My Top Five Supplements at 71 (Out of Over 25)

My best friend called me the other night. We have known each other a very long time, and for a while now he has been following bits of what I do — creatine in the morning, apple cider vinegar gummies, and olive oil, because I told him he should. He has not upgraded to the good stuff yet.

Then he asked me a question I have never actually answered.

“What would your top five be?”

Over Twenty-Five Things, and I Had Never Ranked Them

I take over 25 things every morning. They are all listed, with doses, in my supplement stack. Everything I do is public. But nobody had ever asked me to put them in order, and I realised on the phone that I could not do it off the top of my head.

That bothered me. If I cannot say which five matter most, I am not running an experiment. I am just taking pills.

So I told him the three I was sure of, and then I sat down afterwards and worked out the rest.

I know this list will change over time. But as of today, this is the list.

The Three I Named on the Phone

1. Apple Cider Vinegar

I used to take 40 mg of prescription famotidine every morning and every night for heartburn. After a while on apple cider vinegar, I came off it. I have been completely off that prescription for almost a year.

That is why it is number one. It is the only thing on this list where I can point to a result like that in my own life.

That is my experience, not a study, and the research on vinegar for heartburn is thin. If you take a heartburn prescription, do not stop it because of me. Talk to your doctor first, because heartburn that keeps coming back can be a sign of something that needs treating.

It also comes with a warning I have to repeat every time.

I do not drink apple cider vinegar any more. A doctor told me to stop immediately because of what the acid was doing to my tooth enamel — and enamel does not grow back. I was drinking two tablespoons first thing every morning and again every evening before bed. Straight acid on your teeth twice a day, day after day, is close to the worst way to take it. I switched to gummies with the mother instead, and now I take them every morning and every evening. My friend is already on the gummies, which is the right call. The full story is in why I stopped drinking it.

2. Extra Virgin Olive Oil

My friend started drinking olive oil because I told him to, but he is still buying the cheap stuff, which often is not what the label claims. Real extra virgin oil, the kind that catches at the back of your throat, is one of the few things where the evidence is genuinely strong. I take three tablespoons a day.

The strongest evidence is PREDIMED, a Spanish trial of 7,447 people aged 55 to 80 who were at high risk of heart disease. The group eating a Mediterranean diet with extra virgin olive oil had about 30 percent fewer heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular deaths than the group told to cut back on fat. That was a whole way of eating, not olive oil on its own, and the trial was re-analysed and republished in 2018 after problems with how some people were assigned. The result held. Almost nothing else on my list has a randomised trial like that behind it.

The longevity numbers are just as interesting. A Harvard study that followed more than 92,000 American adults for 28 years found that people who had more than half a tablespoon a day were 19 percent less likely to die during the study than people who rarely used it, and 29 percent less likely to die of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. A study like that shows a link, not proof, and the benefit showed up mostly when olive oil replaced butter, margarine and mayonnaise.

Then there is that catch at the back of your throat. It comes from a compound called oleocanthal, and researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center found it blocks the same inflammation enzymes as ibuprofen. Compounds like that are exactly what cheap, refined olive oil is missing. A 2025 analysis of the PREDIMED data found the heart benefit tracked with extra virgin oil, while ordinary olive oil showed weaker links. That is the whole reason I keep telling my friend to upgrade.

3. Creatine

Creatine was the first thing I ever started taking, which makes it the oldest item in my stack. Everything else was added after it.

Most people think of it as a gym supplement. I take it for my brain.

Your brain burns an enormous amount of energy, and creatine is part of how cells recycle that energy fast. The catch is that muscle pulls creatine out of the blood first, and far less of it reaches the brain. That is why I take 15 grams a day, all of it in one cup of morning coffee, instead of the 5 grams usually recommended for muscle.

The brain research is encouraging but not settled. A 2023 review of memory trials found the clearest benefit in older adults. Other researchers then pointed out a statistical problem, and when the authors re-ran the numbers the overall effect disappeared, but the benefit in older adults held. In a small 2025 pilot study at the University of Kansas, people with Alzheimer’s who took 20 grams a day for eight weeks ended up with about 11 percent more creatine in their brains and scored better on several thinking tests. There was no placebo group, so that needs a proper trial before anyone leans on it. Europe’s food safety regulator also reviewed the evidence in 2024 and did not accept that creatine has been shown to improve thinking.

So I am not claiming it protects my brain. I am betting that it might, on something cheap, safe and well studied for muscle. Why I take it every day.

One practical note if you get bloodwork. Creatine raises creatinine, a number doctors use to check your kidneys, so tell your doctor you take it before anyone reads that result.

The Two I Had to Think About

Neither of these came to me on the phone. Both made the list once I sat down with the whole stack in front of me, and they made it for completely different reasons.

4. Timeline Mitopure Gummies

These contain urolithin A, a compound your gut bacteria are supposed to make from foods like pomegranates, walnuts and berries. Most people do not make much of it. In one of the company’s own studies, only 12 percent of participants had any detectable urolithin A before they started. Eating the food is not a reliable way to get it.

In animal studies, urolithin A switches on the process cells use to clear out worn-out mitochondria, the parts of the cell that make energy, and replace them with new ones. In muscle, that is the whole game. Holding onto muscle is most of what my training is for.

What earns it a place in my top five is that it has been tested in people, not just in mice or a dish. In a four-month trial in older adults, 1,000 mg a day improved muscle endurance, although the six-minute walk test did not improve significantly. A second trial in middle-aged adults found leg strength up about 12 percent. Both trials were funded by the company that makes it, and I would want to know that if I were reading this.

I take two gummies a day, which is 500 mg, half the dose used in the older-adult trial. It is also one of the more expensive things I take, at about $3.33 a day. These are the gummies I buy (affiliate link).

5. Telo-Vital

This is the one that breaks my own rule, and I want to say that plainly.

Telo-Vital was developed by Dr. Bill Andrews, who has spent more than 35 years studying telomeres, the protective caps on the ends of your chromosomes that shorten as you age. I interviewed him on the show. His team tested more than 10,000 plant extracts looking for ones that switch on telomerase, the enzyme that rebuilds those caps.

Here is the part that matters. Telo-Vital has not been through human clinical trials. What has been shown is that the extracts switch on telomerase in human cells in a lab dish. That is a long way from proving a capsule adds healthy years to a person. By the standard I just used for Timeline, it should not be on this list.

It is on the list because it is one of the few things in my stack I am measuring directly. I take one capsule with breakfast every morning, I wrote down my baseline before I started, and the real numbers come with my next full panel in January 2027. Most of what I take I will never be able to measure on its own. This one I can, and whatever the numbers say will go on the site.

This is the Telo-Vital I take (affiliate link).

Why the Order Actually Matters

Nobody starting out should take twenty-five things. That is not a recommendation, it is the result of six years of adding one thing at a time and keeping the ones that earned their place.

If you are where my friend is — two or three things in and wondering what to add next — the order is the whole answer. Start with the ones that are cheap and well studied, pay attention to what actually changes for you, and add the speculative ones later, if at all.

That is the honest version. Most of what I take falls in the speculative bucket. Four of these five do not. The fifth is Telo-Vital, and it is there because I am measuring it, not because the evidence is in.

What I Am Telling Him to Do Next

Get bloodwork before adding anything else. He has no idea what his numbers are, which means he cannot tell whether any of this is working. Every number I track is public, and it is the only reason I can say anything useful about what changed.

If you want the rest of what I do, my full daily regimen is in my protocols, the training side is under fitness, every number I track is in test and stats, and the products I actually use are on my discount codes page.

What would your top five be? Tell me in the comments — I am curious how different they are from mine.

Affiliate disclosure: the Timeline and Telo-Vital links in this post are affiliate links. If you buy through them, I earn a commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Live long and prosper,
Gary

A note from Gary: I am not a doctor, and I am definitely not your doctor. I am a 71-year-old man running a 129-year experiment on himself in public. Nothing here is medical advice. Talk to your physician before changing anything. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.