My 2026 Supplement Stack: The Short List That Actually Survived

The year I stopped LARPing as a supplement store

I used to treat my kitchen shelf like a minor pharmacy. Stacks, protocols, stacks inside protocols. Nootropics, mitochondrial support, longevity blends. The whole circus.

It looked impressive on Instagram. It did not translate to better sleep, better code, or better baseball coaching. It translated to expensive pee and a low-level feeling that I was always running an experiment but never shipping the results.

So in late 2025 I did something radical. I stopped almost everything. Hard reset. Two months with no supplements at all except salt and coffee. Then I rebuilt from zero.

This post is the outcome of that purge. What actually survived into my 2026 protocol. Why it earned its place. And what I dropped without regret.

Rules for making the cut

I needed rules. Without constraints it is too easy to justify yet another shiny capsule.

My filter for 2026:

• Strong evidence in humans, not just mechanistic hype or one mouse study.
• Clear subjective effect that I could feel or measure in my own data.
• Low complexity. No 17-ingredient blends I cannot reason about.
• Safe to take long term at standard doses, with bloodwork to back it up.
• Cheap and boring. If it sounds like science fiction, it starts with a handicap.

If a compound did not hit at least three of those, it went away during the purge and has not come back.

The short list that survived

Right now my protocol is basically this:

• Magnesium (evening)
• Creatine monohydrate (morning)
• Vitamin D3 + K2 (morning, winter only)
• Glycine and L-theanine (situational, sleep / anxiety stack)

That is the core. No multivitamin, no giant longevity cocktail, no "limitless" capsules.

I do not think this list is magic. I just think it passes a basic sanity test: strong evidence, visible impact for me, and no need to build a Notion dashboard just to keep track of what the hell I am swallowing.

Magnesium: the recovery anchor

Magnesium is the only supplement I genuinely miss when I stop it. The effect is not subtle.

My context: I lift three times per week, sprint once, coach and throw baseball several evenings, and try to keep my brain running at a decent frame rate for deep work during the day. Sleep is the bottleneck for all of that.

When I first stripped everything away, my sleep did not fall apart. It just got rougher around the edges. I woke up a bit more during the night, HRV dipped a few points, and my grip strength in the morning tested slightly worse. Not catastrophic, just noisy.

Reintroducing magnesium brought that stability back.

My exact magnesium setup

What I use now:

• Type: Magnesium glycinate or bisglycinate. The cheap oxide forms go straight through me and do not touch my sleep.
• Dose: 200 to 300 mg elemental magnesium, taken 60 to 90 minutes before bed.
• Timing: After last food, before last screen. Paired with reading something non-technical.

I tested citrate, threonate, and blends. For me, glycinate wins because of consistent sleep quality and no stomach drama.

What I actually see from magnesium

Measured effects across several two-week on / two-week off blocks, with no other changes:

• Sleep: Deep sleep up by 15 to 25 minutes on average. Fewer random wake-ups.
• HRV: Average night-time HRV up by roughly 5 to 8 ms. Resting heart rate down by 2 to 3 bpm.
• Subjective: Less "tired but wired" feeling after late baseball evenings or heavy leg days.

Is that all magnesium and not confounders? Hard to be sure. But the pattern has been stable for over a year of testing. When I pull it, I feel the difference within a week. That is enough for me.

Why magnesium survived the purge

• Most people are at least a bit low on it, especially if they train.
• Sleep, stress, and muscle recovery all care a lot about magnesium status.
• The risk profile at normal doses is basically zero if your kidneys are fine.

If I had to keep a single supplement, this would be it.

Creatine: not just for gym bros

Creatine used to feel like a gym-only thing in my head. Bulk powder, shaker bottles, memes. Then I looked at the actual data around brain function, fatigue, and aging. After that it moved from "maybe" to "why am I not already taking this".

Why I take creatine as a developer and a coach

My work week splits into two modes. Deep work at the laptop building web stuff. High-intensity physical work on the field coaching and training. Creatine touches both.

On the physical side, I recover faster between heavy sets and intense sprints. Nothing dramatic, just less of that flat, empty feeling at the end of the week. I can open on Monday with real legs instead of sandbags.

On the mental side, the effect is subtle but real. Long coding sessions feel slightly less draining. Context switching costs me less. I do not get that "brain brownout" as fast late in the afternoon.

My exact creatine setup

• Type: Plain creatine monohydrate. No fancy buffered or "next-gen" versions.
• Dose: 5 g per day, every day. No loading phase.
• Timing: Morning with my first meal or coffee. I tried pre-workout and post-workout. Did not matter for me.

Renal markers on bloodwork have stayed rock solid across multiple tests. Mild weight gain of around 1 kg from extra water in the first couple of weeks, then stable.

How I know creatine is doing something

I ran two 6-week blocks off creatine in 2025 to test it properly. No training changes, same calories, same sleep schedule.

• On creatine, my 5 rep maxes on squat and deadlift held steady or improved while cutting calories slightly.
• Off creatine, I had to fight harder to keep the same numbers, and bar speed dropped based on video timing.
• Deep work sessions went from about 60 to 70 minutes before a noticeable focus drop, to around 80 to 90 on creatine. That is fuzzy, but the pattern repeated.

Is it placebo? Maybe some of it. I honestly do not care. The mix of evidence, safety, and real-world feel is strong enough to keep it in the stack.

Vitamin D: seasonal, not daily religion

I live in the Netherlands. Winter here is grey. Sunlight is something you remember from photos. If I rely on UV exposure alone from October through March, my vitamin D levels tank.

I have the bloodwork to prove it.

My vitamin D protocol now

• Form: Vitamin D3 with K2 (MK-7).
• Dose: 2000 IU per day in late autumn, up to 4000 IU mid-winter. Always with food that has some fat.
• Schedule: From roughly October to March. Then I pause, get sunlight, and retest.

My target range is mid-normal, not mega-dosing. I aim roughly at 80 to 100 nmol/L. When I stopped supplementing for a full winter to test, I dropped into the low 40s and felt it.

What low vitamin D felt like for me

The drop was not dramatic. Just a slow drift into something that felt like constant low power mode.

• Motivation took a hit. Starting tasks got heavier.
• My morning light walks stopped doing as much to wake me up.
• Mood got flatter. Not depressed. Just grey, like the sky.

Reintroducing D3 brought those back up over 4 to 6 weeks. Not like flipping a switch, more like repainting the background color of the day from dull to normal.

Why D3 stayed in my 2026 protocol

Strong evidence, especially for people living far from the equator. Cheap. Easy to measure and adjust based on bloodwork. Also very simple to cycle: on in dark months, off with sun and retesting.

I treat it like a seasonal tool, not a forever pill.

The small anti-anxiety combo I kept

I do not run a giant nootropics stack anymore. I do, however, keep two simple tools for nights when my system is buzzing and sleep is under threat.

They are not daily. That is the point.

Glycine: cheap, sweet, effective

Protocol:

• 3 g glycine powder, mixed into a small amount of water, about 30 minutes before bed.

Effects for me:

• Body temperature feels lower, which fits the research around sleep onset.
• Sleep onset latency drops. I fall asleep faster instead of replaying the last code problem.
• Dreams get a bit more vivid, which I take as a sign of deeper sleep cycles.

I do not use glycine every night because I do not want it to become psychological crutch. Two or three times per week, max. Especially after late training or an evening game where adrenaline is still floating around.

L-theanine: caffeine's quiet partner

I first tested L-theanine as a way to smooth out coffee jitters. It worked. Then I tried stacking it with glycine on nights where my brain refused to downshift.

Protocol:

• 100 to 200 mg L-theanine, with or without glycine, 45 to 60 minutes before bed.

The effect feels like someone slowly turning the volume knob down on background worry. Thoughts are still there. They just stop yelling.

I also sometimes use 100 mg mid-afternoon with coffee if I need focus without the edgy feeling. It is not magic, but it cleans up the signal.

What I dropped, and why I stopped pretending to miss it

Here is the graveyard from my 2023 to 2024 "biohacker" era.

• Multivitamins
• Fish oil capsules
• Random adaptogen blends
• Nicotinamide riboside and other longevity hype
• Exotic nootropics with names that sound like wifi passwords

Multivitamins

I dropped multi formulas because they felt like sweeping dirt under the rug. If my diet is trash, one pill with 27 ingredients in random doses will not fix it. If my diet is solid, the multi becomes redundant or even excessive for some minerals.

Bloodwork after a year without them looked fine. That was the final nudge.

Fish oil

Controversial one. I cut fish oil because I ate more actual fish, checked my omega-3 index, and it came back in a good range. The caps started to feel like insurance I no longer needed.

Also, the quality question around fish oil products is messy. I would rather eat sardines twice a week than spend brain cycles on rancidity and sourcing forever.

Adaptogens and blends

Ashwagandha, rhodiola, exotic mushroom mixes. They all promised calm focus and resilience. Some did something for a week or two, then faded into background noise.

They also made my stack impossible to reason about. Did I feel better because of the herb or because I finally fixed my sleep schedule? Hard to say. So I cut them and focused on training, sunlight, and habits instead.

Longevity hype stack

I had a short romance with the usual suspects: nicotinamide riboside, resveratrol variations, and similar. They were expensive and honestly did nothing I could feel.

I enjoy the research as science fiction for my future self. I just do not see a case for spending real money on those while I still sometimes sabotage my sleep by scrolling baseball stats after midnight.

The big nootropic experiment that fizzled out

I also ran a giant nootropic experiment in 2024. Choline sources, racetams, you name it. What I learned: the best cognitive enhancer is a boring mix of sleep, electrolytes, walking, and actually blocking notifications.

Hard to sell as a product. Very effective in practice.

How this simpler stack affects my life outside the bottle

The biggest win from the 2026 protocol is not the supplements themselves. It is the reduced mental overhead.

I do not start the day by lining up eight different bottles like a ritual. I do not need a spreadsheet to track cycles. I do not have that weird pressure to "optimize" everything all the time.

I take three things that feel like part of the foundation: magnesium, creatine, vitamin D in winter. Then I have two small tools, glycine and L-theanine, for specific scenarios.

The rest of the energy goes into training, building, coaching, and fixing my environment. Light, food, movement, sleep. Boring levers. They move heavier weight.

If you want to run your own purge

I am not a doctor. I am just a developer and coach who got tired of playing pharmacist. If you want to run your own purge, this is how I would approach it again:

• Get baseline bloodwork before you change anything.
• Strip everything non-essential for 4 to 8 weeks. Keep any medically necessary stuff, obviously.
• Reintroduce one compound at a time, for at least 3 to 4 weeks, and track something concrete. Sleep, strength, mood, HRV.
• Be suspicious of anything that only works when stacked with three other things.
• Spend at least as much time improving sleep and training as you do reading supplement labels.

For me, that process left a very short list: magnesium, creatine, vitamin D, and a tiny sleep stack that actually earns its place on my shelf.

It does not look impressive in a photo. It does not need to. It just works, quietly, in the background. Which is exactly how I want my supplements to behave in 2026.