1. Vitamin C In addition to its role in various metabolic and physiological functions, your body uses vitamin C to protect your immune system, and researchers have studied the efficacy of vitamin C as a therapeutic treatment in the prevention of cancer, diabetes, atherosclerosis, the common cold, stroke and heart disease. Vitamin C improves neutrophil chemotaxis, a process that betters the ability of neutrophils (a type of white blood cell) to move toward sites of inflammation or infection and increases the body's ability to fight disease. Finally, vitamin C also protects against reactive oxidant species, reducing the risk and severity of a variety of illnesses. 2. Korean Ginseng Korean ginseng also known as Panax ginseng, possesses strong antioxidant and immune-stimulating properties. Korean ginseng helps regulate immune cell function, including macrophages, T cells, B cells and natural killer cells, and improves inflammation through its high content of a variety of pharmacological compounds, like ginsenosides and acidic polysaccharides. In most cases, it is ginseng root extract that is used to maintain immune homeostasis, although the other parts of the plant can be used as well. Ginseng root is often consumed raw or as a juice, tea or powder, and some studies have suggested that daily consumption of Korean ginseng may decrease oxidative damage and improve immunomodulatory activity while presenting no adverse side effects. 3. Astaxanthin Astaxanthin is a carotenoid antioxidant that possesses potent immuno-modulation properties, including the ability to increase interleukin production, a type of cytokine expressed by white blood cells. Additional studies have found that dietary intake of astaxanthin may heighten immune response while also reducing DNA damage and inflammation, and astaxanthin may play a protective role in immune function by limiting free radical damage to immune cells. 4. Shiitake Mushrooms Medicinal mushrooms and their benefits have been studied extensively for many years, however, recent research has revealed that this traditional oriental therapy may also modulate the immune response by activating lymphocytes and dendritic cells, thereby up-regulating the production of cytokines.

How do you feel about GABA supplement for stress and the nervous system and for sleep?

Most multivitamin research asks whether the pills prevent big diseases. This study asked something more practical: can people still handle what daily life requires? Researchers followed more than 16,000 adults over 60 for three years as part of the COSMOS trial. The group taking a daily multivitamin reported better day-to-day function than the group taking a placebo, and the biggest differences showed up in how much people were held back by things like fatigue and shortness of breath. It was presented at a nutrition conference in July and hasn't been through peer review yet, so I'd file it as a small, interesting finding rather than a settled one. It does come from the same trial that has already produced three peer-reviewed papers on memory and thinking, and that track record is why I'm paying attention to it. I've said for years that food should be your first source of nutrients, and I stand by that. But soil quality has declined, diets have narrowed, and most people come up short on at least a few important nutrients. Closing those gaps is one of the simplest things you can do for your health by taking a whole food multivitamin.

The COSMOS trial has given us one of the first randomized looks at whether a supplement can measurably slow biological aging. COSMOS itself assigned more than 21,000 older adults to a daily multivitamin, a cocoa extract, both, or neither; in a prespecified substudy of 958 of them, researchers tracked five DNA methylation clocks (epigenetic markers that estimate biological rather than chronological age) over two years. Writing in Nature Medicine, they reported that the multivitamin slowed two of the second-generation clocks: PCGrimAge advanced 0.11 years less per year than placebo, and PCPhenoAge 0.21 years less. Cocoa extract showed no effect on any of the five. On PCGrimAge, the benefit was concentrated in people who started out biologically older than their chronological age, which fits what I saw clinically, since the further you are from optimal the more room there is to move. The trial used a generic, off-the-shelf multivitamin built on synthetic nutrient forms. So imagine if they used a real food multivitamin?? The results would have been ever more amazing!

Green tea has a well-earned reputation for calm, focused energy, and L-theanine is a big reason why. A new systematic review and meta-analysis in Molecular Psychiatry pooled 31 randomized trials covering roughly 1,168 people and found that a single 200 mg dose, taken 30 to 60 minutes before a cognitive task, meaningfully improved choice reaction time, a marker of sharper attention. The reduction in acute stress was more modest, and there were early signs of more stable mood, though that benefit needs confirmation in higher-quality trials. The amino acid did not increase fatigue, so the calm it provides does not appear to come at the cost of alertness, and across every study no serious adverse events were reported. That fits what I have long observed: L-theanine is one of the safest and most reliable compounds we have for supporting cognitive function and a healthy stress response.