Podcast #11 – Guide To Supplementation

Hi, and welcome back to the pro day sports podcast. Again, I’m a science contributor, Chris Dory, and I’m excited today’s topic. I’m actually talking a little bit about supplements. So if you’ve been around the sports industry at all, you are going to run into, um, a plethora of different contributions and recommendations on supplements. And our society is just inundated with marketing of different things that you need to consume as an athlete in order to progress, um, or your team needs to take this, or, uh, you should be doing this three times a week. Uh, there’s just a lot of information out there. And so, um, in a short amount of time, I want to cover. And so one of the most widely studied supplements, um, uh, you know, what the government kind of does in response to different things coming to the market and, uh, what you should be looking for as a coach or an athlete, uh, or someone who is interested in perhaps, you know, increasing your health, um, as you kind of continue on with the best Sports Performance Training Tulsa.

And so let’s jump right into that. Uh, first of all, you know, we have the food and drug administration, the FDA, which kind of houses, uh, the main pushback of what goes out into the market, particularly, uh, drugs that are used by physicians for prescribing and going against different things. But also, you know, they have a secondary feature of, of kind of blocking anything that’s detriment, detrimental, or potentially harmful to consumers out on the market. Um, now when we get over to the supplement industry, it’s kind of interesting because a lot of these aren’t technically drugs, so they can oftentimes bypass, um, being evaluated by the FDA. And so if you go look at a lot of the markets you go to GNC, or, uh, some of these other nutritional supplement stores, a lot of times they’ll have a caveat on the back of it.

And it’ll say this hasn’t been evaluated by, uh, the, uh, the FDA. And, and so, uh, what that means is a, uh, uh, scientific research team has been paid by a company to develop a formula is what they’ll call it. And, uh, they will suggest, Hey, maybe it does this. And it goes over to the barking department. And then the marketing department takes a photo of a really buff guy, uh, or a buff girl, and puts it on the, the labeling and they try to sell you on it. So a lot of the stuff out there in the market today is unfortunately very hyped, um, experimental results and very exaggerated information. And so, as an athlete and coach, it’s important that you understand that, um, there is no miracle drug, there is no, um, miracle, uh, anything out there that is a complete game-changer for you as an athlete or as a potential supporter of an athlete with your Sports Performance Training Tulsa.

And that goes back to some of the good old sayings that nothing beats hard work. Um, if I can caveat any of the further discussion is, uh, you know, uh, your diet and your sleep patterns oftentimes have a greater accumulative effect on your ability to perform as an athlete, then any of the supplements that you will take out there now, as you continue to progress. And particularly if you get to the elite levels of competition, then supplementation can be a very important factor in determining one percenters or very small things that can accumulate, uh, over time. But, uh, back to our FDA, there is another kind of a department and it’s housed under the national Institute of health NIH, and it’s called the office of dietary supplements, the ODS. This is another federal agency, and they spent about 10 point $4 million with 59 grants to research in fiscal year 2019.

Um, and they study things like vitamin D and protein and probiotics, vitamins, iron, uh, fatty acids, calcium, uh, botanicals. It’s a big fancy word for all the herbs that go out into the market. And, uh, so, uh, uh, they kind of strategically try to, uh, back study a lot of the things that go out onto the market that, that oftentimes doesn’t get caught by the FDA. So, um, let’s kind of shift a little bit and think about what supplements have actually been scientifically backed. You can go pick anything up off the market, and they’re going to claim that it’s been studied and it’s widely successful. And what that really means is that, uh, the university put out a research publication on that particular sub supplement in it suggested that perhaps out of the study group, that performance was increased or, uh, uh, something was benefited from it.

And then the study population, um, however, you know, uh, there’s only a few things that we’ve really proven over the long haul that it actually is important to supplement as an athlete. And if we go back and look at, uh, some, uh, writing by, uh, Phillip Gardner, his, his, uh, 2011 publications that advanced neuromuscular, uh, exercise physiology, but, uh, dietary supplements as far as resistance training is concerned. And we focus more on resistance training, um, endurance training, uh, doesn’t get as much focus on this, but, um, creatine is one of the most widely studied supplements that we have out there on the market. And, uh, another one, one that I was less familiar with, but beta hydroxy, beta methyl, butyrate, that’s a fancy one, but a HMB is it’s often called in. Sometimes it gets put into, um, uh, formulas and oftentimes, you know, you won’t hear it mentioned, uh, but again, it’s been quite widely studied with the best Sports Performance Training Tulsa.

And then of course the other thing is amino acids. So your proteins, right? Um, so protein is almost synonymous with amino acids because amino acids are built or linked together to produce proteins. So when you were in the gym or in your workout, your, uh, most likely going to break down the muscle tissue, okay, this is what causes you to get sore. Uh, we used to think that a soreness was something we did want, but it’s actually important to go through the inflammation process because your body begins to rebuild the muscle tissue as you break it down. And as long as you didn’t break it down too much, you know, resulting in injury, you will, uh, grow stronger or in the academic world, we say that you start adapting. So you go to the gym and you lift weights, get really sore. You go back to the gym and lift weights and get sore.

You go back to the gym, you lift weights again, uh, not quite as sore. Okay. And then over time you maybe don’t get a sore. So you’ve got to start changing the intensity duration or frequency of your exercise routine so that you can continue adapting to the, uh, types of exercises you’re, you’re putting against your body. Okay. So let’s take those three and I’m going to knock it down to, you know, creatine and protein or amino acids. Those are the two most widely studied, uh, supplements. Okay. If you will. And we kind of think of it as that, um, anything outside of that, there’s a lot of energy drinks. Uh, of course, caffeine, caffeine doesn’t necessarily have a lot of studies that will, uh, uh, increase a whole lot as far as, uh, power and, and output, um, in the athletic world, but it can act as a positive mood booster or, uh, increasing your ability to, to focus.

It’s different from person to person. Um, and it’s different from the types of exercise that you’re doing. If you’re going for an endurance, um, performance, then, uh, caffeine may not be as beneficial if you’re going for, uh, for example, example, resistance training or something. That’s going to require a lot of strength. Caffeine may be, uh, a better supplement to take. Um, but that’s, that’s really all that we need to say about those two supplements. Uh, as far as looking at, uh, some of the other information on creatine, um, there’s an interesting study that came out in, uh, uh, 2012. And this one was in the journal of international society of sports nutrition. And, uh, they took several athletes. It was 24 men, and they subjected them to resistance training over six weeks. And, uh, they gave half of them, a cocktail of amino acids, creatine, and took casting protein or casein protein, whey protein, and a caffeine service for you Sports Performance Training Tulsa.

They gave other a group, a placebo, okay. And subjects. And it’s the same resistance training, uh, exercise at the end of the study. They, um, compared the muscle thickness, they looked at cross sectional area, which relates to hypertrophy the fiber type and the one rec, uh, max okay. Between the groups on what they chose to, to kind of measure from baseline to post study. And, um, they actually didn’t find a whole lot of difference between the parameters. Um, they noticed the power of the non placebo group, uh, actually increased. So the, the group receiving the, the creatine. So, uh, this particular study actually showed there, wasn’t a whole lot of difference between some of these supplementation groups. Um, we have had a lot of other studies that suggested that creatine is important. Um, I’ve got another one. This is from, uh, 2012. This is from the, uh, uh, an international journal on sports nutrition that was published.

And, uh, if we look at it, I’m going to quote some of it. Um, if we jump down into it, but, uh, um, creatine is available, uh, uh, available to the body and is obtained through the diet. And it’s about one gram a day for omnivorous diet. Okay. 95% of the body’s creatine stores are actually found on the scale of muscle. Okay. The remaining 5% is distributed in the brain. Liver, kidney and testes is creatine is predominantly present in the diet for meats, vegetarians have lower resting creatine concentrations. So that could be something important. If you, as an athlete are, um, you know, more of a vegetarian diet to getting a creatine, um, um, uh, supplementally might be important for you. Uh, uh, there’s a, and this is back to the article. There’s a great amount of research published on creatine supplementation, protocols, administration forms of creatine, as well as potential side effects.

Okay. Those are all things, uh, despite this, the mechanisms by which creatine acts in the human body to improve physical or cognitive performance are still not clear. Welcome to academic research, uh, the main objectives of this review, and this is what I’m looking at is, and they actually went on to look at more of the mechanisms and, and find some of the purposes now, uh, uh, the average 70 kilogram young male has a CRE team pool of around 120, 140 grams and varies between individuals. And, uh, also depends on the muscle fiber type that you predominantly have and the quantity of muscle mass. Okay. Um, the indogenous production. And this is back to the article in dietary intake matches the rate of creatine production from the degradation of fascial career team and creatine at 2.6%. And 1.1% per day, respectively, um, oral creatine supplementation usually leads to an increase of creatine levels within the body with our Sports Performance Training Tulsa services.

And a, you can clear it from the body, uh, usually by renal filtration. That means it’s you urinate and pass all the extra stuff out. So then the argument usually goes on, well, how much should we be taking, uh, there’s a lot of different studies on how much, anywhere from 0.1 gram per kilogram of body weight, all the ways up to a, some studies suggest five grams per day. Again, there can be side effects in the long term, uh, supplementation of creatine. It hasn’t necessarily been studied. Um, we, uh, uh, we, as in the academic community, uh, might, uh, find that there are some detrimental effects for longterm supplementation, but, uh, not enough that, uh, there’s any major concerns out there. And if you have a young athlete, it’s not usually advised to the supplement with creatine, uh, as an athlete, uh, uh, gets older, um, then a supplementation with diet could be positive outcome for resistance or power training athletes.

Um, if you have somebody who’s more of an endurance trained athlete, uh, then the creatine studies aren’t as widely circulated, so we know less about it. Okay. Uh, and back to this article it’s pre-list and mentioned, but the 2003 meta analysis showed individuals ingesting creatine, combined with resistance training attain an average of 8% and 14% more performance on their maximum, uh, one rep max, um, or endurance strength, respectively, then the placebo groups out of that study. Um, but again, a country, contradicting information has been found, uh, just like to study a cited earlier. So, um, you know, as we look at this and you start to go out on the market, uh, there’s just so many things out there, especially if the onset of energy drinks for coaches and athletes alike, uh, you know, caffeine supplementation should be cautiously approached. Um, uh, you know, the basics are still much more of an effect on your performance as an athlete than any of the supplements that are out there.

Most of those are, um, subject to bias by the marketers. And they’re going to, um, try to sell you a glamorous, uh, product that is not going to change, uh, your performance as an athlete anymore than the hard work diet sleep patterns that you’re going to be able to adjust on your own. So, um, as you go out there again, creatine and protein and amino acids supplements are some of the most widely studied supplements. And, uh, uh, focusing on some of the other things may not be, uh, to the best advantage for most athletes out there. Um, a good focus again, on the baseline. Things are going to produce the best outcomes in the long haul for developing good, productive and winning habits for you as a coach or an athlete. Um, and that’s all we have for supplements. Again, I’m Chris Dory, a science contributor for, um, uh, pro day sports the top Sports Performance Training Tulsa company.