Smart About Supplement Stacks

“Supplement stacking” is right on trend, but you need to know how to do it correctly if you don’t want to crash and burn on your stack.

Do you take a multivitamin every day? If that’s all you take, perhaps with a little vitamin C when you feel a cold coming on or some magnesium if you are cramping a bit, that’s a very 1980s approach to supplements. That’s not to say that supplements are waning in popularity.

Between January 2023 and March 2024, the Australian Bureau of Statistics conducted the National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey. The results showed that 33.6 per cent of Australians (that’s one in every three people) take dietary supplements like vitamins and minerals on a daily basis. According to the CSIRO, the annual dollar value of the supplement industry will be more than five billion and it is growing at about three per cent per year.

The thing is, people want more from their supplements these days, just like we want better sleep, more fulfilling relationships, on-demand
entertainment and work-life balance. In supplement terms, this is taking the form of “personalised nutrition” where the generalised multivitamin has been supplanted by nutrients targeted to a person’s specific needs. A particular manifestation of this is “supplement stacking”, a practice that promises much but also carries some pitfalls for the unwary traveller and warrants some deeper thought.

What is supplement stacking?

Supplement stacking is a market term used to describe the practice of combining multiple supplements that work together to help you achieve your specific wellness goal. It is very popular in the bodybuilding industry but is equally applicable to mental health, menopause, fertility, and any number of personal health aims.

In principle, this sounds good and is a smart approach to taking supplements. However, like any concept that gets into the hands of influencers and marketers, supplement stacking is the subject of a lot of misinformation. Not all supplements combine well and there is also some nuance in how they operate from person to person. At the same time, there are some supplement stacks that do not work for anyone.

Some stacks to avoid

More is not always better. Some supplements do not combine well. There are many instances of this but here are some common ones to avoid.

Magnesium and Zinc
These are two important and highly useful minerals, but magnesium and zinc do not make a great stack. This is because they compete for absorption in your intestines. If you take them together then you reduce how much you absorb of each of them. If you really want to take both, then take your zinc during the day with food and your magnesium at night, because it helps with relaxation and sleep.

Zinc and Calcium
It is an absorption issue again with these two useful minerals. Zinc helps with immunity and wound healing. Calcium supports healthy bones. Both are important for nail health. If you want to take both though, you should take them at least two hours apart.

Ginkgo biloba and Fish Oil
The herb Ginkgo biloba is used to improve peripheral circulation and mental function. Fish oil supplements have anti-inflammatory effects and also help balance blood fats. Both of these supplements can also thin the blood, so combining them might increase the chance of excessive bleeding. This would be especially true if you were taking another blood thinning medication, so tread warily before stacking these two.

Hypericum and Ginseng
Hypericum perforatum (also known as St John’s Wort) is a wonderful herb for relieving mood disorders and mild depression. Ginseng is what herbalists call an “adaptogen”, meaning it helps the body adapt to stress, lifting energy and improving overall function. Unfortunately, they should not be taken together because they both raise levels of serotonin in your body and while serotonin is good, in excess it can lead to symptoms like restlessness and confusion.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list; it is an illustrative one to show that adding more and more supplements to your stack just because you like the effects that each is individually supposed to have might not get you the results you want.

Stacks that work

The key with stacking is to ensure the supplements you want will not interact negatively and possibly even work together synergistically so that their sum is greater than their individual effect. These are a few supplement stacks that work.

Vitamin C and Iron
Vitamin C improves the absorption of iron, especially when the iron is from non-animal sources.

Sleep stack
Magnesium is great for muscle and nerve relaxation. Combining it with soothing herbs like Valerian and Chamomile makes for a great sleep stack. If you want to go further, add in some l-theanine (a relaxing substance found in tea).

Vitamin D, Calcium, and vitamin K2
This is a great bone stack because vitamin D helps with calcium absorption while vitamin K2 helps deliver calcium to bones, as opposed to being deposited in the arteries.

Stress stack
To support stressed adrenal glands, the minerals magnesium and potassium are very useful, especially when combined with an adaptogenic herb like Withania somnifera or Ginseng.

Immune stack
Zinc and vitamin C are both important for functioning of your immune system while a herb like Echinacea can also give your immunity a boost.
Again, this is not a complete list but it indicates how effective supplement stacking works.

Smart about stacking

There will be individual variation when it comes to the results you get from stacking your supplements. As well as knowing what combinations of nutrients work and don’t work, you also need to know how your body and your lifestyle interact with the supplements you want to use. It is about looking beyond simplistic hype and making informed decisions. A few rules to live by in creating your supplement stack so that you get the most out of it are:

Be clear about your goals
Establish what you want your supplement stacking to achieve so that you don’t waste money and effort on uncertain outcomes.

Consult and research
Don’t trust what you see on Instagram or in a mass email newsletter. Consult an expert or do some deep dive research to establish the supplements you want to combine.

Observe and adjust
People react differently, even to supplement stacks that theoretically should work well. Make a note of your baseline start point, observe how you change (or don’t), and make adjustments accordingly.

This article is featured in WellBeing Magazine 224