I’m nearing 40. Are you sure it’s normal to feel terrible most of the day when eating right, exercising, and getting enough sleep? This doesn’t sound normal to me.
Can I overdo things and feel like shit? Yeah but mostly I feel great.
My knees are kind messed up but that is from running 500 miles every summer during middle school and high school.
So no, being in your 40s shouldn’t mean feeling like shit.
As to the topic at hand, I use two supplements in addition to prescription blood pressure medications. I take my blood pressure 3 times daily. I can see in the cold hard numbers if I forget to take them.
That point being: All of us deteriorate. We all reach an age/state where conventional medicine has reached its limit and snake oil begins to be look attractive. Not all of it is proven wrong, none of it is proven right.
It falls short of feeling like shit, but there is a kind of death by many cuts that changes the baseline for feeling normal in the wrong direction.
Whether or not that's true, if you replaced someone's magnesium supplement with viagra, you could seriously hurt them.
>> FDA confirmed through laboratory analyses that the [...] products, purchased on www.amazon.com, contained [...] the active ingredients in the FDA-approved prescription drugs Viagra and Cialis, respectively, used to treat erectile dysfunction (ED). These undeclared ingredients may interact with nitrates found in some prescription drugs, such as nitroglycerin, and may lower blood pressure to dangerous levels.
With the amount of mislabelled product out there in circulation (and presumably a general lack of harm), does it still make sense to require a prescription?
I mean, even though 50% of these are intentional overdoses... the other 50% probably didn't know they were doing something that was going to destroy their liver: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK441917/
The interaction with other blood pressure meds appears additive rather than synergistic and Viagra alone only minimally reduced blood pressure. The cough and cold aisle or a cafe presents more dangers.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10078539/
At least over the counter Viagra would be properly labelled about these things.
It's a better regulated industry now, but with the explosion in supplement popularity over the last decade I doubt there is an easy way to test and punish all manufacturers. If you look at the list of supplements included in that warning letter, they have classic nonsensical names that Chinese companies are known for (WeFun, Genergy, etc). None are on www.amazon.com anymore, but hundreds of other supplements show up with absolutely no way of telling whether any of them are clean (e.g. "Endurance 2Nite").
> Chalk is typically almost pure calcite, CaCO3, with just 2% to 4% of other minerals
The supplement I just looked up uses Calcium Carbonate. That could just be purified chalk and be in compliance with the FDA. In fact, it probably is just that.
Animals are eating the world
The issue is that a chronic mistreatment of your body (similar to what you describe). The solution is a chronic loving of your body. Best time to start was 20 years ago. Second best time is today. I wish you luck and I can tell you: it doesn't have to be the way you describe, but it WILL take patience and a life-long commitment.
And yeah: forget supplements. Focus on good food.
Minerals and vitamins come from USP, which is tested and regulated and everyone in the industry gets the same quality (regardless of what they claim). It is what they say it is, if it’s USP.
Where is gets sketchy quickly is all the other stuff, like plant extracts etc
I don’t take many supplements but they all work for their intended purpose.
creatine for muscle recovery and making me a tiny bit stronger
ZMA (zinc, magnesium, b6). for deeper sleep and overcoming multiday hangovers
melatonin for vivid dreams and waking up feeling more refreshed.
b12/d3 for energy
i don’t take them all every day, but they have consistently noticeable effects and have improved my quality of life.
i also just use the store brands from major retailers, and have low expectations.
More importantly when I was in my late thirties I also thought feeling shitty was just part of getting older, but it turned out I had cancer. talk to a doctor.
> My family spends a huge fortune on supplements, most of which are placebos
Unless you are just using “most” as a weasel word to hedge the chance that you might be wrong, using “most” would imply that you are aware of some supplements that aren’t frauds. Can you share them?
Supplements are absolutely regulated. To say otherwise is just ignorant of the law. Those regulations are not well enforced. That is the fault of the US justice department and Congress. The FDA is under-equipped in the way of funding to enforce regulations. And they're dependent on the justice department to actually follow through on enforcement. The justice department is only really interested in enforcement action where harm has occurred.
Amazon can do better, but why are we exclusively placing the onus on them to enforce federal law? Why is the FDA not going after the brands making and selling this shit?
Half of my family spends a huge fortune on supplements, most of which are placebos. If you're young, you may not understand, but for us over 40, life starts to suck, physically. When you're young, your body is very fault-tolerant...have 6 beers and a cheeseburger for supper every day for a week?...nothing a few tums can't fix. Now that I'm over 40, I do everything right (daily exercise, eat healthy, get sleep, etc) and still feel like shit most of the day....same with most my age...thus we're desperate for anything that will make us feel better and not have any side effects that make things worse.
Supplements are the dream and an age-old scam. Maybe punishing big retailers who tolerate fraud will not only reduce false claims, but make the public more aware that so called health experts online are ignorant, scammers, or both.