Every supplement I tried in four years: helped, did nothing, made me worse

I have spent more money on capsules than on my car. Nobody pays me to say any of this, and none of it is medical advice — bodies are wildly individual and mine reacted to things most people tolerate fine. This is a record, not a recommendation.

Genuinely helped

• DAO enzyme before restaurant meals — did not make me invincible, but cut the flushing and the 3 a.m. wake-up noticeably.
• Magnesium glycinate at night, started very low. The first real sleep I had in two years.
• Vitamin C, small doses spread through the day. Larger single doses made me jittery.
• Molybdenum, at the suggestion of my practitioner, during mold work. Subtle but steady.
• Cod liver oil in the winter, once my gut could handle fats again.

Did nothing I could detect

• Three different mushroom blends. Not bad, just no signal.
• Collagen powder. Everyone loves it. My skin and joints shrugged.
• A very expensive mitochondrial complex I finished out of stubbornness.

Made me worse

• A multi-strain probiotic heavy on Lactobacillus casei — three days of flushing and insomnia. Histamine-producing strains are a real thing.
• Full-dose activated charcoal while still living in the moldy apartment. Crushing fatigue and constipation.
• Bone broth, which I drank religiously because the internet told me to. High histamine, and it made my sinuses miserable for months before I connected it.
• Quercetin at the label dose. Half the dose was fine. Dose matters more than I wanted it to.

One new thing at a time, at a quarter of the suggested dose, for five days, written down. I learned more in three months of that than in two years of stacking.

The larger lesson: supplements were never the lever. Getting out of the exposure, sleeping, and eating enough food were the levers. Supplements made the levers easier to pull.