Do any longevity/healthspan supplements even work?

Nutrition Q&A [Moderated]
1

The “longevity” sphere is getting more trendy nowadays, especially due to exotic personalities such as Bryan Johnson. Many of these anti aging people tend to swear by a lot of supplements, claiming these are capable of extending healthspan and providing more healthy years and also claiming functional improvements such as improved muscle mass, strength, walking speed, exercise and injury recovery etc.

My question is, do any of these heavily promoted supps have any actual data to back up these claims?
If I were to be more specific, the one’s I’ve heard about are

  1. NR, NMN, Niacin
  2. Magnesium
  3. Omega 3 fish oils
  4. Glynac
  5. Resveratrol
  6. Any vitamins really b,c,d,k2
  7. Collagen peptides
  8. Senolytics
  9. Metformin & Rapamycin (not exactly supplements but still popular)
  10. Spermidine
  11. TMG
  12. HMB
  13. Hyaluronic Acid
  14. Psyllium Husk
  15. Taurine
  16. Coq10
    There’s more but I think I already typed too much.

So do any of these supplements have any evidence to back up improvements in any of the things I mentioned before? Or is it all bs and it’s better to ignore all the noise and just stick to creatine and whey?

2

For your list, I’ll provide a yes/no based on the current evidence, though this obviously cannot apply to all cases:

  1. These are not all the same thing, but evidence of benefits in humans are mostly theoretical/mechanistic for NAD-related supplements.
  2. No
  3. No for OTC fish oil. Prescription isomers may be beneficial for secondary heart disease risk reduction.
  4. No
  5. No
  6. No, in general.
  7. No
  8. No
  9. Not supplements at all, but rather pharmaceuticals. Can be useful in some therapeutic settings, but not generally advisable.
  10. No
  11. No
  12. No
  13. No
  14. Those with high cholesterol can supplement fiber further for greater lipid lowering. Otherwise, no
  15. No
  16. No

Again, a number of caveats apply in specific settings. If looking to determine whether or not a claim is true re: longevity, ask for evidence in humans. If that evidence is not robust and/or not in a specific outcome that reliably correlates to health- or life-span, it’s probably BS.

FWIW- I think the longevity space is extremely difficult to navigate.

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3

Why so? Lots of misinformation?

4

That’s pretty standard across the health and wellness scene as far as I’m concerned. The longevity space has additional problems with lack of human data on actual outcomes that mean anything, few with expertise in the field despite credentials, and lots of financial incentive to promote various tests, supplements, and so on.

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