5 supplements for stress, mood, and recovery

Are you feeling like you are not recovering or you are stressed in your body or your mind, or you're waking up tired, or you feel like you're working harder than results show? Maybe your mood is not where it needs to be. Now, whether you're doing all the things we talk about on the show, like training and dialing in your nutrition, I do want to talk about supplements occasionally, being a nutrition coach. So today I'm gonna give you five specific supplements that target stress, sleep, and recovery in a way that could give you a boost to the training and the diet that you're already trying to put in place to build muscle and to burn fat. And one of these on the list has actually been shown to perform as well as prescription antidepressants for moderate symptoms at a fraction of the cost with fewer side effects. So we're gonna get into all of those today. Okay, you get a lot of influencers telling you what to take, you get a lot of programs, a lot of high-priced products based on supplements. And I hear from a lot of you that you go straight to these oftentimes, wonder why they don't work. And I ask, are you lifting? No. Are you watching your protein? No. So I kind of want to put those in two different buckets. In other words, you should be doing the basics and see how that goes, see what's left. But supplementation can also be helpful as well. There are some things on the list today I'm gonna talk about that I would recommend to anyone, no matter what. And then there's other things that are really up to you to investigate, potentially talk with your healthcare provider, functional doctor, whatever, if you need to. I'm not here to plug these or give you affiliate links or anything. Okay. I just want to talk about five compounds that have some clinical evidence behind it, which again is mixed at times, and at times it's stronger. What doses have been studied, and how do the outcomes matter to you? As someone who is lifting weights, you want to lose fat, you want to build muscle, but you're stressed or you've got issues with mood or things like that, which is very common in the audience that I'm speaking to. If you are in your 40s, 50s, or beyond, because of hormones, because of lifestyle, there's a lot of reasons that we have these. And some of you are doing all the things and you still have problems with stress, mood, sleep, et cetera. And then stick around to the end because I'm gonna share a 30-second stress audit, three signs that your recovery is the thing holding you back. And that can be very helpful for you. I'm a big fan of those sorts of exercises. So here's what we're covering today. First, why stress and sleep are not luxuries. They're really important to your body composition. And you probably already know that, but it's good to understand why again and get refreshed on them before we then connect them to okay, here are five supplements that I might recommend, depending on the person with the form, the dose, the study behind them, and the safety concerns for each, because nuance is important. One of them has been banned in a country. And I want to make sure you listen all the way through the episode to get all the details. And remember, this is not medical advice. I'm not specifically recommending any of these to you. I'm just sharing the information on them. So before I share those supplements, I need you to understand why we're talking about this on this podcast. When we this is a strength training and nutrition podcast, this is not a wellness or functional or supplement-styled podcast. And there are those out there. There are those. I'm kind of sick of them. I'm trying to have, you know, no more guests, for example, who are in that world. Although I just to be fair to my guests, all the guests I've had have been amazing. There is a study from 2010 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, where it was a small study, 10 participants, age 41, so probably like a lot of you, and they were on the same calorie deficit with the same food and calories, but the only difference was the sleep. This is the one, the study I've mentioned quite a few times, where one group got eight and a half hours, the other group got five and a half hours. Both groups lost the same weight, but the well-rested group lost a lot more fat and less lean mass. And the sleep-restricted group lost a lot less fat and more lean mass. And I always like to mention this study. It's just a microcosm of something that's been seen time and again. And I definitely see this with clients where the sleep is the one thing left holding them back. They're doing all the other things, and for some reason, they still get five hours of sleep. And they're asking me, why isn't it working? Why is my metabolism so low? Why can't I lose weight? I'm like, you're getting five hours of sleep. Okay, but I can't really change that. What else can I do? And honestly, it's worse than that because when you're chronically stressed and your cortisol is high, your body, that is the catabolic hormone where in a short burst, like post-workout, when your cortisol is up, it's great. It helps clear the metabolic debris and all that. But when it's chronically elevated, then it's gonna accelerate that muscle protein breakdown. And it's also gonna increase the visceral fat storage in your abdomen. So more belly fat. And for women in perimenopause, we see we tend to see this compound because of the hormones, the declining progesterone, which is like a buffer for cortisol. So now it's you have less of that. But even for men with testosterone decline, that's a less anabolic environment in your body to counteract these things. So if you are training hard, if you're trying to eat well, but you're chronically stressed and you're sleep deprived, it's like you got holes in the bucket. It's like you got holes in the bucket. You could pour more water in, more volume, more protein, whatever, but they're just gonna keep draining out on the other end. So you're like, okay, Philip, but doesn't that mean I should just fix my sleep? Perhaps. But what if something is lacking, like a nutrient in your body that is causing it, making it harder for you to sleep? Can we address these in parallel? And that's kind of where I think there's a usefulness to this. So let's get into the five supplements. Supplement number one is magnesium. And so I like to start with one that's super common and effective, and like I have no problem at all recommending to just about everyone. And you want a bioavailable version of this? This could be magnesium glycinate or L-theanate or one of the blends. People always ask, what should I get? Just get something that is highly bioavailable. You can Google it, ask ChatGPT, is this bioavailable? Whatever. And the reason magnesium is important is because about half of adults don't consume enough from food. And honestly, I think it's more than that that just don't get enough, especially as we get older. Um, women between the ages of 51 to 70, two-thirds of them fall below the requirement. And then exercise increases your need for magnesium above sedentary people. So you're you're definitely short on this. Like I know you're short on magnesium. Most people are. It's very, very hard to get enough in the modern food supply and the way most people eat, even if you're trying to eat quote unquote healthy. And the cool thing is we have studies that compare magnesium intake to sleep. And the largest sleep trial to date was Schuster 2025, 155 participants, and they tested magnesium bisglycinate at 250 milligrams daily for four weeks. Their insomnia severity index dropped 3.9 points in the group that took the magnesium versus dropping 2.3 points for placebo, and most of it happened in the first two weeks. And people who had low dietary magnesium to begin with saw the biggest intake, which makes total sense because if you're depleted of a nutrient, repletion of the nutrient works. And for a lot of you who are undereating, underfueling, you probably have some form of malnutrition. In fact, I know you do across many areas. Now, I have notes in here with a bunch of other studies. I think I'm gonna bore you to death. There have been studies of the different types of magnesium that looked at these insomnia scores. And just in general, they see them go down when you take magnesium. We also see an improvement in depression scores and anxiety scores. And again, it's within two weeks, so it's pretty quickly. And I've had plenty of clients who they just started taking magnesium and they're like, wow, my migraines went away. I'm feeling better, I have more energy, I can sleep better. So that's why I put this first on the list. I think it's a really powerful supplement. And the mechanism is that magnesium increases an enzyme that converts active cortisol to inactive cortisol, which is why, even if they directly measure cortisol in the urine, they also see an improvement, right? Now, again, the form matters. So the cheapest one is not the one you want. That's magnesium oxide, like you'll see it in Walmart or whatever. I would say glycinate is the highest among the oral forms and gentlest on your stomach. Feonate is the one that gets into the brain. So some people buy magnesium blends because they're supposed to have all these other benefits. And you may want to experiment with different ones, like take one for, say, a full month and then switch to a different one and try it out. It's worth experimenting if this is a concern for you. And for most people, you're gonna want to take at least two to four hundred milligrams. Most pills are like three to five hundred milligrams of elemental magnesium in the evening. Take it in the evening. I usually take mine a couple hours before bed, so it's after dinner, but not too far after dinner. If you want the cognitive and the brain benefits, you might want to target in on L3N8. And all of these have elemental magnesium, but then they also have these other compounds. And really, the only issue with a too high of a dose could be a GI issue, and probably that's it. Again, this is not medical advice today. I'm not telling you to take this, I'm not telling you what dose to take, I'm telling you what the evidence has looked at. So that is number one, magnesium. Please, everybody consider it. And with all these supplements, it is totally up to you, you with your doctor, you with your medical professional, and your own mind and choices whether you want to experiment with these or not, because they're not FDA approved, yada, yada. Okay. Supplement number two is omega-3 fatty acids. I didn't think, or you probably didn't think that would be on the list. Maybe, maybe, maybe not. Okay. So you've got one of the most studied things on the list is omega-3 fatty acids, EPA, and DHA. And for mood, EPA seems to be the thing that will help with your mood. Um, and that's been measured through depression scores. Whereas DHA seems to not have an impact on those things. Now, one interesting thing is if you're healthy or if you get enough already, it doesn't make a difference and it doesn't prevent, it doesn't prevent depression necessarily. It treats existing symptoms. So just be aware of all these things. These are important distinctions. Now, inflammation, systemic inflammation in your body, this is one of the big things talked about in terms of recovery, where omega-3s can be helpful. And there have been a ton of studies on how omega-3, like two to four grams per day, which is a little more than you would think. Like you got to be careful when you buy this stuff because you'll see a dose might have far less than that or might not have as much EPA and DHA in there. So you have to just kind of do the math and check for yourself based on your budget. But they found that omega-3s reduce CRP, TNF alpha, and IL6. And these are those three inflammatory markers we talk about a lot on the show that accumulate with age and that do affect a lot of things and your recovery and things like that. And when I say recovery, I mean literally like delayed onset muscle soreness can be reduced because your inflammation is reduced. Now you might say, well, inflammation is a natural response to the body adapting to the stressor, and that's true, but you don't want too much inflammation. So you might hear something like one to two grams of combined EPA and DHA for general health, and that's probably the dose you'll see in a lot of things. I would aim for probably more than that, like double that. However, here's my disclaimer high dose omega-3 is associated with a modest increase in arterial fibrillation risk, about 25% in a particular meta-analysis. And if you have a history of heart issues, definitely talk to your doctor. All of this stuff is not medical advice. Okay. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Supplement number three here. And a lot of you are already taking this, it's become more and more popular, and that is Ashwagandha, specifically KSM 66. This is the one that seems to have this pretty massive link to cortisol, but it also has a lot of safety caveats you have to be aware of. So the landmark trial on this was Chandrosikar, I think you say, 2012, 64 participants, and this was 600 milligrams a day of KSM 66. That's the amount that is in something like Legion's version of Ashwagandha. There's 600 milligrams, considered the like optimal clinical dose. And they saw that serum cortisol in these participants dropped almost 28% versus placebo. Their perceived stress scale scores dropped 44%. There have been more recent meta-analysis that confirmed a reduction of cortisol. And then for lifters for strength for muscle, there's a study from 2015 that saw people taking Ashwagandha had better gains in their bench press, their leg extension, their muscle size, their testosterone with lower creatine kinase levels, which suggests they had better recovery. Now, these were untrained individuals, which I always have to say is a huge caveat because you know newbies often amplify the effect of any of these interventions, from what I've noticed. But studies in trained individuals do still show some smaller but meaningful benefits. And then we have sleep. There was a study in 2019, Legade, or Langade, I should say, and they used what's called actigraphy to measure things like sleep onset latency, sleep efficiency, total sleep time in insomnia patients. And the KSM66 Ashwagonda, 600 milligrams a day for 10 weeks, significantly improved all of those. So that is the generally recommended dose that you can buy. And some products have it in there, like the multivitamin I take from Legion has ashwagandha in there. I don't think it's to that dose within the multivitamin, but that's what you would get if you bought it on itself. Now, let's talk about safety here because there is some data out there that connects liver injury to ashwagandha. And most of these resolved after people stopped taking it, but there were three patients with pre-existing liver disease who did die. And it's typically two to 12 weeks after starting use. So Denmark banned it in April 2023. France, Sweden, and a few other European countries have issued warnings. Now, there's no randomized trial so far that has reported serious liver events, but oftentimes they are excluding people with liver disease, of course, and they don't go for very long, you know, eight to 12 weeks. So my recommendation is if you have any history of any medical issue whatsoever, including liver issues, you're not using this podcast as advice anyway, right? This is just information. Talk to your doctor. Don't just take stuff on your own. If you've got an issue, pre-existing conditions, talk to your medical professional. If you are not concerned and you are trying to, you want to see how it works, consider cycling it like eight to 12 weeks on, four weeks off. I think I've seen anecdotally, sometimes people get tolerant of it and it helps to do that anyway. But there, who knows what the side effects are with something like this, an adaptogen, right? We've heard it can potentially stimulate thyroid function. So I give you this not to scare you, but because you have to make an informed decision. So speaking of making informed decisions, this is the kind of thing we love to do inside Eat More Lift Heavy. Eat More Lift Heavy is my 26-week coached program. Two coaches in there, Coach Carol and myself, designed to build every skill you need for lasting body composition change. You want to lose fat, you want to build muscle and do it in a structured way. Each week we'll do that. Week six, especially in the program, is just dedicated to sleep stress and recovery, where you learn to use your own biofeedback data to identify, hey, what is limiting my progress? And then week 16 is the supplements and micronutrient review, and we're gonna help you audit your stack of supplements against the evidence so you can make personalized changes for yourself. So if you're tired of all the guesswork, if you want structured coaching to address the whole picture, not just macros, not just training, those are like 5% in the equation. Go to eatmoreliftheavy.com. I'll drop the link in the show notes. That is eatmoreliftheavy.com. All right, let's get back to the list. We've got supplement number four is saffron extract. Now, a lot of people haven't heard of this, and it's not for everyone. But there was a study in 2019 of it was a meta analysis of 23 trials, randomized controlled trials, and they compared it to placebo, and it significantly improved depression and anxiety. And then there have been some trials that tested saffron directly against SSRIs, and it actually found that it was similar to several SSRIs. Fluxetine is one in particular, and they found that they were statistically equivalent to SSRIs for depression and anxiety with fewer adverse events. Now, I want to be clear here this applies to mild to moderate symptoms. Saffron is definitely not a treatment for severe major depression. Most of these are small trials. Who knows how good the methodology is? But the most recent one from 2025, Lepresti, had 202 participants. It used 28 milligrams a day of standardized saffron extract and an improved depression scores. And we think this works because saffron contains crocin and saffronol. Crocin inhibits the re-uptake of serotonin, dopamine, and neuro or norepinephrine. You probably recognize those. And so SSRIs target only serotonin. Whereas the saffronol, right, the saffron extract compound, it binds to your GABA A receptors, and that is the same target as benzodiazepines, but at a much milder intensity. So you get this multi-target mechanism from one compound. So I hope I don't, I'm not losing you there. I went a little technical. I had to write that down to say it the right way. But it's kind of crazy. And for the women in our audience, I know a lot of women who take this. I know there have been some studies, specifically with women, that showed it it helped with PMS severity, for example. And there are supplements that combine saffron extract with magnesium, with I think L-theanine, which is amino acid, that also is shown to help with stress and also helps with performance, like in the gym. So you gotta look it up and find the right thing. There is, you know, the safety margin you have to think about, the supplement dose, the toxicity thresholds, all that stuff. And please, please, please look into it yourself. But I wanted to put it on your radar. That's saffron extract. Supplement number five is Ltheanine, which is what I just mentioned. And I'll say it's probably the gentlest supplement on the list, probably the safest based on the evidence. Again, I'm saying probably as a disclaimer, it's an amino acid. It's found in tea. Its effects are documented on something like EEG because it increases your alpha brain wave activity. And that's associated with alertness or relaxed alertness. So that's like your the state between full wakefulness and drowsiness. So it's like you get relaxed but without getting sedate, getting sedated, which is weird because I also see it recommended for performance in the gym. So it's like it helps you focus and get relaxed, but it doesn't make you tired, right? Like magnesium or you know, magnesium could actually make you a little bit tired or drowsy. So these alpha wave increases that happen pretty quickly after you ingest it, something like 45 minutes, can then do like reduce your cortisol and make you feel more relaxed. And then when we look at sleep, there's some moderate improvements in sleep quality as well, and daytime dysfunction, as they call it. So it's more of a sleep quality thing, not a sleep quantity thing. And apparently there's a really good synergy with caffeine, where when you take it with caffeine, you can improve your speed and accuracy on attention tasks, get less distracted compared to caffeine alone. Caffeine only improves accuracy, but with L-theanine, it seems to also improve speed and attention or speed and lower distraction. It also seems to blunt the jitteriness of caffeine, but preserve or enhance the cognitive benefits. So it's kind of interesting. Again, look into it yourself. There on the on the downside, it doesn't seem to affect people with more severe symptoms of anxiety, you know, like generalized anxiety disorder. So again, this is more for everyday stress, not clinical use. And I think the dosage on here is the sweet spots like 200 milligrams. By the way, the saffron extract, I think it was 28 or 30. So this is 200. And it's also generally recognized as safe, GRAS status with the FDA. It's been approved for unlimited food use in Japan since 1964. And they've looked at doses up to 900 milligrams with no adverse events in trials. So it sounds like a pretty safe supplement and one more to look at. All right, now remember, I promised you a 30-second stress audit at the end. Three signs that your recovery might be the bottleneck coming up in just a second. But if this episode made you realize, hey, my approach to body composition needs to be more complete. Maybe I'm not thinking about the recovery in stress or the supplementation. Maybe I'm not lifting weights. Maybe my nutrition isn't dialed in. That is why we have eat more lift heavy. That is why I made this 26-week coach program. We walk you through not just nutrition and training, but sleep, stress, biofeedback, supplements, everything else that determines whether the work that you're putting in actually shows up on your body. We do not sell supplements. We don't. We teach you how to make smart decisions about them based on your data. Go to eatmoreliftheavy.com to learn more and join us. The link is in the show notes. That's eatmoreliftheavy.com. Okay, here's the stress audit that I wanted to share with you. Three signs that your recovery is the bottleneck. Sign number one is that your training performance is declining or stalling, even though it's the same program and your nutrition is on point. All right. And this assumes you're not in a diet, guys. Okay. Because if you're on a diet, that alone is causing the issue. I promise you. All right. So if you were hitting the weights, but now you're stalling, there is some problem with recovery. Now, food is recovery. So if it's just that, it's that. But it could be another issue. Sign number two is you're waking up more tired, regardless of how many hours you slept in bed. Like even if you sleep seven to eight hours and then you feel like you haven't slept, there is a recovery issue there. Okay. And then sign number three is that you're holding on to water and your weight is bouncing around more than usual, especially around your midsection. So this is a relative thing. You need to compare before and after. You're holding on more water than usual and your weight is bouncing around more than usual, especially around your midsection. This could be that you are more stressed and because of the higher cortisol, you're increasing your water retention and visceral fat storage. You may not see this over days. This may take weeks or months to see it, but if you're measuring things, if your scale is erratic, your waistline feels puffy, even in a deficit, could have to do with stress. It's a good sign. So if you said yes to two out of those three, then recovery could be and is probably your constraint. It's not necessarily training volume, it's not necessarily calories, but it is if you're underfed, let's just put it that way. It's really some form of recovery. And hopefully this episode was helpful at least for one tiny piece of that in the supplement world. Okay, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember that the supplements themselves do not do the work. They clear some of the constraints or obstacles to the work you're already doing to help you out as tools. I'm Philip Hape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.