In 2012, I became permanently disabled. Seizures, a brain injury, multiple surgeries, PTSD, chronic pain — the kind of diagnosis that makes you stop trusting the life you had and start searching, urgently, for anything that might give some of it back.
I fell victim to nearly all of it. The detox protocols and the entire supplement architecture built around them. Collagen, before I understood enough to evaluate whether it was doing anything at all. If you’re reading this because you’re somewhere in that same search right now, cycling through what the algorithm hands you, I’d guess you’re standing roughly where I was standing then. I’m not writing this from above that experience. I’m writing it from having lived inside it for years.
That’s the honest part most content in this space skips: it took years. Cycling through one thing after another. Thousands of dollars, by the time I added it up. Moments that felt like real breakthroughs, followed by long stretches of nothing, followed by outright failure.
In This Article
How I Actually Evaluate What I Take Now
What changed wasn’t a single supplement working. It was a slower shift in how I understood what I was even looking at — physiology, pharmacokinetics, pharmacology, and an honest read on marketing and incentives. That combination is what finally let me evaluate a supplement claim instead of just reacting to it. What it led me back to, after years of cycling through the newest thing, was almost embarrassingly simple: foundational movement, foundational supplementation, the actual basics of what a body needs, done consistently.
What follows is an honest account of what I’ve personally tried, tested on myself, and either kept, cycled in situationally, or walked away from — and why.
At a Glance
Daily: electrolytes, zinc, magnesium (two forms), digestive enzymes, plus a set of baseline nonnegotiables. Cycled in: berberine, ashwagandha, probiotics. Resolved and retired: alpha-lipoic acid. Kept narrowly: two detox protocols. Tried and stopped: collagen, NAD+ precursors, beef organ capsules, greens powders, mushroom tinctures.
What I Rely On Daily
Electrolytes — Curated, Not Stacked
This is the one that actually worked, and it’s not close. I don’t buy into “electrolyte stacking” — piling on multiple products chasing a number. What I’ve done instead, over years now, is pay real attention to my own sodium, potassium, and magnesium balance and build a personal approach around what my body actually needed. It’s one of the single most impactful things I’ve done for my day-to-day function — steady, compounding difference from getting the basics genuinely right.
Zinc — What Bilateral Pain in Four Joints Was Actually Telling Me
Over the same stretch of months, I developed pain in my shoulders, hips, knees, and back — bilateral, appearing at roughly the same time across all four areas. That pattern made no mechanical sense; a torn tendon doesn’t show up symmetrically in four unrelated locations at once. The back soreness was particularly frustrating, since it involved a site I’d already had multiple surgeries on — soreness I believed had been resolved years earlier.
Physical therapy and orthopedic evaluation offered the standard playbook: more surgery, more medication, more therapy, or “live with it.” Nobody once asked what I was actually taking. So I went back into the research myself. What I found: daily zinc over an extended period blocks the body’s ability to absorb copper, and copper is required for lysyl oxidase — the enzyme your body uses to build and repair collagen and elastin in connective tissue, everywhere, not just one joint. That explained the bilateral, multi-joint pattern: one systemic repair pathway shut down everywhere at once. Low copper also traps iron in storage, and the working theory is that the body compensates by expanding bone marrow inside large joints, producing exactly the deep ache I was feeling.
This is a connection I pieced together myself, not a diagnosis any of the specialists I saw offered. The reason I take zinc at all is real — it supports GABA production through a pathway relevant to seizure threshold, so it isn’t a supplement I could just drop. Since stopping the daily dose, the pain across all four areas has improved together, not one at a time. My path forward is rebuilding copper through whole foods — pumpkin seeds, lentils, poultry, nuts, sardines — rather than adding another supplement to fix a problem the last one caused.
Magnesium — Two Forms, Two Different Jobs
Magnesium shows up twice in my routine, in two forms, because I’m using it for two specific purposes, not one generic one. L-Threonate (Magtein) is for cognitive support — MIT-originated, real if still-developing human trial data behind it. Worth being honest about the marketing here: it’s often sold as “the only form that crosses the blood-brain barrier,” and that specific exclusivity claim is more contested than the marketing suggests — other forms have shown blood-brain barrier activity too. What’s genuinely established is Magtein’s clinical data on cognitive and sleep outcomes specifically.
Glycinate is the more familiar workhorse — calming, well-absorbed, gentle on digestion, evening-appropriate. Using both isn’t redundancy. It’s matching the right form to the right job.
Digestive Enzymes — Noticeably Working
Less bloating, and the general improvement in digestive comfort you’d expect if the enzyme is doing its job. No complicated backstory required — it’s just working, consistently, which is honestly rare enough in this list to note on its own.
What I Cycle In Situationally
Berberine — The One With Real Evidence Behind It
I run a moderately high glucose level, and berberine has some of the more consistent human clinical evidence of any natural compound for exactly that — multiple meta-analyses show real, statistically significant reductions in fasting glucose and HbA1c, in some trials comparable to actual glucose-lowering medication. A specific problem, a specific tool, evidence that climbs high enough on the ladder to justify using it. I rotate it rather than take it continuously.
Ashwagandha (KSM-66) — Real Results, Honestly Described
I didn’t have cortisol tested, so I can’t claim a measured result — what I can say honestly is I felt a real, noticeable difference: calmer, more settled, the kind of shift the research on cortisol modulation would predict, even without a lab number to point to. Using KSM-66 specifically, the subjective effect was clear enough that I still cycle it in when I want that result. A felt result, not a measured one, but still one of the more convincing entries on this list.
Probiotics — Targeted, Not Daily
Probiotics earn a place in specific situations — after a course of antibiotics, during periods of heavy stress, bracketing travel — but I don’t take them as a daily staple. The targeted use makes sense to me in a way that constant daily supplementation doesn’t; the gut isn’t something that benefits from a permanent, unchanging bacterial input regardless of what’s actually going on.
What Resolved and Retired
Alpha-Lipoic Acid — Resolved Its Job, So It’s Retired
I took ALA specifically for nerve pain and nerve damage from back and neck injuries — and its evidence base actually fits that use; ALA’s strongest clinical support is for diabetic peripheral neuropathy symptoms specifically, not blood sugar control the way it’s often marketed. That nerve pain has resolved. I’m not still taking it on the theory it might help something else. It did the job it was there for.
What Earned a Permanent, Narrow Place
Detox Protocols — Most Are a No, Two Are a Yes
There are a hundred versions of this online, and I’ve tried a meaningful number over the years. Most didn’t earn a permanent place. The two that did: the Heavy Metal Detox Smoothie built around Anthony William’s protocol, and the celery juice protocol, both covered in detail elsewhere on this site. Everything else got set aside — not because detox is inherently useless, but because most of what’s marketed under that name didn’t hold up to scrutiny.
What I Tried and Stopped
Collagen Supplements — Two Very Different Results
I saw improvement at first — I was significantly deficient, so almost anything would move the needle initially. But it plateaued. What actually changed things was understanding the real building blocks your body uses to synthesize its own collagen, rather than supplying pre-made collagen and hoping it gets used. Once I supported that synthesis pathway directly, I saw drastic improvement. Collagen supplements themselves: no longer part of what I do.
NAD+ Precursors (NMN, NR) — and NAD Direct
Using the same evidence ladder I apply everywhere: the mechanistic story is compelling, and cell-culture and animal data are strong. What’s missing is human RCT evidence that these precursors translate into the outcomes people are buying them for. I never fully started, because the evidence hadn’t climbed high enough to justify the cost.
Beef Organ/Liver Capsules — No, and Not for the Usual Reasons
The carnivore world treats beef and organ meats as close to the healthiest thing a person can eat. My experience runs the opposite direction, and it’s not about fat or cholesterol — it’s adrenaline. Even a small amount of conventionally-raised beef produces a noticeable uptick in nervous system irritability within hours for me. That link is one drawn from holistic health traditions rather than peer-reviewed clinical research, and I’d rather say that plainly than let the claim pass as settled science. Organ capsules concentrate the same tissue into supplement form, which doesn’t change the underlying issue. More on the full reasoning in Choosing the Cleanest Meats for Healing.
Greens Powders and Mushroom Tinctures — Whole Food Over Processed Extract
Both have a legitimate use case, but I land in the same place with each: I prefer the whole-food version — actual vegetables, actual mushrooms a few times a week — over the processed, concentrated form. Processing loses efficacy the intact food doesn’t.
The Baseline Nonnegotiables
A handful of these don’t have a dramatic story — steady parts of the foundation, chosen for well-established reasons rather than personal trial and error.
- Vitamin C — a cofactor the body needs to synthesize its own collagen, which matters more here given everything above about connective tissue repair.
- B-Complex — supports energy metabolism and nervous system function broadly.
- NAC — a glutathione precursor supporting liver detoxification directly. I’ve been a strong believer in this one for years.
- D3 + K2 — addresses a gap common to anyone managing chronic illness with limited outdoor time. The pairing matters: K2 directs the calcium D3 helps absorb toward bone rather than letting it accumulate where it shouldn’t — not optional given the bone-density risks already covered elsewhere on this site.
- Vegan EPA/DHA — covers the same brain-health and anti-inflammatory territory omega-3s are known for.
- Ubiquinol CoQ10 — supports mitochondrial energy production directly, foundational given how much of my history involves fatigue and neurological recovery.
- Psyllium Husk — straightforward fiber support, taken with adequate water.
What Deserves Its Own Article
A few of these have enough behind them that a short paragraph wouldn’t do them justice — I’ve tried each thoroughly and landed on “no,” but the full reasoning is coming in dedicated posts: Creatine, protein powders (every category on the market), and colostrum.
Where This Leaves Me
None of this is a template for anyone else to copy directly. What I hope it demonstrates is the process more than the specific list — years of genuine trial, real cost, real disappointment, and eventually a set of tools I can actually explain the reasoning behind, rather than a stack I accumulated out of hope.
I hold all of this loosely, the way I try to hold most things: “Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31, NASB). Stewardship of this body was never about getting the stack perfect. It’s about paying honest attention, adjusting when the evidence or my own experience says to, and not mistaking effort for wisdom.
See the Full Philosophy
Want to see how this fits my broader daily healing system? “My Daily Supplement Routine” lays out the full philosophy this piece builds on.
Read the Full Story
The evidence-ladder thinking running through this entire piece — how to evaluate a claim instead of just reacting to it — is the subject of “You Do You.”
Sources & Further Reading
- Copper, Lysyl Oxidase, and Extracellular Matrix Protein Cross-Linking. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
- Effects of Administering Berberine Alone or in Combination on Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. 2024.
- Efficacy of Alpha-Lipoic Acid in the Management of Diabetes Mellitus: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
- The Effects of Magnesium L-Threonate (Magtein®) on Cognitive Performance and Sleep Quality in Adults: A Randomised, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial. Frontiers in Nutrition, 2025.
- Magnesium L-Threonate and the Blood-Brain Barrier. Dr. Taylor Wallace.
Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before starting, stopping, or combining supplements, especially if you use medications or have health conditions. David Julian, Natural Vitality Advocate, is not a licensed medical professional. Views expressed are personal and based on lived experience — they do not guarantee specific outcomes.