My Morning Stack

A simple supplement regimen that includes beef peptide collagens, a non-grassy AG1 alternative, and more.

Welcome to HEAVIES, a modern and spiritual Substack about health and wellness.

Last week, you may have seen a few news headlines floating around about a new aggregate study of nearly 400,000 U.S. adults that found daily multivitamins do not actually do that much to help people live longer, and might—a big might—actually contribute to a slightly lower life expectancy. From the Guardian:

For the latest work, Dr Erikka Loftfield and colleagues at the National Cancer Institute in Maryland analysed data from three major US health studies. All launched in the 1990s and gathered details on participants’ daily multivitamin use. The records covered 390,124 generally healthy adults who were followed for more than 20 years.

The researchers found no evidence that daily multivitamins reduced the risk of death and reported instead a 4% higher mortality risk among users in the initial years of follow-up. 

Here’s the important part, though: 

The greater risk of death may reflect the harms multivitamins can cause or a trend for people to start daily multivitamins when they develop a serious illness.

There’s something really sad, and very American, about housing dailies from a Costco-sized Centrum Silver after your first mild heart attack, which is as strong a precursor to an early death as anything. 

I’ve long believed that supplements should be used how the name suggests: supplemental to your diet, not a fix-all, used to strategically fill the gaps in your nutrition. (Anyway, if that above study freaked you out, please know that another very recent study found strong evidence that daily multivitamins keep you sharper in old age versus a placebo.) 

After having a kid, I’ve been trying to be more intentional with my morning supplement stack, especially since it’s way harder to eat healthy when you’re preparing meals that the whole family has to eat. The other thing no one tells you about having a toddler is that your brain feels like it’s constantly being dragged into the bog by a swamp creature: your thought processes are slow and sludgy, no matter how much sleep you get. 

So, I’ve been trying to keep my stack super simple, with a focus on energy, recovery, and keeping brain fog at bay. Basically, I add a scoop or two of each of the below into a cup of cold water in the morning, give it a few whirrs with a milk frother—I use this $8 one from Amazon—and drink it all down. Nothing fancy.

Then I’m ready to start the day. 

Carnivore Aurelius Beef Collagen Protein

I try to make collagen about 20% of my daily protein intake (which is currently in the ballpark of 130g). My dad has a painful disease called ankylosing spondylitis, a brutal condition in which the cartilage in his spinal column fused into bone, which deeply impacts his mobility. So, I’m a little more paranoid than most people about ligament and joint health…