#403 Supplements I Stopped Taking, Optimal Body Fat Percentage - Q&A

Siim Land (0:00)

In my previous video, I talked about the new supplements that I'm taking, and I shared my updated list. Well, one of the questions was also that what are the supplements that I stopped taking, and what are the red flag supplements? So in this video and in this Q&A, I'm gonna cover this topic and many other questions. All right, the first question, you shared the new supplements you're taking, what are the supplements you stopped taking? So the first supplement that I wanna talk about is spermidine. This supplement has become quite popular over the past few years, and it's essentially a poliamine that is thought to have benefits for autophagy regulation and other aspects of aging and longevity. Now, first of all, there's no human trials on spermidine supplementation that it's going to have any longevity benefits, and the only hint or the only reason why people think that spermidine supplements might have longevity benefits has to do with the studies on dietary spermidine intake. So the spermidine that you get from foods, that has been found to be associated with reduced mortality, reduced hypertension, reduced risk of other diseases quite often in previous studies, but that there's no studies indicating that the supplemental spermidine would have those same effects.

And in fact, one of the recent, at least two of these clinical trials on spermidine have found that number one, the first study found that it didn't even raise blood spermidine levels or spermidine levels, so it probably has little to know by availability, and the second study also found that the spermidine supplements, they didn't improve cognition in elderly people who suffer from like some decrease in cognitive function. So at least right now, it kind of goes to show for me, at least, that there's no point in taking spermidine supplements. There's little to no evidence that they work. A lot of the review articles on spermidine being a longevity supplement are written by people who have, let's say, stocks in spermidine supplements, or these companies.

So personally, I don't want to waste money on this spermidine supplement, and I did stop taking it over the last year and a half, or something like that. I did take it initially just to try it out and experiment it. And some people say that it helps with hair growth, or something that my wife also tried, spermidine, she said it did help with hair growth and nails, for example, but anything else, I haven't noticed. And the clinical trials, at least on spermidine right now, show that it doesn't have any effects. So much rather than taking spermidine supplements, it's better to focus on the dietary spermidine, the spermidine that you get from foods like wheat germ, cheeses, some beef even has, vegetables, mushrooms, and that's how those foods have the most amount of spermidines, that the highest spermidine food is like wheat germ, wheat bran. So you can just buy powder of wheat germ, and it actually tastes quite nice. You can add it to salads or some mix into smoothies or just take it with a spoon. You're going to get much more spermidine, or more like buy available form of spermidine, I guess.

And also like that is aligned with the current studies that the dietary spermidine intake is linked to reduced mortality. So I'm just fine by eating spermidine foods myself.

The second supplement I want to talk about that I stopped taking is calcium alpha-ketoglutarate. This is another more trendy supplement or a supplement that is becoming trendy.

And I do think that there are mechanistic reasons why calcium alpha-ketoglutarate might have some health benefits.

And it has to do with the Krebs cycle, so energy production and things like that, the citric acid cycle. There's also one human study that found that supplementing with calcium alpha-ketoglutarate reduced biological age scores in humans. So this is one of the biggest reasons why people think that it's gonna have longevity benefits. So it reduced the DNA methylation-based biological age in humans. And that's only just one study, unfortunately, and it's obviously not enough for me to keep taking calcium alpha-ketoglutarate. I did take it. It's just very expensive.

So right now, based on this one study, it's not worth it for me, at least, to take it in a regular basis. Like in a few years or something, we might have new studies that either replicate those effects or shed new light on to the topic. So then I might change my mind. Maybe it is worthwhile taking just right now.

There's a lot of supplements that initially are seen or thought to have a lot of benefits, but after a few trials, they become disappointing supplements. So like sperminin, for example, I think it's a bit disappointing results as of now. And who knows what's gonna happen with calcium alpha-ketoglutarate as well. Right now, I'm not taking it because it's pretty expensive. Next supplement on the list is turkesterone. So this is another hype supplement, I guess, over the past few years. So turkesterone is an ectysterone, like a plant or like insect steroid hormone that supposedly helps with muscle growth and muscle hypertrophy. I've tried it. I haven't noticed like muscle growth, but I did notice that I was slightly stronger when I was taking turkesterone. Maybe it's placebo, but I was already, while I was taking the turkesterone, I was already aware of the studies that find that turkesterone has no like beneficial, or it doesn't have anything greater effects for muscle growth and muscle strength than placebo, at least in the human trials that we do have. So it's, you know, my mind was already prepared that, hey, it shouldn't work, but I still noticed like a small increase in my strength, just the strength, the pure strength component of my exercise routine. But I didn't notice anything else. So again, it's a bit more expensive, and it's a very like theoretical or hypothetical supplement as of now. So I'm not taking it because of that reason. Maybe if I really wanna max out my strength gains in the short term, then I might take it again. But again, maybe it's placebo. So I'm not gonna take it right now. And the last supplement that I cover is Alpha GPC. So this is a cholinergic supplement. I do think that it's worthwhile to make sure that you get adequate choline, but in my opinion, it's better to get the choline from diet resources.