Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimised practices for waking, working, learning, eating, training, playing, sleeping and sex. Aubrey Marcus

… except that low magnesium has been linked to diabetes, hypertension, sudden cardiac death, headaches, asthma, and a lot of other ailments. But you know what happens before any of those more serious situations? You just feel like crap. Your body slows down, and it sends up warning signs in the form of irritability, fatigue, loss of appetite, weakness, and muscle twitches. Our ancestors wouldn’t have had to worry about the amount of magnesium in their blood—but we do.

      What happens when an entire species that was accustomed to living outdoors and hunting and gathering suddenly decides that indoor living is the way to go? We all become deficient in vitamin D. That’s right: over a billion people are deficient in vitamin D. The list of consequences for vitamin D deficiency feels like a roll call at the sick ward: depression, fibromyalgia, Alzheimer’s disease. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Vitamin D is so closely tied to immune response and hormone function that those billion people are sicker and weaker than they need to be—just because they don’t get enough sunlight. It’s a free supplement—and yet not only are we not taking it, we’re actively avoiding and defending ourselves against it. Think about that the next time you go slathering on sunblock with SPF Geisha Face.

      Vitamin D and magnesium are involved in hundreds of chemical processes and are thus a couple of the more standard vitamins and minerals people know to look to supplement. Does that mean that supplementing with magnesium and vitamin D will prevent you from getting every disease ever? Of course not, but your risk profile increases with deficiency.

      There are other crucial supplements. Our diets are chronically deficient in fish oil and omega-3 fatty acid. We aren’t getting enough B vitamins, nor are some of us able to process what we do get. And then there are all the tiny micronutrients from plants too tedious, too bitter, and too exotic to harvest for a meal.

      Supplements can help you because good supplements work. But there isn’t a single pill that’s going to fix everything that ails you. Anytime you see someone promise you that, let them know you think they are Number 1 by raising your middle finger right in their grill. What supplements do is upgrade the places in your body that aren’t easily optimized by food and exercise alone. Done right, these supplements can bring you better health, clearer thinking, and energy that your ancestors would have envied.

      Owning It

      We are entering the golden age of nutrition and supplementation. Yes, our stressors are many, and yes, we have traveled far from the ancestral blueprint. But we can do things that no hunter-gatherer could imagine. We can research every clinical trial ever performed, and every active form of a vitamin … on our phones. We can walk into Whole Foods or, even easier, shop online and get delivered to us the most exotic nutrients the world has ever produced. The hidden secrets of Amazonian plant doctors, now available on Amazon Prime. In a single formula you might have traditional herbs from Europe, India, Japan, Siberia, North America, and South America … conveniently blended in a plant-based capsule. All of them studied together for efficacy against placebo by accredited American research institutions. We may have dug ourselves into a hole, but we have a helicopter full of solutions to pull us out of it.

      But let me be as clear as Crystal Pepsi on one important point before we go any further: to supplement, according to the dictionary and to science and to common sense, is to add an extra element or amount to something. What it does not mean is to replace that something completely.

      A supplement is something that enhances or completes something else. It is anything that you do to intentionally boost your nutritional profile or increase performance. I would argue that getting twenty minutes of sun is a supplement (it increases vitamin D). That eating pumpkin seeds before you have sex is a supplement (it increases nitric oxide, which increases blood flow). That dark chocolate is a supplement when you feel the blues (it has four psychoactive mood-boosting chemicals). None of these supplements, however, are substitutes.

      Supplements of any kind, but especially the supplements we are going to talk about in this chapter, are not a substitute for solid food and physical activity. Don’t have any illusions: you can’t just take a pill and own the day if you eat like a sloth and move like one too. The first move to give you every advantage should always be improvements to diet and lifestyle. (We’ll cover these in great depth in chapters 8, 10, and 12 specifically.) Eating more oily fish can boost omega-3 fatty acid levels. Eating Popeye levels of spinach and taking daily magnesium sulfate (Epsom salts) baths may help improve magnesium deficiency. But sometimes those aren’t options, or you’re doing those things and it just isn’t enough. Bridging that gap, between deficient and optimal, is a good reason to take a supplement when regular daily methods aren’t enough.

      Even really successful, high-performing people are often handicapping their own potential just because they aren’t supplementing. Take mixed martial arts legends Donald Cerrone and Tyron Woodley. Donald has nearly set the record for the most wins in the UFC, and Tyron defended his UFC championship belt at the highly competitive welterweight division multiple times. They are at the top of their sport. They are in peak physical condition. They work with the best trainers in the world. They use the best gear. And they are people who need every edge they can get—because the guy in the cage with them is trying to take their money, their health, and their ranking, by pummeling them into submission. And even though Donald has a soft spot for Budweiser and Hot Tamales, these warriors prepare like the champions they are.

      When I first started working with Donald and Tyron, they were as antisupplement as it gets. I wasn’t surprised: both of them had supplement sponsors in the past, but what they tried didn’t make them feel any better. With the combination of artificial ingredients, unhealthful binders, strange colors, and unnecessary fillers, most “sports” supplements are awful. So these two pros figured they were better off going without. And with stories all around them about companies spiking their products with illegal ingredients to boost effectiveness, they felt they were safer facing a drug test without any of those things in their system.

      Those are all valid reasons not to take supplements—except that it meant they were leaving serious athletic potential on the table. When they agreed to try the protocol we designed for them, it was like a switch flipped. Donald went on a huge win streak, blazing through the 170-pound division and putting on some of the most impressive fights and finishes of his career. It included an incredible four-hit knockout combination straight out of a video game that went viral like chlamydia through a freshman dorm. Tyron started his supplementing right as he began training for a rematch with one of the most dangerous strikers ever to fight in the UFC, Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson. He said he felt on fire, the best he’d ever felt in training camp. And it showed: his cardio was impeccable, and he defended his belt successfully. If I were a betting man, I’d say that when you’re reading this, he still has that strap around his waist.

      Fundamentally, whether you’re an MMA fighter or an M&A attorney, supplementing is about taking control of what you need to own your day. And what you need—no matter your goals, your situation, or your drive—always comes down to two common threads: combating mineral and nutrient deficiencies and increasing performance.

      Essential Supplements

      Throughout this section we’re going to talk about the major areas that everyone should focus on, and then in the prescription we’ll get down to brass tacks on how to get it done.

      GREENS BLEND

      Everyone agrees that we need a balanced spectrum of vitamins and minerals in our diet, and the best way to do that is to eat a varied diet. Consume the bountiful diversity of earth-grown foods: shellfish like oysters, grass-fed beef, leafy greens like Swiss chard, and brassica vegetables like cauliflower, on top of a whole complement of spices and herbs.

      Of course it isn’t always easy to eat this way, even with the best of intentions, which is why it should be no surprise that the lion’s share of our dietary deficiencies is precisely in the area of vitamins and minerals. As I see it, you have two supplement choices: you can take multivitamins, which traditionally are notoriously hard to absorb, or you can reach for a multinutrient “green food” mix, which will cover a lot of your nutrient bases.

      A good greens blend is going to be nutrient-dense and should have