The Five Lowest-Graded Supplements in Dave Asprey's Stack

Dave Asprey has said he takes roughly 150 supplements. When we rebuilt his record to our depth standard, we could verify 56 items from three or more independent sources, and 53 of them are his own regimen. Thirty-seven of those carry grades in our library. Most of the stack grades respectably. This ranking is about the other end: the five lowest evidence grades in the most documented stack we hold, and what each one costs him every month.

Lowest-graded does not mean most dangerous. It means the human evidence is thinnest relative to the claim and the spend. One of the five carries a real caution, and it is flagged where it appears. The four C- items are tied on evidence and are ordered here by worth-it grade.

Evidence grades from the Longevity Lab Report library, as graded today.

1. Betaine HCl: D+

Asprey takes two to three capsules of betaine HCl with each meal, down from six. The idea is straightforward: more stomach acid, better digestion. The problem is that the human efficacy data is nearly absent. Our record found mostly anecdote where controlled trials should be, which is why the evidence grade is D+ and the worth-it grade is D, at about $8 to $12 a month.

The caution is concrete: betaine HCl should never be taken on an empty stomach, and it is a poor idea alongside ulcers, gastritis, or regular anti-inflammatory use. This is the one item in the five where the thin evidence comes with an active downside risk.

2. Fisetin: C-

Fisetin is the senolytic hope: in mice, it clears senescent cells and the data is genuinely interesting. In humans, there are no published outcome results at all. Our grade is C- for evidence and D for worth-it, tied with betaine HCl for the worst worth-it mark in this five, because the typical cost is $20 to $30 a month for a benefit that has never been measured in a person. Asprey's sources list it in his core daily stack without a stated dose, which tells its own story: even the protocol is unsettled, because the human research has not settled it.

3. Ornithine: C-

Asprey takes ornithine in his nightly sleep stack, dose not stated in the sources. The human record is a handful of small Japanese trials on subjective sleep quality, using 400 to 800 milligrams, with no large replication since. Evidence C-, worth-it C-, at about $10 to $15 a month. Nothing here is alarming, and the sleep claim may even hold up. It simply has not been tested at the scale its place in a flagship stack implies.

4. Quercetin: C-

Quercetin, at 500 to 1,000 milligrams a day in Asprey's stack, is interesting in exactly one context: the early human senolytic work paired it with a prescription drug, and the results belong to the combination, not to quercetin alone. Standalone, the human data is weak. Evidence C-, worth-it C-, at about $12 to $18 a month. A supplement whose best evidence requires a prescription partner it does not ship with is a hard case to make at any price.

5. Vitamin E: C-

This one needs care, because Asprey's form choice is deliberate. His vitamin E is 50 milligrams of mixed tocotrienols in a combined softgel, explicitly not the alpha-tocopherol form that most trials used. He is right that they are different compounds. The graded record still lands at C-, for two reasons. The large trial record on vitamin E supplementation is a warning, not a null: in SELECT, 35,533 men taking 400 IU a day saw no prostate protection and a 17 percent increase in prostate cancer risk. And tocotrienols, his chosen form, have no human outcome data for longevity at all. Different form, same evidentiary position: unproven where it is not discouraging. Worth-it grade C, at about $5 to $10 a month, the cheapest item in this five and the one with the most instructive file.

The next three, at C

Three more items sit one step above the five. Biotin (C) is a real vitamin with a weak cosmetic case, and high doses carry a practical hazard: they distort common lab results, including heart and thyroid panels. GABA (C) has small, mixed trials and an unresolved basic question about how much of it reaches the brain. Glutathione (C) has a delivery problem: the plain oral form is poorly absorbed, the newer forms raise blood levels without proven outcomes, and the precursor route, NAC, has comparable or better support at lower cost, while oral glutathione runs $20 to $50 a month.

What the bottom five mean

Asprey's stack, graded whole, is not a weak stack. Thirty-two of its 37 graded items sit above these five, and the discipline of the rebuild matters here: this ranking exists only because his record was verified item by item, with doses and sources, which almost no public stack survives. The bottom five are where a reader copying the famous version of this regimen spends real money on the thinnest ice in it: roughly $55 to $85 a month across the five, at typical prices, for one D+ and four C- evidence grades. Copy the structure of the stack if you like. These are the five line items to question first. If any of the five are already in your own stack, the same math is running on your money every month.