Disclosure: Links in this post are affiliate links. If you buy something through them, I get a small commission at no cost to you. This is not medical advice — talk to your doctor, not a tired dad with a supplement habit.
There’s a version of me from five years ago who would have a lot of questions about my current morning routine.
That guy drank black coffee, maybe ate some toast, and got on with it. Simple. Dignified. Not the kind of person who stands at his kitchen counter at 6:15 AM washing down beef organ pills with his morning coffee.
That guy is gone. I don’t know exactly when it happened — somewhere between the sleep deprivation of early fatherhood and the point where I started actually reading the health content that showed up in my feeds — but at some point I crossed a line and now I’m on the other side of it, taking eight different supplements with my coffee every morning like it’s a job.
I’m going to tell you what I take, why I started taking each thing, and how honest I can be about whether any of it is working. Spoiler: pretty honest, because I find the alternative exhausting.
The Stack
Collagen peptides — This was the first addition, and it’s probably the most defensible. I started mixing it into coffee about two years ago after reading enough about joint health and recovery that I decided it was worth a shot. It dissolves completely, doesn’t change the flavor, and I’ve had fewer issues with my knees since I started. Is that causation? Probably not entirely. Do I care enough to stop? Not really.
Creatine — Also defensible. The research on creatine is genuinely solid — it supports muscle output, it’s safe, it’s cheap, and it works. Five grams into my coffee every morning. This is the one I feel most confident about. Standard creatine monohydrate is all you need; don’t buy the expensive version with the fancy marketing. They’re the same thing.
Bovine colostrum — This is where it starts getting harder to explain at dinner parties. Colostrum is the first milk produced after birth, and the premise is that it supports immune function and gut health. I’ve been taking it for four months. I haven’t been sick since December, which could mean it’s working or could mean I’ve been washing my hands more. I genuinely don’t know. But I keep taking it, which tells you something about my decision-making process.
Amino acid capsules — Post-workout recovery support. I take these as pills rather than powder, mostly because I’ve already got enough stuff going into the coffee. They’ve fully disappeared into the routine at this point. No strong opinion either way; I’ve just kept buying them.
Grass-fed beef organ complex — Here we are. This is the one. If you’d told me five years ago I’d be taking desiccated liver, heart, and kidney in capsule form before 7 AM, I would have asked what went wrong in your timeline. The idea is that organ meats are extremely nutrient-dense — liver especially — and if you’re not going to eat actual liver (I’m not; I’ve tried; I can’t), the capsule version covers some of what you’d otherwise miss. Does it work? I feel good. I was also sleeping better, eating cleaner, and working out more when I started, so attributing anything specifically to the beef organs is a fool’s errand. I take them anyway. Yes, I’m aware.
The honest version
If I’m being straight with you: collagen and creatine are the two I’d defend under actual scrutiny. The rest exist somewhere in the gray zone of “plausible benefit, limited downside, I’ve already bought three bottles and don’t want to admit it’s a sunk cost.”
I’m not telling you to do any of this. Personal experience only — what I take, why I started, how I actually feel about it. Most wellness content wants you to believe someone has fully solved themselves and is now sharing the secret from the other side. I have not solved myself. I just added organ pills to my morning and kept going.
The coffee’s still good, for what it’s worth.
The one habit underneath all of this that costs nothing and works better than most of it: I also wrote about actually drinking enough water, which sounds obvious until you realize you haven’t been doing it.
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