Sports Supplement Update: An Interview with Chris Lockwood
Pull Quote: “Though protein is vitally important to obtaining a positive net protein balance and thus, gaining muscle mass, protein isn’t the only nutritional determinant to gaining lean muscle…”
Pull Quote: “Any company not investing in clinical safety and efficacy trials isn’t in it for the longevity of the industry and, in my opinion, should just get the hell out now because their actions only end up hurting all of us…”
Pull Quote: “Was it the ephedra herb that sealed this fat loss powerhouse’s fate or rather the greed, ignorance and lack of checks and balances within our own industry that sealed our own fate?”
The relatively poor regulation of sports supplements allows athletes and their coaches to be targets of marketing campaigns based on pseudo-scientific claims and marketing hype rather than documented benefits. However, some supplements offer real advantages to the athlete. Some products work by producing a direct performance-enhancing effect (e.g., creatine, caffeine). Other products can be used by athletes to meet their nutritional goals and, as an indirect outcome, allow them to achieve optimal performance (e.g., meal replacement products). Furthermore, several herbal medicines may have therapeutic medicinal value applicable to athletes. Finally, some products may help to optimize body composition.
Muscular Development discussed the issue of sports supplementation with Chris Lockwood, M.S., C.S.C.S., who has worked as the diet and energy category director for GNC and senior brand manager of American Body Building/Science Foods. Chris is currently the vice president of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN).
Lockwood: First, I’d like to comment on the regulation of sports supplements, as was addressed in your intro. As the old saying goes: “Point one figure in blame and there are three (fingers) pointing back at you.” This, in response to any blame “our industry” or members thereof, choose to place on the FDA or any other agency for “poor regulation” of the products labeled, sold and protected as dietary supplements. To be more specific, the criticism, scrutiny, lawsuits and disrespect directed toward sports supplements, the companies that manufacture and market them (supplements), those employed within the industry, as well as the dietary supplement industry as a whole and the immediate industries dietary supplements support (ex: retail outlets, online merchants, raw material suppliers, magazines, etc.) are, instead, whom are to blame for the predicament we now find ourselves facing. As we are all part and parcel to this sandbox in which we play, it’s equally important each of us take responsibility for cleaning up and ridding ourselves of the garbage that’s hamstringing our ability to compete on a much higher level. Put simply, to scream foul and stand behind the shield of DSHEA [the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act] when ephedrine and pro-hormones are removed, but to then lay blame externally for “poor regulation” when we feel sports supplements are being wrongly judged is an exercise in hypocrisy.
DSHEA was established to create an industry of self-regulation and control, not unlike that of most areas of commerce. However, effective self-regulation requires internal checks and balances, barriers to entry (other than monetary), clearly defined standards of practice and internal enforcement of policies, just to name a few. The dietary supplement industry has no such barriers to entry, has not one unifying association to represent our interests, but dozens, each with their own agenda(s) and motives and there are no internal checks and balances even if a company is clearly not playing by the rules. It isn’t until “our industry” gets our respective shit together that we’ll finally be taken seriously, though the journey from where we currently are and where we need to be won’t be without its roadblocks and setbacks. With that, I’ll step down from my soapbox.
What are the basic nutritional determinants of whether or not muscle size increases when one trains with weights?
Lockwood: The textbook story of “calories-in, minus calories-out,” that’s been repeated ad nausea for decades, is quite possibly the most misleading nutritional advice ever spoken. Theoretically, when all variables are controlled, such a simplified approach to weight gain/loss is acceptable— eating more than you burn will enable you to gain weight; eating less, you’ll lose weight. However, what happens when not just one, but hundreds and even thousands of variables influence how one person metabolizes a calorie compared to another [person]? To loosely quote Scott Connelly [founder of MET-Rx®], “If one of those persons is taking nandrolone [i.e., deca durabolin] and the other isn’t, is a calorie really a calorie?” No way! Twenty-five hundred calories to the person on deca is likely to be met with far different results than the same number of calories to a person not taking deca.
Training is also a variable, as is recovery and a whole host of other controllable and uncontrollable variables. If your long-term training is just shy of a Pilates episode combined with a few Thera-balls and resistance band exercises, then in the long-run your nutritional needs resemble little of that required for someone pushing serious poundage with increasing overload. Train like an animal every day and never rest nor slow down, then even the greatest of nutritional programs can lead to muscle wasting. All that being said, the only way to know if a person’s nutritional requirements for gaining muscle mass are being met by that person’s diet is to assess net protein balance (net protein accretion minus net protein catabolism). Though protein is vitally important to obtaining a positive net protein balance and thus, gaining muscle mass, protein isn’t the only nutritional determinant to gaining lean muscle; albeit, a very important one. I have little doubt that if a research study were designed to find a correlation between macronutrient composition and net muscle gain, we’d likely find those consuming high amounts of protein having a strong correlation with ability to gain muscle mass. However, if the CHO-PRO-FAT [carbohydrate-protein-fat] studies offer a glimpse into such, it would also be equally as likely that we find protein to reach a saturation point at which, if protein consistently accounted for a greater and greater percent of total calories (holding calories constant), then there would come a point at which the correlation between protein intake and muscle gain would begin to become inversely related.
Editor´s Note: We agree that the old notion of “a calorie is a calorie” is probably the most misleading nutritional advice known to mankind. One can´t assume that the only thing that counts in terms of food consumption and energy balance is the intake of calories and weight storage.
How important are carbohydrate-protein drinks as aids to rapid recovery?
Lockwood: Assuming first, we all agree it’s highly unlikely that a well-constructed meal will be immediately available upon cessation of exercise, then, yes, it’s of my opinion that a post-workout powder, MRP [meal replacement powder] or RTD [ready-to-drink] is vitally important to promote efficient recovery. That isn’t to say that I believe all post-workout supplements need to include both carbohydrates and protein. In fact, if non-competitive, steady-state recreational bodybuilding is the primary form of exercise, a protein-only post-workout supplement appears to be just as effective as a combination of carbs and protein; assuming total calories are roughly equal. However, if a bodybuilder or strength/power athlete is in a heavy cycle of their periodized training program, then as has been concluded by some of Tarnopolsky’s current work, carbohydrate content and total calories are required for complete glycogen resynthesis. Robert Wolfe, [the late] Gayle Butterfield, Peter Lemon and Kevin Tipton are just a few of the researchers whom have provided a wealth of understanding to this area of study. When viewed collectively and in light of some of the recent work by Jeff Stout and others, one could make a strong argument for consuming a precise amino acid combination at specific time points around one’s training to maximize muscle growth. Time will tell, however, what, if any, specific amino acid ratio works best, whether different amino acid combinations are better than others at various times around the training window and what amounts are optimal. And that just scratches the surface of where the research is heading.
What do you think about the following “muscle-building” supplements: ZMA, KIC, Tribulus terrestris?
Lockwood: Independently, there’s solid data to support the use of zinc, magnesium and vitamin B6— all are commonly depleted both in active and inactive populations— however, the claims most often cited in support of ZMA are quite misleading. “The ZMA study” is co-authored by one of the principle owners of the ZMA patent and thus raises serious red flags as to the independence and bias of the study itself. Though, yes, zinc and magnesium are being delivered in more bioavailable, chelated forms, we’ve yet to see if ZMA offers any advantage over, say, consuming a well-formulated multi-mineral and/or MRP with comparable amounts of the active ingredients. From a strictly branding perspective, the ZMA folks have done a superb job. The unfortunate reality, however, is if consumers are provided with the knowledge of using chelated forms of zinc and magnesium, in combination with vitamin B6 as a co-factor to drive the system then they’ll find on their own that there’s little reason to pay the additional cost for the ZMA name. That is, unless studies begin to show that the patent-pending ratio of zinc:magnesium:B6, as is used in the ZMA preparations, is somehow superior to other similar blends. Even so, ZMA is a mixture, not a compound and as such I hope the ZMA folks have some powerful patent protection attorneys as well as the finances to litigate against all of the knock-offs.
Editor´s Note: The ZMA study co-authored by Victor Conte reported that the ZMA group had increased levels of total testosterone, free (biologically active) testosterone and IGF-I compared to plateaus or drops in the placebo (fake supplementation) group (Journal of Exercise Physiology, 3(4):26-36, 2000). However, a recent study by Dr. Richard Kreider and colleagues indicated that ZMA supplementation during training doesn’t appear to enhance training adaptations in gym rats (Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 1(2):12-20, 2004). Obviously, more research is needed before firm conclusions can be drawn.
Lockwood: Where do I begin with KIC? a-KIC [alpha-ketoisocaproate] will likely become just as big a “household” name as the nitric oxide products made a-KG [alpha-ketoglutarate]. The difference is, if science and not ignorance leads the way, the use of the two will remain somewhat distinct from the other; both having their respective roles, albeit if I had but enough money to purchase only one or the other, I’d put my dollars on a-KIC. I’ll suggest that readers pick up a copy of the chapter I wrote in the Essentials of Sports Nutrition and Supplements for a more detailed discussion, but here’s the jist of it: a-KIC is referred to as a branched-chain keto acid (BCKA), which, as the name implies, is very similar to a BCAA [branched-chain amino acid], with the exception of the keto group. In fact, about 50 percent of ingested a-KIC is converted directly into what is largely becoming known as the most anabolic and anti-catabolic of all the amino acids— the BCAA, leucine. Here’s where it gets even more interesting. a-KIC is a direct precursor to the production of HMB and thus one could beg the question, “HMB, in high enough doses and when consumed in a minimal carb environment, is supposed to be so great, and leucine is beginning to be found-out as the premier amino acid, and all of these compounds contain one very similar ingredient— a-KIC— then can’t I simply take a-KIC throughout the day and get the best of all benefits?” Maybe yes, maybe no. Thus far, it looks like a-KIC needs to be bound to another amino acid to offer its greatest advantage. For example, arginine-a-KIC (AAKIC) was found to be more beneficial than either arginine or arginine-a-KG (AAKG) at increasing nitrogen retention and weight gain in mice and AAKIC was also more effective than ornithine-a-KIC (OAKIC) at increasing protein synthesis. A dipeptide of leucine and a-KIC may be interesting, though, one could argue that bonding with arginine is more advantageous than with leucine because via arginine catabolism during first-pass digestion [i.e., first-pass metabolism], a greater amount of a-KIC is left available to be delivered to receptor sites. Frankly, I’m not that smart, so I don’t know the answer to this one. As a caveat to the use of a-KIC, I offer this, though: a-KIC may be one of the worst-tasting amino acid compounds I’ve ever had the displeasure to taste and try to formulate against for flavor. Almost all amino acids taste like feet, but when we first experimented, back in 2001, with a-KIC, forskolin, yohimbine and copper, the workout results may have been phenomenal, but the downside was that I kept burping-up what tasted like sweaty socks (by the way, I have no actual comparative for the taste of sweaty socks; only assuming).
Editor´s Note: Essentials of Sports Nutrition and Supplements will be released by Humana Press in early 2006.
It’s now clear that leucine is the most anabolic of all the amino acids. For example, a recent study published in the American Journal of Physiology (Epub ahead of print) indicates that leucine, but not isoleucine or valine, acts as a nutrient signal to stimulate protein synthesis in heart and skeletal muscles of neonates.
First-pass metabolism of dietary supplements or drugs can occur in the gut and the liver. This can greatly reduce the amount of active substance that ends up in systemic circulation.
Lockwood: My case for, as well as against, Tribulus is the same for and against all active ingredients, but unfortunately seems to be most damaging to herbs: that is, I absolutely support the use of a pure form of Tribulus terrestris extract such as what the analytical testing facility, Chromadex, found being used in the Biotest product, TribexÔ, however, as with ALL active ingredients that get as little as a mention of support for their use in a scientific paper, the active ingredient quickly becomes the bastard child of many a whoring-out in the raw materials markets. That is to say that, yes, there’s strong data that a standardized extract of Tribulus terrestris L., from above ground parts, containing five to 10 milligrams per kilogram bodyweight, per day, of active Protodioscin, offers some form of ergogenic [performance-enhancing] affect.
Problem is, Tribulus is an herb, so just as we’ve all come to understand that a wine grown in Northern California during a dry season is different from the same wine, from the same vineyard, grown during a rainy season and is still far different from a totally different vineyard’s version of that wine, grown in Alabama, so too, are herbs used in dietary supplements different. For example, a common name for Tribulus is “puncture vine” and almost any mountain biker who’s ever ridden in the West at the end of the spring season can attest to the number of punctured tires that arise as a result of these tiny, dried-up balls of thorns. But, am I to assume that Tribulus growing on the trails outside of Salt Lake City is just as efficacious as the Tribulus grown in the high-altitude climate of Bulgaria? Absolutely n. However, that’s what so many raw material suppliers and the people who manufacture those products would like for you to believe— that Tribulus is Tribulus; ephedra is ephedra; Rhodiola is Rhodiola; that an herb’s an herb.
Worse still, companies commonly use an inferior-grade herb, but still use all of the positive research data of the more efficacious form of that herb to support their marketing efforts. It’s what’s polluted and ruined the herb market, as a whole and brought a horrible black-eye to the efficacy of all herbs and supplements— when a study finds that an herb “doesn’t work,” the entire herb family gets cast in a poor light. But most studies, unfortunately, don’t even run analyticals to determine if the active ingredients in the herb being studied contain similar level(s) of actives as those from a previous study showing positive findings. Which leads me to another all-to-common scam of raw material “spiking”— that is, to spike an otherwise inferior form of the herb with extra amounts of the principle active used in standardization of that herb family. Sounds good in theory, but it’s the equivalent of adding extra alcohol and/or sugar to a bottle of wine or using more wood to build your home, but without using additional nails and supporting materials to keep everything together. Aside from being totally unethical and, in my opinion, one of the primary reasons so many Tribulus products don’t work, spiking and the use of inferior raw materials is essentially totally legal because our industry does so little, if anything, to regulate or dissuade against such practices.
Rhodiola rosea is another great example of an effective herb that’s been dragged through the mud. R. crenulata is essentially crap, but R. rosea standardized to 3.6 percent rosavin, 1.6 percent salidroside and not more than 0.1 percent p-tyrosol, per 100 milligrams of R. rosea root, has consistently been shown to provide beneficial acute training effects as a powerful adaptogenic herb. Oh and by the way, outside of the Tribestan® studies, conducted by the Bulgarian manufacturer Sopharma, the only data that supports increased testosterone and arousal from Tribulus, is in rodents. However, there’s data showing that Tribulus has a definite hypoglycemic effect, which may indirectly lead to an increase in testosterone production as a result of an increase in cAMP in response to low glucose levels. Nobody has looked that closely at the molecular level, but if that’s the case and we also find similar results as have been found in our little rodent friends, then we’ll also likely conclude that, as in the rodent studies, there exists both a minimum AND a maximum dose for peak effectiveness.
Can vitamin supplementation improve performance?
Lockwood: Most definitely. Let’s face it, the majority of the human population either doesn’t make the correct food choices and/or simply doesn’t have access to the foods best designed to help that person meet their daily physical needs, far less, improve a person’s human performance. That said, I agree with the RDs of the world that supplements aren’t necessary if someone eats the right foods. However, in that same breath, I’m also not so ignorant as to assume people follow that advice or, more importantly, are being provided the tools required to follow that “simple” pearl of wisdom. Fact is, a supplement is just that: a supplement; not to replace food, but to fill the gaps. Thus, yes, dietary supplements can offer great advantages to aiding performance. If the question is more specific to vitamins, then I recommend a healthy dose of the B vitamins to any athlete consuming a lot of protein and training heavily. The B6 vitamin, in particular, may be the most important because of its conversion to pyridoxal-5-phosphate, which functions as one of the body’s premier co-factors in energy conversion.
One side note, though, I do think it horribly irresponsible and ignorant how so many supplement companies just kitchen-sink vitamins and minerals into a formula, using only a percentage of the daily recommended intakes (DRIs, or RDAs) as their guide. In my earlier years, I was just as guilty at making this rookie mistake. But given today’s availability to better information, there’s no excuse for formulating a product with, for example, all vitamins and minerals containing 20, 50 or even 100 percent of the DRIs. Yes, it looks good on a label if you’re marketing to the Centrum® or One-a-Day® mass market legions, but any informed biochemist will quickly inform such companies of how little of so many of those ingredients are going to end up being used because of the competing nature of certain vitamins and/or minerals during digestion, as well as the co-ingestion or absence thereof of macronutrients to support their transport.
How do you feel about thermogenic fat loss supplements?
Lockwood: First off, possibly the best and worst thing that ever happened to this industry was the removal of its too often tapped, too-used, late-night booty call of a supplement, ephedra. Though I was hopeful that the removal of ephedra would bring lurking and laboratory hopefuls into the fat loss limelight, as well as rally the industry to work more closely and begin to adopt standards and practices that would thwart future repeats, I’ve seen little, if not the opposite transpire.
The new products that were immediately brought to market were mostly out of sales and retail shelf preservation, rather than innovation…though there were a small handful of very innovative and effective ingredients that were actually unique (7-keto, A7-E and forskolin being the most metabolic of the bunch). However, here we are two years later and still there’s little innovation. That isn’t entirely due to a lack of trying, but rather the legal environment and a lack of scientific support from the largest supplement retailer— i.e., if your largest retailer isn’t likely to bring in a new item because they don’t trust and/or accept the science, then, as consumers and as an industry, we’re all hamstrung by this innovation roadblock, so to speak. Hell, I was on board that large retail ship when ephedra got pulled and could do little to redirect the course of our sales dollars— only the captain and his industry-hopping crewmates chose to move this entire industry. However, I can stand by and blame our current situation only on a handful of persons with little regard for this very small segment of the industry or rather see that the way around such ignorance is to flood the doors with scientific support of safety and efficacy of new ingredients and compounds. Yes, the latter is more costly on the up-front, but the long-term benefit to a company, the consumer and the health of this industry is immeasurable. Any company not investing in clinical safety and efficacy trials isn’t in it for the longevity of the industry and, in my opinion, should just get the hell out now because their actions only end up hurting all of us and the consumers with whom trust has been placed blindly.
Some, however, would argue that ephedra had all the scientific validation it needed to prove safety and efficacy, yet it still got pulled. That’s correct, however, ephedra didn’t get pulled because of a lack of science; it got pulled because of our own greed and lack of control over the players within our industry and lack of educating both our existing consumers and those who are more transient to what we offer. Too few are the brands/companies that sell their products based upon strong branding and consumer loyalty. Instead, companies most often arise as me-too knock-offs shrouded behind the typical array of marketing puffery, yet undermining the market by competing on price and price alone. Thus, the uncreative sales minds of the world look for their commission checks not in the long-term strength of a brand, but in the discounted sales they can make today. Beating their competitor’s price is the only “strategy” far too many sales people use to sell a product.
When the largest specialty retailer, drug retailers, food retailers and the mother ship of wholesale mass market retailers, for example, decided to battle it out for the diet consumer, the strategy each employed had absolutely nothing to do with educating their customers and gaining loyalty over their competition, but rather each chose only to dip further and further into a pricing war. However, so that a consumer can get cheaper and cheaper sale prices, you can bet your ass it’s rarely the retailer that’s eating the lion’s share of the discount— those retailers, with their precious shelf space on the line, use that leverage to go directly to the brand/manufacturer for the discounts to support a sales strategy the retailer has chosen. It’s a sick chain, because the brand simply pushes harder on their suppliers for cheaper prices, or switch to cheaper suppliers altogether. Which, in the end, mean cheaper raw materials, but unfortunately not simply as they appear on a cost spreadsheet— I mean “cheaper” in the sense that the raw materials many companies choose to use in response to competitive price erosion ends up being of a lesser quality. It definitely doesn’t always start with retail pressure(s); in fact, many companies were using inferior ephedra long before the prices dropped out of the market and many companies still either knowingly or just ignorantly choose to use the cheapest raws they can get their hands on so as to compete in the market with the highest profit margins for which to promote (i.e., sale pricing) against.
Consumers, however, fail to see why they should even care— many feel like, “Well, at least I’m getting my 25 milligrams of ephedra for cheaper; who cares who’s losing money?” From the outside looking in, that’s an easy leap of faith. However, one person’s faith is described as another person’s opportunity, if that other person is a slime ball with only monetary intentions and/or ignorance to the science. The ephedrine isomer, L-ephedrine, was the alkaloid the standardizations tested for/against; if a product was labeled with 25 milligrams ephedrine, that product was supposed to contain 25 milligrams of the L-ephedrine isomer. Problem is, the ephedra plant contains a whole host of other isomers, such as pseudoephedrine, methylephedrine, norephedrine, norpseudoephedrine and/or methylpseudoephedrine, just to name a few. L-ephedrine is the most beneficial of the alkaloids and works on both beta- and alpha-receptors, but on the other end of the spectrum a cheaper ephedra product could have been excessively high in methylpseudoephedrine, which has markedly negative effects on raising blood pressure. Thus, for a company to provide the full 25 milligrams of L-ephedrine in their cheap product, the company inevitably made an even greater piss-poor situation worse by adding more of their low quality raw into their product, therefore, providing the uninformed consumer an even higher dose of the less effective, far less desirable, ephedra isomer in the process. Geniuses, aren’t they? Bit their noses off, despite their faces.
So… was it the ephedra herb that sealed this fat loss powerhouse’s fate or rather the greed, ignorance and lack of checks and balances within our own industry that sealed our own fate? If you think this won’t repeat itself, it already has with so many other ingredients that have become commodities whereby beating last year’s sales numbers or some Johnny-come-latelies lame attempt at breaking into this market is more important than delivering consumers with the quality, efficacious and safe products they want, but more importantly deserve.
All said, yes, I support the use of fat burners, be they containing ephedra or not…if consumed responsibly and by a well-informed consumer. In fact, I kind of like how things have evolved back into there being two categories— an energy category and a separate fat burner category of products. Sometimes I want brain candy without losing my appetite, whereas other times I want my metabolism elevated, but am in no need for extra neural stimulation. In fact, one of the best, most recent innovations in this segment is coming out of the energy category— for example, Spike, again by Biotest, is using a novel vitamin B1/thiamin derivative that has some serious mental acuity properties. Irrespective of the advice, unless you’re one of a very few members within the industry who can pick through the barrage of marketing B.S. and just plain deceit, I simply cringe to think of the choices the great majority of our consumers are making when they’re almost blindly making a purchasing decision. Oh and by the way, if I had to offer any advice to those in search of ephedrine, you’re not entirely out of luck. In fact, the quality control of what’s available is quite good, though you’ll have to “Old School, 1980’s-style” it and go down to your local drugstore and pick up a box of Bronchaid® tablets, a bottle of No-Doz® and some aspirin. To all great things, what was old will again be new.
Editor´s Note: Although ephedrine-caffeine supplementation promotes fat loss and improves athletic performance, this combo is certainly not for everyone and must be used responsibly. It's very important you read product labels, warnings and cautions and follow the directions. On the other hand, scientific literature does not support anti-ephedra horror stories published in the mainstream media. For example, a recent scientific review on ephedra and purported adverse effects, published in the respected Toxicology Letters (2004;150:97-110), concluded that the published preclinical and clinical studies and the long history of safe use of ephedra, support the safety-in-use of ephedra when used as directed. According to the authors, the problems associated with the adverse events appear to be the result of overuse, inconsistent potency, individual sensitivity and contaminations.
