I have been tired for most of my life and I fall squarely into GenX. I have had a stroke, PTSD, depression, and ADHD. Who wants a job with an unicorn startup when you can have this?! Needless to say, my life has been consumed looking for a solution for this fatigue. My emergency goto used to be coffee (1-2 cups/day) for about 2 weeks followed by a zombie like fatigue for the next 3 to 4. I have tried different interventions both traditional and non traditional to combat the fatigue with some pretty out there modalities. The result was usually no effect with the with an occasional small positive net effect. In the past year, I was rereading some of my medical tests and found I was extremely low in taurine. Yes, most people can naturally synthesize this amino acid, yet it declines with age. In my case, I hypothesize that the internal biological process had never been working any better than sub nominally. As a counter to this, I have been supplementing with taurine for the past 6-8 weeks. The result has been a nominal return of energy. I have been able to switch from a 8 to 10 hour work day, all the while lowering my caffeine intake (coffee -> mud/wtr). I have considered that this might be placebo but it feels different and there is no noticeable fatigue recurrence given I maintain good habits. It might be a possible avenue for suffering people to explore who have exhausted all other avenues.
I have chronic fatigue issues and after trying thousands of dollars' worth of supplements over the years what worked best for me were blood glutamate scavengers (N-acetyl cysteine for me, I take an unnaturally high dose of up to 8g a day), which seem to help other chronic fatigue people, as well as berberine & niacinamide.
Other things help me that are specific to me but those definitely had a rather dramatic impact on me (after an initial period of feeling like I'd been hit by a train -- it tended make me experience my fatigue up front instead of as PEMS and also reduce the symptoms of it somewhat)
Taurine is great too, there's also TUDCA which is somewhat legendary in some parts of the fatigue community, very good supplement.
Hope this helps! <3 Doing the personal work of letting go of emotional stressors and ceasing all stimulant use when possible (I know it sounds horrible) was also really hard and made a big impact over the years for me.
Still not perfect but so much more functional than I used to be. <3
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/molecular-neuroscience/... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4061860/