenomenally so the whole food sources are the best but again if you find a deficiency you don't want to change your diet go with the supplement okay so now we're out of the supplements to fill deficiencies category now we can head into the one that everybody loves and gets excited about which are supplements to improve performance help you build muscle and burn body fat the fun stuff number one has to be of that category has to be protein it has to be the probably the most beneficial performance enhancing muscle building supplement that there is just just based off of the clients that we've worked with well and the irony of this is that it's because of what we just talked about is because it's one of the most common deficiencies right you know if you get enough protein through diet and whole foods you know it's not necessary anymore but because this is an area that most people how unless we're talking to the bodybuilding community because we know they eat six chicken breasts a day besides that community the average American really struggles to get enough protein for optimal performance you go back to your optimal thing right they're not deficient in protein but they're not eating enough to maximize the muscle building effects that protein could provide or to maximize the satiety effects of protein or the thermogenic fat burning potential of protein they're just not eating enough you talk about this all the time Adam I almost unless I had a client who like you said was in that bodybuilding space I almost never had a client give me their food tracking when they first started I almost never saw it and said oh wow you're in the optimal range of protein intake it was always like you know I'd say for women I would see protein intakes of 30 50 grams a day 70 maybe when most of them would have benefited from 100 grams or 120 grams of protein protein intake has been shown in studies quite conclusively at high levels and high is about 0.6 to 1 gram per pound of body weight in relatively lean individuals if you're obese you want to use your lean body mass but protein in that range has been shown to build more muscle add more strength and to regulate appetite and also hold on to muscle when people are dieting people are reducing their food intake to lose weight when the protein intake is higher they lose less muscle which is a great thing because one of the problems of dieting is a slower metabolism from muscle loss so protein becomes extremely important now here's the problem with protein when I had a 130 pound female client and I'm telling her to eat 110 grams of protein a day how many 6 ounce chicken breast is that they're eating a lot of meat throughout the day and it's just hard it's inconvenient and so protein powders became extremely valuable to that population and again we're using this the same way that we were using the last supplements we just talked about I see tremendous value I've always got a vegan protein and a whey protein in my house I've always got them in my covers but they lasted me quite a while because again I'm not trying to take the protein powder I'm trying to get all of my protein intake through Whole Foods but the reality is that a lot of times that doesn't happen that's where I utilize that supplement it's not a supplement like it's not used the way I think the body building community tries to use it take it every day every day at post workout it's like this ritual to do that like no you don't need to do that in fact you don't want to do that if you can get it through Whole Foods again you want to try and get it through Whole Foods but the reality is a majority of the population including ourselves miss those targets that's why you use a supplement like this for sure hands down of all the ones that are going to benefit you for overall fat loss or building muscle I would definitely rate this is the number one after you've handled it and it's just you know protein powders are convenient I can take them with me anywhere typically protein powders don't contain lots of carbs or fats so I'm minimizing the calorie intake you know 40 gram shake of protein you know might have 180 calories but getting 40 grams from a meat source might be twice as many calories because there's added fat and whatnot so if you're dieting and you're noticing you know if you're trying to cut your cut down and you're noticing that oh I need more protein but I only have so many calories to work with protein shakes can can help quite a bit and there's a lot of good quality ones out there but this one I definitely think see the most benefit I feel like we have to address that a little bit though too because don't get caught up in the looking for the cheapest source I get DMs quite often about you know I looked at Organifi and Legion and they tend to be more expensive protein powders now because this is probably the number one supplement that you should take for building muscle or burning body fat as far as you know getting what your body needs to and perform optimally because of that it's also marketed to and there's a slew of people making all kinds of money in this space and because the supplement industry is not regulated through like the FDA there's a lot of leeway in what people are utilizing to make these supplements so you know you pay for what you get oh totally protein is not cheap real protein is not cheap it's relatively expensive so don't skimp out on when you're taking a protein powder supplement but of course food again is totally ideal it's funny I was reading other studies on protein to take as people get older they're showing studies now that they need to increase their protein to take as they get older to help prevent the muscle wasting that comes from getting older they seem to they seem to benefit even more from a higher protein intake than the younger people do now you don't need to eat like the body builder amounts of protein but most people listening don't get that one gram of protein per pound of body weight or the .7 grams of protein per pound of body weight the next supplement creatine creatine is it's not protein it's not a essential nutrient if you're getting adequate amounts of protein in your diet your body will synthesize creatine from three amino acids however supplementing with creatine has been shown across the board in thousands of studies it's actually one of the most studied supplements known to man has been shown in many many many studies to have tremendous muscle building benefits the side effect of which also is fat loss and lots of studies now showing health benefits from supplementing with creatine the population that could benefit the most from supplementing with creatine vegans mainly because creatine can only be found in animal sources red meat being one of the highest concentrations studies actually show that vegans who supplement with creatine get a tremendous health benefit one of which being cognitive boosts actually show IQ boosting from supplement which I wonder about that especially with true vegans who don't like ingest anything animal related if that's a problem you know just supplementing you can get vegan you can get creatine that's made in a lab like a version correct and it's a vegan former creatine highly recommend it here's a supplement that I recommend to most people after of course diet is good and all that stuff but I don't if your goals fat loss if your goals muscle building if you just want to be healthier if you just want to feel less stiff if you just want cognitive boosting I'm typically going to say hey you know diet looks good workout looks good let's try supplementing with some high quality creatine and see what happens the amount that people supplement with anywhere between 2 to 5 grams 5 grams being high 2 grams probably be more appropriate I say 5 grams for somebody who doesn't eat a lot of meat and somebody who does eat adequate meat I'm saying 2 to 3 grams is plenty they're showing brain health benefits heart health benefits anti aging benefits they're showing now with creatine supplementation it could increase the amount of mitochondria in the body which are the energy powerhouses it's got antioxidant properties for the heart even creatine is a phenomenal supplement and it's funny because it started in the muscle building space in fact at one point it was like people were freaked out about it because it was like in the 90s in particular when it first came out it's like steroids no no none of that compound does not have hormonal effects although in men with low testosterone it may actually boost testosterone through fueling the testosterone process in the testies but creatine are a great well just it's simple forms or simple form it just replenishes energy at a much faster rate so just think of all the people and situations that benefits as a matter if you're a crossfitter a marathon runner a powerlifter an average gym goer knowing that whatever because you're taking creatine your energy replenishes at a faster rate that's it that's it I mean in that the carryover to that is in all pursuits of fitness is at the highest and it's the only one like there's supplements out there like in pre workouts that make you feel like you get more energy because it stimulates your central nervous system and so then you feel like you're wired and so oh you're getting no that's like artificial energy like creatine actually replenishes energy at a faster rate and it's been proven to be that that great of a performance supplement for years now now the effects of taking creatine if you start supplementing it here's what you may notice and by the way I want to say this to you some people don't do well supplementing with creatine ok so I know we're selling it real hard and what I don't want is somebody to take it have gastro distress or diarrhea and be like well I'm going to keep taking it because they said you know it's such a great supplement ain't that good some people some people get really upset and gastro distress from creatine if you take it and that's you not for you but the vast majority of you should not have a problem here's what you'll notice when you supplement with creatine after about five to seven days of supplementing it you're stronger it's pronounced you'll notice you're going to lift between five to ten pounds more on every lift you'll notice that your muscles feel fuller and rounder and you'll also notice maybe between one to five pounds extra on the scale depending on how much muscle you have the more muscle mass the more weight you'll gain on the scale the less muscle mass the less weight you gain on the scale now I know there's some people listening probably in particular females who are thinking I don't want to gain any weight that's so I'm not going to take creatine it's not making you gain body fat it's literally adding more hydration intracellular hydration so you're just you're holding more water but it's not bloat doesn't add water to the outside of your body like you're smooth it's water inside the muscle so if anything it actually improves the appearance of more tone or more sculpt gives you more definition best source of creatine, creatine monohydrate don't mess with the other types of creatine the creatine citrate and all that crap well to the same point that I made with the protein but it's become so popular that everybody is in the space and now to make it competitive they're adding things to it or making cases why their absorption is faster all that shit you know it's so funny Cray alkaline came out and their big thing was absorbs better absorbs faster less bloat which is so stupid because it doesn't cause bloat but whatever selling point ever you want to know what's funny they tested it head to head against monohydrate and actually your body absorbs less your body absorbs the creatine monohydrate superior across the board so whatever supplement company you're looking at if they're trying to sell you on why their type of creatine is better there's no studies to support it all the studies show that creatine monohydrate is the best Legion makes a good creatine monohydrate if you're looking for a brand alright next supplement this one is your guys' favorite you guys fuck with this one especially Justin I don't think it's just I think it's probably 99% of the listeners it's the most used drug in the world overall production and for just like a nice like clear state of mind like I can get things done like I just it works man there's nothing else that even competes with it or compares with it other than you know that other one that they banned right crystal math we're talking about caffeine caffeine is very very widely studied it's been used by humans for thousands of years it's a wakefulness agent you do build up a very fast tolerance to it so it's addictive so you could take caffeine for anybody who's ever tried to go off coffee you know what I'm talking about you feel like miserable for a week or two because your body has to reacclimate so best use of caffeine in my opinion is to take it on an every other day basis or save it for the days you need that extra zip the individual variance with tolerance in caffeine is wide super wide your liver gets helps your body get rid of caffeine and there is a genetic variant in some people where it doesn't work as fast I think I have one of those like if I do more than 300 milligrams of caffeine in a day I don't feel good you guys do more than 300 milligrams of caffeine in one sitting well it goes it comes in waves and I think to I don't ever want to be dependent on anything either we we try and stress that point a lot there's something that's reoccurring constantly and you haven't ever stepped away from it for a while or it's like something like you're you're scared to stop doing like that's something I'm going to want to address and make sure that like I'm cycling it in and out so there's it's scheduled in there so I am at least like lowering the amount of intake or completely off of it for a bit and then reintroducing caffeine has got anti-depressive effects these are documented so it's a mild anti-depressant obviously improves productivity it's a wakefulness agent it can help with fat mobilization that doesn't mean it's a very powerful fat burner well you move a lot more but that being said to that point Sal what won't make this list as we're going through our fat burners and any fat burners that carry any weight whatsoever the piece of it that carries the most weight is the caffeine that they put in it so keep that in mind let me tell you you can get a cup of coffee or caffeine pills for next to nothing and fat burners are extremely expensive the most valuable piece of a fat burner 99.9% of the time will be the caffeine that's inside of it and you can get caffeine in a pill form super super cheap for high doses of caffeine or just from black coffee from black coffee teas caffeine has got brain health benefits it's got anti-cancer benefits in particular for the liver it has a lot of benefits now that doesn't mean it doesn't have potential negative side effects if you consume too much caffeine it will contribute to the physiological perceptions of stress it can cause stress hormones to go up and it is probably hands down the worst culprit for people's sleep insomnia yes yeah 100% 100% like when I work with clients and they can't they don't have good sleep I would say 7 or 8 out of 10 times when I reduce their caffeine and take their sleep it just became went away well too like with the thyroid I know it's not like advantageous to have like caffeine in the diet as well like that tends to like not pair well with any kind of thyroid issue yeah you got to figure out your tolerance so figure this out don't gauge it off other people for I gave you mine 2 to 300 milligrams every other day is about as much as I can do which is significantly lower than Adam or Justin who have a tolerance for caffeine I wish I had that wonderful I can't do it if I have too much I feel I just feel well all that really means is that we can get away with more before we have to come back down the other direction but it's inevitable we have to come the other way too that's I just don't feel the effects as much well and that I always my selling point to people to get them to cycle because it's hard you get you get a client or you get somebody who loves their coffee my gosh it's the hardest and they drink you know 3-4 cups a day or they have 2 cups of coffee plus an energy drink or 2 and you try and a workout or something and you try and tell them you want to bring them all the way down they look at you like you're crazy but what I always you know remind them and sell them on is that listen you love caffeine right you'll love it even more when you've cycled off a little bit and then you reintroduce it you forget how amazing that feels when you've cycled off and then you've reintroduced you know what's funny that's true for all supplements not the cycling off but more generally of using them appropriately yeah if you use supplements appropriately especially the ones we're talking about you can get great benefits use them inappropriately not only will you get not as great a benefits you may actually get detrimental effects like caffeine like use too much caffeine for your body you're not going to get athletic performance boost for example for me if I have too much caffeine I'm not lifting more weight I'm not able to do more reps I do less I get out of breath I feel terrible I don't get mental sharpness I get mental confusion if I have too much caffeine it gives me anxiety I don't feel good I get worse sleep right if I have too much so use the right amount for your body and you get some amazing benefits now one thing one one thing I want to say about caffeine caffeine pairs exceptionally well to one other supplement which isn't on the list but I'm gonna say it because it's great with caffeine theanine the amino acid theanine if you take caffeine or you drink lots of coffee try 200 milligrams of theanine for every 100 milligrams of caffeine doesn't Mike put that in his yes he's so his pre-workout contains as I was going to say yeah contains that it does yeah that's one of the things I know that you fell in love with about yes theanine with caffeine smooths out the the energy and it keeps it there longer and it seems to lower the tolerance building effect so taking theanine may allow you to have caffeine a little bit more regularly I remember when you first started getting because we used to do this way before any of the sub supplements we would keep theanine on our cold brew and cold anyone who's on the tap yeah anyone said cold nitro brew knows that like that's it's stronger right it hits you a lot it's a lot higher in caffeine and Sal started to get us to take the theanine after I'd already been using the cold brew for quite some time the way I explain it or what I notice is you know sometimes you could take enough coffee to where you feel a little antsy or anxious or jittery it totally takes that edge off and it doesn't make you and another thing you don't lose the boost and another side effect that you get from caffeine is a really hard spike and then a crash a few hours later it just it doesn't seem to spike as hard no jitteriness and then it's a it's an even high that you kind of get from it so that was what I noticed when you introduced theanine to every client that ever that I ever worked with I don't say ever but the back half of my career I would say that had coffee or would take caffeine I would have them supplement with theanine and they all became converts after that they always theanine with my coffee and they got great results so you don't have to but try it out and see for yourself theanine's super cheap especially if you're somebody who that part of why you don't have coffee lies because you get antsy or jittery try it with theanine see if you notice a difference totally the last category this one a more general category like we did with the first one it's these are adaptogens these are a class of compounds that help the body deal with stress so why is that important a body that's more resilient to stress is going to be healthier feel better it's you're going to get away with a lot more now there's a lot there's a adaptogen category is massive so I'm going to list some of my favorite ones my absolute favorite adaptogenic supplement which also has lots of western scientific backing is ashwagandha absolutely love ashwagandha for its adaptogenic properties it's also one of the most consistent testosterone boosting adaptogens in men with low testosterone and when you take ashwagandha if it's appropriate for you you'll notice you just feel more energy and you just feel generally better adapt your muscles adapt better to exercise they show that people with high stress when they take ashwagandha they build more muscle gain more strength and have better fat loss how did you explain adaptogens when comparing it to like you know supplement like performance supplements or ergogenic or you know vitamin supplements how would you explain adaptions like it's a regulator like how would you yeah literally it literally strengthens your body's ability to handle stress so if you have like a high stress life you're not getting good sleep here's how I like to use adaptogens I like to use adaptogens when I'm pushing the limit with my training if I'm really pushing the limit then I'll start throwing adaptogens into my arsenal and I'll start to feel like okay I feel good I'm not I'm not overtraining quite as easily or if I'm losing sleep or if I'm in a stressful situation you know I used a lot of ashwagandha when I was getting divorced very stressful you know situation so I used it on a regular basis it makes it makes a big difference now the adaptogens are not supplement just like all the other performance supplements you don't need to take these by the way but if you like to take supplements this is a decent category now are they all considered anti-inflammatory or some of them anti-inflammatory they're all so here's how they're anti-inflammatory they're not anti-inflammatory by just lowering inflammation in everybody they're anti-inflammatory by regulating the inflammatory process to keep it so that it's supposed it's in the it's where it's supposed to be so it doesn't hammer inflammation like you know if I took ibuprofen it's gonna lower inflammation no matter what taking an adaptogen will get my body to use its inflammatory process in a more appropriate way so if you if you have high inflammation it will lower inflammation if your inflammation is low you're not gonna go any lower by taking an adaptogen because your body doesn't need to and what are some of the tumoric falls into that category tumoric is good, cordyceps one of my absolute favorites cordyceps is a great performance enhancer because of it I also notice with cordyceps my heat and cold tolerance go through the roof so if I if I use the sauna or I'm gonna go outside in cold weather in fact that's a supplement that I recommended a while ago to construction workers who work outside in harsh weather got tons of messages from people who were using cordyceps and notice a benefit from that. Rodeola, rodeola is a stimulating adaptogen meaning it does give you energy I've recommended it as a replacement for caffeine so if you're trying to wean yourself off caffeine you can take rodeola not everybody does great with rodeola though I'm one of those people if I take rodeola I just don't feel I don't feel good I know Adam you too right? I don't like it either it makes me feel kind of like it makes me feel down yeah yeah it totally puts me in it and it does not give me energy I don't feel fueled from it. Now most people will get energy from it most people take rodeola and lots of soviet studies on rodeola from back in the day that the soviets were huge fans of rodeola so it's got lots of scientific backing and again here's the thing we may be saying oh these are awesome there's great studies if you take it and you feel like shit stop taking it because there's such a huge individual variance again rodeola I tried rodeola at least three times because all the studies show it works really well each time I took it after about the third day didn't feel good and I just okay rodeola doesn't work for me and we made this fifth and last because it probably will make the biggest difference it's the least important of the all the other categories that we covered although there's lots of benefit lots of value I know sal probably uses adaptogens probably more although you had me using some of them when I was trying to raise my testosterone levels I was using ashwagandha so there are there are benefits that I have utilized it but of all the things that we talked about today the reason why it was last is because I think there's the least amount of benefits in comparison to everything yeah I think we did them in the right order right the vitamins and minerals that can replace deficiencies most important protein protein second creatine third caffeine fourth and adaptogens fifth now this doesn't mean that there aren't supplements out there that we're going to talk about that may benefit you but we listed the top five generally speaking from all the people we've ever worked with and the majority of you listening if you had to take a supplement this would be the category we left we left off all the T2 4 fat burners no skate BCAA yeah so there's we intentionally left those out because when you start to get to all that other glutamine like you start separating all these things and making these great claims knock these out first before you waste your money on spending on all these other supplements that are overhyped now if you have a great diet great training regime you get good sleep you're fine you're totally fine you may benefit from taking some little bit extra creatine you can throw in some caffeine every once in a while maybe some adaptogens if you're pushing your body but honestly nothing nothing that we talked about here will replace what a diet training routine good lifestyle can do they don't even come they're not even the same universe yeah so it's not even a comparison and with that go to mine pump free dot com and download all of our guides and resources they're all free they cost nothing you can also find the three of us on Instagram you can find Justin at mine pump Justin you can find me at mine pump Sal and Adam at mine pump Adam