Extra Nutrients
Best-in-class: Extra Nutrients
A comprehensive multivitamin/mineral weighted toward antioxidants and phytonutrients — a step up from a basic multi for higher oxidative-stress lifestyles.
Extra Nutrients quick facts
| Suggested dose | As directed with food. |
| How often | Daily, with food |
| Who it's for | Higher oxidative-stress lifestyles wanting a more loaded multi. |
Worth being honest about the premise. High-dose isolated antioxidants have repeatedly underperformed in outcome trials, and in athletes they can blunt the training adaptations they were taken to protect — the exercise-induced oxidative signal is part of what drives mitochondrial biogenesis. Reasonable as broad insurance for someone under genuine oxidative load; less obviously useful timed around training. Nrf2 activators like sulforaphane, which upregulate your own antioxidant enzymes, are the more leveraged approach.
How Extra Nutrients actually works
A higher-antioxidant multivitamin — the standard micronutrient base with elevated doses of vitamins C and E, mixed carotenoids and polyphenols layered on. Each component has its own defined role; the antioxidant premise is that additional exogenous radical scavengers reduce oxidative damage beyond what endogenous systems manage.
Where to get Extra Nutrients
Buy Extra Nutrients at Thorne →The evidence for Extra Nutrients
Graded by what exists behind each claim.
✅ Clinically validated
- Corrects micronutrient gaps and raises antioxidant status (component-level evidence).
- Bioactive vitamin forms and chelated minerals improve utilization.
📊 Correlative data
- Higher antioxidant/phytonutrient intake is broadly associated with better health markers.
🧪 Theoretical / extrapolated benefits
- Extra antioxidants help under high oxidative load, but mega-dosing antioxidants can blunt some training adaptations — timing matters.
How to read these tiers: they say how much human evidence exists, not how well something works — and ✗ flags harm, never a disappointing trial. How the evidence tiers work →
What Extra Nutrients actually does
What separates this product from an ordinary multivitamin is not the vitamins. It is a short list of botanical and NAD-pathway actives bolted onto a high-potency base, and every one of them is present at a fraction of the dose its own evidence was generated at. The filed Supplement Facts panel declares quercetin phytosome 100 mg, bilberry extract 80 mg, nicotinamide riboside chloride 25 mg, trans-resveratrol 25 mg and mixed carotenoids 4 mg — 1 mg each of lutein, astaxanthin, zeaxanthin and lycopene — alongside 850 mg of vitamin C and 134 mg of vitamin E Office of Dietary Supplements. The mechanism section of this page is therefore an arithmetic section.
Nicotinamide riboside at 25 mg is the clearest case. Nicotinamide riboside enters NAD synthesis through nicotinamide riboside kinase 1 and 2, which phosphorylate it directly to nicotinamide mononucleotide, bypassing the NAMPT step. The human trial that established that chronic supplementation raises whole-blood NAD in middle-aged and older adults used 1,000 mg a day for six weeks Martens 2018. This panel contains 25 mg Office of Dietary Supplements — one fortieth. Nothing in the NAD literature suggests that dose does anything measurable to a blood NAD concentration.
Twenty-five milligrams of trans-resveratrol has a different problem, and it is metabolic rather than arithmetic. Resveratrol carries three free phenolic hydroxyls, which are exactly what UDP-glucuronosyltransferases and sulfotransferases in the enterocyte and liver are built to conjugate; the parent molecule is near-quantitatively absorbed and then almost entirely converted before it reaches the systemic circulation. The concentration argument for resveratrol is worked through with the trial numbers on this site's own resveratrol page and is not repeated here. What the panel adds is the dose: gram-level doses were needed to reach double-digit nanomolar parent compound, and this is 25 mg Office of Dietary Supplements.
The general rule for the plant actives, with a number behind it. A review of 97 human bioavailability studies puts peak plasma concentrations for dietary polyphenols below one micromole per liter, and mostly as conjugates rather than as the parent molecule Manach 2005. Five separate polyphenol-family ingredients at 25 to 100 mg each will not sum to a pharmacological exposure of any one of them.
Now the mechanism that is genuinely load-bearing on this page, and it runs the wrong way. Contracting muscle generates reactive oxygen and nitrogen species from NADPH oxidases and from mitochondrial electron leak, and those species are not damage in this context — they are the signal. Oxidation of cysteine thiols on redox-sensitive kinases and phosphatases is part of how a training session is converted into an adaptation: activation of AMP-activated protein kinase and p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase, induction of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator 1-alpha and therefore mitochondrial biogenesis, and release of NRF2 from KEAP1 to drive the endogenous antioxidant response. A large dose of an exogenous antioxidant taken around a session quenches the signal before it is read. The formula's own note about keeping antioxidants away from training is a description of this mechanism.
Cell, rodent, human — and where it stops
The blunting effect is not a theory, it is two randomized trials, and the doses are inside this bottle. Fifty-four recreationally trained adults took 1,000 mg of vitamin C and 235 mg of vitamin E daily or placebo through eleven weeks of endurance training: maximal oxygen uptake and running performance improved similarly in both groups, but the markers of mitochondrial biogenesis — cytochrome c oxidase subunit 4, cytochrome c and PGC-1alpha — rose less in the supplemented group Paulsen 2014. In elderly men taking vitamin C and E through a strength-training program, the increase in total lean body mass was blunted relative to placebo Bjornsen 2016.
Hold that against the panel. This formula delivers 850 mg of vitamin C and 134 mg of vitamin E per daily serving Office of Dietary Supplements. That is the same order of magnitude as the supplement arm in both trials. A reader taking this product with breakfast and training at six in the evening is not running the experiment those trials ran; a reader taking it thirty minutes before a session is running it almost exactly.
The multivitamin base, in people, on hard endpoints. The underlying claim of any comprehensive formula rests on the Physicians' Health Study II, where a daily multivitamin over more than a decade produced a modest reduction in total cancer incidence Gaziano 2012 and no reduction whatever in cardiovascular events Sesso 2012. Neither trial tested a formula anything like this one.
The specific obstacle: this is the multivitamin evidence attached to a product designed for people who train. The blunting trials were run in trained and in elderly populations and their endpoints were adaptation markers and lean mass Paulsen 2014Bjornsen 2016; the multivitamin trials were run in older, sedentary-to-moderate physicians and their endpoints were cancer and cardiovascular events Gaziano 2012Sesso 2012. Nobody has run a high-antioxidant multivitamin in a training population with either kind of endpoint. The card's own answer — take it away from sessions — is the right practical inference and it has never been tested as an intervention.
Extra Nutrients — which form, and does it matter
Every distinctive ingredient in this formula is a sub-therapeutic version of a product this site sells separately, and the comparison is the honest way to read the panel. Quercetin phytosome is present at 100 mg Office of Dietary Supplements; the standalone phytosome product declares 250 mg per capsule at one to three capsules a day. Nicotinamide riboside is at 25 mg against 1,000 mg in the trial that raised blood NAD Martens 2018. Trans-resveratrol is at 25 mg against the gram-level doses of the pharmacokinetic literature. If you want any one of those effects, this bottle is not how you get it; if you already take one of them separately, this bottle is a small unnoticed addition to that dose rather than a duplicate.
Where the forms are genuinely good. Folate as L-5-methyltetrahydrofolate, B12 as a half-and-half mixture of adenosylcobalamin and methylcobalamin, B6 as pyridoxal 5'-phosphate, riboflavin as the 5'-phosphate, vitamin K as both K1 and menaquinone-7, and the minerals as bisglycinate and malate chelates Office of Dietary Supplements. The two-cobalamin split is unusual and is defensible: adenosylcobalamin is the cofactor for methylmalonyl-CoA mutase in mitochondria, methylcobalamin for methionine synthase in cytosol, and most products supply only one of them.
The carotenoids are the ingredient where 1 mg is arguably correct. Lutein, zeaxanthin, astaxanthin and lycopene at 1 mg each Office of Dietary Supplements are dietary quantities rather than trial quantities, and for the carotenoids that is the safer side of a real line: the trials that harmed people used pharmacological beta-carotene in smokers, not milligram amounts of mixed carotenoids.
What the card says that the panel does not contain. The card's safety note tells a reader to check the B6, zinc, selenium, vitamin A and iron content against the upper limits. There is no iron in this panel Office of Dietary Supplements. Three of the other four are worth checking and one of them — selenium at 200 micrograms — is worth checking hard.
And the label record. The most recent Supplement Facts panel filed for this product is flagged off market as of 29 May 2020, with no later filing Office of Dietary Supplements, while Thorne's catalog still lists the product. Everything quantitative on this page comes from that 2020 panel and should be checked against the bottle you are holding.
What would have to be true, and how you would know it was not
1. Plasma vitamin C at four weeks, which is the direct test of the one claim that separates this from a basic multi. At 850 mg a day Office of Dietary Supplements predict plasma ascorbate rises into the saturated range of roughly 70 to 80 micromoles per liter and then stops, because renal reabsorption via SVCT1 saturates and the excess is excreted. Predict that somebody already eating fruit sees almost no movement. Higher antioxidant status is a claim with a marker, and this is the marker.
2. The prediction that cuts against the product, and it is a training measurement rather than a blood test. Run a ten-week block taking this within an hour before or after your sessions, with load, sets and reps logged. Predict your lean mass gain is not larger than an equivalent block without it, and may be smaller Bjornsen 2016, and predict the endurance adaptations you cannot see — mitochondrial protein content — are blunted even if your times are not Paulsen 2014. This is the rare case where the supplement's own card and the trial evidence agree that timing can make the product work against you.
3. hs-CRP at twelve weeks, with a floor effect stated in advance. Predict a fall only from a baseline above 2 mg per liter, and no movement from below 1. The polyphenol content of this formula is too small to be the reason for any change that does occur Manach 2005.
4. Whole-blood NAD, if you can get it, and predict nothing. Twenty-five milligrams of nicotinamide riboside Office of Dietary Supplements against the 1,000 mg that raised NAD in a controlled trial Martens 2018. If this formula moved blood NAD it would be the most surprising result in the NAD literature. Predict a flat line, and read the ingredient as a label ornament rather than an active.
5. Fasting glucose and HbA1c at six months, because of the selenium. Two hundred micrograms daily Office of Dietary Supplements is the dose associated with a higher incidence of type 2 diabetes in a randomized trial, concentrated in those already selenium-replete Stranges 2007. Predict no change in most people and treat a drifting fasting glucose on a high-selenium formula as a reason to look at the formula.
What will fool you: starting a comprehensive formula at the same time as anything else. These products are usually bought during a general reorganization of diet, sleep and training, and the capsule gets the credit for the reorganization.
What nobody has tested yet
Nobody has tested whether a multivitamin blunts training adaptation. The blunting trials used isolated vitamin C and E at high dose Paulsen 2014Bjornsen 2016. A comprehensive formula delivers 850 mg of C and 134 mg of E alongside carotenoids, polyphenols and selenium Office of Dietary Supplements — a different and arguably more relevant exposure, and one nobody has randomized. Twelve weeks, two arms, muscle biopsies for mitochondrial protein and DXA for lean mass. It is the study this whole product category needs.
Nobody has tested the timing fix. The advice to take antioxidants away from training is universal, sensible and entirely untested. A three-arm trial — formula in the morning, formula peri-workout, placebo — through a training block would establish whether the eight-hour separation people are told to observe actually rescues the adaptation.
Nobody has established a dose-response for nicotinamide riboside below 250 mg. The published human work sits at 250 to 1,000 mg Martens 2018. Whether 25 mg does anything at all to whole-blood NAD has never been measured, which means an ingredient on this panel is there on the strength of trials run at forty times its dose.
And nobody has asked whether the phytonutrients in a multivitamin are absorbed at all when they are swallowed together. Quercetin, resveratrol and the carotenoids compete for the same phase II conjugation enzymes and, in the carotenoids' case, for the same mixed micelles Manach 2005. A pharmacokinetic study comparing each ingredient alone against the full formula would tell you whether the panel is a stack or a queue.
Extra Nutrients — its own safety story, not its category's
The upper limits worth checking on this specific panel, in order. Selenium 200 micrograms against a limit of 400, with a randomized diabetes signal at exactly this dose Stranges 2007. Zinc 15 mg against a limit of 40, which is comfortable, and paired here with 1.5 mg of copper Office of Dietary Supplements — a ratio that avoids the copper-depletion problem a zinc-only formula creates. Manganese 6 mg against a limit of 11, which is the tightest ratio in the formula and is rarely mentioned. Vitamin A 1.125 mg total, well inside the 3 mg preformed limit, and with two thirds of it as beta-carotene rather than palmitate.
The interaction the card does not name and should. This panel contains 100 micrograms of vitamin K — 50 as K1 and 50 as menaquinone-7 Office of Dietary Supplements. Menaquinone-7 has a far longer half-life than K1 and is the more disruptive of the two for anybody taking warfarin, because it produces a sustained rather than a transient effect on gamma-carboxylation. A stable INR and a new high-potency multivitamin is a combination that needs a conversation and a retest, not a note.
Vanadyl sulfate, at 250 micrograms, which almost nobody notices. Vanadium has no established human requirement and its supplement use rests on insulin-mimetic effects seen at doses thousands of times larger. At 250 micrograms Office of Dietary Supplements it is neither useful nor harmful; it is included here because a reader checking a panel against upper limits should know it is there and that the limit for vanadium is 1.8 mg.
Stacking with the rest of this shelf is the real risk, and it is specific. Quercetin phytosome, bilberry, resveratrol and nicotinamide riboside all have their own pages and their own bottles on this site Office of Dietary Supplements. A reader following several of them is taking each ingredient twice without either label mentioning the other, and quercetin in particular inhibits CYP3A4 and P-glycoprotein in a way that matters for narrow-therapeutic-index drugs.
Timing, restated as a safety property rather than an optimization. For somebody whose goal is hypertrophy or endurance adaptation, taking this formula around a training session is the one documented way it can make the outcome worse Paulsen 2014Bjornsen 2016. That is unusual among supplements and it is the single most useful sentence on this page.
Sources read for this page
- Office of Dietary Supplements, National Institutes of Health. Extra Nutrients (Thorne) -- filed Supplement Facts panel, 4-8 capsules daily: vitamin C 850 mg, vitamin E 134 mg, vitamin D 50 mcg, thiamine 40 mg, niacin 160 mg (niacinamide 130 mg plus nicotinic acid 30 mg), vitamin B6 10 mg as P5P, folate 1.7 mg DFE as L-5-MTHF, vitamin B12 450 mcg, pantothenic acid 450 mg, zinc 15 mg, selenium 200 mcg, copper 1.5 mg, manganese 6 mg, chromium 200 mcg, molybdenum 100 mcg, boron 3 mg, vanadyl sulfate 250 mcg, quercetin phytosome 100 mg, bilberry extract 80 mg, nicotinamide riboside chloride 25 mg, trans-resveratrol 25 mg, mixed carotenoids 4 mg, vitamin K 100 mcg; no iron; off market as of 29 May 2020. NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database, DSLD ID 231306
- Paulsen G, et al. Vitamin C and E supplementation hampers cellular adaptation to endurance training in humans: a double-blind, randomised, controlled trial.. Journal of Physiology 2014 · PMID 24492839
- Bjornsen T, et al. Vitamin C and E supplementation blunts increases in total lean body mass in elderly men after strength training.. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports 2016 · PMID 26129928
- Gaziano JM, et al. Multivitamins in the prevention of cancer in men: the Physicians' Health Study II randomized controlled trial. JAMA, 2012 · PMID 23162860
- Sesso HD, et al. Multivitamins in the prevention of cardiovascular disease in men: the Physicians' Health Study II randomized controlled trial.. JAMA 2012 · PMID 23117775
- Martens CR, et al. Chronic nicotinamide riboside supplementation is well-tolerated and elevates NAD(+) in healthy middle-aged and older adults. Nature Communications, 2018 · PMID 29599478
- Stranges S, et al. Effects of long-term selenium supplementation on the incidence of type 2 diabetes: a randomized trial.. Annals of Internal Medicine 2007 · PMID 17620655
- Manach C, et al. Bioavailability and bioefficacy of polyphenols in humans. I. Review of 97 bioavailability studies.. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2005 · PMID 15640486
How you would know if it worked
The claim that separates this from an ordinary multivitamin is 'raises antioxidant status', and plasma vitamin C is the one antioxidant marker on this menu that responds to intake within weeks, which makes it the direct test of that claim. Vitamin D and folate are the two ordinary repletion markers underneath it, because whatever else this is, it is still a multi and gap-filling is still what a multi can be held to. The mechanism worth knowing before you draw anything: high-dose isolated antioxidants can blunt training adaptation, which is why the note on this product says to keep them away from sessions. A rising vitamin C with a training block that went backwards is not a contradiction — it is the trade-off working exactly as described.
- Vitamin C Retest: 12 weeks after changing intake.
- Vitamin D (25-Hydroxy) Retest: 8–12 weeks after a dose change; then every 6–12 months.
- Folate, Serum Retest: 8–12 weeks after supplementation.
The cheapest panel carrying Vitamin D (25-Hydroxy) and at least one other of these is Mood, Anxiety & Low Motivation, at $202 — the panel is named for a different question, and the marker is the same marker. That is the whole cost of finding out.
Draw before you start, not after. A result with nothing to compare it to answers nothing.
Extra Nutrients — safety & side effects
- A high-potency multivitamin; the multivitamin cautions apply unchanged.
- Read the B6, zinc, selenium, vitamin A and iron content against the upper limits before adding anything standalone.
The same on every page it applies to. Read it here; it is not repeated research.
- Separate from thyroid medication by four hours. Minerals bind levothyroxine in the gut and reduce absorption enough to shift a stable TSH.
Not medical advice. If you take prescription medication or have a diagnosed condition, check this against it with a pharmacist or doctor — pharmacists are underused and free.
- When to take it, and what to take it with
- Which form actually absorbs
- Who it's worth it for
- Best-in-class brand pick
- Coach Cam's stacks and notes
- Fasted or with food, and when in the day
- Morning or night, and why that window
- Around training, or deliberately away from it
- What it must not share a window with
Everything above is free and stays free. Skool is where it becomes a plan — Extra Nutrients in an order, with the rest of what you're running.
Unlock in Skool — $10/mo →Bloodwork to run alongside Extra Nutrients
Baseline first, then again at 8–12 weeks.
| Marker | What it’s watching for |
|---|---|
| Vitamin D (25-Hydroxy) | The one most often actually low, and the one with a real ceiling |
| Vitamin B12 | Commonly low in older adults, vegetarians and metformin users |
| Folate, Serum | Read alongside B12 — supplementing one can mask the other |
| Homocysteine | The functional read on whether your B vitamins are working |
The Full Micronutrient Screen panel covers these in one order — 11 markers, $363.60 with the discount applied.
Check results you already have → · All 103 markers A–Z
Extra Nutrients — frequently asked questions
What is Extra Nutrients?
A comprehensive multivitamin/mineral weighted toward antioxidants and phytonutrients — a step up from a basic multi for higher oxidative-stress lifestyles.
What is the suggested dose of Extra Nutrients?
As directed with food. This is a general reference for education only — statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and this is not medical advice.
Where can I find Extra Nutrients dosing and the full breakdown?
The suggested dose and the full evidence — clinical, correlative and theoretical — are on this page. What's inside Skool is when to take it, which form actually absorbs, the brand worth buying and Coach Cam's stacks.
Where can I buy Extra Nutrients?
Coach Cam sources Extra Nutrients from Thorne, with 10% off auto-applied at checkout — use the buy link on this page.
What Extra Nutrients is used for
Extra Nutrients appears under 1 goal in the goal router.
Related Vitamins supplements
Where this goes next
The pages here are the frameworks. The protocols — the dosing, the order to correct things in, the week-by-week schedule and what to retest — are inside Skool.