I am in the stretch of life, somewhere in the middle, where your body stops giving you things for free and starts sending invoices for how you treated it in your twenties. As a founder who has spent years prioritizing work over almost everything, including sleep, I have had to actually think about health rather than assume it. And the first thing I learned is that most of what is sold to men my age about it is noise.
The supplement industry in particular has perfected the art of selling certainty about uncertain things. Walk into any shop and you will be told a dozen pills will fix your energy, your focus, your everything. The honest truth, which sells nothing, is that for most reasonably healthy people the expensive cabinet of supplements does far less than three boring things that cost almost nothing.
The boring things that actually work
Sleep, real sleep, is the closest thing to a miracle drug I have found, and the one I spent years foolishly treating as optional. Movement, not heroic exercise, just regular honest movement, does more for my energy and my head than any pill ever has. And eating like an adult most of the time, without turning it into a religion, handles most of the rest. None of this is exciting. All of it works, and it keeps working long after the supplement of the month is forgotten.
This is the same lesson I keep relearning in every part of life. The unglamorous fundamentals, done consistently, beat the exciting shortcut almost every time.
Where supplements actually fit
I am not against supplements entirely. If a blood test shows you are genuinely low in something, fixing that is just sensible, and a couple of well-evidenced basics are reasonable insurance. The trap is the other way around: taking a fistful of pills to compensate for sleep you are not getting and movement you are not doing. That is paying for a patch instead of fixing the leak, and the body is not fooled.
I think about this the way I think about protecting my recovery generally. Health in your thirties and forties is not bought in a supplement aisle. It is built, slowly and unglamorously, out of sleep and movement and not lying to yourself, and the sooner you stop looking for the shortcut, the sooner you can start on the boring things that actually pay.