Supplements - How To Decide What To Use: 5 Min Phys

Galpin moves quickly through this gate because for most well-known supplements it is a formality: if you are taking creatine at 3-5 grams per day for strength, it is safe. The gate becomes relevant for people exploring novel or poorly-studied compounds, people who are 'stacking' multiple stimulant-class supplements, or people using supplements for purposes outside their studied applications. His practical advice: if it has passed FDA scrutiny and has broad use, assume safety at label doses unless you are in an unusual health situation.

Galpin says this is the gate he would need 55 minutes to cover properly. The key insight is that 'does it work?' is a binary question that obscures a continuous variable (effect size) and a personal value judgment (what effect size matters to me). By forcing yourself to pre-decide, you avoid the cognitive bias of evaluating evidence after you have already paid for the supplement and want it to have worked. He also notes this is why he refuses to answer supplement questions on social media: without knowing the person's philosophy — their context, their goals, their financial situation — he literally cannot answer.

Galpin frames this gate as the one most people skip, and he thinks skipping it is a major mistake. The vitamin D example is simple: getting more sun is free, has zero quality-control risk, and addresses the root cause (insufficient UV exposure) while simultaneously improving mood, sleep, and other vitamin-D-mediated pathways. The supplement route patches the biomarker without fixing the underlying behavior. For most micronutrient deficiencies, improving dietary variety and reducing ultra-processed food consumption would eliminate the deficiency without any supplementation. He notes this logic is in his book Unplugged.

Galpin's specific worked example: Nathan Tomasello (college wrestler) at $1,000/month on supplements for a 3% performance boost. Galpin's reframe — that same $1,000 could fund a full-time physical therapist or massage therapist, which would produce more than 3% improvement from better recovery and injury prevention. The unstated principle is that early in an athletic career, the fundamental limiters are technique, recovery, and nutrition quality, not the marginal gains from supplementation. Trevor Bauer at $15 million per year has different math: a 3% boost in physical performance has real contract-value implications.

Galpin emphasizes that he cannot give a blank recommendation — even for creatine or caffeine, the answer has to be 'try it and measure it.' He names genetics, lifestyle, background, and age as the key variables that drive individual differences. The practical implication is that every supplement recommendation is a hypothesis to test, not a prescription to follow indefinitely without re-evaluation. If after a proper personal trial the effect is not there, the honest conclusion is that this supplement does not work for you regardless of what the average data says.

Galpin recommends this resource specifically because it goes beyond the binary 'yes/no' answer to effect size and evidence grade. He uses the examples of arginine and beta-alanine as supplements where you might want to know the percentage improvement you can expect in your sport before deciding to invest. The site also helps distinguish between a supplement with ten well-designed trials and a supplement with one small industry-sponsored study — the kind of distinction that is invisible in most consumer-facing supplement marketing.

Galpin points to this as the purchasing-stage check that closes the ingredient-vs.-active-product gap for the most critical use case. The process is straightforward: search the NSF or Informed Choice websites for the specific supplement name and brand before buying. Both websites maintain searchable databases. For recreational users, these certifications also serve as a rough quality signal even when testing compliance is not the concern — a manufacturer willing to pay for lot-level batch testing generally has better overall quality-control processes.

The philosophy check sits at the second gate of the decision tree, immediately after safety. Galpin says he could spend hours on this topic alone and notes it would require a 55-minute video to do it justice. The key practical output is that before looking up any study on a supplement, you should decide your personal threshold: what magnitude of effect, in what timeframe, for what cost, would I actually consider meaningful? A professional baseball player making $15 million a year has a very different answer than a college wrestler with no income. Galpin explicitly says he will never answer 'does supplement X work?' on social media because the answer requires knowing the person's philosophy, their competitive context, and their financial situation.

Galpin extends the analogy to the most common complaint he hears: 'I took this and it didn't work.' His answer is almost always that the person used it for the wrong purpose, didn't take it long enough, took the wrong form, or combined it with things that interfered. The screwdriver analogy also covers situations where the ingredient works in research but may not be active in the specific product purchased — a separate and often overlooked problem especially with herbal supplements.

Galpin uses ginkgo biloba extract as the example: you might read the data, decide it works for inflammation, and buy a product — but if that product does not actually contain the studied extract in the studied form and dose, you are essentially doing a different experiment from the one you read about. He notes this problem is especially severe with herbal supplements and is one of the key reasons he defaults to recommending whole food and lifestyle interventions whenever feasible: food does not have an ingredient-vs.-active-product gap.

The rationale for the food-first gate is not just effectiveness — it is also risk mitigation. Whole foods do not carry the ingredient-vs.-active-product ambiguity, contamination risk, or undisclosed additives that supplements carry. Galpin also makes the point that lifestyle interventions tend to address root causes (you are deficient in vitamin D because you are not getting sun) rather than patching symptoms, and they tend to have broader positive effects on other systems simultaneously. The exception case he gives for legitimately needing supplementation is creatine for vegans: there is no dietary route to meaningful creatine intake without red meat, so the food-first gate fails and supplementation becomes the correct answer.

Galpin names specific athletes: Nathan Tomasello (college wrestler) and Trevor Bauer (professional baseball). For Tomasello, $1,000/month invested in a full-time physical therapist or massage therapist would likely produce more than 3% improvement and would address the actual limiting factors in his performance. For Bauer, a 3% boost on a $15 million salary has obvious financial logic. The broader principle is that the opportunity cost of a supplement budget is real — that money could go to higher-leverage interventions — and this calculation is entirely individual.