Not in any way that matters. A couple of them can produce a small measured change on a chart. None of them is a weight-loss strategy.
Berberine is the honest example. The research on it does report effects on body composition, so I’m not going to tell you the number is zero. What I’ll tell you is that the same review rated the underlying trials low quality, and that a small average change across a study group is a rounding error next to what happens when a man changes what he eats. I’ve worked with over 895 men and I’ve never once seen a supplement drive a result.
Weight comes off when insulin comes down, and insulin comes down because of what you eat, when you sleep, and whether you drink. That’s the whole game. Everything below is a small edge, and an edge only does something when there’s a system underneath it worth sharpening.
To be clear about what I’m not saying: this is about supplements, not medicine. If your doctor has you on metformin or a GLP-1, that’s a clinical decision between the two of you and it’s a different conversation from whether a $70 tub of capsules is doing anything. What I’m against is buying the tub instead of fixing the food.
Once the food is right, though, a handful of these genuinely help. And the shelves are so full of rubbish that most men end up spending real money on the wrong five, so it’s worth knowing which is which.
The Bottom Line: Two supplements are worth taking as defaults for most men over 40: creatine, alongside resistance training, and protein if you’re not hitting it from food. Eight more are worth it only for a confirmed gap or a specific problem: omega-3, vitamin D, zinc, magnesium, psyllium, L-theanine, berberine and ashwagandha. One, melatonin, isn’t an ordinary over-the-counter supplement in Australia at all. None of them is a weight-loss strategy. They are the last 5% of the job, and they only pay off once your food, your sleep and your drinking are already sorted.
Medical disclaimer: this covers what the published evidence shows, not medical advice. One point before the list. If you take prescription medication of any kind, check with your GP or pharmacist before starting anything here, because several of these interact: berberine with metformin in particular, and others with blood thinners, thyroid medication and blood pressure drugs. If you take nothing and you have no thyroid, liver or kidney condition, that caution mostly doesn’t apply to you. Melatonin is the exception either way, because in Australia it isn’t freely available over the counter. Declared interest: the omega 3/6 test kit is included in Andre’s coaching fee, and he sells the corrective oil (Zinzino) to clients whose results show they need it. Set out in full below.
Which supplements for men over 40 are actually worth taking?
Eleven supplements have published evidence worth knowing about, but they are not one category and they should not be bought as one. Two are reasonable defaults, eight are worth it only if you have a specific gap, and one of them isn’t sold over the counter here at all.
| Dose used in the research | What the evidence actually shows | |
|---|---|---|
| Useful defaults in the right context | ||
| Creatine monohydrate | 3-5 g daily | The best-evidenced item here. The muscle-preservation evidence is strongest when it’s combined with resistance training: alongside lifting it adds fat-free mass, chest and leg press strength and chair-stand performance over lifting alone. |
| Protein powder | 25-40 g per serve | Food in a tin, not a supplement. Useful only to close a gap you’re not closing with meals. ISSN puts the daily target at 1.4-2.0 g per kg. |
| Useful only for a confirmed gap or a specific problem | ||
| Omega-3 (EPA/DHA) | 1,000-2,000 mg combined | Food first. The Heart Foundation’s position is that most people get what they need from eating fish. A supplement earns its place if you don’t eat fish, or you have a specific indication like high triglycerides. A 127,477-person meta-analysis found a modest drop in cardiovascular risk. Modest is the honest word. The omega-6 to omega-3 ratio can also be tested directly, which is more useful than guessing, and I do that with clients. |
| Vitamin D | Test first, then dose to the result | The only item here where a blood test tells you whether you need it, which makes it the one worth testing rather than guessing. Take D3 with K2, which helps direct calcium into bone rather than leaving it to deposit in arteries, and zinc alongside it, which the body uses to act on vitamin D once it is there. Sitting at the bottom of the reference range is not the same as being where you want to be. See below for what I run myself and why that number is not a recommendation. |
| Zinc | 15-30 mg with food | Corrects a deficiency. It does not boost testosterone in men who already have enough, and that has been tested directly. |
| Magnesium glycinate | Depends on your total intake | Deficiency is common in men who train and drink. On sleep specifically the evidence is mixed: observational studies find a link, the trials contradict each other. Dose depends on diet, formulation and kidney function, and the supplemental upper limit for adults is 350 mg elemental unless a doctor says otherwise. |
| Psyllium husk | 5-10 g in water | In a 16-week study of centrally obese 40-60 year-olds it lowered fasting blood glucose and HOMA-IR, most strongly alongside lifestyle change. That study did not measure post-meal spikes or appetite. Separately, it does what fibre is famous for: a constipation trial found it significantly increased weekly bowel movements. |
| L-theanine | 100-200 mg | Reduced stress-related symptoms in a small healthy-adult trial. Combined with caffeine there is reasonable evidence for attention. Takes the jitter off coffee if you still drink it. |
| Berberine | 500 mg, 2-3x before meals | An umbrella review found effects on glucose, insulin resistance, lipids and body composition, but rated the underlying trials low quality. The one caveat that matters: it interacts with metformin and a range of other medications, so if you take anything prescribed, clear it first. |
| Ashwagandha | 300-600 mg daily | Lowered cortisol against placebo in one 60-person trial, and a separate RCT found it improved sleep quality in both healthy adults and insomnia patients. This is the one Andre takes daily. Two things to know: it can affect thyroid hormone levels, and there are published case series of ashwagandha-related liver injury, mostly in people taking nothing else. Rare, but it means stopping and getting checked if you go yellow, itchy or unusually tired. |
| Not an ordinary over-the-counter supplement in Australia | ||
| Melatonin | Contested, see below | Not a general over-the-counter supplement in Australia. Access is restricted by formulation, age and indication, and the right dose is genuinely unsettled in the research. |
Creatine and protein are the two most men should start with
Take two of them and you can ignore the rest for now: creatine monohydrate at 3-5g, and enough protein to hit 1.4 to 2.0 grams per kilo of bodyweight.
Creatine is the closest thing here to a settled case, with one condition attached that most articles leave off. The older-adult meta-analysis everyone quotes tested creatine during resistance training, in men averaging 64 years across about twelve weeks of lifting. Combined with the lifting it added fat-free mass, chest and leg press strength and functional performance over lifting alone. Take it without lifting and you lose the strongest part of the case: the muscle-preservation evidence is at its best when the two go together. On cognition, the review evidence points to short-term memory and reasoning; the other domains come back conflicting, so treat the brain benefit as a plausible bonus rather than a reason to buy.
Protein isn’t really a supplement, it’s food you couldn’t be bothered cooking. That target comes from the International Society of Sports Nutrition, and I work my clients at the top end of it. Hit it with meat, eggs and fish first. Use a shake only for the gap you can’t close, usually the day you’re in back-to-back meetings and your first meal lands at 2pm.
What sleep and stress supplements can and can’t do
Magnesium, melatonin, L-theanine and ashwagandha all sit in the same category: they might help a man who’s already fixed his inputs, and they do nothing for a man who’s on the piss four nights a week.
Magnesium is the one men reach for first and the one where the evidence is weakest. The systematic review on magnesium and sleep found that observational studies show a link and the actual trials contradict each other. That’s an uncertain finding, not a modest one, and anyone selling it as a sleep fix is ahead of the data. It’s still worth correcting a genuine shortfall, which is common in men who train hard and drink. Just get the dose right for your diet and your kidneys rather than off a label, and know that the supplemental upper limit for adults is 350mg of elemental magnesium unless a doctor has said otherwise.
Melatonin needs more care than any other item here, for two reasons.
The first is that it isn’t an ordinary supplement in this country. In Australia, access is controlled by formulation, age and what you’re treating, so this is not a case of picking a tub off a shelf. Talk to a pharmacist.
The second is that the dose question is genuinely unsettled, and I’d rather tell you that than pretend otherwise. The 2001 trial that made low-dose melatonin famous found 0.3mg restored sleep efficiency in over-50s and brought their night-time levels back to normal. It also found 3mg improved sleep, but left melatonin circulating into the daylight hours and dropped body temperature. Then a 2022 crossover study in healthy older adults found the opposite ranking: 5mg increased sleep efficiency where 0.3mg only trended that way. Two good studies, two different answers. What that means practically is that this is not a decision to make off a label. Two good studies disagree, so take the question to a pharmacist with your own situation in front of them rather than picking a number because a podcast told you to.
None of it substitutes for the actual lever. Sleep is a metabolic intervention in its own right, and the men who fix it fix it with a bedtime, a dark room and no alcohol, not a capsule.
Same story with zinc and testosterone. Zinc will help a man who’s deficient, and plenty of men who train hard and sleep badly are. It won’t raise testosterone in a man who isn’t, and when researchers gave a high-dose zinc supplement to men with normal levels, testosterone didn’t move. If your levels are down, the answer is in how you actually raise testosterone after 40: sleep, alcohol, training load and body fat. Not a mineral.
Five supplements men over 40 are wasting money on
Five of the biggest sellers in this market don’t have the evidence to justify the shelf space: apple cider vinegar gummies, greens powders, BCAAs, collagen sold for fat loss, and fat burners.
Apple cider vinegar gummies. The sugar in the gummy works against the blood sugar benefit you bought it for, and there isn’t enough acetic acid in it to do the job anyway.
Greens powders. Sold as a vegetable substitute to men who don’t eat vegetables. Proprietary blends, undisclosed doses, and the fibre stripped out. Eat the vegetables.
BCAAs. Redundant the moment you’re eating enough whole protein, which is a problem you should be solving anyway.
Collagen for fat loss. Incomplete amino acid profile, missing tryptophan, and less filling than whey. Fine for what it’s actually for. Useless for your gut.
Fat burners and metabolism boosters. These deserve their own paragraph, because they’re the worst thing in the aisle and they’re aimed directly at you.
The flame on the label is the entire product. If a capsule could meaningfully burn fat it would be a prescription drug, and the ones that are prescription drugs come with a doctor attached. What’s actually in most of them is a stimulant stack: caffeine piled on synephrine piled on yohimbine, which is a lot of load on the heart of a 55-year-old carrying 20 kilos he shouldn’t be carrying.
Then there’s what isn’t on the label. A 2021 review in Molecules documented the routine illegal spiking of weight loss supplements with synthetic pharmaceuticals, including drugs that had already been pulled from the market for cardiovascular risk. And in the American drug-induced liver injury network’s data, weight loss and bodybuilding supplements are the leading supplement category behind liver injury. You cannot read a label and know whether you’re holding one of those, because the problem is precisely that it isn’t declared.
But the real objection isn’t the chemistry. It’s that the whole category is a band-aid. Every one of these products is sold on the promise that you can leave the cause in place, the food, the drink, the sleep, and buy your way out of the consequence. You can’t. You’ll spend the money, take the stimulant, get the jitters, lose nothing, and still be sitting on the thing that actually put the weight there.
What I actually use
Two things here are mine rather than general advice, and you should know which is which.
My vitamin D. Mine sits at 156 and I still take 10,000 IU a day. I’ll say plainly that this is above standard guidance. The upper level of intake for adults is 3,200 IU a day in Australia and 4,000 in the US, and 156 is already past the 125 mark where the guidance starts flagging risk. That’s a call I’ve made with my own bloodwork in front of me, reviewed, knowing my own history. It is not a number to copy off a stranger on the internet, and I include myself in that. Get tested, then set your target and your dose with your GP. What I’d argue for is the principle, not my figure: scraping into the bottom of the range is not the same as being where you want to be.
Omega 3/6, and where I stand in it. Part of what I do with clients is test the omega-6 to omega-3 balance rather than guess at it, because the ratio is measurable and because a plasma ratio skewed the wrong way tracks with worse all-cause, cancer and cardiovascular outcomes in a UK Biobank analysis of half a million people. Then I supply an oil, Zinzino, to correct it if needed and we retest.
To be completely transparent, the test kit is included in the coaching fee, so you’re not paying me to find out. If your ratio comes back where it should be, you don’t need to do anything and we move on to the next thing. For the men whose results say they need it, I do sell the Zinzino oil, but only if it’s actually necessary.
I’m telling you that because this article has just spent two thousand words saying be suspicious of anyone selling you a supplement, and I’m not going to write myself an exemption.
The difference is that the test decides, not me. That is the whole argument of this article applied to my own business: test, then treat what the test found. It’s the opposite of how the supplement aisle works, where the product is sold to everyone who walks past regardless of whether anything is actually wrong.
And you don’t need me for the test either. Get the ratio measured wherever you like, take the result to whoever you like, and fix it with oily fish if you’d rather.
The men who got results didn’t get them from a bottle
Clint came to me as a Type II diabetic on Metformin, with elevated triglycerides and 10 years of cholesterol medication behind him. Twelve weeks later he’d lost 17kg and his HbA1c had gone from 6.5 to 5.9, which put him in remission, and he came off both medications under his doctor’s supervision. Yes, we used supplements along the way. They’re not what moved his HbA1c. The food was.
Shaun had liver function results that had been high since 2018. Nobody had fixed it in six years. He lost 13kg on the program and his liver function came back to normal for the first time, and his doctors couldn’t believe it. No supplement can be credited with that result.
I’m 60. I sit at 65kg and around 15% body fat, and I’ve held it for over a decade. That’s not a stack. That’s no alcohol, no vegetable oils, rarely any gluten, and a base of training I’ve kept up for 40 years. Whatever’s in my cupboard sits on top of that. Strip it out and the 65kg and the 15% would still be there, because they were never coming from a tub.
Supplements are the last 5%, not the first move
A supplement can only amplify what’s already there. If the foundation is broken, you’re paying to amplify nothing.
Get your food right first, and specifically the low-carb, healthy-fat approach that actually addresses the insulin driving the weight. Then sleep. Then the drinking. Once those are genuinely handled and not just intended, come back to this list and pick two or three. Not ten.
Most men run it in exactly the reverse order. Which is why they’re still carrying the gut they had five years ago, plus a cupboard full of half-used tubs.
If you’ve got the tubs and not the result, the problem isn’t which supplement you picked. It’s that nobody has ever looked at what you actually eat in a day and told you the truth about it. A pharmacist can tell you whether a capsule is safe for you. Nobody in that conversation is going to look at what you ate on Tuesday. I look at my clients’ food every single day, and I can usually tell them what happened on the weekend before they do. That’s what the coaching is. Your food in front of me every day, a call each week, and me on the end of a voice note in between. Give me thirty minutes and I’ll tell you straight whether that’s what your situation calls for. Book it here.
Frequently Asked Questions
What supplements should a man over 40 take daily?
Two are reasonable daily defaults: creatine at 3-5g if you’re also doing resistance training, and enough protein to reach 1.4 to 2.0 grams per kilo. Omega-3, vitamin D, zinc, magnesium, psyllium, L-theanine, berberine and ashwagandha are worth it only for a confirmed gap or a specific problem, and vitamin D is the one to test rather than guess. Melatonin is a separate case: it isn’t an ordinary over-the-counter supplement in Australia.
Do supplements actually help you lose weight?
Not in a way that will change your body. Berberine has research reporting small effects on body composition, but the underlying trials are rated low quality, and no supplement on the evidence-backed list is a weight-loss strategy. Weight after 40 responds to lowering insulin through what you eat, sleeping properly and cutting alcohol. Supplements are the last 5% of the job.
How much melatonin should a man over 40 take for sleep?
There is no settled answer, and in Australia melatonin isn’t a general over-the-counter supplement anyway, so this is a pharmacist conversation rather than a shelf decision. The 2001 trial that made low doses famous found 0.3mg restored sleep efficiency in over-50s without leaving melatonin elevated into the day, while 3mg also improved sleep but did leave daytime carryover. A 2022 study then found 5mg outperformed 0.3mg in healthy older adults. Nobody can hand you a correct number from a distance, which is exactly why this one belongs with a pharmacist.
Does zinc increase testosterone in men over 40?
Only if you’re deficient. Zinc corrects a shortfall, and men who train hard and sleep badly are often short. When researchers gave high-dose zinc to men with normal levels, testosterone didn’t rise. If your testosterone is low, the levers are sleep, alcohol, training load and body fat, not a mineral supplement.
Is creatine worth taking for men over 50?
Yes, with one condition: the older-adult evidence is for creatine taken alongside resistance training, not on its own. In men averaging 64, creatine plus about twelve weeks of lifting added fat-free mass, chest and leg press strength and functional performance over lifting alone. Three to five grams a day, no loading phase, no cycling. The muscle-preservation evidence is strongest when it’s paired with resistance training, so the lifting is the part that makes it worth your money.
Do I sell the supplements that I recommend?
Only one. The omega 3/6 test kit is included in my coaching fee, and if your results show your ratio is off I sell you the corrective oil, Zinzino. If the test comes back fine you don’t buy anything. Nothing else on this list is sold or supplied by me. The omega 3/6 test itself is worth doing regardless of where you get the oil, or whether you fix it with oily fish instead.
Are greens powders worth it for men over 40?
No. They’re marketed as a vegetable substitute to men who don’t eat vegetables, and most use proprietary blends that hide how little of each ingredient is in there. The fibre, which is a large part of why vegetables help, is usually stripped out. Eat the vegetables.
