Collagen in the coffee, chaos in the head!

There comes a moment in every woman’s 40s when she opens a kitchen cupboard and realises she no longer lives in a home. She lives in a branch of Holland & Barrett.

Gone are the wild years of surviving on coffee, vibes, and one suspicious multivitamin from 2017. Now? Now we have systems. We have stacking routines. We have little ceramic bowls filled with capsules that whisper: you’re trying, babe.

Welcome to the era of supplements.

Let’s start with collagen, the Beyoncé of the supplement world. Is it helping my skin, hair, nails, and joints? Maybe. Is it wildly expensive dust I stir into my morning coffee while pretending I’m “investing in myself”? Also maybe. But at this stage, if someone told me powdered unicorn elbow would give me dewier skin and stronger knees, I’d be halfway through a subscription plan before you finished the sentence.

Then there’s lion’s mane, which sounds less like a supplement and more like a pub in the Cotswolds. Apparently it helps with focus and brain fog. I take it in the morning because that feels aspirational. Will it turn me into a razor-sharp genius by 9:15 a.m.? No. But it does make me feel like the kind of woman who uses phrases like “cognitive support” and owns a very clean water bottle.

Next up: creatine. Once the exclusive domain of gym bros named Kyle, it has now entered the women’s wellness chat. Turns out it’s great for strength, muscle support, and even healthy aging. Which is excellent news, because in your 40s you can throw your back out reaching for a cardigan. I take creatine daily and like to imagine I’m one scoop away from becoming the sort of woman who can carry all the grocery bags in one trip again.

And then, the queen of the nighttime routine - magnesium. Magnesium is less a supplement and more a prayer. A plea. A deeply polite request to the universe for sleep, calm, and maybe one bowel movement that doesn’t require planning. There are apparently seventeen types of magnesium, each with a different personality, so choosing one now feels like online dating. Magnesium glycinate? Calm and reliable. Citrate? Let’s just say don’t make evening plans.

Of course, the real fun is in timing it all. Morning supplements, evening supplements, “take with food,” “take away from caffeine,” “don’t take with iron,” “best absorbed during a waxing moon while standing on one leg.” I need a spreadsheet and a project manager just to swallow things correctly.

And yes, I am now officially at the stage where if I put all my supplements in one handbag, I sound like a festive tambourine. I am, as they say, rattling like a pill bottle. Mysterious. Slightly crunchy. One shake away from a pharmacy.

But honestly? There’s something quite glorious about it. Your 40s are when you stop pretending you’re invincible and start supporting the machinery with a bit more tenderness, humour, and a lot more capsules.

So here’s to us - collagen in the coffee, lion’s mane for the brain, creatine for the glutes, magnesium for what remains of our nervous systems. We may not have it all together. But we do have organisers. And they are labelled.