What is Stack Almanac?

Stack Almanac is a supplement tracking and analysis application. It organises a supplement routine, checks timing and pairings, records changes and outcomes, and provides a conversational advisor that cites sources.

How much does Stack Almanac cost?

Stack Almanac is free to use with supplement tracking, 5 advisor messages a day, an interaction checker, data export, and 10 scans a day up to 30 free scans in total. Pro costs £9.99/month and includes 30 standard and 5 advanced-analysis advisor messages a day, deeper insights, wearable data, weekly summaries, and 50 scans a day. Every new account starts with a 7-day Pro trial, no card required.

How is Stack Almanac different from other supplement trackers?

Stack Almanac keeps supplement names, forms, doses, timing, reasons, and routine changes together with reference information and a source-citing advisor. It can surface details worth reviewing and describe associations in recorded data. It does not prove cause, diagnose, or make personal safety decisions.

What causes low energy in men?

In most cases it is a drain rather than a shortage. The four most common in men are poor or disordered sleep (obstructive sleep apnoea is found in around 22% of men and is undiagnosed in more than 80% of cases), regular alcohol, low mood presenting as flatness rather than sadness, and being sedentary. Underneath those sit medical causes a blood test finds: low iron stores, an underactive thyroid, high blood sugar, coeliac disease, low vitamin D or B12. Fatigue is a main or secondary reason for 10 to 20% of all GP consultations, so a doctor has a standard route through it.

What blood tests should I ask for if I am always tired?

NICE's Clinical Knowledge Summary for tiredness in adults lists full blood count, ferritin, thyroid function, glucose or HbA1c, coeliac screening, and kidney and liver function as first line, with B12, folate and vitamin D added by risk factor. Ask for ferritin by name. A 2025 audit of GP practice found it was requested in only 9.4% of tiredness consultations but came back abnormal in 26% of the cases where it was ordered.

Is low testosterone why I am tired?

Usually not. Testosterone falls with age, around 1% a year after 30 in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, though a later normative model found increasing variation between men rather than a clean decline after 40. Having a number in the lower part of the range is different from having a problem: in the Boston Area Community Health survey 28.1% of men over 50 had low total testosterone while 6.6% had symptomatic deficiency. Diagnosis is a morning blood test, repeated to confirm, read alongside your symptoms by a doctor.

Should I take supplements for tiredness before seeing a doctor?

No, and not because supplements are useless. Because taking one can mask the pattern you need in order to work out what is going on, and because a few causes of persistent tiredness are worth ruling out quickly. See a GP promptly if the tiredness came on suddenly or is worsening, or if you have unintended weight loss, night sweats, breathlessness, chest pain, blood in your stool, or low mood lasting more than two weeks.

Does exercise help fatigue or make it worse?

It helps, and lower intensity appears to help more. A randomised trial in sedentary adults with persistent fatigue found six weeks of low-intensity aerobic exercise reduced fatigue more than moderate-intensity did, and the improvements were unrelated to gains in fitness. A meta-analysis of randomised trials found the same direction across the literature. A twenty minute walk most days is the realistic version.

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8 September 20269 min read

Why You're Tired: An Energy Audit for Men

Before you buy anything for energy, find the drain. The four things that flatten men most often, the blood tests worth asking for by name, and the honest version of the testosterone question.

By Stack Almanac

How we research, correct and date our work

supplements guides health

Part 1 of 3 in The Energy Audit. Part 2 covers which supplements the evidence actually supports. Part 3 covers how to run the test on yourself.

Most men start in the wrong place. You notice you have been flat for a few months, you search for something to take, and you land on a list of eight supplements. The list is not necessarily wrong. It is just answering a question you have not earned the right to ask yet.

Energy is not a substance you top up. It is the difference between what your body produces and what is draining it. Adding to the supply side while a drain is running is how people end up spending forty pounds a month and feeling exactly the same in April as they did in January.

So this post buys nothing. It audits. The next one in the series covers what is worth taking, and it will be a much shorter list once you have been through this.

You are not unusual, and that is the first useful fact

Tiredness is one of the most common reasons anyone sees a doctor. A 2021 review in Deutsches Ärzteblatt International put it at a main or secondary reason for 10 to 20% of all consultations with a primary care physician. That is not a niche complaint. That is one in six or seven appointments.

Two things follow from that. Your GP has seen this many times and has a standard route through it. And there is a well-worn list of causes, most of which are not a nutrient gap.

Start with the drains, not the supply

Four things drain energy in men more often than anything a supplement addresses. Work through them in this order, because the earlier ones make the later ones worse.

1. Sleep, and the part men specifically miss

Everyone knows sleep matters. The specific thing worth knowing is that men are the group most likely to have a sleep problem they cannot feel.

Obstructive sleep apnoea is where the airway closes repeatedly during the night. You do not wake up properly, so you do not know it is happening. A review of eleven population studies published in the Journal of Thoracic Disease found it in a mean of 22% of men against 17% of women at the standard diagnostic threshold, and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine estimates that more than 80% of people who have it have never been diagnosed.

You cannot supplement your way out of this one. If several of these apply, ask your GP about a sleep study rather than buying anything:

Loud snoring, or a partner who has seen you stop breathing
Waking with a dry mouth or a headache
Falling asleep easily in the afternoon, in front of the TV, or at traffic lights
Needing to get up to urinate more than once a night
A collar size over about 17 inches, or weight gain that tracks with the tiredness

Sleep matters for more than energy in men. A 2020 review in Translational Andrology and Urology found erectile function, urinary symptoms and testosterone-related symptoms all track with sleep quality in a straight line: worse sleep, worse symptoms.

2. Alcohol, which is sedation rather than sleep

Alcohol gets you unconscious faster and gives you a worse night. That is not a moral point, it is a measurable one.

A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis in Sleep Medicine Reviews pooled controlled studies that gave healthy adults measured doses of alcohol. Even moderate amounts reduced REM sleep, and time awake after falling asleep went up while sleep efficiency went down, with the effect stronger the closer the drink was to bedtime.

Three or four drinks across a week is not the issue. A nightly drink to unwind is, because it is quietly buying tomorrow's tiredness. Worth testing: two weeks without, and see what happens to how you feel at 3pm.

3. Mood, which in men often shows up as flatness rather than sadness

This is the drain men are most likely to skip past, and the one most likely to be the actual answer.

Depression in men frequently presents as fatigue, irritability, withdrawal or drinking more, rather than as visible low mood. A 2025 commentary in the International Journal for Equity in Health looked at exactly this gap, noting that standard diagnostic tools were not built around male-typical presentations and that men are markedly less likely to seek help in the first place.

The honest test is not "am I sad". It is: have things you used to enjoy stopped being enjoyable, and has that lasted more than a couple of weeks. If the answer is yes, no supplement in the next article is the right first move.

4. Deconditioning, which feels like the opposite of the answer

When you are exhausted, being told to exercise is annoying. The evidence is annoyingly clear anyway, and it contains a detail that makes it easier.

A randomised trial in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics put sedentary young adults with persistent fatigue through six weeks of either low-intensity or moderate-intensity aerobic exercise. Both raised feelings of energy. For fatigue specifically, the low-intensity group did better. The improvements were unrelated to changes in fitness, so this was not about getting fitter.

A later meta-analysis of randomised trials found the same shape across the literature: regular exercise lowers fatigue and raises energy and vitality, with effect sizes in the small to moderate range.

The practical read: a twenty minute walk most days is doing more for this than anything you can buy, and pushing harder is not better here.

Then the supply side, which means a blood test

Once the drains are handled, the question becomes whether something is genuinely low. That is a lab question, not a shopping question.

NICE's Clinical Knowledge Summary for tiredness in adults sets out a first-line panel: full blood count, ferritin, thyroid function, glucose or HbA1c, coeliac screening, kidney and liver function, with B12, folate and vitamin D added depending on your risk factors. An audit published in Annals of Clinical Biochemistry in 2025 compared that guidance against what GPs actually requested.

One finding from that audit is worth carrying into your appointment. Ferritin, which is your iron store, was requested in only 9.4% of cases. When it was requested, 26% of results came back abnormal. It was close to the least-ordered test and one of the most likely to find something.

You do not need to arrive with a list of demands. Saying "I have been tired for three months, can we check the standard bloods including ferritin" is enough.

The testosterone question, answered honestly

Search for men and energy and you will be sold a testosterone problem within two clicks. The real picture is less dramatic and more useful.

Testosterone does fall with age. The Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging is the source of the roughly 1% a year figure you see quoted after age 30. But a later normative model of male total testosterone found increasing variation between men after 40 rather than a clean population decline, which is a different claim from the one the ads make.

More to the point, having a number in the lower part of the range is not the same as having a problem. In the Boston Area Community Health survey, 28.1% of men over 50 had low total testosterone, while 6.6% had symptomatic testosterone deficiency. Most men with a lowish number are not the men who need treating.

If you genuinely suspect it, the route is a morning blood test, repeated to confirm, interpreted alongside your symptoms by a doctor. It is not an online quiz and it is definitely not a bottle labelled as a booster. Part 2 covers what the trials say about those.

When to stop auditing and see a GP now

Some tiredness is a symptom of something that needs looking at properly. Book an appointment rather than working through this list if any of the following are true:

It came on suddenly, or it is getting worse week by week
You are losing weight without trying
You have night sweats, a fever, or a lump you have not had checked
You are unusually breathless, or you have chest pain on exertion
You have blood in your stool, black stools, or a persistent change in bowel habit
You have been low in mood for more than two weeks, or you have thoughts of harming yourself

Stack Almanac is not a medical service and none of this is a diagnosis. The point of the list is that a few causes of tiredness are worth ruling out quickly, and supplements delay that.

What the audit leaves you with

Work through the four drains and get the bloods done, and one of three things is true.

Something showed up. Low ferritin, low vitamin D, an underactive thyroid, high HbA1c. You now have a target, and the next article is about how to hit it properly.
Nothing showed up, but a drain is running. Sleep, alcohol, mood or movement. Fix the drain. Supplements will not out-run it.
Nothing showed up and the drains look fine. This is the smallest group, and the only one for whom a short, evidenced list is genuinely the next step.

Most men who search for an energy supplement are in the first two groups. That is the whole argument for auditing before buying.

Where Stack Almanac fits

Stack Almanac is a reference for what you take and how you respond to it, not a replacement for the blood test. If you already take supplements, the useful first job is knowing what is actually in the routine: which ones overlap, which ones are below a dose that does anything, and what the whole thing costs you a month.

If your bloods do turn up a gap, the Almanac Advisor reads your results alongside your routine and your medications, so the change you make is aimed at the gap rather than at the general idea of feeling tired.

Where this comes from

Every figure above traces to one of these. Consumer health summaries were deliberately not used as sources.

Next in the series: Supplements for Men's Energy: What the Evidence Actually Supports.