I have an annular tear on the disc between my L5 & S1 vertebrate. I have been dealing with this for a long time & am in daily pain.

I realized I had become pretty bad with my diet & was eating a lot of processed sugars & cards (we had some parties & had all these desserts left over that I’ve been eating). Then I really started to crave these foods & it spiraled.

About a week ago I decided to cut it out. Now I’m eating overnight oats for breakfast & chicken + salad for lunch every day (which kinda sucks, but I’m doing it).

My back does feel very slightly better. But my energy is SO much better. I can’t believe how much I am getting done at work. I feel like my ADHD has taken a backseat.

I know we keep hearing that sugar is the new bad thing to avoid. But I wanted to share with you all because I can’t believe the difference cutting it out has made for me.

The other change worth calling out is I am doing a lot more leg & core exercises in the last 3 weeks very diligently to help my back & that may be a factor as well.

Basic stuff…. But hopefully my experience can help someone else.

What actually lets you work long hours with high energy, focus, and less stress?

Could be caffeine, supplements, food, routines, exercise, sleep hacks, anything.

Drop what genuinely worked for you, and upvote other answers you’ve tried and can vouch for.

For me: Modafinil but also not always and it increases stress.

I’ve been encountering reels and videos about the benefits of sprinting; HGH and testosterone benefits, muscle preservation without much additional training, better VO2 max and visually better legs and almost bodybuilder-like adaption.

I’d like to hear whether somebody here has incorporated sprinting into the training regimen and what benefits have been perceived.

I am a 30 year old Man.

I have an active sex life but each time I have to do sex, I have to consume Tadalafil. (2.5mg / 5mg)

Without Tadalafil, I find it difficult to get it up.

Need guidance on how I could solve the issue and get erections without Tadalafil.

Other health issues -

1. Severe Anxiety

2. Severe OCD

3. Penis hangs off pubic bone

4. Penis erections at night are angled at right and at left but during sex, penis is straight and centred.

5. Blood sometimes feels rushing into my penis but it just doesn't get up.

Erections feel suppressed, like blood is flowing, but it just won't get up. With Tadalafil 5mg, it went straight up and had the best erection and sexual experience.

Sometime in November 2025, I went paranoid and consumed multiple antibiotics, antifungals and HIV PEP meds. I noticed at night my penis would get completely elongated but not hard at all and when I would turn in bed, it would swing from left to right giving immense pain at base. As time passed, the swinging came considerably in control.

Please guide as I want natural hard erections without any medicine.

I've heard of some people say they fixed their mitochondria and they stopped losing hair? Anyone had similar experience? I don't wanna go on finastride and mess up my libido

I eat salmon maybe 2-3 times a week and was wondering if there’s any risks long term? Anyone else eat a lot of salmon regularly? Worried about mercury and contaminants

Energy throughout the day is much more sustained compared to caffeine. It doesn't make you super energetic or jittery like other stimulants but I find you are able to push through work like a soldier. You only get tired when the drug's half life starts wearing off.

Personally, I have been microdosing 50mg I find it's the sweet spot for focus and sleeping well that same night, if taken early enough.

Studying: I have been able to study for around 30% longer. Off modafinil I would be able to do around 8-9 hours max before tapping out. On Modafinil I can wake up go to the gym, get a workout in, come home and study for 11-12hours.

The focus is much better since I have ADHD I find I can focus better on tasks that I am doing, HOWEVER, this is my experience, the quality of work being done is lower than off Modafinil.

For example: I am doing advanced statistics were you have to be very careful with multiple decimal numbers and use many formulas that require attention to detail. I find that I can miss a number here and there I pay less attention to detail and just do it.

Another example: I am able to read 50 pages of first exposure complicated textbook material. Whereas off Modafinil I can do about 30 pages in that same time, BUT I find that material is more engraved in my brain.

Has anybody else tried modafinil and feel the same?

Since I am still new to modafinil I have never experienced a lecture with it or have done a test with it. Can anyone relate to my experience and did you use modafinil during an exam, what grades did you get?

Last night I was catching up with a friend I hadn’t seen in years, and I ended up explaining my current health/biohacking routine to them. They were pretty shocked by how many things I’m doing in the name of optimizing my health.

Something about that conversation really stuck with me. Because despite all the research, effort, money, supplements, medications, testing, etc., I honestly can’t say that I’m healthier than my friend, who basically just… lives a healthy lifestyle.

It made me wonder: Am I actually optimizing my health? Or am I using the process of optimization as a crutch to avoid doing the boring, difficult things that actually move the needle? You know, things like: Eat well. Exercise consistently. Sleep properly. Manage stress. Maintain relationships. Go outside... etc.

Meanwhile, I’ve accumulated so many things in my routine that I’ve reached the point where I don't think I can even travel to another country because of what I would realistically need to bring with me. That realization is kind of tripping me up.

I’m starting to wonder whether there’s a psychological component to all of this, like I’ve trained myself to constantly search for the next problem to fix, the next supplement or compound to add. I don't understand why I am this way when other people seem fine living a normal life without any of these steps.

I doubt I’m the only person who feels this way.

One of the top posts I remember seeing on a biohacking subreddit was basically someone joking about dreaming that they collapsed in the street, got rushed to the hospital, had every test imaginable done, and the doctors discovered they were deficient in some obscure but critically important vitamin. They supplemented it, and suddenly every problem in their life was solved and they can simply be normal. Obviously it was a joke, but the more I think about it, the more accurately it captured my my exact mindset.

For context, below is my current “protocol.” I should add that I didn’t start all of this at once. Most of it was added one thing at a time over roughly 3.5 years. But seeing everything written out together is kind of shocking... Surely no human being needs all of this, and almost certainly, I must be doing some kind damage to myself because of some unknown drug interaction or contaminated supply.

Prescription Medication:

• Adderall XR - 10mg
• Wellbutrin XL - 300mg

Supplements:

• Base:
  • Multivitamin
  • Omega 3 Triglyceride
  • Vitamin D3 + K2 - 5000 IU/day
  • Magnesium (3 forms on rotation: Taurate, Malate, Glycinate)
  • Creatine Monohydrate - 5g/day
  • Taurine - 1.5g/day
• Cellular Energy:
  • NMN (Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) - 250mg
  • NR (Nicotinamide Riboside) - 250mg
• Mitochondria Support:
  • CoQ10 (Ubiquione) - 200mg
  • PQQ (Pyrroloquinoline Quinon) - 20mg

Hormone Optimization:

• Testosterone Cypionate - 10mg/day
• hCG - 100IU/day
• Tesamorelin - 0.5mg/day
• Ipamorelin - 0.25mg/day

Peptides:

• Body Weight / Insulin Sensitivity:
  • Retatrutide - 2.5mg/week
• Energy:
  • SS-31 - dosage titrating stage
  • MOTS-c - dosage titrating stage
  • NAD+ - dosage titrating stage
• Brain / Mental:
  • Semax - dosage titrating up
  • PT-141 - dosage titrating up

Others:

• Caffeine from coffee and tea around 500mg per day
• L-Theanine from black tea.
• Nicotine lozenges 1mg 2 times per day

A friend has a vibration plate in a corner of their home gym, and I tried standing on the lowest setting for a few minutes after a day spent mostly on my feet. I did not have a grand takeaway from it. It just felt like a low-effort pause when I was too tired to do a proper stretch session.

Then I went online and immediately ran into the usual extremes: people treating it like a miracle, and other people treating it like an expensive joke. I am not looking for a cure or a performance shortcut. I am only curious whether anyone has found a simple, realistic way to use one as part of an evening wind-down without turning it into another piece of equipment that needs a whole routine around it.

If you keep one at home, what made it stick: convenience, a fixed time of day, or just the fact that it is already out in the room?

Falling asleep is no problem but sleeping through is impossible I wake up like 5-6x times during the night either to go to the bathroom or just randomly during the night.

My sleeping schedule hasn’t changed i wake up at similar times and go to sleep at the same times but i wake up feeling groggy and nauseous.

Since that problem started i feel sleepier during the day and have less energy which was never a problem for me

I tried every way to optimize my sleep: (from sleeping mask, ear plugs to time released melatonin, 5-HTP)

It started pretty randomly and it stresses me out for some reason

Thinking to try: (Epithalon or DSIP) any advice?

I've been building a free iOS app for tracking a complicated supplement/medication schedule — disclosure up front, it's mine, it's free, and I'm not affiliated with any vendor.

The part I didn't expect to be hard was the compound library. My first version just listed everything with a friendly one-line description, and it read like every other write-up out there: confident, uniform, and quietly misleading. Everything looked equally supported.

So I added an evidence tier to every entry — FDA approved, in clinical trials, early human data, animal data only, or purely anecdotal. Then I actually sorted them.

Out of 27 compounds: 5 are approved. 1 is in trials. 14 have early human data, some of it very thin. 6 have nothing but animal studies. 1 is community reports only.

Seeing it laid out changed how I think about the space. Most of what gets discussed confidently sits in that "early human data" band, where a couple of small studies get repeated until they feel settled. There's one in my library with no defensible human dosing data at all, so instead of inventing a starting point I made the app say that outright.

I'm not posting this to tell anyone what to take — genuinely not my place, and I'm not qualified. But if you're running n=1 on something, knowing which tier you're actually in seems like the minimum, and it's information that's weirdly hard to find in one place.

Happy to share what the tiers are per compound if that's useful. Not medical advice, talk to a doctor.

Due to a denial from health insurance, I was suddenly unable to get an SNRI which had been helping me for 7 months or so. I was on a smaller dose anyway, so I didn't think having to stop it would have this big of an effect, but it certainly was a quick drop off for mood. I went from doing pretty well to being really depressed, irritable, and a couple anxious days thrown in there as well. While the insurance stuff gets sorted out (which could take weeks, if it hopefully resolves), is there anything I can substitute in the meantime for a mood lift?It doesn't take much of a chemical change to throw everything into chaos, I suppose!

I don't like to try balancing things like serotonin on my own, but I do have Saffron supplements on hand. Saffron is serotonergic, I'm pretty sure, but it's also one of those things that takes weeks of consistency to build up. Still, I've been taking an SNRI for 7 months, so maybe saffron could sort of pick up where the SNRI left off? I'm not too optimistic about that, but I don't know what else to try. I also have bromantane, but it's a year old and it never seemed to help me in the first place. I'm just looking for some patchwork to try and save my mood a bit until I can get my medication again. I haven't been eating much, but I've been exercising. Mood has definitely not been good, though, and the brain fog is pretty crazy, too, so I feel I should be proactive instead of trying to ride it out.

I’m a 34 year old male, 230lbs Down from 280. I naturally got down to 230 fasting and boxing with weight lifting but with 2 kids it creeped back up to 250lb.

I’m generally healthy, own my business so I’m able to train right before lunch, I don’t have breakfast just creatine fiber Citrulline and tea before lunch.

I usually stop eating around 8pm and start again between 12-2.

I weigh all my cooking oils & proteins sometimes I eyeball veggies.

I started tirzepitide and got back down to 230lb at 4.4 mg a week. I lift weights 5 days a week push/Pull/legs split. My body fat is around 25% and I’m really trying to get it into the teens.

I could walk more it’s just hard with the kids right now so we go for walks every other day, it’s just too hot for them right now in Texas so I row at night for 30 minutes low intensity.

I Eat between 1700-1900cal a day, but the scale stays around 228-231 and it’s been about 4 weeks.

Do you have any advice?

What’s a good filling breakfast that won’t make me sleepy with less carbs and saturated fat. Can’t do oatmeal anymore. Makes me extremely sleepy even with protein.

Hey guys I’m 21M, generally fit, I go to the gym 4 times a week, walk 10k steps a day, 15% body fat, eat very well.
I’ve found that compared to other guys, I struggle to go more than one round during sex and it will take me a long while to build the Urge back again. Max maybe twice a day?
Anything anyone recommends would be amazing to take for this or check with doctor

Hi, I’m looking for something that could help with mental energy/focus after work.
I finish around 4 PM and usually feel mentally and physically drained, which makes studying difficult.

Sleep, training, and diet are already on point.

I was considering Semax, other options/opinions?

As a non smoker, I'm curious how bad for cardiovascular health, inflammation and other health markers smoking is?

I'm not trying to pick up a new habit, I'm just wondering how bad of a choice a lot of people around me are making.

Are bad health effects overblown? Or maybe the opposite? What do studies say?

Suppose your sleep score, resting heart rate, or readiness score looks bad for a few days, but you feel normal and your performance hasn’t dropped.

Would you want a coach to change your training anyway?

The case for changing it is that the data might pick up fatigue before you notice it. A slightly easier session now could prevent a bad workout later.

But wearables are imperfect. If the plan changes every time a score dips, you may end up training around the device instead of using it as one source of information.

I think the hard part is deciding what should win when the signals disagree: the wearable, how you feel, or how you’re actually performing.

If you had a coach reviewing all three, when would you want them to step in?

I am wondering if there are ways I have not heard of, to “schedule” crying, for lack of a better way to say it.

I have been going through a lot personally, and have never been able to cry when it is the appropriate time, like at the memorial service of my own sibling, or when alone or after a bad fight with my partner or whatever, but it will come out eventually at a wrong time. I hate when I have to hide at work to cry or end up not being able to see while driving because I’m having another breakdown in my car. Or having awkward social interactions if it comes up.

As far as taking care of it the ways I know how, yes I have a therapist. I know my mental health is also behind this so I will address that in detail and am always open to more advice on that.

I meditate pretty regularly now, much more than I used to. I have improved my bloodwork with vitamin d, zinc and iron deficiencies now fixed. Everything is good except high ldl cholesterol, for two draws in a row it was like 4 points over. And on the hormones side, just high progesterone also bit out of range but doesn’t seem super high.

Also, in case any of what I take could be making me more “out of touch” with my emotions then that would be nice to know. Or if any of it might be negative for my mental health right now. what I take for vitamins/supplements:

Mucina pruriens 500-1000mg every other day, it seems to help my mood

Sun-chlorella 500 mg almost every day, keeps me regular and also seems to help my mood

Beta gulcan for hopefully lowering cholesterol, I just recently started that 1000mg split in two to take with meals

Vitamin d blend with lithium orotate, ashwsgandha, L-theanine almost every day

I also do NAD+ IM shots once a month 200mg for just the past two months and the energy seemed to last less the second time. But I did notice a boost. Now to save money and get more, I will be getting that amount in a week from smaller doses. Just got it prescribed on a self-injection plan instead.

I smoke a lot of weed, and some tobacco, and I vape. Yes, I know that is not great. I don’t drink at all. I got ahold of ketamine recently and have done it a few times. That helped my mental health to some extent. but the effects wore off pretty quickly and I can’t get ahold of that stuff cheaply or reliably anyway.

So, I am trying to take care of both my mental and physical health right now and get exercise and eat well on top of all this.

The idea of being able to control crying is fascinating to me, too! I have tried that trauma informed yoga and similar new-age stuff and massage for release, but it did not happen for me.

Thanks for reading all that if you did!

I want to start doing some consistent, regular tracking for my core cardiovascular and metabolic markers (ApoB, hs-CRP, fasting insulin, thyroid) and i am strictly looking for a blood test at home to skip the clinic visits and I've narrowed it down to these two options.

Both seem to cover the basic markers I need to log but I'm having a hard time deciding which one is better for long-term tracking, anyone here actually compared both or chosen one over the other? I want something that makes it easy to see trends over time. Recs would be appreciated!!

Hi,

What have you used to improve your vision?