Supplement answers for people who lift, with the label numbers
One question per page. The answer in the first forty words, then the working: what the research shows, a comparison built from real UK label numbers, a worked example with the cost per day, and the sources.
Magnesium
Magnesium glycinate for lifters: which form, how much elemental magnesium, when to take it and what it costs per day.
Omega-3
Fish oil for lifters: EPA and DHA per softgel, what the label numbers mean and how to compare products honestly.
Collagen
Marine collagen for lifters: type 1, hydrolysed, vitamin C on the label, doses used in research and cost per day.
Lion's mane
Lion's mane for lifters: fruiting body or mycelium, extract ratios, what the research actually shows and what a capsule costs.
Guides
How to read a UK supplement label, what third-party testing means, and how to work out cost per day before you buy.
How every page here works
The front of a supplement bottle is marketing; the nutrition panel is a contract. Ghost Fitness reads the panel. Each page takes one question people who train actually ask, gives the direct answer first, then shows the elemental amounts, the %NRV, the doses the research used, and the price divided by the days a bottle lasts. Claims are limited to the wording authorised in the UK, and research is described as research.
Every section uses one Futuro Labs product as the worked example, because its labels print the numbers these comparisons need: magnesium glycinate at 300mg elemental for 22p a day, omega-3 at 300mg EPA+DHA for 17p a day, marine collagen at 1200mg with vitamin C for 28p a day, lion's mane at 5:1 fruiting body for 13p a day. The label of each is worked through on its own page. Ghost Fitness earns a commission on some links; the numbers do not change because of it.
Latest answers
- How to take fish oil without burping?Omega-3. Climb the fixes by cost. Free: take the softgel in the middle of a meal rather than before it, stay upright for an hour or two after, and split a dose across two meals. Cheap: freeze the softgels so they pass the stomach before dissolving, or choose a smaller softgel. Moderate: check the oil is fresh, since a rancid oil burps worst, and prefer a triglyceride form. Premium: an enteric-coated softgel that releases past the stomach. Last resort: an algal or emulsified oil for a reader who still burps on everything. The cost-ordered ladder.
- Can I take fish oil at night with magnesium?Omega-3. Yes, and the rule is the meal, not the clock, which is the answer a shift worker needs: a fish oil wants the fattiest meal you eat and an upright hour after it, whatever time that meal falls, and a magnesium wants the plate you never miss, so a night-shift lifter whose main meal is at one in the morning takes the pair then, and a day worker takes them at dinner. Neither has a clock of its own, both work by status over weeks and months, and the only wrong time is a fasted softgel at the pillow. The meal, not the clock.
- Can I take omega-3 with vitamin D and multivitamin?Omega-3. Yes, and the trio has one sum and one help. The sum: most multivitamins carry vitamin D, typically 10 to 25 micrograms, so a separate vitamin D is added to it and the total kept under the 100 microgram adult upper level, the winter's 10 micrograms plus a multivitamin's 10 being 20 and fine, a 100 microgram tablet plus a multivitamin being over. The help: vitamin D and the multivitamin's A, E and K are fat-soluble and absorb better beside the fish oil and a fatty meal. The multivitamin's minerals count against any separate tub, and a body-oil fish oil is chosen beside a multivitamin's vitamin A. The vitamin D sum.
- Can I take vitamin D and omega-3 at night?Omega-3. Yes, at the evening meal, where the fish oil's fat carries the vitamin D. Two stories attach to vitamin D and night and both are thin: that evening vitamin D suppresses melatonin and disturbs sleep, a theory with observational hints and no controlled trial, and that vitamin D improves sleep, an association between low status and poor sleep with small mixed trials. Neither should move the tablet from the meal where fat is. The fish oil's own night rule holds: with food and an upright hour, never fasted at the pillow. Two thin stories and one plate.
- How to avoid fish burps with omega-3?Omega-3. A fish burp has four mechanisms, and each fix addresses one. Oil floating on an empty stomach is fixed by taking the softgel in the middle of a meal so the oil is emulsified into food. A stomach that empties slowly and a body lying flat is fixed by an upright hour or two after the meal. A lower oesophageal sphincter that fat relaxes is fixed by a smaller softgel, a split dose or an enteric coat that releases past the stomach. The aldehydes of a rancid oil, which are the smell, are fixed only by a fresh oil. The mechanism-mapped fixes.
- Is omega-3 good for gym?Omega-3. Four questions. Does it build muscle: no, the four-gram trial raised protein synthesis in a laboratory without measuring size, the review finds no hypertrophy in trained young adults, and protein holds the only growth claim. Does it help recovery: modestly at best, the DOMS review finding small reductions in soreness at gram-and-above doses over weeks. Does it improve performance: no, the reviews find no consistent strength, power or endurance effect. Should a lifter take it: most should, not for the gym but because a training diet rarely holds two fish portions a week, so the 250mg heart claim and the index a low-fish diet leaves unbuilt are reached by one softgel or three. The gym verdict.
- Does omega-3 benefits help with women?Omega-3. The same sentences as anyone, the maintenance of normal heart function at 250mg of EPA and DHA, of brain function and vision at 250mg of DHA, and of triglycerides and blood pressure at two and three grams, plus two women-specific files. The maternal claim: real and authorised, maternal DHA contributing to the normal brain and eye development of the foetus and breastfed infant at 200mg of DHA a day on top of the adult 250mg, from a body-oil fish oil or an algal DHA, never a liver oil. Period pain: small randomised trials report less menstrual pain with fish oil, suggestive and claimless. Iron is the mineral a woman who trains is likelier to be short of. Two files graded.
- What is omega-3 EPA and DHA?Omega-3. Omega-3 is a family of polyunsaturated fatty acids named for where their first double bond sits, three carbons from the tail. ALA, the parent, comes from flax, chia, walnuts and rapeseed and is converted to EPA at a few percent and to DHA at well under one percent. EPA, twenty carbons and five double bonds, and DHA, twenty-two and six, come ready-made from oily fish and the algae the fish ate, and are the forms the body uses and the register's sentences hang on, heart at 250mg of EPA and DHA and brain and vision at 250mg of DHA. A label's EPA and DHA line, not its omega-3 or fish oil line, is the number. The family tree.
- What is bettervits omega-3?Omega-3. It is whatever its label says, and this site teaches the reads rather than reviewing a brand whose range changes: the EPA and DHA per softgel, since a standard fish oil delivers around 300mg per 1000mg and a concentrate more; the form, triglyceride or ethyl ester; the softgels to your target, 250mg for the claims or a gram for the index; the pence per hundred milligrams against 5.7p; and the testing certificate for oxidation and contaminants. Online brands often state the source and a purity phrase and rarely state the form or the TOTOX number, which a buyer asks customer service for before buying. The what-is-it checklist.
- What's the downside of fish oil?Omega-3. Ranked on two axes. Common and trivial: fishy burps and reflux, fixed by a mid-meal softgel and an upright hour. Common at high doses: loose stools and a fishy taste. The quality downside: a rancid oil, oxidised in the tub, tasting of paint and delivering oxidised fat. Rare or specific: the antiplatelet note for anticoagulant users and before surgery, an LDL rise in some people at the triglyceride-lowering doses, the dose-related atrial fibrillation signal most evident at four grams, and vitamin A in liver oils beside a multivitamin. Not downsides: dependence, weight gain at nine calories a softgel, and thinning of the blood at standard doses. The two-axis table.
- How much omega-3 per day to reduce inflammation?Omega-3. No dose carries an inflammation claim, the UK register's omega-3 sentences being heart, brain, vision, triglycerides and blood pressure. The mechanism is real: EPA and DHA built into cell membranes over months become resolvins and related mediators that help inflammation resolve. The trials that moved a marker used two grams of EPA and DHA a day or more for weeks to months and found small CRP reductions, larger where CRP was raised, and the inflammatory arthritis trials used 2.7 to 4 grams for three months. A lifter's inflammation after a session is repair and resolves on its own. The resolvin teach.
- What is considered a high dose of fish oil?Omega-3. High is anything over about a gram of EPA and DHA a day, and the rungs above it are named: two grams for the triglyceride claim and three for blood pressure, both with a do-not-exceed-five statement; four grams as the dose of prescription omega-3 for raised triglycerides and of the muscle research; five grams as the regulator's safe level. The honest ceiling for a healthy adult is set by the atrial fibrillation signal, a dose-related rise in AF risk in the outcome trials most evident at four grams and small or absent below a gram. Fish oil weight is not the dose; EPA and DHA are. The upper rungs.