Your Guide to Pre-Workout Supplements

What’s a “Pre-Workout” Anyway? It can mean a few things: A pure stimulant to jack you up before training, or a substance to get you mentally focused. A nutritional drink with the right carbs, proteins, and amino acids to fuel workout performance and subsequent recovery. A combination of one and two above. In short, pre-workout supplements are meant to enhance your performance in the gym. They can contain all sorts of ingredients that increase energy, improve blood flow to the muscles, or enhance focus. There are all sorts of formulations, but before you decide to buy a pre-workout supplement, you need to know the facts. Common Pre-Workout Ingredients Some pre-workout supplements are junk. The only legit way to know if a pre-workout is good or not is to simply look at the ingredient label. Marketers often lie, but the ingredients don’t (well, usually). Here are some common pre-workout ingredients: Beta Alanine Betaine Caffeine Creatine L-Citrulline L-Leucine Let’s go over the evidence and show what the clinical studies tell us about these ingredients. Beta Alanine Beta alanine is a naturally-occurring amino that’s responsible for giving you the “tingles” associated with some pre-workout formulations. Those tingles come from increased blood flow to the skin and muscles, which has an impact on performance. In one of the largest research papers published on beta alanine to date, researchers found that it could improve athletic performance by up to 10.49%. The research paper looked at dozens of clinical studies and found that simply taking two grams of beta alanine before a workout was enough to give users a boost in their athletic performance. According to researchers, beta alanine most likely works by increasing “intracellular pH buffering, as the result of increased muscle carnosine levels.” In layman’s terms, this means that beta alanine helps decrease cellular acidity levels from intense exercise. The bottom line is that beta alanine is a great ingredient to have in your pre-workouts, and it’s one of the best ingredients for getting a pump. Betaine Anhydrous This is a naturally-occurring chemical that’s produced by the body, but can also be found in foods such as spinach, beets, seafood, and wine. One study, cited by 70 other clinical research papers, found that supplementing with betaine anhydrous can improve muscle mass, endurance, and body composition. Specifically, the study found that the cross sectional area of the arms increased drastically when users supplemented with betaine. Bench press volume increased dramatically also, along with lean body mass. Caffeine Caffeine is, by far, the most common ingredient found in pre-workout supplements. The benefits of caffeine are very well studied. A meta-study of caffeine published in the British Journal of Sports found that caffeine consumption before a workout can help improve athletic performance by anywhere between 2% and 16%, which is a hell of a lot in the sports performance world. Creatine Creatine is naturally created in your body, and it’s essential to the production of adenosine triphosphate production (ATP). Your body needs ATP to create energy, and thankfully, creatine helps your body create more of the compound. One research paper, conducted at Baylor University and cited by 437 other clinical researchers, found that creatine drastically increased overall athletic performance: “Short-term creatine supplementation has been reported to improve maximal power/strength (5-15%), work performed during sets of maximal effort muscle contractions (5-15%), single-effort sprint performance (1-5%), and work performed during repetitive sprint performance (5-15%). Moreover, creatine supplementation during training has been reported to promote significantly greater gains in strength, fat free mass, and performance primarily of high intensity exercise tasks.” Creatine is especially known for its ability to help users gain muscle mass. Take a look at the following graph from the website Healthline: According to this graph, users can put on nearly twice as much muscle mass when training and taking creatine, as opposed to just training alone. L-Citrulline L-Citrulline, or citrulline malate, is known to enhance endurance and decrease muscle soreness both during and after your workouts. Citrulline also helps muscles recover faster. One study, conducted by the Department of Medicine at the University, found that supplementing with citrulline malate reduced muscle soreness by a whopping 40%, which is a huge deal because it allows athletes to get back into the gym a lot quicker. L-Leucine Among the amino acids, the one that has perhaps the biggest effect on regulating protein synthesis is leucine. It’s the main mTOR amplifier among amino acids. Although leucine is found in any whole protein source, some pre-workout blends add an extra amount of it for an added muscle protein synthesis punch. What’s the Best Pre-Workout Formula? So, what’s the best
Origin: Your Guide to Pre-Workout Supplements

Tip: Foods and Supplements That Control Cortisol

Nutrition One of the functions of cortisol is to maintain a stable blood sugar level – cortisol increases it when it’s too low. One way of minimizing cortisol is… eating carbs! Or more specifically, maintaining a normal blood sugar level. That’s why I don’t like very low-carb diets for people who are chronically stressed. It can easily lead to chronic cortisol production. Sure, you can create glucose from amino acids to maintain a stable blood sugar level. Just because you go keto doesn’t mean you’ll be flooded with excess cortisol. But eating next to no carbs, especially if you’re very active, is likely to lead to higher cortisol levels. A super high-carb diet isn’t better though. It can lead to greater blood sugar swings. But certainly, consuming around 30% of your caloric intake from carbs, ideally low glycemic ones, will help keep cortisol under control. I especially like having carbs around workouts and in the evening to decrease cortisol (and adrenaline). You want to lower cortisol in the evening to facilitate sleep and recovery. Supplements There are many strategies you can use to keep cortisol at bay. You don’t want to completely kill it; you actually need it to train hard. But you must be able to bring it back down when needed. Use workout nutrition. Easily-absorbed carbs during workouts can reduce cortisol by providing fuel. If you have carbs already available, you won’t need to mobilize as much, which will mean there’s less of a need to produce cortisol.This is especially effective when you’re doing a higher volume training plan. Plazma™ is your best option here although Surge® Workout Fuel will also work, though it has fewer of the anabolic amino acids to fuel muscle growth. Use vitamin D. This is especially important during periods of high stress. Vitamin D reduces the impact cortisol has on the conversion of noradrenaline to adrenaline. While it might not directly decrease cortisol, it prevents excessive adrenaline production, which can help prevent CNS fatigue (dopamine or noradrenaline depletion or adrenergic desensitization). Take magnesium post-workout and in the evening. Magnesium decreases the binding of adrenaline to the adrenergic receptors and can help you calm down while protecting your beta-adrenergic receptors (keeping them sensitive). Use rhodiola in the morning. Rhodiola helps keep the stimulatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters in balance and can lower cortisol. I like glycine post-workout and in the evening. Glycine is a neurological inhibitor. It slows the nervous system down when it’s too amped up, which by extension decreases cortisol and adrenaline. Furthermore, glycine increases circulating serotonin (the feel-good neurotransmitter and the mood balancer) and activates mTOR, which will increase the protein synthesis from the workout. For sleep, use Z-12™. It increases serotonin and GABA (gamma-Aminobutyric acid). These two inhibitory neurotransmitters will allow you to have a more restful night, allowing you to restore a more normal cortisol circadian rhythm, dropping it low when it’s needed most.
Origin: Tip: Foods and Supplements That Control Cortisol

Tip: Facts On Fat Burning Supplements

The fat burning supplements category is quite broad. Tons of different products are being sold with the claim of helping you lose fat faster and more easily. Fat loss supplements are formulated to do one of the following: Increase metabolic rate or energy expenditure via increased beta adrenergic (adrenaline) activity Increase metabolic rate or energy expenditure via a higher T3 (thyroid hormone) production Increase fat mobilization via inhibition of the alpha-adrenergic receptors Increase fatty acid transport and/or utilization of fat for fuel Improve insulin sensitivity Activate the mitochondrial uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1) There might be other mechanisms (like reducing fat absorption) but these are the main ones. So let’s break each of these down. Increased Metabolic Rate Via Beta Adrenergic Stimulation This is done with products often labeled “stimulants” so think ephedrine, synephrine, and the like. Caffeine can even be included here, indirectly. These work, and they do increase energy expenditure which leads to fat loss. But their effect is fairly small. An old study looked at the effect of the ephedrine/caffeine stack. It improved metabolic rate/energy expenditure by 5%. That’s maybe an extra 100 calories per day. It can still have an affect and help get that last bit of fat off when you’re dieting down for a contest, but it’s no miracle. The main reasons stimulants “work” is that they blunt appetite, which makes you eat less and makes it easier to follow a diet. It also gives you more energy when you’re tired from dieting down. If you have more energy, you’ll move more and train harder which will also help you lose fat. But overusing stimulants come at a price. First they lead to an increase in cortisol, and most of us already have too much of that. But more importantly, when you chronically overstimulate, the beta adrenergic receptors can easily become desensitized (they don’t respond well to adrenaline anymore). When that happens it’ll actually become harder to lose fat and you’ll also have less energy and motivation. Ultimately, you’ll start to feel worse and worse. This category of product is best left for losing the last few pounds. I only recommend using them for a few weeks, which is why they need to be the very last thing to add in a regimen. Increased Metabolic Rate/Energy Expenditure Via Higher T3 Production The T3 thyroid hormone is in large part responsible for elevating your metabolic rate. The body produces mostly T4 which is then converted to T3. To boost T3 levels you can either increase overall thyroid hormone production or increase T4 to T3 conversion. To boost overall thyroid production the best thing to do is to provide the body with enough raw material to make these hormones. Specifically iodine and tyrosine. As such, supplements containing both can help a bit with thyroid production. As for T4 to T3 conversion, one of the best things you can do is decrease stress levels. Chronically elevated cortisol can impair that conversion. Zinc deficiency will also be problematic because zinc is required for the conversion to take place. Rhodiola and raspberry ketones, which are in Hot-Rox® Extreme, can indirectly increase that conversion too. Increased Fat Mobilization Via Inhibition of the Alpha-Adrenergic Receptors We have two main types of adrenergic (adrenaline) receptors: the beta and alpha receptors. The beta receptors are the “on” switch. When activated they increase heart rate, CNS activation, energy mobilization (including fat) and muscle strength. These are the receptors being targeted by most stimulants. The alpha receptors are the “off” switch. When activated, they shut down energy/fat mobilization, slow heart rate, decrease CNS activation, etc. Some supplements are antagonists of the alpha adrenergic receptors. This simply means that these supplements block the alpha receptors. If you block them, your body continues mobilizing energy for longer. There’s a theory that stubborn body fat sites (where you have problems losing fat the most) have more alpha and less beta adrenergic receptors, making it much harder to mobilize fat there. Yohimbe HCL/yohimbine, which is also found in Hot-Rox® Extreme, is an antagonist of the alpha receptors. For that reason it can work for increasing fat mobilization, especially in stubborn regions. Just be aware that if you’re overly stressed or planning to do a monster CrossFit-like workout, yohimbe might not be a great idea: even without stimulants these kind of workouts will increase adrenaline so much that you can run into trouble. The best use for a yohimbe-containing product is before steady-state cardio. It’s not a magic pill, but it can help get rid of the stubborn body fat when that’s all you have left. It works WITH exercise – it’ll make the exercise more efficient at mobilizing fat. By itself it will have a small impact, and it’ll be a lot more effective with cardio than weight training. Increased Fatty Acid Transport and/or
Origin: Tip: Facts On Fat Burning Supplements

Tip: 10 Supplements for Overall Health & Longevity

There are plenty of good supplements for building muscle, but what about the other stuff, like general health? There are thousands available, so let’s narrow down the list and focus on the most important ones for longevity and feeling good. 1 – Certain Chelated Minerals If you’re an athlete, you sweat and thus you’re likely deficient in zinc, which, along with selenium, maintains high testosterone levels and the immune system. If you’re a plain old human, you’re also likely deficient in magnesium, and magnesium alone is responsible for over 300 biochemical reactions in the human body, ranging from muscle and nerve function to protein synthesis. Likewise, certain minerals like chromium and vanadium help maintain regular blood sugar levels and insulin, the importance of which would take another 10,000 words to explain. Suffice it to say that these particular minerals are often in short supply and athletes would do well to take them, preferably in chelated form. Elitepro™ Minerals is the best source. 2 – Vitamin D3 If you’re able to spend between 15 and 30 minutes in the sun, pretty much naked, every day, without getting skin cancer or looking like an old catcher’s mitt, skip the vitamin D3 supplements. Otherwise, take 1,000 to 2,000 IU every day to enjoy increased cognition and better immune health and bone health while reducing the risks of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. 3 – Coenzyme Q10 CoQ10 is what’s known as a pseudovitamin in that it’s essential for life, but it’s not essential to life that you supplement with it. Nevertheless, consider taking 90 to 200 mg. a day, with food, to reduce plaque in the arteries and to feed mitochondria. 4 – Resveratrol It can protect us from insulin resistance and heart disease, along with working as a potent estrogen antagaonist and aromatase inhibitor. Take about 1800 mg. per day. Rez-V™ is the top choice. 5 – Cyandin 3-Glucoside This substance regulates the chemical master switch called AMPK (adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase). This master switch plays a huge role in determining not only how fat you are, but how long you live. Take 2400 to 3600 mg. per day before meals. Indigo-3G® is the most potent. 6 – Omega-3 Fatty Acids We live in an omega-6 world and it’s killing us. Nature intended for us to have a two-to-one or three-to-one ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids in our body, but because of our fast-food, snack-food, meal-in-a-box way of life, this ratio is now more like 20 to 1 in favor of the omega-6s. Inflammation is thus running rampant through our bodies and the best way to stop it is to cut down on the omega-6’s and to start swallowing those beautiful amber fish oil gelcaps. Take up to 12,000 milligrams of a combined DHA/EPA formulation such as Flameout® once a day. 7 – CLA Conjugated linoleic acid is a fatty acid found in high quantities in grass-fed beef. Since most of us don’t get much grass-fed beef, we’re likely deficient in this important fatty acid. Numerous studies have shown it to be a potent cancer fighter, as well as playing a role in normalizing blood pressure, fighting cardiovascular disease in general, and helping with osteoporosis, inflammation, and even body composition. Take about 1,000 mg. a day. Products, like Flameout®, that contain the two isomers of CLA are the best. 8 – Curcumin Curcumin is one of those supplements that sometimes seems too good to be true because the stuff does everything. It helps enhance cardiovascular health, reduces body fat, relieves pain, kills multiple types of cancer cells, and reduces estrogen levels, among other things. Take about 1,000 mg. a day for general health, more, as needed, to alleviate pain. Make sure you use a formula that’s employing additional food technology to make it more absorbable, though. 9 – Superfood This product is the thinking man’s alternative to multivitamins. It consists solely of 18 nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables that have been desiccated, pulverized, and stored in a pouch. As such, Superfood contains all the nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals intrinsic to the fruits and vegetables it’s made from. Take two scoops a day. 10 – Saw Palmetto The research behind saw palmetto as a prostate savior isn’t conclusive. We’re not sure that it relieves symptoms of benign prostatic hyperplasia or that it lowers levels of prostate specific antigen. However, we’re fairly certain that it does lower levels of DHT while increasing levels of testosterone. The latter achievements, and the possibility that it does help with the former, convince us that it merits inclusion in your health prescription. Make sure you buy a product that was manufactured using the “supercritical C02” method. Take between 160 and 320 mg. a
Origin: Tip: 10 Supplements for Overall Health & Longevity