#412 Supplements To Take After 50, Top 5 Things to Improve Sleep - Q&A

Siim Land (0:00)

All right, first question. What are some recommended supplements for people in their 40s? So I think that there are some supplements that would be more beneficial to take if you are older. Now, 40s is still very young. I think there's not a lot of physiological differences between people and their health between 30s, 40s. And only starting in your 50s, you start to see some of changes in hormones and other aspects of health that would warrant some like specific interventions or specific supplement protocols that would be more beneficial for those people. So I think people in their 40s, you want to take the same supplements in your 40s as you would take in your 30s, because there's not a lot of differences in your, let's say muscle mass and VO2 max, like drastic differences. But in your 50s, there will be some more significant changes. Now, what are the supplements in your 50s, like whether is going to start to have some changes in your hormones and health? Then I have made some posts actually on Twitter as well, about the supplements I would start to take once I reach my 50s. And those supplements are, number one, glycine and NAC. I would still continue taking them. Right now, I'm not taking NAC on a daily basis. I'm taking it a few times a month or something. But I do take glycine daily for the collagen and glutathione benefits. But I would add NAC in my 50s, because after the age of 45, you see a decline in natural glutathione production because of age-related changes. And they find that even healthy individuals who are otherwise healthy, they have a healthy diet, a healthy body composition, even these people see a decline in glutathione levels because of the natural process of aging. So in your 50s, you would benefit from a higher, let's say, support for glutathione production. And glycine and NAC are the best precursors for that. And we have a lot of clinical trials as well. The combination of glycine and NAC has been shown to reduce some of the hallmarks of aging or aspects of that, including inflammation, waist circumference, increased grip strength, gait speed, cognition, and those kind of things. So I think it's a very effective supplement, cheap as well. And you would technically start to benefit more from glycine and NAC on a daily basis after the age of 50 or after the age of 45, depending on your health status. But I personally will start taking glycine and NAC on a daily basis. So I would add NAC on a daily basis. So I'll at least take 2.5 grams of NAC daily plus at least 2.5 grams of glycine. But I'm taking already 10 grams of glycine nowadays. So yeah, I would just add the extra NAC to there. The third supplement would be melatonin because melatonin levels also decline with age. Now the decline in melatonin already starts after puberty. So in your 20s already, you're producing a significantly less amount of melatonin than you did in your teenage years. And once you reach your 50s and more significantly in your 70s and 80s, you see a much greater drop in melatonin levels. So I'm not taking melatonin daily right now because I sleep well. My body is producing still adequate amounts of melatonin, maybe not optimal amounts even in your 20s. But I'm not taking it every day. In my 50s, I will start taking melatonin like every day, and I would increase the dosage as well. So right now, in my 20s, late 20s, and in my 30s, I'll get away with like 0.3, 0.5 milligrams of melatonin to reach the optimal level of melatonin. And in my 50s, I will probably increase it to like 1 milligram every day. And in my 70s and 80s, probably I would increase it even more, so like 1.5 milligrams, because people in their 70s and 80s, they produce like a fraction of the melatonin that you produced when you were 20 years old as well. So the older you get to there, the greater the decline in melatonin tends to be. And this decline in melatonin isn't like inherently a good thing. Melatonin has benefits on sleep. It has other benefits as well in terms of antioxidant defense and anti-inflammatory status. So I think that melatonin is like longevity hormone in that sense and an anti-aging hormone. So, yeah, I'm definitely going to start taking melatonin regularly when I reach 50 The fourth supplement I will take would be creatine, definitely. So if you're young, then you technically don't need creatine either because you already have, you know, relatively speaking, a higher amount of muscle mass and muscle strength and muscle speed and cognitive function as well and bone density. So, you know, you technically don't need creatine in your 20s and 30s, even 40s, perhaps. It doesn't mean that you wouldn't benefit from taking creatine. You would just have slightly higher muscle strength and and other. You get the other benefits of creatine as well. So you're like optimizing it in your 20s, 30s, 40s. But after the age of 50, your health status declines slightly. Specifically, you see a decline in muscle mass, muscle strength and bone density also starts to slightly deteriorate by that age. So at that age, in the 50s, creatine is like a health span supplement. And that protects against some of that decline. So I'm a pretty big fan of creatine for that reason. And I would take it more consistently in my 50s, 60s and 70s. So right now, I do take creatine not every day because I'm also trying to like maximize my VR2 max or trying to increase my VR2 max currently. And I mean, I don't technically need to increase my VR2 max anymore because it's very high already. But I'm just, you know, in my age, I'm trying to OK, you know, it's all downhill from here in terms of VR2 max. So VR2 max peaks when you're 18 years old. And naturally speaking, you know, my VR2 max is much higher right now than it was when I was 18 So it doesn't mean that you can't have a high VR2 max even later in life, but it just means that, you know, starting on from 30s, 40s, it's going to be harder to have a higher VR2 max as well. So right now, I'm kind of reaping the benefits of the high VR2 max to build a buffer or build like a reserve for that. And later in my 50s, the shift, in my opinion, should be more towards muscle mass and bone density because that's where more harm comes from for people after the age of 50 So that's where I'll focus more on creatine. And creatine has cognitive benefits as well. So it's been shown to improve memory function in elderly people. So yeah, if you're like 70, 80 years old, like I would definitely take, give creatine to your grandparents and parents because it's very cheap, safe, and effective. So it's one of the most effective supplements for physical performance and currently cognitive performance as well. And lastly, the fifth supplement I'll start taking after the age of 50 is going to be natokinase. So natokinase, it mostly has benefits for heart health and cardiovascular disease risk reduction. So it has antithrombotic, anti-blood coagulation effects and anti atherosclerotic effects. So there are a few clinical trials showing how natokinase potentially could reduce arterial plaque or the plaque accumulation. And it definitely has protection, like reduces the risk of thrombosis and those kind of things, which does tend to increase after the age of 50 So men, especially, are at a higher risk of heart disease much sooner than women. So, you know, natokinase is like a very cheap and effective supplement for that, in my opinion. And the dose would be at least 6,000 fibrinolytic units, and would probably start taking like 10,000 FUs per day. So these are the list of the supplements I will take after my age of 50 You know, a lot of some of them I'm taking already right now. There might be a few other ones there that I'll add, but these are the ones I think is like the top five. Before I continue on, I briefly mentioned to you about one of my favorite longevity gadgets, which is the Pont Charge infrared sauna blanket. It's a cheaper and more convenient way to take the sauna anywhere at any time. I've talked a lot about the benefits of regular sauna use. I believe taking a sauna regularly is the second best thing for your longevity after exercise. In fact, the sauna mimics a lot of the health benefits of exercise. The sauna is also effective for excreting heavy metals and other chemicals we're exposed to on a daily basis. The bond charge infrared blanket is made of pure leather, and it's low in EMF. It's got a rating of 4.9 out of 5, based on 176 reviews, which is crazy. But I'm not surprised, because I'm using the blanket almost every day, and it gets the same job done as a regular sauna. Plus, it's easy to clean, and you can store it under your bed. All right, back to the video. Next question. Three simplest ways to increase VO2 max. So VO2 max is something that is worthwhile to increase. There's a lot of opinions about whether or not VO2 max is important based on the research that I've done, and I've scoured the literature for quite extensively. And I do think that VO2 max is one of the best physiological markers of healthspan, for sure. And if you extend your healthspan, it also has some effects on your lifespan. So how do you increase the VO2 max? There's many ways you can do it. There's no, I guess, better or worse way. The most important thing to do is to just exercise, specifically some aspects of cardiovascular exercise. So if you just do more cardio, you're going to see an increase in your VO2 max. And just doing more, so adding more hours to the cardio, no matter how much you're doing right now, will still tend to increase your VO2 max. Because if you look at the elite athletes, they exercise hours and hours per week, and they have the highest VO2 maxes out there. So the more you do, the higher your VO2 max typically will be.