Sup-Lament

Supplements, man. 

One day you're getting ready to hit the club at 11pm and going to work still slightly drunk the next day (er, so I've heard ... cough) and then the next, you're downing magnesium and creatine instead of vodka shots and doing a deep dive into online reviews of probiotics.

To be fair, I've always been a fan of taking pills in hopes that they improve me from the inside. I don't know if my mom fed me some sort of propaganda along with my Flintstones multivitamin or if I just came to my own (imaginative) conclusions, but I literally recall being a kid and thinking I could feel my chewable vitamins working. And since childhood, I've pretty much always taken a vitamin at the very least, but these days it's getting kind of ridiculous. (Now that I think about it, my brother is the same way, so I'm gonna have to lay the blame on our mother for this one. Sorry, Mom.)

I have supplements I take in the morning on an empty stomach and supplements I take before bed and supplements I take with my first meal and supplements I can't take together because they pretty much cancel each other out (looking at you, iron and zinc). I have supplements for my hair and skin and nails and supplements for my bones and supplements for my brain and supplements that I just take in hopes that they will do ... something positive (?). 

My husband, who does not take — and has never taken — any supplements whatsoever and gets his vitamins from red meat and beer, likes to scoff at my hopeful cornucopia of good health (pictured below). 

(Not pictured: my extra large bag of collagen powder and my jumbo bottle of creatine.)

He says I just have expensive pee. And, I don't know, maybe he has a tiny point? I don't exactly feel like one would hope to feel after ingesting an entire aisle at GNC. But I'm also in my mid-forties, so who knows? Maybe I would feel like absolute crap if I didn't take all these things, and my baseline level of physical mediocrity IS the improvement. 

Honestly, out of all the things I take, there are only a couple that I can truly feel the difference when I don't take them. And they are these two things (with links if you're interested — yes, these are affiliate links, but use 'em or don't!):

My nails are AWFUL, so I've taken literally dozens of hair, skin, and nail supplements — and out of them all, this is the one I've noticed the most difference with. They smell kind of garbage-y TBH, so I hold my breath when I swallow them, but within the first few weeks of taking them I was growing a ton of new baby hairs which was a huge surprise! (Get them with this link!)

And then this:

Y'all, I went down a ridiculously deep rabbit hole of research on the best magnesium supplements and settled on this one, and I do notice a huge difference in my sleep when I take these an hour or so before bed. Not that my sleep is optimal by any means (because again, mid-forties) but it would be a WRECK without my magnesium supps. (Get 'em here!) 

Anyway, whether the rest of the stuff works or not, I will continue spending a small fortune in the hopes that they're extending my longevity, keeping wrinkles and Alzheimer's at bay, making my arteries clean as a whistle and whatever else they purport to do. My pee will continue to be, as my husband says, "expensive."

... Although he has no room to talk. Red meat and beer are expensive too!