Josiah wrote:When I take my supplements has has been a major problems for me. The major complexity is that I'm following an eight hour eating window Intermittent Fast and it's unclear which supplements can be taken during my fasting window without interfering with the fast. This topic seems to be quite controversial and I've received advice from every extreme of the spectrum.
I'm also looking for a single on-line resource which offers reliable advice on every supplement as to whether it must be taken on an empty stomach or with a meal. I've seen people mention examine.com but every time I've looked it's disappointed.
I agree, this is often uncharted territory. Just thinking about resveratrol, I've read that it can act as a pro-oxidant during the day or an antioxidant at night... but looking to a researcher like David Sinclair for best practices, it's consumed during the day in yogurt. I've read that it can amplify the signal of caloric restriction, which sounds like it would be best taken away from a meal, but it improves insulin sensitivity and gut health where maybe it would make more sense to take with a meal... on one hand, you might want to take it with something like quercetin or fisetin, but on the other hand, if you take it with other polyphenols and something like fish oil maybe it has too strong of a blood-thinning or hormetic effect... so when do you eat the stuff?
Or thinking about b-vitamins... if they help to metabolize amino acids and macro nutrients, are they best consumed with calorie-rich amino-rich meals? Or, do you already want them metabolized and saturated before you have a meal? Or, does it make sense to take something like b6 at night since it helps to produce melatonin, and maybe b5 with a fat-rich meal, b1 with a carb-rich meal, and something like b3 away from the other active b's since it can lower methyl groups. I tend to have these sorts of questions about most supplements.
I tend to figure that at best, the effect of supplement timing is usually quite low in the grand scheme of things (but that isn't to say that there isn't an ideal timing if we had more information.)