1. Glycine, 3,000 mg at night

This is the one Dr. Colbert calls dirt cheap and talks about first, because it changed his own sleep. His account on the broadcast is direct: he was getting about ten minutes of deep sleep a night, started taking three grams of glycine before bed, and moved to over an hour. Mary’s version is that he stopped falling asleep in his chair three minutes after sitting down.

Glycine is a simple amino acid. It appears to lower core body temperature slightly before sleep, which is one of the physiological signals that lets deep sleep begin. In a small polysomnography study, three grams before bed improved subjective sleep quality and shortened the time to reach slow wave sleep. A separate trial in partially sleep restricted volunteers found less daytime fatigue and sleepiness the following day.

How he uses it: 3,000 mg, taken at night. It is mildly sweet and dissolves in water.

Honest placing: the trials here are small and short. This is promising rather than settled. It is also inexpensive and well tolerated, which is why it is worth trying before anything exotic.

2. Magnesium

About half of Americans do not get enough magnesium, and it participates in more than 300 reactions in the body, including the ones that produce and stabilize ATP. Low magnesium shows up as muscle cramps, poor sleep, irritability and a general sense of running on empty.

Form matters more than dose. Magnesium oxide is cheap and poorly absorbed. Chelated forms are gentler and better taken up. Divine Health’s High Potency Magnesium uses chelated dimagnesium malate and chelated magnesium taurate, 150 mg of elemental magnesium per two capsule serving.

Cautions: talk with your clinician before supplementing magnesium if you have reduced kidney function. Magnesium can also affect the absorption of certain antibiotics and thyroid medication, so separate them by a few hours.

3. An NAD+ precursor

NAD+ is the molecule that carries electrons into the electron transport chain, which is the final step where your mitochondria actually make ATP. NAD+ levels fall with age. Precursors such as nicotinamide riboside are the practical way to raise them by mouth.

Dr. Colbert is candid that this one is noticeable in a way most supplements are not. In his practice he has used NAD+ for patients with chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and heavy brain fog, and for people over seventy who have stopped moving. Kyle describes feeling clearer within about fifteen minutes of a scoop.

One important boundary: Dr. Colbert also discusses injectable NAD+ used under medical supervision in an age management practice. That is supervised clinical care, not a home protocol, and no dosing for it appears here. The oral powder is the at home form.

4. CoQ10

CoQ10 sits directly in the energy production line inside the mitochondria, and it is concentrated in the tissues that work hardest: heart, liver, kidneys and muscle. Your body makes it and you also absorb it from organ meats, fatty fish and poultry, which is why vegetarians and vegans often run low.

Dr. Colbert makes two points here. The first is about form. After roughly age 40 to 50 many adults convert CoQ10 to its active form less efficiently, so he prefers the ubiquinol form from that age onward. The second is about absorption: CoQ10 is fat soluble, so take it with a meal that contains fat.

5. Vitamin B12, and the activated B vitamins with it

B12 is on Dr. Colbert’s essential list, and his description of deficiency is short and useful: “you start to get real tired.” You can also become anemic, and over time low B12 damages the myelin sheath around nerves, which is the tingling, numbness and burning that people feel in their feet.

Certain groups are much more likely to be low: vegans and vegetarians, anyone on a proton pump inhibitor for reflux, people with celiac disease, Crohn’s or colitis, and anyone who has had gastric bypass surgery. If you are in one of those groups and you are tired, this belongs on your blood panel.

The B vitamins work as a team in energy metabolism. Thiamine and riboflavin help convert food into cellular energy, and B6, folate and B12 together keep homocysteine in a healthy range. Activated forms such as methylcobalamin and methylfolate are the ones Dr. Colbert formulates with.

6. Vitamin D3, with K2

Dr. Colbert calls vitamin D the single most important vitamin, and deficiency is common enough to be worth assuming until proven otherwise. He cites roughly 82% of Black Americans, 69% of Hispanic Americans and 30% of white Americans as deficient. Low vitamin D is strongly associated with fatigue and low mood, particularly through the winter.

His general starting point is at least 2,000 IU daily, ideally checked with a blood level rather than guessed. He pairs it with vitamin K2, because D increases calcium absorption and K2 helps direct that calcium into bone rather than arterial walls.

Cautions: vitamin K2 interacts with warfarin and similar anticoagulants. If you take one, do not add K2 without speaking to your prescriber first.

7. Omega-3 fats

Over 90% of Americans fall short on omega-3 fats. The connection to energy is indirect but real: your brain is roughly 60% fat and consumes 20% of your body’s oxygen despite being 2% of its weight. That much oxygen use generates oxidative stress, and inflammation in the brain is a large part of what brain fog feels like from the inside.

DHA concentrates in the brain and the retina. EPA is the more anti inflammatory of the two. Dr. Colbert suggests at least 1,000 mg a day as a starting point and personally takes considerably more for cardiovascular reasons. If fish oil repeats on you, take it after a meal and start low.

Cautions: higher dose omega-3 can increase bleeding risk. If you take warfarin, clopidogrel, apixaban or another anticoagulant or antiplatelet, clear the dose with your clinician, and tell your surgeon before any procedure.

8. MCT oil, and ketones as clean fuel

Medium chain triglycerides take a shorter metabolic route than most fats. They travel to the liver and convert readily into ketones, which the brain can burn directly. For people who feel wiped out an hour after a carbohydrate heavy lunch, this is often the most immediately noticeable item on the list.

Dr. Colbert is emphatic on the other side of this: refined carbohydrates and bread are energy robbers. “If I eat bread at lunch, it turns my brain off. I am exhausted. I have to go take a nap.” Steady blood sugar is steady energy, and MCTs help by giving the brain a fuel that does not spike and crash.

Start slow. Too much MCT too fast causes cramping and loose stools. Begin with half a serving. If you take insulin or a sulfonylurea, talk with your clinician before shifting toward a ketogenic pattern, because your medication dose may need adjusting.

9. Beet root and citrulline for nitric oxide

Mitochondria cannot make energy without oxygen, and oxygen arrives by blood. Dietary nitrate from beet root converts to nitric oxide, which relaxes blood vessels and improves blood flow. Citrulline supports the same pathway by a different route.

The most consistent finding in the research is that dietary nitrate lowers the oxygen cost of exercise, meaning the same effort demands less oxygen. Meta analyses support a modest benefit for endurance performance. Whether it does this by improving mitochondrial efficiency itself is genuinely disputed, and at least one careful study found the oxygen saving without any change in mitochondrial efficiency. The practical effect holds up better than the proposed mechanism.

Cautions: this one meaningfully lowers blood pressure. If you take blood pressure medication, and especially if you take nitrates such as nitroglycerin or a PDE5 inhibitor such as sildenafil, speak to your clinician before adding beet root. Do not be alarmed by pink urine.

10. Feed your gut so it makes urolithin A for you

This is the newest science on the list and the one Dr. Colbert is most excited about. Mitophagy is the process by which your body recycles worn out mitochondria and builds fresh ones. Urolithin A is a postbiotic compound that supports it. In a randomized trial in middle aged adults, urolithin A improved muscle strength and markers of mitochondrial health.

Here is the catch. You do not eat urolithin A. Your gut bacteria make it from ellagitannins in pomegranate, walnuts, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and cherries. Only about 30 to 40% of people carry enough of the right anaerobic bacteria, including Akkermansia muciniphila and certain Bifidobacterium species, to do the conversion well. Antibiotics and a high sugar diet are the usual reasons the capacity is missing.

Purified urolithin A works, and Dr. Colbert is blunt that it runs roughly 100 to 200 dollars a month. His alternative is to rebuild the machinery instead of buying the end product: support the gut bacteria, then feed them daily. “Every night I have a handful of walnuts, a little shot of pomegranate juice, my blueberries, strawberries and raspberries.” He puts the cost of that approach around thirty dollars a month.

Honest placing: the trials on purified urolithin A are the strongest evidence here. The idea that you can reliably reproduce that effect through diet plus probiotics is reasonable and mechanistically sound, but it has not been tested head to head. Treat it as a sensible, inexpensive first move rather than a proven equivalent.