Stacking, sequencing and budget
A hundred entries is a menu, not a shopping list. Most people will take between two and six of them. Here is how to think about which, in what order, and what to do when money is the constraint.
Sequencing: one at a time
Add one new thing at a time and give it two to four weeks before the next. The reason is diagnostic: if you start three supplements in a week and feel worse, you have no idea which one did it, and you'll probably stop all three, including the two that were helping. Every trial in this guide tested a single agent against a stable background. Copy that design.
Stacking: cover different mechanisms
Two entries from the same mechanism bucket are usually redundant; two from different buckets are usually complementary. An anti-inflammatory (Section A or C), something that feeds the microbiome (D) and something for the barrier (F) address three points on the loop. Four different antioxidants address one point four times. The capability matrix exists for exactly this check.
Combination products
I prefer single-ingredient products almost everywhere in this guide: you can adjust one without the other, and you can tell which is doing what. The two exceptions are deliberate, the multivitamin (J-00), and the peptide combo (G-01/G-02), where the two peptides are meant to travel together.
The doubling-up problem
Many products carry extra ingredients, a multivitamin with 2,000 IU of vitamin D, a fish oil with added D3, a "gut repair" powder with a gram of glutamine. Add these up on one tracking sheet (see the four questions). If you take a multivitamin, it is the first row.
Budget tiers
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| Tier | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| If you can only afford one | Curcumin. It has the deepest trial record of anything here, in both diseases, and it addresses the mechanism (inflammation) that does the damage. Thorne Curcumin Phytosome: go.supplementsforibd.com/curcumin |
| Foundation (2–3) | One anti-inflammatory from the Five, vitamin D3 guided by a blood level, and one barrier entry. For most people this is where the value is. |
| Full Five | All five, added one at a time over two to three months. Omega-3 and SBI at study-range intakes are the expensive lines; the powder form of SBI and a concentrated fish oil bring both down. |
| Extended | The Five plus phenotype-specific additions from the previous page, chosen with your health team against the matrix. Rarely more than eight total. |
Prices are not listed in this guide by design, they live on the dispensary. The tiers are about number of products, not dollars.
Food first, always
Several entries can be had as food or tea at near-zero cost: turmeric in cooking (with the absorption caveat), fatty fish twice a week, red onion and capers for quercetin, ginger tea, chamomile tea, bone broth for glycine and collagen, sunlight for vitamin D. The whole-food line in every full entry exists so you can check that before you buy anything.
What I personally take, and why, is two pages further on in this section, labeled as exactly that.
READ & SHOP
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Options to explore with your care team. These are not a recommendation to take them together. Andrew earns a commission on Fullscript purchases. US shipping only.