The NAST Protocol

The natural assumption is that Brut is the beginner version and NAST is what you graduate to. That is not the relationship. They answer different questions about what is scarce.

The maths that should decide it: a maximal protocol run at 60% adherence loses to a minimal one run at 95%, because nearly everything here is dose-over-time rather than dose-per-session. NAST only wins if you will genuinely run it at 90%+. Most people running NAST are running Brut badly and paying four times as much for the privilege.

• Tier 1, also in Brut: creatine 5 g · EPA/DHA 1–2 g · vitamin D3 titrated to a measured 30–50 ng/mL · protein to 1.6–2.2 g/kg.
• Added in NAST, mechanism real and outcome data thinner: vitamin K2 (MK-7) 100–200 mcg with the D3 · magnesium glycinate 200–350 mg elemental · prebiotic fibre (inulin, GOS, arabinogalactan) · urolithin A 500–1,000 mg · CoQ10 100–200 mg · glycine + NAC.
• Deliberately still excluded, even at maximum: NAD+ precursors (bioavailability confirmed, benefit unmeasured), spermidine (null flagship trial), taurine (premise refuted), collagen (industry-funded evidence base), and everything sold as anabolic without a prescription.

Note what the maximum does *not* include. A maximal protocol is not 'every supplement' — it is every supplement that clears the bar, and the bar does not move because the budget did. Roughly two-thirds of the longevity aisle fails at any budget.

This is the strongest argument for the maximal version, and it is the one nobody markets. Brut takes one blood panel a year. NAST takes four, plus imaging — and the value is not the individual reading, it is that four points make a trend and one point makes a guess.

• Quarterly full panel: ApoB, Lp(a) once ever, fasting insulin, HbA1c, hs-CRP, full lipids, liver and renal, thyroid with free T3/T4, 25(OH)D, ferritin, B12, omega-3 index, RBC magnesium.
• Annual: DEXA for body composition and bone density, VO₂max test (measured, not a wearable estimate), skin check.
• Continuous: sleep staging, HRV, resting HR, daily weight at fixed conditions, steps.
• Periodic: continuous glucose monitoring for two-week blocks rather than permanently — the goal is to learn your responses, not to watch a graph forever.
• Every set logged, every session. Non-negotiable at either end of the spectrum.

Three to four times the money and roughly four times the time, for the portion of the dose-response curve where returns have most flattened. That is the honest trade, and printing it is the point — a maximal protocol that hides its cost is asking you to make the decision without the number that decides it.

The naive maximal protocol assumes effects add. Several of these actively subtract, and the subtractions are mechanistic rather than anecdotal.

This is the actual ceiling on maximisation, and it is not willpower or money. Past a certain density, added levers start cancelling each other, and the marginal one costs more in interference than it delivers in effect. NAST is the point just before that — not the point past it.

• A defined block — 8 to 16 weeks — with a specific target and a date it ends. Open-ended maximisation has no success condition, so it can only fail.
• A period with genuine slack: no exams, no launch, no travel. NAST does not survive contact with a bad month, and a collapsed protocol costs more than a smaller one held.
• As a diagnostic. Run it clean, then remove one lever at a time and watch what actually degrades. Most people discover that four or five things were carrying the result and the other thirty were expensive theatre.
• Never as an identity. The protocol funds the life; it is not the life. A person who has optimised themselves into having nothing to optimise *for* has failed at the only metric that was ever the point.

The most useful thing NAST produces is not the result. It is the list of what you can drop. Run the maximum once, deliberately, and you will find out empirically which levers were load-bearing — and that list is almost always closer to Brut's nine than to this page's thirty-five.