My Lunchtime Supplement Stack
My Lunchtime Supplement Stack
All the supplements I take with my lunch, including Omega 3s, Vitamin D, Vitamin K, and CoQ10. Supplement Stack series part 3/5
Supplement Stack series:
My Lunchtime Supplement Stack
In part 2 of this series, I took you through all the supplements I take in the morning, including Athletic Greens AG1, Designs for Sport Collagen Complete, and Adapted Nutrition Keto K1000 Electrolyte Powder.
In this part, I’ll take you through what I take with lunch. I usually eat a pretty light lunch and follow it with all my fat-soluble supplements taken with 500ml (16oz) of water.
Thorne Vitamin D
Vitamin D is key to maintaining bone health, immune function, cardiovascular health, and hormone balance. It promotes lean muscle mass and supports healthy brain function. My protocol is to take 10,000 IU 5 days a week together with vitamin K. If I could only take one supplement, it would be vitamin D. You can read about how I experimented my way to my ideal vitamin D supplementation protocol in this post.
Mark Sisson gives a good overview of vitamin D in this post and suggests that “A good general rule is 4000 IU per day supplemented”.
When you’re supplementing with vitamin D, it’s important to have adequate amounts of vitamin K and magnesium. Vitamin D affects how we absorb calcium, vitamin K helps make sure that the calcium goes to the right places, and your body depends on magnesium to make vitamin D available. I talk more about vitamin K below, and I’ll go into further detail on magnesium in part 5 of this series.
In part 1, I talked about how important it is to have goals in place for your supplementation. Taking too much vitamin D can be dangerous, so it’s critically important to have your goals and protocols informed by lab testing. My goal is to maintain my serum vitamin D levels at 50-70 ng/mL (measured by a Vitamin D, 25-OH blood test). The amount of supplementation required for this varies greatly by the individual; I’ve found that taking an average of 7,000 IU/day gets me to this level (roughly equivalent to taking 10,000 IU 5 days/week). I take Thorne Vitamin D, but there are many good vitamin D products on the market.
Thorne Vitamin K
Vitamin K supports the normal and healthy ability of the blood to clot, promotes strong bones, and helps maintain the health and elasticity of arteries. It "pairs up" with vitamin D in the body to help keep calcium in the bones where it belongs and out of the blood vessels and other soft tissues.
Mark Sisson has a good overview of the benefits and forms in this post where he suggests that “Almost everyone should take a vitamin K2 supplement containing both MK-4 and MK-7”.
Thorne Vitamin K provides the highest quality, clinically studied forms of vitamin K1 (1 mg) and vitamin K2, as MK-4 (5 mg) and MK-7 (90 mcg). It contains significantly more MK-4 than most products on the market, and the MK-7 is MenaQ7®, the form used in the majority of MK-7 research.
If you are already supplementing with vitamin D and it has vitamin K, or you want to use a different vitamin K supplement, vitamin K2 in MK-7 form is the most important. I’ve seen it recommended that you get ~100 mcg if you're taking 5,000 IU of vitamin D per day or more.
Thorne Super EPA Pro
The two forms of omega 3 to focus on are EPA and DHA. They help maintain normal triglyceride and cholesterol levels, support healthy circulation by promoting blood vessel elasticity and blood flow, enhance mood, support cognitive health, and promote a healthy inflammatory response throughout the body.
It seems that a 2:1 EPA to DHA ratio is optimal for mitigating inflammatory risk factors, and Andrew Huberman suggests taking 1,000-3,000 mg of EPA per day for brain health based on all the research he has reviewed. It is tough to do with most supplements on the market without taking several servings and potentially consuming too much DHA. Thorne Super EPA Pro contains 1,300 mg EPA and 320 mg DHA per serving.
Because omega 3s can easily oxidize, which negates a lot of the positive effects, it is critically important to ensure you’re taking very high-quality supplements. I personally would not take any that come in a mega-sized container from the grocery store.
I take Thorne Super EPA Pro with my lunch, and I take Designs for Sport Omega 3 Hi-Po with dinner (which contains 750 mg of both DHA and EPA). This results in around 2,000 mg of EPA and 1,000 mg of DHA per day for me. My HDL and triglyceride levels are the best they’ve been since I started with this protocol.
There’s an interesting clip on YouTube with Dr. Rhonda Patrick and Morgan Levine, PhD where they talk about how having a higher Omega 3 Index is correlated with a 5-year longer life expectancy. My goal for this biomarker (which comes from a blood test) is 8% which I was able to hit on my last lab test with the above protocol. P.S. you can check out my post on PhenoAge (Morgan Levine, PhD was one of the creators) in this post.
Thorne CoQ10
Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) is a nutrient found in the mitochondria of cells. It provides support against oxidative stress by enhancing the activity of the body’s master antioxidant – glutathione. CoQ10 is particularly supportive for the cells of the heart, liver, brain, kidney, and muscles. It promotes normal heart rhythm and blood vessel function and helps maintain healthy blood pressure.
I take CoQ10 primarily for heart health benefits. While I’m not currently on a statin, they appear to decrease CoQ10, so it might be particularly important to supplement with it; of course, you should talk with your doctor about this.
I take Thorne CoQ10, which is a proprietary, lipid-based, non-crystalline form of coenzyme Q10 that is nearly three times better absorbed than ubiquinol (the form that most other CoQ10 supplements contain).
Designs for Sport Beef Protein
I drink a protein shake at lunchtime on days when I feel like I did not get enough protein with my lunch or don’t have time to eat a meal. I already drink Whey protein post-workout and sometimes in the evening to increase my protein intake, so I use Designs for Sport Beef Protein at lunchtime to keep my protein sources varied.
This product is made from a bone broth protein called HydroBEEF™. The beef comes from animals raised in Sweden without hormones or antibiotics.
I’ll take you through my pre-workout and post-workout (afternoon) supplement stack in my next post.
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