The Best Supplements You've Never Heard Of

 

Jamie Grill/Getty Images.  Updated May 08, 2015. The right nutritional supplements can be a valuable addition to your fit-guy arsenal. Check out these five supplements that fly under the radar but really work. Reduce pain. Prevent disease. Build muscle in the gym. No, this isn’t a late night infomercial. In this article, I’m sharing the potential benefits of some surprising supplements that fly under most people's radar. Sure, some supplements on the market are little more than snake oil. However, certain supplements -- herbs, spices, plant compounds, and even algae – can be a valuable addition to your fit-guy life. (For more on this, check out the article All About Surprising Supplements.) Just remember: before you try any new supplement, make sure it’s backed by solid research. Take marketing claims with a big pinch of salt. And check with your doctor first. With that said, here are five supplements with surprising benefits that are worth learning more about. Curcumin for pain relief Curcumin is the yellow pigment in turmeric and curry spice, and it’s been studied for decades because of its many potential health benefits. For one thing, curcumin is anti-inflammatory and can help decrease pain. In fact, the relief provided by 400 to 500 mg of curcumin seems comparable to taking 2000 mg of acetaminophen (Tylenol). Curcumin can also function as an antioxidant, helping to defend against cellular oxidation and therefore warding off disease. Note that curcumin by itself is poorly absorbed. A good curcumin supplement will contain either black pepper extract (piperine) or phosphatidylcholine (phytosomes) to make it bioavailable. Check the label before buying. Berberine for blood sugar Berberine is a compound found in many plants, including Oregon grape, barberry, and goldenseal, among others. Berberine is known for helping with blood sugar control. In fact, berberine’s anti-diabetic properties are proven to be as every bit as powerful as a pharmaceutical drug. Not many supplements can boast that kind of effectiveness. Berberine can also reduce blood lipids, which means it also might protect against heart disease. There is one possible downside to berberine, though:  it could inhibit muscle growth. Something to keep in mind if you’re actively training. Spirulina for cholesterol If you have high blood pressure or cholesterol, or you’re at risk of heart disease, you might want to check out spirulina, which is a blue-green mixture of algae species. Studies show that spirulina supplementation can lower lipid peroxidation levels (a marker of damaged blood lipids) by around 15%, and reduce triglyceride levels by about 10-15%. Tip: Make sure you’re taking a reliable, true spirulina source.  Non-spirulina blue-green algae could contain toxic contaminants. Rhodiola rosea for fatigue Rhodiola rosea is anadaptogenic herb that grows in cold climates, such as the Arctic, and other mountainous regions of the world. Rhodiola has been shown to decrease fatigue, boost focus and improve overall well-being. In one study, students taking rhodiola scored 8.4% higher on their exams than the placebo group. That’s a pretty big advantage! Similarly, in a study of healthy physicians, rhodiola supplementation significantly decreased fatigue and improved performance on work-related tasks by about 20%. Betaine for power & strength Betaines naturally occur in many plants to protect cells from dehydration. Sugar beets, quinoa, and spinach are three of the best food sources of betaine. Research suggests that 2.5 grams of betaine per day may help you increase your reps during resistance training. It may also boost your power when throwing, jumping and lifting. One study implied that long-term betaine supplementation may improve body composition, but more research is needed to find out whether betaine can actually help you gain lean mass and/or lose fat. Tip: The recommended dose is 2.5 grams per day. Lower than that and you won’t get any benefits, and too much higher could be unhealthy. What you need to remember about supplements For these (and many other) supplements, research is still in the early stages; in some cases, in its infancy. Also, be sure to treat supplements as just that: supplements. They aren’t meant to replace your other healthy habits. You still have to eat well. You still have to find time to exercise. And you still have to hit the pillow and get proper sleep. Once you’ve got a solid foundation, supplements can simply be a ‘bonus’. They’re just one more tool in your fit-guy arsenal. -- Want help finding the best eating, exercise, and lifestyle advice for you? Then check out this Free Health and Fitness Starter Kit, exclusively for men. Includes: Busy man's guide to getting in shape, how much you should eat at each meal, the 5 unspoken things every "good" eating plan has in common, & more. And for more about Dr. John Berardi, including links to his latest men's health articles, click here. References Apicella JM, et al. Betaine supplementation enhances anabolic endocrine and Akt signaling in response to acute bouts of exercise. Eur J App Phys. 2013;113(3):793-802. Armstrong LE, et al. Influence of betaine consumption on strenuous running and sprinting in a hot environment. J Strength Cond Res. 2008;22(3):851-860 Cholewa JM, et al. Effects of betaine on body composition, performance, and homocysteine thiolactone. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2013;10(1):39. Del Favero S, et al. Creatine but not betaine supplementation increases muscle phosphorylcreatine content and strength performance. Amino Acids. 2011; 2299-2305. Hoffman JR, et al. Effect of betaine supplementation on power performance and fatigue. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2009;6:7. Hoffman JR, et al. Effect of 15 days of betaine ingestion on concentric and eccentric force outputs during isokinetic exercise.  J Strength Cond Res. 2011;25(8):2235-2241. Lee EC, et al. Ergogenic effects of betaine supplementation on strength and power performance. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2010;7:27. Olthof, MR, et al. Effect of homocysteine-lowering nutrients on blood lipids: results from four randomized, placebo-controlled studies in healthy humans. PLoS Med. 2005;2(5):e135. Pryor JL, Craig SA, Swensen T. Effect of betaine supplementation on cycling sprint performance. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2012;9(1):12. Schwab U, et al. Betaine supplementation decreases plasma homocysteine concentrations but does not affect body weight, body composition, or resting energy expenditure in human subjects. Am J Clin Nutr. 2002 Nov;76(5):961-7. Schwab, U, et al. Orally administered betaine has an acute and dose-dependent effect on serum betaine and plasma homocysteine concentrations in healthy humans. J Nutr. 2006;136(1):34-38 Schwab U, et al. Long-term effect of betaine on risk factors associated with the metabolic syndrome in healthy subjects. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2011;65(1):70-76. Trepanowski JF, et al. The effects of chronic betaine supplementation on exercise performance, skeletal muscle oxygen saturation and associated biochemical parameters in resistance trained men. J Strength Cond Res. 2011;25(12):3461-3471. Bailey SJ, et al. Dietary nitrate supplementation reduces the O2 cost of low-intensity exercise and enhances tolerance to high-intensity exercise in humans. J Appl Physiol (1985). 2009;107(4):1144-55. Bailey SJ, et al. Dietary nitrate supplementation enhances muscle contractile efficiency during knee-extensor exercise in humans. J Appl Physiol (1985). 2010 Jul;109(1):135-48. Cermak NM, Gibala MJ, van Loon LJ. Nitrate supplementation’s improvement of 10-km time-trial performance in trained cyclists. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2012;22(1):64-71. Cermak NM, et al. No improvement in endurance performance after a single dose of beetroot juice. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2012;22(6):470-8. Christensen PM, Nyberg M, Bangsbo J. Influence of nitrate supplementation on VO₂ kinetics and endurance of elite cyclists. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2013;23(1):e21-31. Hobbs DA, Kaffa N, George TW, Methven L, Lovegrove JA. Blood pressure-lowering effects of beetroot juice and novel beetroot-enriched bread products in normotensive male subjects. Br J Nutr. 2012;108(11):2066-74. Hord NG, Tang Y, Bryan NS. Food sources of nitrates and nitrites: the physiologic context for potential health benefits. Am J Clin Nutr. 2009;90(1):1-10. Hord NG. Dietary nitrates, nitrites, and cardiovascular disease. Curr Atheroscler Rep. 2011;13(6):484-92. Lansley KE, et al. Dietary nitrate supplementation reduces the O2 cost of walking and running: a placebo-controlled study. J Appl Physiol (1985). 2011;110(3):591-600. Murphy M, Eliot K, Heuertz RM, Weiss E. Whole beetroot consumption acutely improves running performance. Acad Nutr Diet. 2012;112(4):548-52. Siervo M, Lara J, Ogbonmwan I, Mathers JC. Inorganic nitrate and beetroot juice supplementation reduces blood pressure in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Nutr. 2013 Jun;143(6):818-26. Vanhatalo A, et al. Dietary nitrate reduces muscle metabolic perturbation and improves exercise tolerance in hypoxia. J Physiol. 2011 Nov 15;589(Pt 22):5517-28.

Toxins in Nutrition Supplements Still Escape FDA Oversight

 

By Dina Fine Maron | April 2, 2014 |  

 

When young and middle-aged adults started showing up at the hospital with liver failure last spring, doctors in Hawaii struggled to find the thread that connected the patients. They found it in the form of a popular sports supplement, OxyElite Pro.

The supplement was linked last May to severe hepatitis, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, tasked with removing such dangerous substances from store shelves, did not learn of the cases until four months later. By February, months after the product was voluntarily taken off the market, there were 97 cases linked back to the supplement, including one death and three liver transplants.

These and other statistics from a new report highlight continued weaknesses in the U.S. system’s ability to protect consumers from OxyElite Pro and other untested supplements. Consumers are continually being put at risk of consuming supplements tainted with harmful substances, Pieter Cohen, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, writes in the April 3 New England Journal of Medicine. About half of all U.S. adults take dietary supplements, meaning that literally millions of people could be at risk.

OxyElite Pro was far from the first such problematic incident. Even five years ago the U.S. Government Accountability Office highlighted serious supplement oversight issues, warning that FDA does not have enough authority to ensure the products are safe. That report, like Cohen’s, called for supplement manufacturers to be required to register their dietary supplements. Currently, the FDA relies on voluntary notifications about supplement-related deleterious health events from clinicians and consumers through an online reporting system called MedWatch. It also hears about such events from manufacturers who receive information of serious side effects or learn of health threats from other academic, federal or state public health partners that contact the agency. The manufacturer is supposed to ensure its own product is safe and also notify FDA if its supplement contains a new dietary ingredient at least 75 days prior to marketing the product, but even that requirement is often ignored. “Firms not submitting [new dietary ingredient] notifications remain a significant concern for the agency,” says Theresa Eisenman, an FDA spokesperson.

The threat of potentially toxic nutritional supplements often comes from pharmaceuticals, steroids, stimulants or other substances that are tucked inside the supplements. Just last year, Cohen and his colleagues detected a new cousin of methamphetamine in a different sports supplement. Meanwhile, FDA found a form of an amphetamine in nine supplements.

To address the woeful monitoring of nutritional supplements, Cohen calls for the creation of a supplement response team that would include clinicians, toxicologists, pharmacologists and chemists that could respond to reports of serious supplement-related adverse events in real time. Such a system, Cohen writes, would speed up responses to help protect consumers.

Cohen also backs another proposed fix. FDA officials told GAO in a follow-up report published in 2013 that one hold-up to acting on adverse event reports is that it’s often difficult to establish a causal relationship between a product and the health problem based on the limited information in the report. One solution, FDA has said, would be setting up an adverse event reporting service like a poison control hotline, especially since some consumers already report such incidents to poison control centers. Questions posed during that call could help fill in information gaps that could speed up investigations, but FDA has said that an obstacle there would be cost. A pilot project designed to test the waters with such a system had promising results, but it did not answer questions about if a nationwide system would actually generate information faster than a traditional system, Cohen says.

The prospects for any significant immediate change, however, seem slim, given that past reform efforts have all but flatlined. Sen. Dick Durbin (D–Ill.) has repeatedly tried to pass a bill that would require supplement manufactures to register their products and to provide more safety information, but it languished in 2011. An effort to attach provisions of the bill to other legislation as an amendment last year also proved unsuccessful. The bill was then reintroduced this session with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D–Conn.) as its cosponsor, although no one expects the legislation to move. There is also no companion legislation in the House.

The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, signed into law in 2011, gave FDA slightly more power in this arena—providing it with new enforcement authority to order a recall when a product will likely cause serious harm or death. But with OxyElite Pro, its manufacturers ultimately voluntarily took the product off the market after FDA threatened that it would order the company to stop production otherwise. FDA has had to take action in other cases, however. The new recall authority, however, clearly does not go far enough to protect consumers.

Without sweeping legislative changes, even if Cohen’s other plans were enacted, consumers will continue to have a safety net full of holes.

Image: Womenshealth.gov