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Comment by ackbar03 | Hacker News Reader

Since supplements have been brought up, what's with the American's obsession over supplements? It's like people are just chomping them down like they're some sort of food stable like bread or rice (or maybe that's just what all the youtube videos want you to think). Its like every bodybuilder on youtube has their own brand of supplements now. Don't even get me started on pre-workout. "Don't feel like working out? Chug this powder!"

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With bodybuilding most bodybuilders will agree that the only (legal) effective supplement for weightlifting is creatine, with vitamin D, fish oil, and multivitamins generally recognized as also useful for general health. But the most important “supplements” are anabolics which of course can’t be legally advertised. The problem is average Joe doesn’t know that, and bodybuilders need to make money (most make very little if any money from bodybuilding) so they do endorsements and marketing for health brands which are legal even if they may not be effective.

Preworkout is a bit different because it actually is marginally useful for workouts, and I think most actual bodybuilders take some form of it. But it’s super cheap to produce so most of the expense is on marketing. You can make homemade PWO with stimulants and “pump supplements” for super cheap if you buy the raw compounds

I’ve found exactly one supplement that had a major impact on my quality of life, and that’s magnesium. Something about magnesium supplements greatly reduced my daily anxiety, to the point that I was amazed because I’d always just imagined I was an “anxious person”.

How much do you take a day an

In dosage?

I'm not the person you asked, but the most important part isn't the dosage, it's the form.

Basically, make sure the magnesium tablet is anything but magnesium oxide - our digestive systems cannot absorb that. Just about any other form (there's like... six of them) will work. Magnesium oxide only helps with constipation, which is also important I guess but a completely different problem.

I take Magnesium Glycinate personally, but have heard good things about Magnesium Threonate.

I take Magnesium Glycinate 400mg once a day. I feel super relaxed after taking it, although I have noticed an uptick in muscle twitches, which extra calcium seems to mitigate.

Magnesium has an important role in the chemistry and development of neurons, and it is very common for people to have a shortage of it:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31336935/

In my case taking magnesium helps with insomnia and ADHD symptoms (although it's impossible to tell if the ADHD improved directly due the magnesium, or due to better sleep)

Certain segments of America tend to have poor diets. Especially the young, working class which happens to overlap with the bodybuilding class which makes whey protein a logical choice. Whey protein. It is very cheap; just add mix in a multivitamin and OTC stimulants like caffeine and you have a very marketable product with a 300% markup.

The YouTube body building demographic is in the same economic class so capitalizing on a product their audience already uses makes perfect sense.

Also, America is one of the few countries with consumer pharmaceutical advertising so marketing supplements is not out of the ordinary.

Approximately nobody mixes whey protein with caffeine. Not sure what you’re talking about

Look up “protein coffee” and maybe try to lay off the snark a bit if you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Supplements don't cure diabetes.

The sardines are a very high-fat food item that will satiate you and potentially replace a big load of carbohydrates. Which would affect the prediabetes.

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