If you’ve been reading these posts for a while, you’ve noticed that supplements come up regularly — specific nutrients, specific forms, specific reasons. But supplements have never been the foundation of what I recommend.
The foundation is how you live.
Diet, sleep, exercise — both physical and cognitive — stress reduction, optimizing gut health, meaningful social connection, and continuing to learn and experience new things. These are foundational pillars of an anti-Alzheimer’s lifestyle, and no supplement replaces any of them. If the foundation isn’t in place, supplements are filling a leaky bucket.
What supplements do is support and extend what lifestyle alone can’t fully accomplish — particularly as we age:
Our ability to absorb certain nutrients declines
Our bodies face increasing levels of oxidative stress
And the specific biological vulnerabilities associated with Alzheimer’s risk require more targeted nutritional support than food alone can provide.
The brain has enormous nutrient requirements. It is the most metabolically active organ in the body, and it depends on a steady supply of specific vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, and antioxidants to function optimally. Many of these are depleted by chronic stress, poor sleep, gut dysfunction, medications, and the normal process of aging. Replenishing them isn’t optional — it’s maintenance.
But here’s what matters almost as much as which supplements you take: the quality of what you’re taking and whether you actually need it.
Why brand quality matters — and why I don’t buy supplements on Amazon
The supplement industry is largely unregulated. Unlike pharmaceuticals, supplements don’t require pre-market approval from the FDA. That means what’s on the label isn’t always what’s in the bottle — and in some cases, what’s in the bottle includes contaminants, fillers, or doses that don’t match what’s stated.
Third-party testing exists to address this, and reputable brands invest in it. They test for purity, potency, and the absence of contaminants including heavy metals. Many do not.
Amazon is a particular problem. Even well-known brands sold on Amazon are frequently counterfeited, stored improperly, or sold past their expiration date by third-party sellers. I’ve seen lab analyses of supplements purchased on Amazon that contained a fraction of the stated dose — or none of the active ingredient at all. This isn’t theoretical. It happens regularly.
I purchase and recommend supplements exclusively through Fullscript, a professional dispensary platform that works directly with high-quality brands and maintains proper storage and handling throughout the supply chain. It is a significantly safer and more reliable source than retail — including Amazon, grocery stores, and big box retailers.
Being targeted and intentional — why testing changes everything
Taking supplements without knowing what you actually need is guessing. Some guessing is reasonable — there are nutrients that most people are deficient in and that are broadly safe to supplement. But for a genuine prevention protocol, targeted testing is what separates a thoughtful approach from throwing money at bottles.
Three categories of testing are particularly valuable:
Advanced micronutrient testing — intracellular and serum.
Standard blood tests measure nutrients in the serum — the liquid part of your blood. But serum levels reflect what’s circulating, not what’s actually inside your cells where nutrients do their work. You can have a normal serum level of a nutrient and still be functionally deficient at the cellular level. Intracellular testing measures what’s actually available inside your cells, which is a fundamentally more accurate picture of your nutritional status.
I use this testing with clients regularly, and the results are consistently revealing. People who eat well and take supplements still show intracellular deficiencies in nutrients critical for brain health — B vitamins, magnesium, antioxidants, zinc. Knowing specifically what’s low means we can address it precisely rather than broadly.
Advanced cardiometabolic testing
As covered in previous posts, metabolic health and brain health are deeply connected. Insulin resistance, oxidative stress, vascular inflammation, and lipid dysfunction are all upstream contributors to Alzheimer’s disease. Advanced cardiometabolic testing — well beyond a standard cholesterol panel — gives us a clear picture of where metabolic dysfunction is occurring and which nutritional and lifestyle interventions are most needed. It also tells us which supplements are most relevant for your individual situation.
Plasmalogen testing
Plasmalogens are phospholipids that play important roles throughout the brain and body. Your body makes them, a lot of them, all your life. Although production declines, often sharply, with age.
In the brain, plasmalogengs play a key role in how your brain cells communicate. They also play a crucial role in cholesterol efflux in the brain, especially in APOE4 carriers.
The same test provides information about mitochrondria health, the methyltransferase system, peroxisomes, specific gastrointestinal tract acids, dietary fatty acids and more.
So while you can take a variety of supplements without any lab data at all….
…my goal is always to be intentional. Every supplement in a well-designed protocol is there for a reason, ideally supported by data.
In the rest of this post, I cover six foundational supplements most people benefit from, the specific brands I use and recommend to my clients, and how to access my Fullscript practitioner supplement dispensary for 15% off a variety of supplements every time you order, which more than offsets the upgrade.