0:00

Drexler. Helms? That

0:05

might have been the first time that we've successfully done that

0:07

intro and something that feels

0:09

iron culture-esque without us bumbling

0:11

over our own shoelaces. So I'll

0:14

count that as a win. I fully

0:16

expect that our ratings and

0:18

the number of shares we get on this episode will

0:21

be drastically improved because of that. It's

0:23

the little things that count, folks. So

0:26

yeah, the first thing I want to address is I

0:28

went back and I actually listened to

0:31

the episode that was you at Omar where

0:33

you talked about protein. And

0:37

maybe I shouldn't have because I

0:39

was a little disappointed. Well, you

0:42

know, when I came back on and,

0:44

you know, I talked about how we couldn't

0:46

be driven apart, how,

0:49

you know, we were on the same page and

0:53

you mentioned, hey, maybe don't go listen to that episode. I

0:56

did what any person would do when they're told not

0:58

to listen to something, I listened to it. Right.

1:01

And yeah, the,

1:05

I guess the framing

1:07

of my biases towards

1:09

protein, I felt they weren't fair.

1:12

I feel like I've changed my mind over time. I feel like

1:14

I've evolved as a human. And

1:18

are you, I'm

1:22

just trying to wrap my head around this. This is

1:24

coming by surprise. Are you contesting

1:26

the shadowy nefarious nature of all

1:28

your conflicts of interest or is

1:30

it just the other part?

1:33

Well, it is true. It Omar actually alluded to this, that

1:36

I am an unpaid

1:38

and also surprisingly unsolicited

1:41

scientific board member for elemental formulations. It's

1:45

almost like Ben Escrow feels like he knows what he's doing and

1:48

he doesn't need to ask me about that. But

1:51

yeah, I am not only an unpaid, unsolicited

1:55

and really non-contributing member of elemental

1:57

formulations, but I

2:00

also. do well, I guess you

2:02

said it wasn't shadowy. You said it was more just that I

2:05

get stuck in my ways and it was just

2:07

this this this bias, this hobby

2:09

horse that I had that higher protein

2:11

diets were just better

2:13

despite the evidence was or you tell

2:15

me. I mean, I guess I guess

2:17

I've lost as an old crotchety man,

2:19

I've lost all touch with reality on

2:21

how I'm perceived like how

2:23

out of touch am I? Are we talking like I

2:27

don't know how to use a cell phone level or

2:29

hey, I'm still on Facebook like like what are we

2:31

talking? Well, I actually

2:33

like I'm not even kidding. I was

2:35

looking at the jitterbug cell phone options

2:37

the other day because I just wanted

2:39

to spend less time using a smartphone.

2:42

But ultimately, I felt like it was not not

2:44

really worth it to have a two phone system

2:47

going but so I kind of

2:49

reject the whole premise of the the contrast

2:51

that you set up there. And

2:55

folks who are subscribed to the mass

2:57

research review know that that Facebook group

2:59

is where it's at. So I'm very,

3:01

very into not using smartphones and using

3:03

jitterbugs instead and I'm very into sticking

3:05

with Facebook as the true original

3:08

social media platform because to this

3:11

day, I'd still argue that it's the best

3:14

place to actually have a decent conversation about

3:16

whatever you're talking about, you know, with

3:19

Twitter, it's like here, let me send

3:21

you 13 different tweets, because

3:24

I have such extreme character

3:26

limitations. And

3:29

then, you know, on

3:31

Instagram, it's tough to follow

3:33

a conversation in there. So yeah, Facebook, we

3:36

need to bring it back. What do

3:38

we need to do, Helms, to make

3:40

Facebook the new, trendy social media? And I

3:42

don't even know about TikTok. So let me

3:44

acknowledge that one as well. I'm not on

3:47

it, probably should be, but

3:49

I'm not. So we need to figure

3:51

out how we can bring it back and restore

3:53

its greatness. To directly

3:56

answer your question in an indirect way, I

3:58

forget what you said. what

4:00

I said about you and your stance on protein. I'm

4:02

sure it felt like a fun joke at the time.

4:04

I have no idea what I said. You're

4:07

catching me on a Friday afternoon, on

4:10

a very busy work week. So

4:12

I haven't really been forming memories lately. You

4:15

know, I'm just kind of, it's like

4:18

those very simple organisms that are just

4:20

pure responses. You know, there's a stimulus

4:22

and I respond to it. So I'm

4:24

sure, you know, when I frame

4:26

it that way, I'm starting to think maybe Omar kind

4:28

of led me down a really dangerous road. So maybe

4:30

you should take it up at him. You

4:33

know, I really do think it is

4:35

typically the person who is not there

4:37

to defend themselves who should be getting

4:39

the heat. And

4:41

that has been the way that it's gone thus

4:44

far on iron culture. And that's

4:46

not because we're all, you know,

4:48

cowardly by nature and

4:51

in a dysfunctional three-way. That's

4:53

absolutely just the way things have

4:55

happened in so much as Omar

4:58

instigated this and then when

5:00

I wasn't there, you know, it might have

5:02

seemed like it was me, but it was

5:04

actually Omar. And that may change next time

5:06

you guys listen, next time. But

5:09

ultimately, we're going to be

5:11

sticking together one big happy family that

5:14

is always talking crap about the person who's not in

5:16

the room and we're such a big happy family that

5:18

we don't have the schedule to all be on

5:20

at the same time. I don't know. Now that

5:22

you mentioned that, I'm kind of starting to resent Omar

5:25

for making me say those things about you when you

5:27

were gone. So now

5:29

there's some additional issues

5:31

that we need to kind of resolve the next time the

5:33

three of us get together. Yeah,

5:36

that's one option. Or

5:39

perhaps next time the two of us are

5:41

on, we can speak about the person who's

5:43

not there. I find that's the best way

5:45

to resolve conflicts. Yeah. Well, it avoids fights,

5:47

at least in the short term. Yeah,

5:50

know it. And I'm all about short

5:52

term thinking, folks. So yeah. And

5:55

then to indirectly ask the question that

5:57

you indirectly asked that was indirect related

6:00

to what we're directly talking about. How

6:02

do we bring Facebook back? You're asking

6:04

the wrong guy because I'm too old.

6:06

If I talk about it, it'll automatically

6:08

be a bad decision and an out

6:10

of touch perspective. However, if you talk

6:12

about ways to get people back on

6:14

Facebook, it'll either

6:17

be seen as retro, artisanal,

6:20

or potentially hipster. And I mean that with

6:22

the positive connotation. So

6:25

you're gonna have to leave the charge on that one. Yeah,

6:27

we need like some cool 19 year

6:30

olds who just really like to say, oh, actually

6:32

I'm only on Facebook now. And

6:34

that'll really do it. And

6:36

they'll say, I was on Facebook, I

6:38

was there for their first album before anybody

6:41

heard of it. So yeah,

6:43

fingers crossed because Facebook used

6:46

to be great in the fitness world. You

6:48

get really good discussions going. People would really

6:51

engage in some dialogue. And by internet

6:53

standards, it was a decent dialogue. By

6:56

human standards, of course it was terrible

6:58

dialogue because it was the internet. But

7:02

yeah, we'll bring it back. We just need some cool

7:04

young people to do that. I think you and I

7:06

have both aged out of the trend setting phase

7:09

of our lives. Yeah,

7:11

I am so aged out

7:13

of trend setting that I don't actually know what trend setting

7:15

means. So I

7:18

agree. You know what? Like

7:20

that's fire. I'm woke and let's

7:24

put it on the snap

7:26

talk. All right. Are

7:30

you gonna talk? What are we talking about? Yeah,

7:32

what are we talking about? Honestly, I

7:34

think a decent segue from how our

7:36

opinions have changed over

7:39

time. People might have seen the recent mass

7:41

blast from the past that I did on

7:43

the mass research review where I

7:45

actually discussed your very first publication, Metabolic

7:50

Adaptation, implications for the athlete. And

7:52

the point I made in it was that

7:55

the reason I respect you tremendously as a researcher,

7:57

being totally serious now, is Just

7:59

how much your opinions of overtime based upon

8:01

the data. And. How. You're.

8:04

Probably one of the more vocal proponents

8:06

suggesting that the data. On.

8:09

Quote Unquote Reverse Dieting. indicates.

8:11

That it for example may not

8:13

be any better than any other

8:15

posts diet strategy to reverse metabolic

8:17

adaptation. And you

8:19

know, in our recent discussions. Ah,

8:21

actually here a couple couple episodes

8:24

back on our culture he talked

8:26

about hey, you know what I

8:28

framed under the umbrella of Metabolic

8:30

Adaptation. Probably. As about three of

8:32

three or four different umbrellas. And.

8:36

I. Think in the same way. You.

8:39

Have definitely positively influence me

8:41

on the protein distribution. And

8:44

also you know protein intakes that are appropriate

8:46

and a lot of your writings and thoughts.

8:49

And. Dot. It's always been something that I

8:51

respect you law for as that he typically don't

8:53

have a dog in the race you know, even

8:55

even a pet theory or bias who does very

8:58

much empirically lead and evidence lead which I think

9:00

as a great trait. And.

9:03

One of the things that. My.

9:05

Mind is changed a lot on as I read

9:07

about it. Is. Kind of

9:09

my. My. Threshold and

9:11

my willingness. To. Bet on

9:14

a neutral the positive. If. It's

9:16

in the category supplementation. You

9:18

know, so. And. That

9:20

That is a pretty big shift. so I'm

9:22

working on the third additions muscle strength pyramids.

9:25

And. My supplements after it is probably

9:27

going to change more than any other chapter.

9:30

Other. Ones will have the modifications

9:32

in different takes and. Mean.

9:34

A more options in some cases. What? My

9:36

guess? Is it going to change the most

9:39

because so many incredible new supplements of hit

9:41

the market in the last three years. The

9:44

I mean I've got at least

9:46

fifteen pages dedicated just to. Be.

9:49

Reports. that i've heard that are that

9:52

just mind blowing gained about her guest room

9:54

and as just a testimonial section on trick

9:56

esther on so that's that's is one of

9:58

the subsections No, unsurprisingly,

10:01

it is not expanding.

10:04

It's gonna be a very short chapter. There'll

10:07

be an appendix that immediately follows the

10:09

supplement chapter that is far longer than

10:11

the supplement chapter, just to give

10:13

people an idea of what's happening there.

10:16

And yeah, this is one

10:18

of those things where the typical logic

10:21

that I use on when

10:23

do I tilt over and

10:25

provide a recommendation, I've had

10:27

to create almost basically a new way

10:29

of gauging that. All

10:32

this is not entirely new, just to

10:34

kind of give people an insight into the Helms

10:36

algorithm of recommendation. I consider my

10:38

audience first. Like, does someone have

10:41

relatively extreme goals where they

10:44

have the time, energy, interest,

10:47

and the desire to invest in

10:49

diminishing returns, poor ROIs, right? The

10:53

kind of thing that's hot right now is volume,

10:55

right? So if you're gonna get 80, 90% of your gains

10:58

doing eight to 12 sets per week, and you

11:00

only can work out three times a week for 30 minutes

11:02

to an hour, it's not a

11:04

good thing to try to chase down how do

11:06

I max out the amount of gains I can

11:08

get theoretically from doing volume and oh, let me

11:11

start around 15 to 20 sets, and

11:14

then go from there. I would definitely recommend being

11:16

in that more, eight to 10 range or eight to

11:18

12 or something like that. Because what

11:20

you're getting in return really doesn't

11:23

make a lot of sense based upon your availability and

11:25

your time and all those things. And

11:29

so if I'm talking to someone who

11:31

is willing to invest in unfavorable

11:33

ROIs because they're trying to maximize

11:35

rather than trying to optimize in

11:37

terms of efficiency, my

11:40

old heuristic was sweet. Let's just tell

11:42

you everything that's neutral or potentially positive

11:45

without a risk of harm. And

11:48

example of this might be, hey, we got

11:50

some data on two-a-day training that suggests you

11:52

might be able to preserve your performance a

11:54

little more. We Don't have really good

11:56

longitudinal data that says two-a-day training with the

11:58

same volume will. These better hypertrophy.

12:01

A. Theoretically, you know if you're maintaining

12:03

a higher force output. And. You're

12:06

distributing things and improving recovery.

12:08

mit benefit. Ah, you know

12:10

if you really want to move your precision

12:12

up from. Ah, Yes or a

12:14

our ratings to actually getting an our

12:16

are velocity relationship. A Maybe.

12:19

Get the open bar bell system. it's four hundred

12:21

dollars. You. Know. It. May or

12:23

may not make a difference if you're half an

12:25

hour p point more accurate because he must now

12:27

supports analysts if you've got the disposable money, And.

12:30

I think be very logical for someone to say.

12:32

Well yeah, I definitely can spend. Six.

12:34

Dollars per month. on this supplements.

12:37

That has maybe not the strongest data behind

12:39

it, but has a chance to being beneficial

12:41

for me. So. Why not? And.

12:45

That. Was the position I took as well and

12:47

I had a relatively liberal. Threshold.

12:49

For one, what I consider a submit

12:52

sufficiently quote unquote evidence based. To.

12:54

Go. Yeah, I can give it a shot. But.

12:57

as it become more and more aware

12:59

on know the harm potential of supplements.

13:02

And. A Harmless. Not necessarily

13:04

obvious. It's not necessarily reflected by what's

13:06

on the label. It's not

13:08

in a silly reflected by. Things.

13:10

That happen seemingly commonly or that we

13:13

talk about are aware of. Ah,

13:15

but more have some of

13:17

these not well advertised. Hidden.

13:20

Risks and something that people maybe are too

13:22

dismissive of that are actually. A

13:24

larger problem lurking in the dark are related

13:26

to someone industry? So. That's what I want

13:28

to talk about today. Is this to help people. Understand

13:32

that. It's not

13:34

just. The. Cost to your

13:36

wallet. Or the disposable income

13:38

that you're losing. Ah, when

13:40

you decide to invest in a

13:42

a supplement that has less than

13:45

stellar evidence behind it. And

13:47

new. It's not just. well, you know, Absence.

13:50

Of evidence that evidence of absence that

13:52

the chances could go well. I.

13:54

Have disposable income? Why not? there

13:58

is actually a potential harm that you could

14:00

be incurring that is

14:02

even magnified if, like many

14:04

of our audience are, you're a drug-tested athlete.

14:07

So that's what I want to

14:09

talk about. And I think perhaps to kick things

14:11

off, I want to put it

14:13

back to you, Trexler, because you did a really good

14:16

job. I want to say maybe two years

14:18

ago, I think this is the first time you introduced the

14:20

concept of the way you define

14:22

supplement tiers. I

14:24

give a tier one through five system,

14:27

which I really like because I think it's a

14:29

very good schema and

14:32

model of understanding where to supplements

14:34

go. And

14:36

kind of the entry point of any supplement

14:38

is I believe tier three, right, on your

14:40

schema? Yeah. Yeah. So

14:43

I think it was about a couple years ago,

14:45

I kind of introduced that topic of supplement tiers

14:48

within the mass research review. And

14:52

it was really just a way of kind

14:54

of organizing my thoughts about how to kind

14:56

of categorize supplements because I was getting so

14:59

many questions from people of

15:01

comparing this supplement to that one

15:03

or is the supplement, one of

15:05

the most common questions, is the supplement worth it?

15:08

And I was like, it's really hard to

15:10

answer that without just kicking it back to

15:12

the person asking and say, well,

15:15

what do you consider a worthwhile effect?

15:18

And you have to get into

15:20

this kind of individualized cost-benefit ratio.

15:23

So it was always hard for me to actually answer

15:25

those questions in a way that wasn't kind

15:28

of excessively convoluted and basically

15:30

a non-answer. So I was

15:32

like, okay, what if I

15:34

could put together some

15:36

tiers that at least offer some kind

15:38

of guidance in terms of like, where

15:42

would I slot this particular supplement

15:45

in? And I think

15:47

the biggest thing about the kind of supplement

15:49

tier system or approach is that it's

15:51

not just where does a supplement fall, but where

15:54

does the supplement fall for a

15:56

very specific thing, right? So, you

15:59

know. That's kind of a

16:01

key to it is if you're gonna say, hey, this

16:04

is like a tier one or a tier two kind

16:06

of supplement, the question is tier one

16:08

or tier two for what? Yeah.

16:11

So like, you know, creatine for

16:13

endurance exercise is very different from

16:15

creatine for strength and power.

16:18

You know, same thing, beta alanine

16:21

for someone who runs the 800

16:23

meters or a repeated

16:25

sprint type sport is going to be very

16:27

different from beta alanine for a bodybuilder, right?

16:30

So that's kind of the key there.

16:32

So what I'm doing as I'm talking about

16:34

the supplement tier system is kind of bringing

16:37

up the original figure to make sure that

16:39

I don't botch the definitions or the categorizations

16:41

that I kind of put forward there. So

16:44

yeah, I've got it up here now. So like

16:46

you said, everything kind of starts at tier three,

16:49

which is just like in the middle. It's a

16:51

five tier system. So tier

16:53

three basically means there's

16:55

insufficient evidence to conclusively

16:57

determine its effectiveness, right?

17:00

So if there's something and we just simply

17:02

don't know if it works, we don't know

17:05

if it's good or bad, it kind of

17:07

immediately starts at tier three by default. It's

17:09

like the null hypothesis, I guess, which is

17:11

not the null hypothesis, but it's just the

17:14

null kind of default place where something goes

17:17

until we learn something about it. Now

17:20

if a supplement comes out and there's some

17:22

positive evidence, it can move up, right? So

17:25

tier two basically means there's

17:27

evidence supporting its efficacy or

17:29

effectiveness, but maybe there's not

17:31

a ton of data. Maybe

17:34

the effects tend to be kind of small. Maybe

17:37

the effects aren't super reliable. And

17:39

then another possibility is the

17:42

data are positive, but only for

17:44

like very specialized applications, right? So

17:46

like for beta alanine, for

17:48

example, there is pretty

17:51

good, relatively conclusive evidence that

17:53

beta alanine is good for like

17:56

super, super glycolytic stuff, right?

17:58

So you're going max. maximum

18:00

all-out effort for like a minute

18:02

or two. Beta

18:04

alanine is great for that, right? So

18:07

you could say, yeah, that's

18:09

definitely an effective supplement for

18:11

this very specific kind of

18:13

niche application relative to the

18:15

entire possibility of physical performance,

18:18

right? It's probably not

18:20

great for someone who's doing a power lifting

18:22

program, you know, for someone who's doing a

18:24

weight lifting program, for someone who just is

18:27

doing cardio for health purposes. It's

18:29

a very niche application, which is why I

18:32

put it in tier two. Another

18:34

example would be citrulline malate, you know,

18:36

that's kind of a supplement I've spent

18:39

a lot of time writing about and

18:41

doing studies on. It was one

18:43

of the key areas of my dissertation

18:46

research. I consider that to

18:48

be tier two because first of all,

18:50

the effects tend to be pretty small. And

18:53

second of all, the effects so far seem

18:55

to be kind of unreliable in

18:57

a way that we can't quite, we

19:00

can't easily explain, you know, like there

19:03

seems to be a lot of inconsistency in

19:06

the citrulline malate literature when you're

19:08

looking at strength-related outcomes where

19:10

you've got this whole string of studies that

19:13

show positive effects and this whole string

19:15

of studies that doesn't show positive

19:17

effects. Now

19:19

as more data come out, we'll be able to

19:21

really fill in the kind of funnel plot, so

19:23

to speak, in your mind and say, well,

19:26

you know, if

19:28

the funnel plot fills in very symmetrically

19:30

and it looks like we, you know,

19:32

we're just seeing these, you know, strings

19:35

of positive and negative findings because they're just

19:37

kind of straddling that line, it

19:40

could very well be that as we get

19:42

more data, we say, oh no, that it's consistently

19:44

an effect size of about this. It's just

19:47

that, you know, we're kind of, you

19:49

know, seeing some of those small studies that

19:52

are either very positive or very negative, right?

19:54

So for now, I'd

19:56

consider citrulline kind of a

19:58

tier two supplement because... because of

20:01

those small effects and the kind

20:03

of inconsistency. Another

20:05

example that would be tier two

20:08

is the other kind of half of my dissertation,

20:10

which would be dietary

20:12

nitrate, usually in the form of B-root

20:14

juice. For resistance training

20:17

purposes, there's really not a ton of

20:19

data. There are

20:21

plenty of studies looking at more

20:23

endurance focused outcomes, more

20:26

related to endurance sport. For

20:28

resistance training, there's not nearly as much,

20:31

but the stuff that has come out

20:33

is actually so far tended to

20:35

be a little bit more consistent than what we see

20:37

with citrulline. I

20:40

would say it's one

20:42

of those things where even though

20:44

there's less data, it seems

20:46

to be more reliable so far, or

20:48

at least more consistent. Again,

20:51

dietary nitrate, just because there's such

20:53

a lack of resistance training

20:55

focused data, I would put that in

20:57

tier two. Then tier

20:59

one, that's where you move up and there's

21:01

nowhere to go up from there. Tier

21:04

one supplement just means there is strong evidence

21:07

supporting reliable and noteworthy effects.

21:11

The only one that really comes to mind

21:13

for me with resistance training

21:15

outcomes in mind would be creatine.

21:18

Creatine monohydrate, tried and true,

21:20

pretty sizable effects, pretty consistent.

21:23

One instance of inconsistency so

21:26

far is if you

21:28

are a non-responder, but that is a

21:30

type of inconsistency

21:32

that we have really elucidated.

21:35

We know the reasoning for that.

21:37

It's not like there's this unexplainable

21:39

discrepancy where half of the studies

21:42

are just coming up negative. I

21:46

would put creatine there and then maybe

21:49

you could make the argument that protein belongs in there

21:51

not as a supplement, but just as a thing you

21:54

got to have. If

21:56

supplementation gets you to an adequate

21:58

intake, then I would. I would say it belongs

22:02

there, but I think we've probably

22:04

mentioned many, many times over our

22:06

careers across many different places, supplements

22:08

aren't inherently better than food when it comes to

22:11

protein, and if you're using the supplement to get

22:13

from 2.5 grams per kilogram

22:15

to 2.8, it's

22:17

not gonna do anything for you in the vast

22:20

majority of situations. So we've

22:22

talked about the positive side of this

22:24

whole tear system, and now we should

22:26

probably take a turn that'll probably be

22:28

most of our conversation today, which is

22:30

the not so good side, right? So something

22:33

that arts as a tier three supplement, which

22:37

means we just don't really have enough evidence

22:39

to determine if this thing works. Now,

22:42

tier four is, the way I

22:44

kinda describe that is that there's sufficient evidence

22:47

to conclude that this supplement does not

22:49

have practically meaningful effects for

22:52

a given application, right? And so,

22:54

again, all of this stuff is

22:56

relative to a very specific use

22:59

case or a specific application. A

23:01

supplement can be tier two for this

23:03

outcome and tier four for that outcome.

23:06

And I'm getting kinda close to,

23:08

with beta alanine, I'm

23:11

getting kinda close to saying for

23:13

your typical weightlifting application, especially if

23:15

we're talking powerlifting or Olympic lifting,

23:18

it's probably tier four, you know? I'm

23:21

getting pretty close there, whereas it's

23:23

tier two, or maybe even tier

23:26

one for certain highly anaerobic outcomes.

23:28

So tier four is, it's not that

23:30

we don't know, it's not absence of

23:33

evidence like you alluded to previously. It's

23:35

like, no, we've got evidence and this

23:37

just doesn't work. Or the

23:39

magnitude of effect is so small

23:41

as to be practically useless, right?

23:43

And then tier five is the

23:46

worst of the worst and not

23:48

that, I would say not that

23:51

many supplements that actually make it to market end

23:53

up sinking all the way to tier five. But

23:55

tier five means that there is sufficient evidence

23:58

to conclude that this supplement. either

24:00

harms health or

24:02

harms performance in a given

24:04

application. So ideally, you

24:06

would not want to see any supplements

24:08

falling under that, falling their

24:12

way all the way down to tier five, but it does

24:14

happen from time to time. Often

24:16

times when it's a supplement that harms health,

24:19

that is kind of the precursor to

24:21

some kind of regulatory action where it

24:24

is banned or removed from the market,

24:27

or at least people try to remove

24:29

it from the market with varying levels

24:31

of success historically. And

24:34

then yeah, every now and then we will

24:36

find a supplement that is supposed to help

24:38

performance but paradoxically actually harms performance.

24:40

And so that would be a tier five. And

24:43

tier five is the kind of supplement

24:45

that kind of bring it all back

24:47

full circle. When someone asks me,

24:49

hey, is this supplement worth it? I say, well,

24:51

stop right there. What

24:54

application are you talking about? And

24:56

what magnitude of effect is worthwhile for

24:58

you? Like what do you consider worth

25:01

it? And so then

25:03

they give me that information and we kind of

25:05

go through these tiers. And a

25:07

tier one supplement is usually a no

25:09

brainer as long as it's not cost

25:11

prohibitive, like financially cost prohibitive. Tier

25:14

two and tier three, both

25:16

of those kind of fall in that situation where

25:18

I say, hey, this might give you a little

25:21

extra, we're not quite sure. How

25:24

much are you going to miss the $40 a month

25:26

that you're spending on this? Are you

25:28

doing regular drug testing? Are you worried about

25:31

that potential issues if

25:33

you get a tainted supplement? That's where you

25:36

start really getting into more specifics. Tier

25:39

four, it's pretty easy to say, I encourage

25:41

you not to take it because this thing doesn't work

25:43

for what you're trying to do. And

25:45

then tier five is where you say, I'm actually

25:48

pleading with you not to take it because this

25:50

is going to make you perform worse or this

25:52

is actually going to harm you. And

25:55

so the really tricky one is when you get to tier

25:57

five, there will be

25:59

those. instances sometimes where

26:02

something can help your performance but

26:04

also harm your health. So

26:07

I would say it's an either or thing.

26:10

If it hurts your health but helps your

26:12

performance, I would still put that in tier

26:14

five if there are serious health consequences. And

26:16

so sometimes tier five is where you can easily say,

26:19

I very strongly discourage you

26:21

from taking it, but every

26:23

now and then people will still push forward

26:25

and take it nonetheless. Now

26:28

that's a great summary of the tier list and

26:30

there'll be one major question that comes out of

26:32

that which I'll address is what the heck, what

26:34

about caffeine, where does that sit? And

26:37

then the second is

26:39

where we're going to dovetail from this and

26:41

how potentially any supplement

26:44

could land you in tier five, which

26:46

is the main thrust of this discussion. So

26:48

really quickly, there was

26:51

a really good meta progression that recently came out

26:53

looking at caffeine, which

26:55

I think is one of the reasons why

26:58

it is not a tier one supplement because

27:00

it clarified something that we

27:02

knew. We know caffeine is a relatively

27:04

long half-life. We know caffeine can impact

27:06

sleep even for people who are habituated

27:08

to it and feel like they can fall asleep. After

27:11

taking caffeine, there's sleep architectural impacts

27:13

where it reduces REM

27:15

and deep sleep and you're spending more

27:17

time in less high quality stages of

27:19

sleep, unfortunately. And then

27:21

you're pitting the potential benefit of caffeine

27:23

against the potential downside of reduced sleep.

27:26

And one of the things that a

27:29

lot of people don't realize is that

27:31

there actually are almost no longitudinal studies

27:33

on caffeine looking at performance.

27:36

And one of the reasons why, say, a

27:38

citrulline malate might be stuck in tier two

27:40

even if we do see more consistent effects

27:42

or nitrate if once a meta-analysis comes out,

27:44

is that all looking at short-term

27:46

outcomes or kind of extrapolating does

27:48

it, this improvement in endurance or

27:50

strength actually lead to improved hypertrophy

27:52

or longitudinal changes in say, one-RM

27:54

strength to where now I can

27:56

recommend to our strength and physique

27:59

community. that might be something worth taking.

28:02

So caffeine for two reasons in my opinion,

28:05

is kind of the tippity top of tier two, but

28:07

probably not gonna make it into tier one is

28:09

the lack of longitudinal data and based

28:12

upon this meta regression, unfortunately

28:14

for most people, taking

28:16

the kind of dose that consistently

28:18

improves resistance training performance, you

28:21

really can't do that after nine or 10 a.m. If

28:24

you have a normal sleep wake schedule and

28:27

cycle without it having some negative impact on

28:29

sleep. And the

28:32

thing is, is that you might be able to make

28:34

an argument for say endurance performance for

28:36

shifting caffeine up because two, three

28:38

milligrams per kilogram has been shown

28:40

to more consistently improve performance. But when you look

28:42

at the strength research, there

28:45

are some studies where you can get a

28:47

three gram per kilogram, sorry, three

28:49

milligram per kilogram intake of

28:51

caffeine that is improving performance, but

28:54

most of the time it's in that four to six range

28:57

and you see even more consistent results within kind of the

28:59

higher end of that. So yeah, if

29:02

we're talking, you got a power lifting meeting, it's okay

29:04

if you don't sleep afterwards because you're probably not gonna

29:06

anyway because you're all hyped up. Yeah, go

29:09

ahead. But for regular training, especially

29:11

if you get off work at five and you get

29:13

to the gym at 5.30 and

29:15

you're taking two, 300 milligrams and

29:17

a free workout at 4.30 p.m. Ugh,

29:22

if I had to guess, well, I wouldn't,

29:24

but I would not

29:26

be sure if this is actually a net positive for

29:28

you, let's put it that way. Yeah.

29:31

So that's the answer to that caffeine question. I don't know if

29:33

you wanna chime in on that before I dive into the rest

29:35

of this conversation. Yeah, so

29:37

I think that the ultimate

29:40

safety net for this tier system that

29:43

makes it robust to people saying, Eric,

29:45

you're an idiot for using this, is

29:49

like I said, it's totally application

29:51

specific, which is a

29:53

total cop out, right? Because I can make

29:56

you really refine your question into a way

29:58

that makes it at least somewhat. easier

30:00

to address, right? And so

30:02

I think that comes up, I think it's

30:04

very relevant for caffeine because like you said,

30:07

you put it at kind of the tippy top

30:09

of tier two and I used

30:11

to feel that way and now I'm not even

30:13

sure if it's necessarily at the tippy top in

30:17

aggregate. I think it is for

30:19

certain applications, right? So if

30:21

you told me that what

30:23

you needed was to be slightly

30:25

stronger 60 minutes from now, like

30:28

today, then I'd say, yeah, that's

30:30

tippy top of tier two. We have plenty

30:32

of evidence saying that as long as the

30:34

dose is high enough in 60 minutes, you

30:36

probably will have better, you know, performance

30:39

on an endurance task or,

30:42

you know, an explosive task or even

30:44

like a strength endurance or one rep

30:46

max task, right? So across many types

30:49

of exercise performance, if

30:51

all we care about is what happens

30:53

60 minutes from now, today, one time,

30:55

then absolutely, it's at that tippy top.

30:58

And that's where most of the

31:00

caffeine literature exists is in that

31:03

exact scenario. But if you

31:05

were to ask me, will taking

31:07

caffeine 60 minutes before my

31:09

workouts daily for the next 12 weeks

31:13

benefit my, you know, my training adaptations

31:15

like you were alluding to, that's

31:18

where things get a lot trickier, not

31:20

just because of a very,

31:24

really kind of surprising lack of evidence, you

31:26

would think that we had plenty to go

31:29

with there and we just don't. But

31:31

you start getting into some really interesting questions,

31:34

which is like, you know, just to throw

31:36

a few of them out there. It

31:39

seems based on, you know, a

31:41

building pile of literature, that

31:44

you are probably and

31:46

when I say probably, I mean,

31:48

just based on the population percentages

31:50

of how different people with different

31:52

genotypes respond, you are

31:54

probably by the numbers sacrificing some

31:56

sleep or some sleep quality. If

31:59

you're taking. taking a large dose

32:01

of caffeine, like you said, after basically

32:04

the mid-morning timeframe. And for most

32:06

people, not all, but for many,

32:09

using caffeine as a daily training tool

32:11

is going to involve pushing

32:14

that into the late morning, early

32:16

afternoon, or even later. So

32:18

then you have to balance the potential

32:20

pros in terms of acute performance

32:22

against the

32:25

potential cons of chronic reduction

32:28

in sleep quantity or quality. Then

32:31

you also have to layer on top of that

32:33

the fact that we know surprisingly little,

32:36

like really shockingly little, about

32:39

the time course of

32:41

caffeine habituation and caffeine withdrawal

32:43

when it comes to specifically

32:45

performance outcomes. We

32:47

really don't even know that much about the basic

32:50

stuff, like I have a headache, how long is

32:52

that going to last? But

32:54

when it comes to performance, we really just

32:56

don't know what that timeline looks like. And

32:59

so the question is, by

33:01

the time you get into your third week

33:03

of this daily supplementation, have you basically habituated

33:05

to the point where each

33:07

daily dose of caffeine is just

33:09

rescuing you from withdrawal symptoms and

33:11

restoring a decrement in performance

33:14

that would have otherwise been observed? So

33:17

the question gets really loaded. There's

33:20

a lot to dig into and

33:22

unpack when you start to say,

33:25

we're shifting out of the next 90 minutes

33:27

in terms of our assessment and getting into

33:29

the next 90 days. So

33:32

all of that is to say, caffeine,

33:36

it's really, really complicated. And I'm starting

33:38

to get a little bit more bearish

33:40

about how we view caffeine as

33:42

a daily disorder

33:50

pre-workout supplement in

33:52

isolation. Now we've got pretty good

33:55

data for

33:57

multi-ingredient formulations that include

34:00

caffeine, but they also

34:02

include things like creatine most of the time. And

34:04

yeah, if you take creatine plus all the other

34:06

stuff for 12 weeks, it's probably going to be

34:08

pretty nice. But

34:10

yeah, when it comes to like just caffeine alone

34:13

and we're focused on resistance

34:15

training outcomes, I can only

34:17

think of really like one study off the top

34:19

of my head that has looked at that in

34:22

a meaningful way. It was only

34:24

four weeks long if memory serves, four

34:26

or eight, I believe four. And

34:28

caffeine was not significantly really doing

34:31

much in terms of the, when

34:33

you look at it in terms of statistical

34:35

significance. So yeah, caffeine actually

34:38

surprisingly has a lot to prove when

34:41

it comes to like real world utility.

34:44

And this is my call to action

34:46

that I put out every few months.

34:50

If you're thinking about doing a master's degree in

34:53

exercise science or something related to

34:55

sports nutrition, drop

34:57

me an email because there's about

34:59

four very feasible, very practical studies

35:01

that could be done to help

35:03

us better understand the utility of

35:05

caffeine and that kind

35:09

of habituation and withdrawal timeline.

35:12

These are things that could very feasibly be

35:14

done as a master's thesis as long as

35:16

you're at a university that has a medical

35:18

school or a

35:20

hospital associated and is willing to let you

35:22

do supplement trials

35:24

involving caffeine. So someone

35:27

go do this work please, preferably someone who's

35:29

not me. Well

35:32

said. Thanks for adding in a little

35:34

more detail to that discussion. So I think what

35:36

we've done now is we've kind of fleshed

35:38

out the possibility of a probable benefit to

35:41

you taking a supplement. The reality is

35:43

when you really look at this objectively though, supplements

35:46

come onto the market with some

35:48

degree of hypothetical basis, whether it's

35:50

looking back at what was traditional

35:52

medicine in certain countries or traditional

35:55

libido or performance boosters, there

35:57

is some rationale from something like that. way

36:00

to having what we would describe as

36:02

mechanistic research behind it or a

36:04

theoretical benefit, you know, looking at an

36:06

animal model or in

36:08

vitro the way it impacts a cell

36:11

or just the way we know that

36:13

the compound should function physiologically and then

36:15

that is used as, you know, marketing

36:18

copy. So most people

36:20

when they see a supplement hit the

36:22

market, if they're just, you know,

36:24

consuming the marketing material, they're going to think it's tier

36:26

one or tier two. And

36:28

in reality, it is typically tier three

36:30

if we actually want to use high

36:32

quality evidence to grade it, you know.

36:34

Is there human evidence showing this in

36:36

actual specific performance or body composition benefit

36:38

we're looking for? And

36:40

the reality is that truly more than 99% of

36:43

supplements end up in the mass grave of tier

36:45

four showing that they do not have

36:47

sufficient evidence. And in fact, we have

36:49

evidence they don't do anything. That

36:52

is just the reality. In the

36:54

31 years, I believe, that creatine has

36:56

been on the market, it is

36:58

the only supplement for the purposes of strength

37:00

and hypertrophy that has stayed in the tier

37:02

one spot. Others have been

37:04

elevated there temporarily, arguably maybe, and then

37:07

have fallen all the way down to

37:09

tier four, like HMB, for

37:11

example. Others have maybe been

37:13

there, but then due to health issues, they've kind

37:15

of got categorized as tier five, say like Anafedra,

37:18

for example. So

37:20

you can make arguments, but ultimately, I think

37:23

when you look at this probabilistically, 30

37:26

years, one supplement in tier one

37:29

and three or four, depending upon your goal

37:31

and your perspective, landing in that tier two

37:33

spot. And if you're a bodybuilder, a power

37:35

lifter, a weight lifter, you know, one of

37:37

those beta alanine, probably not there for you.

37:40

Crossfit, strongman medley, stuff like that. A

37:42

concurrent athlete, absolutely. Maybe that's even tier one,

37:44

like you said, Trex. But the point is,

37:46

is that we're looking at

37:48

a very, very small probability of any new

37:50

supplement getting up to that top spot.

37:53

And even if it was, I think it's

37:55

reasonable to say, you know, what kind of effect

37:57

size can we expect? as

38:00

creatine, which while good and

38:02

consistent, we're looking at small

38:04

to trivial effects for most of the things we're

38:07

talking about. If you look at the acute strength

38:09

data, there are some kind of random moderate effect

38:11

sizes, but depending upon if you're looking at upper

38:13

body, lower body, machine, free weight, most

38:16

of the effects cluster around small. If

38:18

you're looking at lean body mass, the effect

38:20

is around small. And if you look at

38:22

the one meta-analysis that came out recently

38:24

looking at direct measures of hypertrophy, it's

38:27

actually trivial to small. And

38:29

that was a really cool meta-analysis

38:31

done by Burke where they only

38:33

looked at ultrasound, computed topography, sorry,

38:36

tomography, or MRI

38:38

changes in local muscle

38:40

hypertrophy with the effect of creatine.

38:43

And the effects were smaller. And that's probably because

38:45

of the hydration effects of creatine, which are good

38:47

and are part of the mechanism. But

38:50

ultimately, most people who take creatine, they

38:52

don't notice a visual change. They do notice

38:54

some slight performance changes, and that is mixed

38:56

in with placebo, of course. But

39:00

it's the best

39:02

case scenario, which is highly unlikely of this

39:04

tier three supplement becoming tier one, it's

39:07

going to provide trivial to small effects in the grand scheme

39:09

of things. So if that's what we're weighing up

39:11

on the probable upside, we

39:13

need to think about the probable downside. And

39:15

kind of the whole pitch of this podcast

39:17

is that it's not just the financial cost.

39:20

One thing you mentioned, Trexler, and this is

39:23

a great segue, is that the tier five

39:25

supplements, once they are found

39:27

to be potentially harmful to health and performance,

39:30

that is when the process might start

39:32

and might be successful of removing them

39:34

from the market. And that's

39:36

because in most countries, the US

39:38

being the most notable one, the

39:40

supplement industry is regulated after

39:43

the fact, meaning

39:45

that there is a very low

39:47

barrier to entry because supplements are

39:49

typically described as isolated

39:51

food products, things that are in the food

39:53

supply or they'd be classed as pharmaceutical drugs.

39:56

So you can say, yeah, I've got this

39:58

thing. It's definitely for nature. Please believe me

40:00

and I definitely made it in a high-grade lab

40:03

I didn't just put flour and get a you

40:05

know a pill capping mechanism at Walmart and then

40:07

you know spend a little more money on Marketing

40:10

and call it mega grow 2000

40:12

and have you taking flower pills absolutely

40:14

didn't do that and in fact you

40:16

can literally do that and Until someone

40:18

decides to test your product or

40:21

reports an adverse event and then you know

40:23

does something in communication the FDA The

40:25

likelihood of you getting taken off the market is extremely

40:27

low and you can rely on

40:29

things like the placebo effect and marketing Campaigns

40:31

and add copy to try to make money

40:34

off that and that is you

40:36

know a valid strategy For

40:39

being successful in the supplement industry unfortunately

40:41

as we can see historically another

40:45

very unfortunate valid strategy that is

40:47

somewhat allowable at least temporarily by

40:49

the fact that Regulation occurs

40:51

after the fact and that the amount

40:53

of supplements that are out there Far

40:56

out paces the scope and breadth

40:58

of capability of any regulatory agency

41:00

is To put things in

41:02

the supplement that aren't supposed to be there now

41:04

in some cases This means you get a better

41:06

effect out of those supplements But

41:09

it may not be the effect you want and

41:11

it may have disastrous consequences depending upon who

41:14

you are so people

41:18

have talked in Relatively,

41:20

you know ambiguous terms as to

41:22

the scope of the issue of

41:24

tainted supplements Most of the

41:26

time when you see this online It's in the

41:28

form of a tested athlete or a claiming natural

41:30

lifter or natural athlete or natural bodybuilder Who

41:33

fails a drug test and they

41:35

get on social media and they go is definitely

41:37

my supplement And you know

41:39

99% of the comments are sure your

41:42

multivitamin had d-ball in it You liar

41:44

and they get wrecked on social media

41:46

And I'm not claiming that those aren't

41:49

in most cases, you know damage control

41:51

or you know, just PR attempts But

41:54

I thought people were most convenient place to

41:56

go if you did it, right? I get

41:58

stuff easy cuz then You can say, of course

42:01

it's in my system, but don't blame me. Yes.

42:04

And so we understand that. And

42:07

if I had to bet on any one of those given

42:09

social media posts, I probably would if I had to bet.

42:12

But you probably don't want to bet.

42:14

You probably want to make an informed decision based

42:16

upon when more evidence becomes available. So

42:18

I think something that would surprise a lot of

42:20

people is that this has actually

42:22

been researched, not in the context of posting

42:24

on social media, but in

42:26

the context of what defense does

42:29

an athlete who has an adverse finding when

42:31

they're what attested, do they take when

42:33

they go to a doping tribunal? And

42:37

I will admit that is a very different

42:39

thing. When you are actually making

42:41

a post on social media, the barrier is how impulsive

42:43

are you and

42:46

is your phone in your hand? The

42:48

barrier for actually making a

42:50

case that you had an adverse finding due

42:52

to a tainted supplement in front of a doping

42:55

tribunal when you're a tested athlete is much higher.

42:57

You have to pay for your own legal

42:59

representation. You have to pay for your own

43:01

testing of the supplement. And you had to

43:03

have the foresight to actually save

43:05

the supplement. And you have to think

43:08

reasonably and either take

43:10

or don't take the advice of your lawyer as to whether

43:12

this defense is likely going to get you there. And

43:15

having firsthand knowledge and

43:17

experience with some people who have

43:19

been in this very unfortunate situation,

43:21

it's certainly an uphill battle. I

43:24

knew an athlete who did

43:27

have an adverse finding due to

43:29

a tainted food product, not a

43:31

supplement. And they did not think to

43:33

save it. But they had what

43:36

I would say is reasonable proof that in

43:38

a criminal court would provide some doubt as

43:42

to when they were last tested, when they

43:44

traveled, where they traveled, what they ate, and

43:46

peer reviewed studies showing that in that country,

43:49

that specific meat product was

43:52

commonly tainted with the specific thing that they failed

43:54

for. And the response of

43:57

the local officials was...

44:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. We'll give you a shorter ban

44:02

if you tell on the person who sold the drug

44:06

you actually took because we don't believe you. So

44:08

it was an uphill battle for them and they

44:10

ultimately lost. But in

44:13

a study that was actually covering 18 years

44:16

of doping control data back

44:19

in, back published in 2020, I

44:21

believe, if I recall correctly, by

44:23

Lauritsen and colleagues, excuse me, 2022, but it covered

44:25

from 2020 to 18 years

44:28

prior, dietary supplements is a

44:30

major cause of anti-doping rule

44:32

violations. They found that

44:35

it was actually a very large percentage

44:38

of athletes who were claiming this

44:40

as their initial defense. And

44:42

I think that in and of itself tells

44:44

you something. So 26% of

44:47

athletes with an adverse finding claimed the source

44:50

of the banned substance was due to supplement

44:52

use. Now, some of them might

44:54

just be using that as a convenience defense, same

44:56

kind of reason they'd get on Instagram. But

44:58

I think the likelihood of that

45:00

being the actual case and

45:03

then making that as a defense they choose in

45:05

court is much higher. And more

45:07

importantly, of those 26% of

45:09

athletes who said, hey, this was because

45:12

of a tainted supplement, half

45:14

of them were able to provide evidence in

45:16

support of that claim. And

45:19

I think that's probably the low

45:21

end, given that personal experience I had

45:23

of them that actually did have a

45:25

tainted supplement. So this is a major

45:27

issue in tested sport. I think that's

45:29

the first thing we can see here. And

45:32

so next time you see someone post on

45:34

social media, yeah, you're probably right that they're

45:36

just doing some CYA. But

45:38

there's a decent chance that they might actually

45:40

have a tainted supplement. And you

45:42

might be thinking, well, okay, if it's this big

45:44

of an issue, well, why is that? Probably

45:47

because of the regulatory issues we

45:49

talked about. But there

45:52

are also other things going on. So drug

45:54

testing has gotten more and more and more

45:56

and more and more precise over time. So

45:58

that a very similar... small amount

46:00

of contamination can result in

46:02

an adverse finding far

46:05

below the amount that would actually give you any

46:07

benefits. So you're really not even getting the benefit

46:09

of inadvertently doping at this point. And

46:11

so I think that's something to be

46:13

aware of. And if

46:16

we want to look at what's a

46:18

decent predictor of the future, history

46:20

is always a good one to look at, especially

46:23

when there haven't been fundamental changes to a

46:25

given industry. So, you know,

46:27

I talked about this on the 3D&J

46:30

podcast about a month ago with Steve

46:32

Taylor or RD. And one of the

46:34

comments that we had in the YouTube

46:36

kind of delayed the fact that people

46:39

don't really want this to be true. I don't want this to be

46:41

true. And they're looking for a way

46:43

of like, listen, this is not a huge threat to

46:45

me. It's not going to be me. And

46:47

they said, hey, you know, you were talking about

46:49

these really high rates of contamination, but that was

46:52

only an issue in the mid 2000s at

46:54

the height of the pro hormone craze. And

46:56

I think it'll be fun to talk about

46:58

just how crazy it was at that time point. But

47:01

we really need to acknowledge there haven't been

47:03

fundamental changes to the supplement industry. And there

47:05

are parallels that have existed since. So

47:08

what am I alluding to? Well, there

47:10

was actually a time period where you

47:12

could buy legal steroids,

47:15

basically, over the counter at

47:17

GNC, ordering of bodybuilding.com. It was in the

47:19

height of the quote unquote pro hormone era.

47:22

And I would say probably more accurately,

47:24

the pro hormone pro steroid era is

47:26

what they were called because a pro

47:28

hormone is technically something that only becomes

47:30

a, you know, anabolic hormone once

47:33

it's converted in your body endogenously,

47:35

like an, like Andro, for example.

47:38

But there were other things that were

47:40

just chemically altering. They just, the supplement

47:42

company chemically altered the name. So it

47:44

didn't look like the typical naming convention

47:46

for an anabolic steroid and just sold

47:48

it straight up. And this was so

47:50

prevalent that it resulted in

47:52

a anabolic steroid control act

47:55

change in 2004. They

47:57

modified the existing laws to redefine

48:00

Antibolic steroids to mean any drug

48:02

or hormonal substance, chemically or pharmacologically

48:04

related to testosterone, and that

48:06

was largely in an effort to

48:08

stop the inclusion of designer steroids,

48:11

pro-steroids, and pro-hormones from becoming ubiquitous

48:14

and sold over the counter because

48:16

they're being purchased by people under

48:18

age, taken in larger doses than

48:20

recommended and having true negative health

48:22

effects on people. And

48:24

also, drug testing failures because it

48:26

wasn't necessarily transparent as to what people

48:28

were buying. So, after

48:30

this time period, there was a really good

48:33

study published by Geyer and colleagues, and

48:35

they analyzed 634, importantly,

48:38

non-hormonal supplements, so creatine,

48:40

proteins, caffeine, pre-workouts,

48:43

etc., from 215 companies,

48:45

and importantly, not just US, but

48:47

across 15 countries. And

48:50

as a whole, nearly

48:52

15% of the products

48:54

contained unlabeled anabolic steroids, which

48:56

is bonkers to me. That

48:58

means you have a one to two out

49:00

of ten chance of any supplement you buy,

49:02

even when it specifically is meant to be

49:04

non-hormonal, actually having anabolic steroids in it if

49:07

you purchase a supplement in 2004. Now,

49:10

when they looked at supplements purchased

49:12

from companies that also

49:14

sold hormonal products so they didn't just

49:16

have like a line that

49:18

contained your optimum nutrition

49:21

standard, kind of wholesome

49:24

50s bodybuilder line of protein and

49:26

creatine, then it was

49:28

higher. If the company did sell hormonal

49:30

products, then we're looking at like a 21.1% chance.

49:34

And if we shift to only companies

49:36

that have a hormone-free line, it

49:38

drops, but not nearly as much as you'd want

49:40

it to, down to 9.6%. So,

49:43

still a one in ten chance. If

49:45

you're buying a non-hormonal product from a

49:47

company that does not sell hormones, you

49:50

could still have a one in ten chance of inadvertently

49:52

taking it. Now, this might

49:54

have been kind of this rush to get all

49:56

their products sold out. I know a lot of

49:58

people did rush to buy a pro-hormone. in the

50:00

mid 2000s knowing that they'd come off the market

50:02

and the companies might have decided, hey, we have

50:05

all these steroids, what do we do

50:07

with them? Because then

50:09

by 2007, the

50:11

percentage had fallen drastically down to

50:13

under 1% out of another repeat

50:15

study of 597

50:17

products. And I think this is what

50:20

prompted that YouTube comment, Trex. It was like, oh,

50:22

yeah, that was a brief issue before we got

50:24

serious and changed the industry with this law. But

50:27

this is really just one law. It

50:29

wasn't to change the regulatory approach that

50:31

is used in the supplement industry. And

50:34

there have been parallels since. And

50:37

they're unfortunate because they really

50:39

tell you that this has not changed.

50:42

I think we can all remember back to

50:44

the Jack 3D era and the

50:46

time period. Yeah, right. Where, I mean, if

50:48

you talk to someone who started lifting about

50:50

10 years ago and they got into pre-workouts,

50:53

they will tell you while

50:55

itching their skin and massaging

50:57

their gums with their tongue in this

50:59

almost kind of feverish way, like, man,

51:02

nothing hit the same as the pre-workouts from 2010

51:04

to 2015.

51:06

I don't know what it is. And I never say it out

51:08

loud, but I think you were taking that.

51:11

That's why it doesn't hit the same. It's a

51:13

good thing that this has changed. You don't want

51:15

them to hit the same because

51:17

quite literally, some of these supplements had

51:20

DMAA for other amphetamine analogs.

51:22

And while it peaked 10 years ago,

51:24

again, that's showing that this

51:27

is a recurring problem. And it

51:29

was to similar levels. So for example,

51:32

Yun and colleagues, they

51:34

did an assessment in

51:36

2017 of supplements advertised for

51:38

weight loss, fat burning, energy or performance

51:40

enhancement, which includes the category of

51:43

pre-workouts, just online from 2015 to

51:45

2016. And guess what? 9.1% of them had illegal stimulants in them.

51:52

So that's even after

51:54

the era we're kind of thinking about still

51:56

going on. If that study had been done

51:58

four years earlier... I would guess it was

52:00

a little higher. And

52:04

we're seeing a similar parallel with SARMS now, selective

52:07

androgen receptor modulators, right?

52:11

And for example, USADA recently

52:13

reported that there were 100 positive

52:16

water findings for the SARMS offspring

52:18

between 2015 and 2017. And

52:21

I doubt that the majority of those

52:23

were intentional doping by the athletes, but

52:26

probably them taking muscle building supplements that

52:28

were not third party tested.

52:31

So this is a recurring issue. And

52:33

to give you an idea, just

52:36

like at what point in the supply chain this

52:38

is happening, it doesn't even necessarily

52:40

have to be a quote unquote shady

52:42

supplement company doing this intentionally. The

52:45

reality is, is that there are

52:47

manufacturers that are supplying dozens of

52:49

supplement companies sometimes, and they

52:51

could be located offshore or in the country they're serving.

52:54

And because the FDA is

52:57

a post hoc regulatory

52:59

agency, what is

53:01

actually required, what is considered

53:04

good manufacturing practices is

53:06

not enforced. It would

53:08

be a good idea as a forward thinking

53:10

company to make sure you're actually following these

53:12

things. But when it's not enforced at all,

53:15

corners get cut because what's

53:17

the downside in terms of the actual

53:20

financial issue? And

53:22

the scope of how often manufacturers in the

53:24

supplement industry are not meeting the

53:28

technically legal, but not again

53:30

proactively regulated or enforced manufacturing

53:33

best practices is staggeringly

53:35

high. So in

53:37

2013, I'll just quickly say

53:39

this, there was a report done

53:41

where they looked at a bunch of

53:43

different manufacturing places. And this is published

53:46

by Matthews and colleagues, Prohibited Contaminants and

53:48

Dietary Supplements. They reviewed this. 70%

53:52

of manufacturers did not meet the

53:54

requirements set forth by the FDA

53:57

for good manufacturing practices. And

54:00

that is pretty scary to me. That's

54:02

not 10% of supplements. That's the majority

54:06

of places that supplements are

54:08

manufactured are not doing the

54:10

things that would prevent contamination from

54:12

occurring even inadvertently. Yeah, I was

54:14

just going to say one

54:17

little racket going on. That's too

54:19

harsh a term, but one thing that

54:21

consumers should be aware of is that

54:24

some supplement companies will put a little

54:26

logo on their containers and say, we

54:29

follow good manufacturing procedures

54:31

as if it, and it looks like

54:33

it's some kind of like formal certificate

54:35

or like verification,

54:38

like badge almost. And

54:41

in the vast majority of cases, it's

54:43

completely meaningless. And it's just them putting

54:45

a logo on their label and saying,

54:48

we are official company policies

54:50

that were compliant with federal law and

54:52

regulations, which is like any business putting

54:54

on their website. We are certified that

54:57

we don't launder money. We

55:00

are giving ourselves credit for that. And also we

55:03

pay taxes. So all of

55:05

that is to say, don't get lulled

55:07

into a sense of security when

55:09

you say, hey, that looks like

55:11

some kind of formal certificate indicating

55:14

some verification of quality. You got to actually look

55:16

into what the logo is and what it says.

55:18

And if all it says is we

55:21

have decided we have good manufacturing

55:24

practices, then it's essentially a meaningless

55:26

unregulated label that they're putting on

55:28

their product. Adam

55:32

L Q

55:49

And in the settlement industry, and we'll talk about this, if

55:52

you want to prove that you

55:55

actually follow GMP, you'll typically see

55:57

an NSF certified GMP or- Are

55:59

you USP, like,

56:03

so these third party companies

56:05

have these auditing programs.

56:08

So US Pharmacopia, USP is one of

56:10

the more well-known organizations that

56:12

will come in and audit your

56:14

manufacturing plant and they'll give you

56:16

USP, GMP certified. But if you're

56:18

just seeing GMP by itself, you're

56:21

basically saying, hey, we follow the laws,

56:23

trust us, can we verify that? Well,

56:25

you don't trust us, come on. And

56:28

it is worth just clarifying that

56:30

those logos that you just mentioned

56:32

from specific companies that have auditing

56:35

programs, those do mean something, but

56:37

they mean a specific thing which is that we,

56:39

if that's the only logo you're seeing on there,

56:42

we paid them to come audit

56:44

our manufacturing practices not

56:46

to chemically test the exact product

56:49

you're buying, right? That is like

56:51

a factory level, you know, auditing

56:53

process of just like, hey, it

56:55

looks like you got all your paperwork, the fire

56:57

exit is labeled, you know, you're doing all the

56:59

stuff you're supposed to do. But

57:02

again, that's not reflective of

57:05

actually testing that product

57:07

for purity or for

57:09

potential adulteration and contamination.

57:12

Correct. Knowing that

57:14

your product was manufactured in a

57:17

plant that is doing things right

57:19

will reduce the chance of inadvertent

57:21

contamination, but you haven't actually verified

57:23

the product and there are, which

57:26

we'll get into, we'll get into third party testing

57:28

and how do you go safely. But I think

57:30

it's just really important to understand the scope of

57:32

the issue that, yeah,

57:34

it was really bad in 2004,

57:37

but it's probably really bad periodically,

57:39

depending upon what is

57:41

currently out there. And the

57:43

reality is that because

57:45

these manufacturers which are

57:47

not even necessarily directly connected to

57:50

the supplement company, they are, you

57:52

know, a B2B business like, hey, I want to

57:54

sell the supplement. Will you manufacture this?

57:56

I'm going to outsource to China. We're going to save

57:58

costs and you're going to make make me my

58:00

insert name of supplement. The

58:03

supplement company could be acting in good faith and just

58:05

trying to save money and may not have the funds

58:07

to get that kind of

58:09

verification. And they

58:11

might not know that they're selling you a

58:13

supplement that could be contaminated. And that can

58:15

occur when the transportation

58:18

is happening and the containers themselves haven't been

58:21

properly cleaned. Or it can

58:23

be that the actual mixers or the

58:25

material used to actually make the

58:27

products have not been cleaned. And

58:30

if a hormonal product or drug, because

58:32

sometimes these are also making

58:35

actual drugs, illicitly

58:37

or maybe legally. If

58:39

they haven't been properly cleaned, you

58:41

can get that contamination. And probably on the

58:44

level that'll even benefit you. Because

58:46

I admit the hilarious, the friend is like,

58:48

hey man, I want to go to the

58:50

expo and buy all

58:52

the sample packets, because I'm just hoping I get an inadvertently

58:55

dose of steroids. I'm going to make some sick gains for

58:57

the next three months. It was a bad

58:59

idea by the way. Like you don't even know what

59:01

hormones you're maybe putting in your body, but

59:03

hey, placebo power to you. But

59:05

anyway, this problem has

59:07

not gone away. There has been no substantial

59:09

changes to the regulatory issues. And

59:12

to really kind of get an idea of

59:14

the scope is challenging the scope

59:16

of this issue, how bad is it? But

59:19

I think there was a very good review that

59:21

was done by Yagam and colleagues. The good Grant

59:23

Tinsley was a part of this. A

59:26

lot of good authors on this. And they

59:29

cited a ton of evidence. And I think this is a

59:31

open access review if you want to read it. And

59:33

it's titled, Prevalence of Adulteration and Dietary

59:35

Supplements and Recommendations for Safe Supplement Practices

59:38

and Sport. This is a narrative

59:40

review. And I don't

59:42

think that in this case means that it's

59:44

really a lower

59:47

quality of evidence. It's just very difficult for us to

59:49

have a true quantitative representation

59:51

of this in a changing

59:53

real world market. But

59:55

they estimate somewhere between 10 to 30% of

59:59

all supplements. means are

1:00:01

adulterated, contaminated. They will have

1:00:03

something in them. So, that's not listed

1:00:05

on the label. And, you

1:00:08

know, this is only one issue. Some

1:00:10

of the more benign but still problematic

1:00:12

issue, and it's actually quite common as

1:00:14

well that I don't think I'm going to talk about

1:00:16

in this episode because it's not quite as scary or

1:00:18

as much of a quote unquote problem to your health

1:00:20

or performance is that this is

1:00:23

when stuff that's not on the label is

1:00:25

in there. The big issue is that some of

1:00:27

the stuff that's supposed to be on the label or at

1:00:29

least at certain doses or at least

1:00:31

at certain potencies is often not

1:00:33

as well, you know. So, we're

1:00:35

looking into changing

1:00:38

the way we assess the potential harm

1:00:40

of the supplement or benefit as

1:00:42

viewing, yeah, on paper it shouldn't have any

1:00:45

harm and it might have a potential for

1:00:47

benefit. But that's assuming the

1:00:49

ingredients are actually what

1:00:51

they say and not anything else. But

1:00:54

the reality is there's a decent chance,

1:00:56

and I'm not talking 10%, 2%, 3%,

1:00:58

4%, 5%, 6%, 7%, 8%, or even 9% tracks. We're talking double digits, 10% to

1:01:06

30% chance that something is not on the

1:01:08

label that could have you failing

1:01:10

a drug test and truly ruining

1:01:12

your reputation and potentially competitive livelihood

1:01:15

could be on the supplement on top of

1:01:17

whatever chance there is that what you would like

1:01:19

to be there is under dosed or replaced with

1:01:22

something else. Now, I

1:01:24

know I'm a competitive natural bodybuilder. I'm

1:01:26

a competitive powerlifter. I've been drug tested

1:01:29

across, you know, three different

1:01:31

sports over, you

1:01:33

know, 16 years of competing. And I

1:01:36

get that that's not everybody. And you may be like,

1:01:38

listen, I don't care if I have a very small

1:01:40

amount of some thing that's not going to impact me

1:01:42

because I'm not getting drug tested. But

1:01:44

I think we need to understand that supplement

1:01:47

companies are sometimes purposely

1:01:49

putting pharmaceutical drugs

1:01:52

in their products to have an effect

1:01:54

to get a market advantage as well.

1:01:57

And there are some it's hard

1:01:59

to know how often that happens or whether

1:02:01

this is inadvertent or purposeful. But

1:02:04

there was a really interesting report that came out

1:02:07

of supplements that had been

1:02:09

identified by the FDA as having adulteration

1:02:11

in them and seeing what was in

1:02:14

them. And I think this

1:02:16

is really telling if your goal is to

1:02:18

just take supplements for health and performance generally

1:02:20

because you want to know what's potentially

1:02:22

in there, right? So there

1:02:24

was a study that was done where

1:02:27

they specifically looked at these reports from the FDA

1:02:29

and this is by Tucker and colleagues.

1:02:31

Unapproved pharmaceutical ingredients included in dietary

1:02:34

supplements associated with US Food and

1:02:36

Drug Administration warnings, okay? And

1:02:38

what they'd looked at was, okay, what are they

1:02:40

actually reporting? And they

1:02:42

found a relatively broad range of

1:02:45

contaminants. I think importantly,

1:02:47

they're primarily occurring in muscle building

1:02:49

drugs, drugs that are linked

1:02:52

to giving you enhancement of libido

1:02:54

or sexual health or

1:02:58

category, like basically energy,

1:03:00

pre-workout, fat loss,

1:03:03

muscle building, or libido

1:03:06

and sexual health. Those are the ones that have

1:03:08

the highest rates of contamination. And

1:03:10

unsurprisingly, they have drugs that might

1:03:12

lead you to believe these effects

1:03:14

are actually happening

1:03:16

from the supplement. So for example, laxatives

1:03:19

are really common in some of these weight loss drugs

1:03:21

because it'll produce weight loss. I

1:03:24

mean, it'll also produce some things you don't want. Also

1:03:28

in some of the pre-workouts in energy

1:03:30

and mental health and clarity and utropics,

1:03:33

actual SSRIs, anti-depressants are in there.

1:03:36

And I can't tell you how bad of an

1:03:38

idea it is to take an unknown type and

1:03:40

quantity of SSRIs on top of whatever else you

1:03:43

might be taking. Never watch one

1:03:45

of the commercials where they advertise an SSRI and,

1:03:47

you know, there's a one minute pitch and then

1:03:50

a one minute list of disclaimers of potential

1:03:52

side effects and drug interactions. You

1:03:54

don't want to have that just happening without even

1:03:56

consulting your doctor. Also, you'll

1:03:58

find erectile dysfasal. function drugs are

1:04:00

very common. So, you know, when

1:04:03

people are like, I don't know, Eric, I actually got

1:04:05

something out of the Tribulus Trestis I took, or I

1:04:08

don't know, Eric, I actually got something

1:04:10

out of that longjack or that whatever

1:04:12

insert, you know, herb that's

1:04:14

supposedly based upon traditional Chinese medicine is

1:04:16

going to benefit your libido. And you

1:04:19

know what? I don't know enough about those

1:04:21

herbs. They might, but it's quite possible

1:04:23

that in addition to those herbs, you

1:04:25

were actually taking a pharmaceutical drug to

1:04:27

increase your frequency and

1:04:30

strength of erections. And you

1:04:32

know, those are having an impact

1:04:35

on endothelial function, blood pressure, and

1:04:38

you don't want to be taking those inadvertently and

1:04:40

not knowing the impact and again, the drug interactions

1:04:42

you could be having. So, even

1:04:45

people who are just out there for general health, do

1:04:48

you want to be taking, unbeknownst

1:04:50

to you, laxatives, antidepressants

1:04:53

and potential erectile dysfunction drugs? I

1:04:56

would argue probably not. And

1:04:59

that is a pretty

1:05:01

big concern because in those cases, they're

1:05:03

being dosed in appropriate amounts to have

1:05:05

an effect because the supplement company is

1:05:07

actually trying to get you to buy

1:05:09

their supplement again because it quote unquote

1:05:11

works. So, this

1:05:13

is a pretty big deal. And it's

1:05:16

something that I think is probably just,

1:05:18

it hasn't been talked about in these kind of

1:05:21

numbers, just this kind of the shadowy thing. But

1:05:23

when you really dig into the numbers, go back

1:05:25

to the intro to this whole podcast, they

1:05:28

shocked me, Eric. And that's why

1:05:30

they've like changed my perspective and

1:05:32

my recommendations on this. Yeah,

1:05:35

absolutely. And like, I mean, something that you

1:05:37

alluded to that I just want to reiterate

1:05:39

is like, you might look

1:05:41

at that list of things and say, you

1:05:44

know what, I don't care if maybe this

1:05:46

is laced with an anabolic or it's laced

1:05:48

with a banned stimulant or

1:05:51

it's laced with a pharmaceutical. Even

1:05:54

if I'm taking that without prescription, I

1:05:56

don't really mind. But one

1:05:58

thing that people don't consider. consider is

1:06:01

if you are also taking

1:06:04

pharmaceutical drugs that you need,

1:06:07

it's not at all unusual to

1:06:10

notice drug-drug interactions or supplement drug

1:06:12

interactions. So even if you're cool

1:06:14

with the idea, oh, maybe there

1:06:16

is some actual viagra in this

1:06:18

herbal supplement, what do I care?

1:06:20

Well, the reason you have

1:06:23

a doctor prescribe your medications is to make

1:06:25

sure that they are all compatible with one

1:06:27

another and that one is not going to

1:06:29

cause issues with metabolizing

1:06:31

the other. One is not

1:06:34

going to make it more potent or less potent or

1:06:36

one isn't going to have an

1:06:38

actual dangerous interaction that causes an

1:06:40

acute medical emergency. So it's

1:06:44

kind of a big deal to have unlabeled

1:06:47

pharmaceuticals or unlabeled

1:06:50

banned ingredients that are in

1:06:52

these products because you don't

1:06:54

know how they might be interacting with medications

1:06:58

that you might be taking. So it's

1:07:00

a huge deal. And I mean, just to add

1:07:02

to the list, I remember back in the day

1:07:04

when they were doing the whole, you know,

1:07:07

back when pro hormones were big,

1:07:10

unsurprisingly, people were always

1:07:12

taking supplements for what they call post-cycle

1:07:14

therapy, right? So taking all the stuff

1:07:16

after you did a cycle

1:07:18

of pro hormones to then kind of

1:07:20

restore your hormones back to their

1:07:23

normal level. And people would take all

1:07:25

sorts of like estrogen blockers and things like

1:07:27

that. And around that time,

1:07:29

they were finding breast cancer drugs, they

1:07:31

were finding like tamoxifen inside

1:07:34

these supplements because, hey,

1:07:36

it's a pharmaceutical drug that's

1:07:38

really good at blocking that

1:07:40

estrogen receptor specifically for estrogen

1:07:42

sensitive tumors. So

1:07:45

yeah, it's just absolutely crazy to see

1:07:47

the stuff that has snuck

1:07:49

its way into the supplement market.

1:07:51

And as you've highlighted many

1:07:54

times, things that continue to find

1:07:56

their way into this market. And

1:07:58

it's funny that I was just

1:08:00

reflecting as you were talking about, you mentioned that

1:08:03

there haven't really been any, there haven't

1:08:05

been a lot of major changes to

1:08:07

the way that the

1:08:09

industry is regulated. And it

1:08:11

is funny because when I thought back

1:08:14

to the instances that I can think

1:08:16

of for when action, some

1:08:19

kind of regulatory action took place

1:08:23

in a manner that actually

1:08:25

changed policy or changed laws,

1:08:27

new stuff on the books.

1:08:30

There seems to be a common thread. And

1:08:33

this isn't going to be a thread that resonates

1:08:35

with anyone who's not American, I

1:08:37

don't think. But if

1:08:39

you were to think, what

1:08:41

would be important to me if

1:08:44

I was just like the perfectly

1:08:46

average stereotypical 65-year-old congressman

1:08:49

in America? What would really get

1:08:52

me going and get me excited

1:08:54

about putting pen to paper and

1:08:56

writing legislation? The two

1:08:58

things that I can think of that really

1:09:00

got the ball rolling

1:09:02

were things that impacted baseball and

1:09:05

things that impacted the US military. So

1:09:09

like, for example, I remember, I'm pretty sure

1:09:11

a Fedra, one of the things that really

1:09:13

moved the needle was the death of a

1:09:16

baseball player who actually had

1:09:18

a heart attack. When you

1:09:20

think about the pro hormone,

1:09:22

the first batch of legislation

1:09:24

there, that was pretty much

1:09:26

all related to the home run stuff that

1:09:30

was getting out of control. And Congress

1:09:32

spent a lot of time on the

1:09:34

books talking about pro hormones. And

1:09:36

then the designer steroids that came after,

1:09:39

again, it was the whole Balco thing

1:09:41

in American baseball. And

1:09:43

then you think about what finally

1:09:46

urged and moved the needle to get

1:09:49

some action going with DMAA. I'm pretty

1:09:51

sure it was actually two deaths in

1:09:53

the military from people that were training

1:09:55

and had acute medical abuse. events

1:10:00

that unfortunately took their lives. So I

1:10:02

think the moral of the story is in

1:10:05

America, if you want anything to get

1:10:07

going with legislation, it's got to either

1:10:09

impact baseball or the military. Otherwise

1:10:11

it'll probably go untouched for another few

1:10:14

decades. Absolutely. Well said.

1:10:17

I mean, I'm sure if there's adulterants occurring in

1:10:19

America, in apple pie as well, that would be

1:10:21

another quick action. Or

1:10:24

like the 4th of July hot dog eating contest?

1:10:27

Yes. Yeah. Absolutely.

1:10:29

So yeah, we're going to find out that

1:10:31

those specific hot dogs are actually the least

1:10:34

harmful processed meats that are

1:10:36

out there in the future. So

1:10:38

watch that space. For

1:10:41

those who do want to read more about this, of

1:10:44

course, Kai, as always, thank you for having a

1:10:47

lot of stuff in the timestamps. But one thing

1:10:49

that he'll now add at this timestamp is

1:10:51

that this is an article that all the mass subscribers

1:10:54

have access to. And we decided

1:10:56

to make it the cover story and freely available

1:10:58

for everybody because I just think

1:11:00

it's really important. And it's something that I

1:11:03

wouldn't want behind a paywall. I just wouldn't feel right about

1:11:05

it considering it was a surprise to me and I'm relatively

1:11:07

well read. So this is a free article

1:11:10

that you can also find on Stronger by Science. And

1:11:13

it is, when should I consider taking a new supplement?

1:11:16

And I think we've done a good job of showing

1:11:19

how supplements are really not going to give you much

1:11:21

of a probable benefit, even in the best case scenario.

1:11:24

And being probably the most alarmist

1:11:26

I've ever been in my career, to be

1:11:29

honest, Eric, I'm normally the person being like,

1:11:31

we're painting with too broad of a brush

1:11:33

on processed foods. We're painting on

1:11:35

too broad of a brush on the potential

1:11:37

harms of high protein diets. Sugar's

1:11:40

really not that bad. But

1:11:42

this time, I'm coming across

1:11:44

as the prohibitionist,

1:11:47

the scary brood who thinks

1:11:50

the sky is falling. But

1:11:52

I just feel like I'm right. I

1:11:55

think the evidence is there and it's enough that

1:11:59

I think people should be a little too concerned. But

1:12:01

I don't think this is, you know,

1:12:03

kind of the stock standard. I

1:12:05

think what they teach people in RD school that

1:12:07

they have to go, you know, no supplements food

1:12:09

first, even if taking creatine

1:12:11

is, you know, like a good idea. There's no

1:12:14

reason why you can't just simply take creatine. And

1:12:16

I don't know, but it's harming our children. It's a gateway

1:12:18

drug. Like I don't buy any of that. I'm not saying

1:12:20

that. I'm not just anti supplement. But I

1:12:23

am highly pro informed

1:12:25

consumer. And unfortunately, I

1:12:27

don't think much of the industry

1:12:30

wants you to be informed about this stuff. And

1:12:33

because there's such a strong

1:12:35

influence, the supplement industry is

1:12:37

the Venn diagram of the supplement industry

1:12:39

and the bodybuilding industry is

1:12:42

closer than the Olympic ranks. You know what I'm

1:12:44

saying? Like it kind of

1:12:46

just looks like you squinted a little

1:12:48

bit looking at a circle. They're very,

1:12:50

very entwined. So you're not going to

1:12:53

get good information on that, unfortunately, or

1:12:55

at least not well popularized information and

1:12:57

people will actively downplay. And even the

1:12:59

consumers who because they just don't want this to be true, I

1:13:02

don't want this to be true. But fine,

1:13:05

I'm not anti supplement or even supplement industry.

1:13:07

But I do think in this

1:13:09

relatively harsh jungle, you

1:13:12

want to have a mosquito net, you know, you

1:13:14

want to have the knowledge

1:13:16

of maybe I shouldn't be hanging, you

1:13:19

know, bloody red meat outside of my

1:13:21

tent, where there is an active, you

1:13:23

know, set of carnivores lurking, right? So

1:13:25

how do you arm yourself against

1:13:28

the jungle, this very strange analogy that I've

1:13:30

decided to stick with? Well,

1:13:32

I think we have to go back to that whole concept

1:13:34

of third party testing. And

1:13:37

that is, there's a whole

1:13:39

industry there for a reason. There's

1:13:41

a reason that companies

1:13:43

like NSF or USP

1:13:46

or consumer labs exist. And,

1:13:49

you know, you do need to

1:13:51

now actually figure out which ones are legit, which

1:13:53

ones like you brought up Eric are not just

1:13:56

the company putting the equivalent of natural on

1:13:58

their product. There's a bunch

1:14:00

and there's a good discussion of this in

1:14:03

a open access review that was

1:14:05

done by

1:14:07

Matthews and colleagues, prohibited

1:14:09

contaminants in

1:14:12

supplements, or I think I'm, yeah, prohibited contaminants

1:14:14

in dietary supplements by Matthews and colleagues in

1:14:16

2018. Got a section

1:14:18

and even a figure showing some of the third

1:14:20

party labels and these do change over time. But

1:14:23

some of the most common ones are NSF or

1:14:25

USP. There's the informed

1:14:27

choice or informed for sport. There's

1:14:30

Aegis Shield, there's Consumer Labs, there's several

1:14:32

and they are different in different countries.

1:14:35

Another great source that you can always check out

1:14:37

is your local WADA representative. They typically talk about

1:14:39

what are some of the ways that you can

1:14:41

get certified safe for sport

1:14:43

supplements. And you

1:14:46

will see that larger companies with a

1:14:48

larger bill or rather expense budget will

1:14:50

put time and effort into this just to show you that the

1:14:52

scope of the problem is pretty significant. It's worth

1:14:54

the money for them not to have that reputation hit. So

1:14:58

absolutely and like Trex are talked

1:15:00

about, just

1:15:03

because you have a certification that the

1:15:05

manufacturers are doing their job right is

1:15:07

not the same as actually getting batch tested

1:15:09

supplements. And

1:15:12

depending upon your level of risk aversion,

1:15:14

you may want both. I think if you're getting

1:15:16

the latter, you probably don't need the former. Like

1:15:19

the whole reason you want the manufacturing plants checked

1:15:21

is to make sure that, you know, what's in

1:15:23

the label is what's supposed to be there. So

1:15:25

if you are, you know, getting third party

1:15:27

testing for the actual batch tested supplements, that's

1:15:30

probably the most powerful thing you can do.

1:15:33

Yeah. I was going to say, if

1:15:35

you're telling me that the supplement you tested it

1:15:37

by batch and it is not

1:15:39

adulterated and it meets label claims, I don't really

1:15:41

care about how your paperwork is organized in the

1:15:43

factory, you know, because that is part of the

1:15:46

audit is they kind of go through all those

1:15:48

kind of regulatory things. No,

1:15:50

I totally agree with you. And I think the

1:15:52

only other caveat I add to that is

1:15:56

when possible, you know, I'd like to go

1:15:59

with something that is batch tested. If

1:16:02

I really had skin in the game and

1:16:04

it really mattered to me, another

1:16:08

good practice is to keep

1:16:11

one or two servings of the supplements

1:16:13

that you take in the original packaging

1:16:15

with the batch and lot number. That

1:16:19

way, again, this is if you have

1:16:21

like real serious skin in the game, if you're

1:16:23

worried that you're going to fail a drug test

1:16:25

that costs you your job or gets you banned

1:16:27

from a sport, if you have

1:16:29

the lot number, the batch number, and

1:16:32

some of that supplement that

1:16:35

at least puts you in a position where you can fight

1:16:37

the fight. Even if it is, even

1:16:40

if it's supposed to have been tested and all

1:16:42

that other stuff, again,

1:16:44

it's not a terrible idea to hold on

1:16:46

to that stuff just in case. That's

1:16:50

the one caveat or one kind of addition

1:16:52

I would add in. The second thing is

1:16:54

I will acknowledge that there are

1:16:56

some scenarios where I will use supplements

1:16:59

that are not third party tested,

1:17:02

but it is really only in the

1:17:04

scenario that I know

1:17:06

that Helms, you

1:17:08

and I are in unique positions where

1:17:10

we know folks in the fitness industry

1:17:13

who do own supplement companies. It's like

1:17:15

if I know a person and

1:17:17

I know not just that they

1:17:19

have integrity, but also that they

1:17:22

have a work

1:17:24

ethic where I know that they are

1:17:26

doing all the little things right. It's

1:17:29

not just- Then they have a

1:17:31

direct hand in the manufacturing that is not

1:17:33

outsourced. Yeah. Again, it's

1:17:35

not just the intentional shady kind

1:17:37

of stereotypical, oh, I'm going

1:17:40

to do wrong

1:17:42

by the consumer because I'm trying to

1:17:44

get an advantage. Sometimes it is, like

1:17:46

you said, completely out of the hands

1:17:49

of the people way down that production

1:17:51

chain who are actually distributing the supplement.

1:17:54

The only scenario where I'll deviate from

1:17:57

something that is batch tested and approved

1:17:59

for- sport would be if it's

1:18:01

just I know that this person has

1:18:03

a lot of integrity and

1:18:05

has a lot of attention to detail and

1:18:08

has a good kind of chain in that

1:18:10

manufacturing process because I know for

1:18:12

a lot of like really small companies,

1:18:16

it can be just totally cost prohibitive to

1:18:18

get because you have to do this third

1:18:20

party testing on a product by product basis.

1:18:22

It's not just like a company pays a

1:18:24

one time fee. You have

1:18:27

to pay for each one of your products

1:18:29

that's actually getting certified and so I don't

1:18:33

want to create a

1:18:35

situation where I'm unable to kind of support

1:18:37

my buddies who I know are doing a

1:18:39

good job. But yeah, outside

1:18:41

of that one kind of unique exception,

1:18:44

yeah, you really do. If you have real

1:18:46

skin in the game, you probably want to

1:18:48

take those two steps of relying on a

1:18:52

high quality third party certification and

1:18:55

also retaining a dose

1:18:57

or two and kind of keeping it,

1:19:00

it may be silly but it's probably

1:19:02

worthwhile. I totally

1:19:04

agree and I created a flow

1:19:06

chart that you can find in that article that

1:19:09

you can find in the show notes. Basically

1:19:12

how do you decide when to take a supplement and

1:19:15

ultimately it's based upon unless

1:19:17

it's a tier one or tier two, you

1:19:19

shouldn't be taking it because the

1:19:23

probability of benefit is

1:19:26

very, very low and the magnitude of

1:19:29

benefit, the best case scenario is also

1:19:31

very low so there's no downside to being a

1:19:33

late adopter to something that starts as tier three and

1:19:35

then eventually becomes tier one and tier two. And

1:19:38

then I even describe and provide some information

1:19:40

on how to gauge if something is tier

1:19:42

one or tier two because everything

1:19:44

is going to seem like tier one or tier two

1:19:46

when you engage with marketing material. And

1:19:49

again, if there's an absence of evidence, then that's

1:19:51

all you're going to have in some obscure textbook

1:19:54

or Chinese text or in vitro

1:19:56

study or something like that. So

1:19:59

the first Next step is, is it a tier one

1:20:01

supplement or is it a tier two supplement? And

1:20:04

then if the answer is yes, then

1:20:06

there's another part of that flow chart

1:20:08

that asks, are there longitudinal data of

1:20:10

a direct meaningful effect relevant to your

1:20:12

goals? And I provide a

1:20:15

definition of what is longitudinal data, what is direct

1:20:17

data, what is a meaningful effect and is it

1:20:19

relevant? And an excellent

1:20:21

tool to supplement this information is

1:20:23

check out examine.com. They do

1:20:25

great work and they've got a basic database

1:20:27

of the effects and the consistency of the

1:20:29

research and essentially a wiki on

1:20:32

all the supplements that have human data. And

1:20:34

you can get a decent read on just looking at

1:20:37

that for any given supplement. And if they don't have

1:20:39

information or if it's not clear, guess what, an eight

1:20:41

tier one or two. And

1:20:43

then the next question is, okay, well, can you obtain

1:20:45

the third party tested or licensed version

1:20:48

of it? Now licensing

1:20:50

is another B2B business

1:20:53

model. The most notable example

1:20:55

is Korea Pure and then Carnicine. And

1:20:57

these are companies that typically name the same

1:20:59

thing as the product. And what they do

1:21:01

is they provide a high quality, high potency,

1:21:03

high purity specific product

1:21:06

and they license the supplement companies and

1:21:08

larger supplement companies that have the budget

1:21:10

for it, they'll just outsource it because

1:21:12

it takes care of all this for them. And

1:21:17

those companies, if you were to go to the

1:21:19

Korea Pure, the Carnicine website, for example, you'll see

1:21:21

that they are doing internal and third party testing

1:21:23

for both purity as well as adulteration.

1:21:26

Now the thing is, is if you just see

1:21:29

Carnicine or Korea Pure as

1:21:31

part of a multi ingredient pre-workout supplement,

1:21:33

but the rest of the product looks

1:21:35

relatively normal, you don't see any other

1:21:37

instances of the third party testing, that's not saying that

1:21:39

all of it was done in such a way that

1:21:41

you can be confident. But if you're seeing

1:21:44

a creatine product that is using Korea

1:21:46

Pure, I would

1:21:48

be reasonably confident that that should be

1:21:51

a much lower risk of

1:21:53

contamination. I can't speak to how it

1:21:55

was transported once the

1:21:57

Korea Pure got that supplement company and they put it

1:21:59

in their bottle. and etc. So it's not

1:22:01

a completely risk-free endeavor, but it's certainly another option.

1:22:03

And I think it should be mentioned. And that's

1:22:05

a shout out to Ben Escrow who brought that

1:22:08

up. I think he might even been on

1:22:10

an Iron Culture episode. But that's

1:22:12

another way of doing this. And then the final step

1:22:14

is all right. So if it is tier one or

1:22:17

tier two, you can obtain third-party

1:22:19

tested or licensed versions of it, then

1:22:21

yeah, I would say you go

1:22:23

ahead and take it, but you need to

1:22:25

still acknowledge that the risk can't be completely

1:22:28

abolished. And I can't quantify the risk if

1:22:30

you do all those things. I think it

1:22:32

would be acceptable. It's something that I take

1:22:34

and I would take even as a drug-tested

1:22:36

athlete who, man, can you

1:22:38

imagine, Trex, what would happen to

1:22:41

Eric Helms if he

1:22:43

failed the drug test and got accused of being

1:22:45

a fake natty with that kind

1:22:47

of evidence? It would... Eric Helms in

1:22:49

the room where I lie. It is? Yeah, that would not be

1:22:51

ideal. No, it

1:22:53

would be a bad day in the life of

1:22:56

me. And one of the reasons I don't care

1:22:58

that much is because it would affect me too,

1:23:00

which would be a very problematic... Really?

1:23:03

No, but in all seriousness, I

1:23:05

am a very collaborative person. So

1:23:08

my co-authors, my

1:23:10

university, my students, the mass

1:23:12

writers, the rest of 3DMJ,

1:23:15

that's probably what is fueling some of the alarmism

1:23:17

is me just going through the scenario of, oh

1:23:19

my God, what if I had a tainted supplement

1:23:21

and I failed a drug test? It

1:23:23

would be... I would have to... Someone

1:23:26

should call me. You know what? If that happens, you

1:23:28

give me a call because I am not okay. All

1:23:30

right? Just doesn't know that. Yeah.

1:23:33

So anyway, folks, I hate to be the

1:23:36

less jovial, more serious, more kind of

1:23:38

dire bad news about the industry, but

1:23:41

ultimately, my only goal here is

1:23:44

to provide you with tools so you

1:23:46

can be an informed consumer. So that's the best thing

1:23:48

we can do. We're all about informed consent

1:23:50

and we're also about informed consumers here at

1:23:52

Iron Culture. So again, if you are

1:23:56

skeptical of my degree of criticism

1:23:58

of the sub- industry or my degree

1:24:00

of alarmism, I would highly encourage you to take

1:24:03

a look at many of these open

1:24:05

access narrative reviews if you want the

1:24:07

direct literature rather than my interpretation of

1:24:09

it. Or if you just want to

1:24:11

dive deeper but you do, you know, you are interested

1:24:13

in my take, definitely check out

1:24:16

the struggle by science free article or if you're a

1:24:18

mass subscriber, you already read this and you're already well

1:24:20

informed. So that's all I've got, Trex.

1:24:22

I'm going to leave it to you. If anything else you

1:24:24

want to add or close out on this topic. Absolutely,

1:24:27

yeah. I think first

1:24:30

of all, I think you did a great job with

1:24:32

the article. I love the article. I think this episode

1:24:34

is a great overview. Like you

1:24:37

said, I'll put some words in your mouth.

1:24:39

It's absolutely unbelievable to me that there are

1:24:41

humans on this planet who don't subscribe to

1:24:43

the mass research review because they would have

1:24:45

already known this. And

1:24:47

I'm pretty sure I've covered other studies

1:24:49

specifically by Peter Cohen and colleagues in

1:24:51

the past in mass that have

1:24:53

talked about similar issues of tainted supplements.

1:24:55

If I haven't done it in mass,

1:24:58

I know I've done it elsewhere. But

1:25:01

yeah, it's something that, you know,

1:25:03

our subscribers have been ahead of the game

1:25:05

in terms of like using the supplement tier

1:25:07

kind of heuristic as a bit

1:25:10

of a filtration mechanism for making these types of

1:25:12

decisions. But I think your

1:25:14

article takes that little seed

1:25:17

of an idea and really turns it

1:25:19

into something that's much more practical and

1:25:21

actionable. And I mean, you

1:25:23

know, in my lifetime, I have

1:25:27

had a similar kind of awakening

1:25:30

with regards to supplements, right? So

1:25:32

like, I remember at one time

1:25:34

when I was younger, failing

1:25:37

a drug test for employment

1:25:39

purposes. So I was

1:25:41

trying to get hired. This is before

1:25:43

I'd competed in anything worthwhile.

1:25:47

And I failed the drug test because this

1:25:49

was back before DMAA got

1:25:51

banned. It was, I mean, everybody was,

1:25:53

if you took a pre-workout, you were

1:25:55

taking it and it was totally above

1:25:57

board, totally legal. And the INBF, WNBA.

1:26:00

I still remember the day when they said it's

1:26:02

actually banned, but we're giving

1:26:04

like a one-year grace period

1:26:06

or something like that. But at

1:26:09

that time, yeah, there were no athletic

1:26:11

bodies of any kind had banned it.

1:26:14

But if you took a cheap drug screen, well,

1:26:17

the really basic one, you would

1:26:19

fail for methamphetamine. And

1:26:21

so like that's, I think perhaps one additional

1:26:23

thing is like if

1:26:26

I had just like not pushed back,

1:26:28

then I would have just not gotten

1:26:30

that job. So it's worthwhile if

1:26:32

you think that you've wrongfully been flagged

1:26:34

for something, keep in mind that

1:26:36

there are situations where better drug

1:26:39

screens can actually distinguish more between things

1:26:41

that have similar compounds, right? So that's

1:26:43

one thing I wanted to kind of

1:26:45

add is that if you fail a

1:26:49

drug test and you're completely blindsided by it,

1:26:51

it's a possibility worth considering is that it's

1:26:54

a false positive. But I

1:26:56

think that false positive experience was the first

1:26:58

time where I was like, maybe I haven't

1:27:00

been thinking enough about the

1:27:02

way I engage with supplement consumption.

1:27:05

And then obviously in grad school, my lab,

1:27:07

we did a lot of supplement trials. We

1:27:09

did a ton. And that started

1:27:12

to really influence the way

1:27:14

I viewed supplements because if

1:27:16

you can look back at my publication

1:27:18

record, we did a

1:27:20

lot of supplement studies and very

1:27:22

few of them, would you actually

1:27:24

find a like meaningful positive effect?

1:27:26

It's not none of them,

1:27:28

but very few of them. I think

1:27:31

that our lab was kind of

1:27:33

one of those labs that had a reputation

1:27:35

for publishing more null findings

1:27:37

than your typical supplement lab. And

1:27:40

so that kind of started

1:27:42

to really influence, I got into doing

1:27:44

research because I wanted to do a

1:27:47

lot of these supplement trials. And

1:27:49

eventually I kind of lost an appetite

1:27:51

for it. And I do think that

1:27:54

that actually played a pretty big role

1:27:57

in me kind of

1:27:59

taking a detour. in my career, because at

1:28:01

the end of my PhD, I felt very

1:28:03

well trained to continue doing supplement studies and

1:28:05

I just didn't want to. Because

1:28:08

I was just like, I no longer have that

1:28:10

excitement of like, I wonder what incredible effect we're

1:28:12

going to find here. Because I

1:28:14

mean, like you said at the beginning of this

1:28:17

episode, when you start looking at like, well, what's

1:28:19

the best case scenario? It's

1:28:21

creatine. How many creotines are there? One,

1:28:24

you know, if you're not discovering literally

1:28:26

the next creatine, it's probably going to

1:28:28

be like something that's maybe not worth

1:28:30

writing home about. It's really sobering

1:28:33

to kind of think, am I ready to do 35 more

1:28:35

years of that? And

1:28:38

the answer was no, which is why, you know,

1:28:40

now that I'm back in the academic world,

1:28:42

it's a very different research trajectory that I'm

1:28:45

working toward, you know? So I've

1:28:47

had some of these moments where I've

1:28:49

made these realizations that have, like

1:28:51

you, have experienced kind of dramatically shifted

1:28:54

the way I look at those decisions

1:28:56

as a potential consumer of any given

1:28:59

supplement. And I think one of the biggest

1:29:02

experiences, the really eye opening one,

1:29:04

I co-authored

1:29:07

a textbook for the

1:29:09

NSCA. So they've got a certification

1:29:11

for what they call

1:29:13

tactical strength and conditioning. So people who

1:29:16

are like police, military, fire, things like

1:29:18

that. So it's kind of like

1:29:20

occupational strength and conditioning type of stuff. So

1:29:23

I co-authored the

1:29:25

chapter on dietary supplements. And

1:29:27

these are folks who if they fail a drug

1:29:29

test, they lose their job in a lot of

1:29:32

cases. I mean, and that's a career, you know?

1:29:34

I almost lost out on a crappy retail

1:29:37

job, right, working at a supplement

1:29:39

store. Who cares, right? You

1:29:41

know, when you're like a teenager. But

1:29:44

man, when you're, you know, trying to

1:29:46

earn a pension and you've been doing,

1:29:48

you know, 15 years of service for the police

1:29:50

force or, you know, doing your military

1:29:52

work, like, yeah, it matters

1:29:55

big time. Like we think our life would

1:29:57

be, you know, ruined if we fail the

1:29:59

test. for a bodybuilding show, a powerlifting

1:30:01

meet, and you and I, maybe it

1:30:03

would be pretty terrible, but

1:30:05

for the average competitor, it's a one year time

1:30:08

out or whatever the case may be. It's

1:30:11

a time out from your hobby, right? No

1:30:13

competitions for you, come back when you're not

1:30:15

banned, or to move to the next organization

1:30:17

if we're being completely honest. But

1:30:19

yeah, if you're ending your career and

1:30:21

your livelihood, your ability to support your

1:30:23

family, like that stuff matters. So

1:30:26

in that chapter, we really

1:30:29

dug deep into the legislative history, the

1:30:32

prevalence of adulteration in supplements,

1:30:35

and as the person who

1:30:37

wrote a large portion of

1:30:39

those specific aspects of that chapter, for

1:30:42

me, it was, we wrote that, I think back in

1:30:44

2015 or 2016, and

1:30:46

yeah, it had a huge impact on the way that

1:30:48

I view the potential downsides

1:30:51

of consuming an adulterated supplement, and

1:30:53

just how many times the supplement

1:30:55

industry has showed us that it

1:30:58

either is unwilling or simply incapable

1:31:01

of providing a level of regulation

1:31:03

that would be necessary to take

1:31:05

those decisions out of

1:31:07

the consumer's hands, to

1:31:10

take that regulatory burden, I would say,

1:31:12

out of the consumer's hands. The

1:31:16

supplement industry from its inception in

1:31:18

the United States has been really

1:31:20

difficult to wrangle and to keep

1:31:23

in line with regulations, and

1:31:25

unfortunately, we need articles

1:31:27

like yours, we need podcasts like this episode

1:31:29

that kind of help consumers make those decisions

1:31:32

and kind of grab people by the shoulders,

1:31:34

give them a shake and say, hey, it's

1:31:37

not conspiracy theory, this idea that you

1:31:39

could have a tainted supplement, they are

1:31:42

out there, we can quantify it. Many

1:31:44

researchers have, and the percentage is higher

1:31:46

than you think. So this

1:31:48

is not necessarily the most fun kind

1:31:50

of episode to

1:31:52

do because we prefer to talk about fun, positive

1:31:55

things that help you get gains, and

1:31:57

this is all about scary, not fun things that help

1:31:59

you get banned. from sport or lose your career.

1:32:02

But nonetheless, sometimes you got to do the important

1:32:04

ones even if they're not fun and cheerful. So,

1:32:07

credit to you for steering the ship and

1:32:10

I think you did a great job. Well,

1:32:13

I appreciate that feedback and I think that's

1:32:15

a great summary. Folks,

1:32:18

I think we'll leave it there. It's

1:32:20

always a pleasure and a privilege to have you

1:32:22

listen and hopefully next

1:32:25

time you'll be graced by the

1:32:27

Trinity. Today you're going to

1:32:29

have to be okay with the duos, the double

1:32:31

erics, double the fun. And

1:32:34

if you liked this episode, do

1:32:37

us a favor and like it. Also,

1:32:39

if you're feeling really generous and man, we

1:32:41

appreciate it, go ahead and leave us

1:32:43

a rating and review. Not that

1:32:45

I'm trying to influence you, but most

1:32:47

people who I respect or worthy human

1:32:50

beings who make the right decision leave

1:32:52

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1:32:54

with that information what you will. And

1:32:57

also, make sure to give

1:32:59

us a shout out on social media and

1:33:01

come back every single insert date here and

1:33:04

we'll see you in the next episode.