There seems to be a lot of noise about how amazing Advocares products are as of late. I will be doing a series where I break down some of Advocares more famous products as well as going over any published research done on the product and giving a scientific opinion (as unbiased as I can) on it as well as my own opinion (more biased) with practical use. Here is my first review and it is on Spark the energy drink.
This is the only study that I found that is actually published through a journal on Advocares Spark energy drink. The study wanted to see the effects of spark during repeated sprint performance and anaerobic power on trained college athletes. Here is a link to the study Spark Study
Overview
20 NCAA div 1 football players were grouped into two groups (2 groups of 10). The study used Running-based Anaerobic Sprint Test (RAST) to measure anaerobic power. Both groups would come in fasted (had not eaten since they awoke) and ate a 400 kcal breakfast with 70 g of carbs. After Eating their breakfast the participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups (AdvoCare Spark or placebo) and 60 minutes after consuming their drink they went through RAST. Then 7 days after the first test day the participants came back and the groups went through the same procedure but switched what drink they had.
Limitations
The Study was only looking at acute effects of Spark not long duration. The way they assessed caffeine tolerance was self reported which athletes could given false numbers on his or her caffeine score. Other then that I could not find any other limitations on this one study but I am open to input.
Strengths
This double-blind, randomized, crossover design is the only one to test the formula of spark on trained athletes to see if it does help acute intense exercise performance. They did put in the effort to make sure that each athlete was running on the same amount of fuel with match breakfast and carb intake across the board. They also made sure that the athletes caffeine history was evaluated by assigning a caffeine score to each athlete based on his daily consumption of caffeinated beverages during the month before the test.
Results
This single study did not show a significant difference between the controlled group and placebo in run time and anaerobic power.
"The repeated-measures ANOVA showed no statistically significant difference for the main effect of the beverage treatment (energy drink vs. placebo) for either the sprint time (F = 3.06, p = .097) or anaerobic power (F = 3.84, p = .066), indicating that the energy drink did not affect performance."
However the study did show some difference from athletes not habituated (regular use) to caffeine were more likely to improve from the energy drink than those who regularly consumed caffeine.
“There was a significant interaction effect between caffeine use and the beverage treatment for both sprint times (F = 4.62, p = .045) and anaerobic power (F = 5.40, p = .032), indicating a confounding effect such that athletes not habituated to caffeine were more likely to improve from the energy drink than those who regularly consumed caffeine.”
My Comments/Opinion
I believe this study's results to be aligned with my own opinion on the product… its a bunch of hype with no bite. Twenty trained college athletes took the product and there was no significant or even practical difference between the placebo or Spark group. I will admit that this is only one study and making an absolute statement like that is wrong but I am not making my opinion on just that study alone, I am making my opinion on the body of evidence that we have on the three most prevalent ingredients in spark (Caffeine, Taurine and L-Tyrosine).
There is evidence of the notable effects of caffeine on cognition, adrenaline, anaerobic capacity and power output but the effects are not ground breaking and each effect does seem to dwindle down after tolerance builds up with the frequent use. Also sparks caffeine dose is greatly underdosed (a overall theme with most supplements) with only 120mg per serving, where the research right now shows most performance advantages comes from doses above 500mg per serving!
Taurine as of right now has not been shown to have any effect of athletic performance but has shown to been helpful with blood flow in type 1 diabetics. Does this mean that taurine is useless to take in? As of right now unless you have a deficiency (if you eat whole protein sources you are fine) and or are type 1 diabetic then the supplementation has no use that we know as of right now, but this can change with more research done. Even if Taurine did have effect I do not think the dose of 200mg will have any effect since when it does make a difference it is in the range of 500 -2,000 mg.
L-Tyrosine has promise in the areas of improving cognition during acute stressors but like the other two ingredients (and most of the others in spark) it is underdosed. Spark contains 500mg per serving and studies show a much higher amount to see any effect from it, around 100-150mg/kg bodyweight this is a dosage range of 9-13.5g for a 200lb person and 7-10g for a 150lb person.
Final Words
Do not buy this product it is way to underdosed and over priced. Here is another objective review on spark by Greg Farris that goes more into the dosing of the product I would advise you to read this as well
http://gregfarrisfitness.com/an-objective-look-at-advocare-spark/
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