Miami Heat legend and basketball Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade recently celebrated his 43rd birthday, and he likes to thank his portfolio of health and wellness hacks for keeping him running. One of his secrets: Thorne supplements, which he calls an “essential” part of his day-to-day. We recently caught up with the athlete to chat everything from his Met Gala nails to his finely curated smoothie rotation.
You’ve been pretty vocal with how much you liked Thorne, even before you signed on with the brand.
Thorne is a part of my routine. Obviously, I have my own training routine, which is very, very important. As soon as soon as I get done with my training routine, I have my pills and three different drinks waiting for me. My routine consists of a protein shake. It has vanilla powder. It has curcumin in it. My curcumin is important because I’ve been an athlete. My bone and my joints are not as good as they once were. I also like to focus on my liver.
I do creatine. I do daily green powder. I’m someone who struggled with vegetables a lot—definitely greens. I try to find things that can supplement that, and I need to have my daily green powder.
I’m also big on the collagen as well, and the magnesium. I have a drink—I call it my “pink drink”—and it has collagen and magnesium in it. I also take the vitamin D pills. I take testosterone support. These things are very important to me. I’m getting into the electrolytes, too. They have the daily electrolytes with watermelon. I’m really just trying to make sure I have different things that my body can always pull from. At this point, my body comes to expect it and I try to make sure that I get it.
You travel a ton, and you have a lot of things you need to be “on” for. What do you do when you need to sleep?
I’m a great sleeper. Sleep has never been a problem for me. When I don’t sleep well is when I’m not in a routine. That’s why routine is so important to me. What I do is I try to make sure that I’m consistent about something. If my body is used to something, I have to stick with it. When I’m on the road, I try to travel with things that just makes my body feel like, okay, I’m used to that, I’m used to that, I’m used to that.
When I wake up in the morning on the road it is very important to me to get my immunity boosters like ginger, turmeric, oranges, apple, celery, kale, spinach—all these things. It’s just all about routine for me. I don’t know that everybody believes in that, but I’m an athlete. I found my success, and making sure that I am good with routine is part of that. And that’s what I try to carry into my third chapter now.
Are you pretty good at remembering what to take?
I wasn’t good at first, but now it’s my life. I’m 43 now, and once you get over 40, you start realizing that you’re not immortal anymore. Right? I think we all realize that we’re just human people. It’s important for me as a leader of my family and as someone who works a lot and works hard. I have to make sure that these things are part of my day. My body is going to tell me.
I’ve been on a record talking about my kidney surgery that I had in 2023. It wasn’t something that I ever expected to have. I thought I had a cancer, but that was an eye-opener for me…you don’t know what’s going on inside your body. I need to make sure that this engine is purring the way that I need it to, and so this relationship with Thorne is even more important now.
Last year, I did a wellness event for 40–50 men out here in California. That was important for us, to have that wellness space—an outlet to be able to be vulnerable, to be safe, to feel safe…it’s all a part of my brand and all a part of my life now. I can’t forget it because I want to live. I want to be here for a while.
What do you do for wellness besides the supplements? Do you do yoga, meditation or anything that goes beyond your obvious job of being an athlete?
Yes, I’m in all of it. I always tell people that I spend at least two hours of my day in the morning focusing on myself. Self-care is very important. I was in New York and I was speaking on a panel, and I said men need to be more selfish. There were some headlines on that one.
But what I mean about is…you need to be more selfish in taking care of yourself. It’s like when you’re on a plane and they say, “Hey, put your mask on first before you help others.” You have to be a little bit more selfish. I definitely work out. I’m a sauna guy. I’m a cold tub guy, but also, too, I’m a meditation guy. I have an app on my phone called Insight Timer for meditation.
I also take drives. I live in California and I will go into a canyon and I will go to the top of the canyon with nobody around and just have my meditation time by myself and drink me some coffee. You know what I mean? I do a lot of different things. I do yoga. It’s very challenging yoga.
When I was an athlete, I didn’t really understand the importance of it. It’s one of the most challenging things that I’ve done since retiring…you have to stay in the hot yoga room for an hour or 75 minutes. That shit is tough. I do that. It’s a lot of different things I do to challenge myself physically and mentally amazing.
We’re still thinking about the Met Gala over here. Did you enjoy it?
Oh, every year. I’ve been six years. Luckily, I’ve been I’ve been able to go the last four years in a row, and this was a really cool year, obviously. It was really an expression of Black culture, and I learned so much by walking through; I got a chance to learn about a lot of the Black culture and fashion that I did not even know about.
I am in a very humbling space and just felt very thankful to be someone who’s able to go out and put on and be at these events and do things that a lot of people have not had the opportunity to do, but also, too, you want to look good. You want to hit the mark, and when you leave the Met and you like, “Let me listen to what people saying. Did we hit the mark?” When you get to hear people say the Wades hit the mark, you like, “Okay, maybe we’ll get in by next year.” You got to keep hitting the mark. I feel like we did a good job of not doing too much, but both making sure that our own personalities fit what the theme was.
We liked your nails.
I still got them! I got to get them redone!
