Most expensive piss in the world!!!
or somepeople will buy anything!!!!
<<Your education is very limited ..
there is more than vitamins in aloe ..>>
no fooling sherlock
more then vitamins and minerals in evey plant
supplements
My mantra about drugs and supplements is informed choice. I'm not going to lecture you about what is natural and what isn't, but I am going to lecture you about looking before you leap. The first thing to remember is that the supplement industry is built on hype and lies. Most legal supplements DO NOT WORK. Someone once told me that a Russian strength scientist, discussing American use of supplementation, said that Americans had the most expensive piss in the world. Of course, hope springs eternal, but most legal supplements are, sorry to say, useless.
Chromium. Touted as a majik fat loss pill. Helpful for some folks with blood sugar issues, but mostly useless otherwise. A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition by Lukaski et al concluded that "routine chromium supplementation has no beneficial effects on body- composition change or strength gain…" (63(6):954-65, June 1996) A similar study by Hallmark et al (Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 1996; 28: 139-144) concluded precisely the same thing. So no changes in fat loss or muscle gain were noted as a result of chromium intake. For normal people, chromium has no real utility. It's been suggested that long-term chromium supplementation in women might actually exacerbate or cause anemia.
Colostrum. This is the stuff that nursing women secrete for a couple of days before their real milk comes in. Leaving aside how gross it is that someone is packaging this stuff (though luckily they use bovine sources, or there'd be a lot of skinny, pissed-off infants out there), this is only useful for newborn babies.
Exercise in a Bottle. Get real. Would you buy Lasting Happiness in a Bottle? Personal Fulfillment in a Bottle? Motherhood in a Bottle? Education in a Bottle? On this planet, exercise doesn't come in a bottle; deal with it. Besides, if you really don't want to exercise, what are you doing reading this page? Ha ha ha!! I got you there.
Fat Trapper. Sure, it traps the fat, and where do you think all that clumped fat goes if you don't digest it? Buy yourself some adult diapers with every bottle of Fat Trapper, and stock up on fat-soluble vitamins to replace what gets leached out of your body. Unless you think anal leakage is sexy, don't bother. Same with Olestra. Remember, we digest our food for a reason! Throw Fat Trapper and Olestra into the toilet (for a realistic effect, shoot it out of a shotgun from across the room to simulate the explosive colonic action you'd experience from eating it), and eliminate the middle man. Here's a website on Olestra, complete with a meticulous "fecal parameters" study (conclusion: blammo!). By the way, Fat Trapper and Exercise in a Bottle manufacturers are now in deep, uh, excrement for their ridiculous claims and are being forced to pay $10 million to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
GHB (gamma hydroxybutyrate). A great sleep aid, a useless bodybuiding aid. The dose response curve is very steep with this stuff, which means that a mistake of a couple of grams (that's grams, not ounces) in dosage can mean the difference between a buzz and death. If you choose to use GHB, be smart about it. Don't combine it with any other downers, especially alcohol. Begin by checking out erowid.org.
HMB. Possibly one of the crappiest of the crap, due to its hype by EAS. Used in livestock to increase intramuscular fat marbling. For some reason some supplement manufacturer figured it would make humans huge and muscley. By this logic, if humans ate dog food, we'd have nice shiny fur coats and be able to catch frisbees with our teeth.
MCTs. Medium-chain triglycerides, more easily digested than long chain fatty acids, and said to improve energy and reduce body fat. Some thermic effects have been seen in rats, but no body composition changes in humans. Aside from the danger to people with liver disease and diabetes, MCTs are also said to give you diarrhea.
Prepackaged multiproducts, like EAS's Betagen or Twinlabs Ripped Fuel. You're much better off buying individual components, which are likely cheaper, and you can control the substances and quantities. Be very wary of all-in-one supplements. Often they have filler, incorrect quantities, stuff you don't need, and stuff you shouldn't be taking.
Triax, manufactured by Syntrax and containing the ingredient tiratricol, aka triiodothyroacetic acid (TRIAC). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has reported that this product may cause serious health consequences including heart attacks and strokes. Some subjects were found to have abnormal thyroid function test results while using Triax. These individuals had sought medical attention because of symptoms such as severe diarrhea, fatigue, lethargy or profound weight loss. Also manufactured by Syntrax is the product LipoKinetics, a weight loss product which is also under FDA review for causing serious liver damage. From the FDA website: "LipoKinetix has been promoted for weight loss by 'mimicking exercise' and supporting 'an increased metabolic rate'. The product contains norephedrine (also known as phenylpropanolamine or PPA), caffeine, yohimbine, diiodothyronine, and sodium usniate." I think the FDA overreacts sometimes, but this product is crap.
Tyrosine. An amino acid used in neurotransmitter production, and supposed to rev you up before you work out. The human body synthesizes tyrosine on its own, and there is no evidence that this stuff really works as a workout booster. Some folks do like it and there is some evidence that it should work, but it seems to require large doses. You'll get better results from a preworkout cup of coffee.
Weight Gainers. Most women don't get into this, but skinny teenage boys suck this stuff up like crazy, desperately hoping not to get their faces pushed into the lockers by Biff the Football Jock again. Unfortunately, these are mostly just low-grade sugar and flavouring. Sure, you'll gain weight from them, but then you won't be the class skinny kid, you'll be the class fat kid. Your number one weight gainer should be real food, and lots of it.
Vanadyl sulfate, aka vanadium. Vanadium is a trace metal which has not yet been proven to be used by the body. It seems to perform a function similar to insulin, which is to enable the body to use sugar for energy, but in humans its efficacy and mechanism has not been definitively proven. Most research has been done on diabetic rats, and has shown that dosages high enough to be effective had the untidy side effect of causing the little critters to be metabolically challenged. Which is known in laywoman's terms as dead. Moreover, it was concluded that in nondiabetic rats, vanadyl had no effect at al. No similar studies in humans have been conducted, seeing as it would be dreadfully awkward to off a bunch of diabetics with this stuff. A study in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition (Fawcett JP et al, 6(4):382-90, 1996) concluded that "oral vanadyl sulfate was ineffective in changing body composition in weight-training athletes, and any modest performance-enhancing effect requires further investigation." In other words, no fat was lost or muscle added, and a very slight improvement in performance on one exercise was more likely to be due to factors other than supplementation. The thing you hear most about this supplement is that it gives you a great "pump", which is that feeling of fullness in your muscles after you work out. Sorry, but in serious training we do not deal in "pumps". Stand on your head for 30 seconds. Your head now has a great "pump". Are you smarter? Good, then you'll be smart enough not to buy this stuff.
Moore, R.J., Friedl, K.E. (1992). Physiology of Nutritional Supplements: Chromium Picolinate and Vanadyl Sulfate. National Strength and Conditioning Association Journal, 14(3): 47-51 |
