The supplement industry is growing drastically every year, in 2012 estimated revenue was 32 billion USD. This is not surprising when you think about it, in Vero alone there are two GNCs, one vitamin shoppe and countless multi level marketing supplement distributors. With fitness becoming more and more popular it makes sense to see such a rise in supplement use. Something we should all ask ourselves, do all those supplements actually do anything?
A little background of me to show the possible bias I may or may not have. I worked at a local supplement store for year and a half, like most young adults who just recently fell in love with the gym I was astatic about my new job. I could now make money helping people reach their goals with fitness, picking out the right protein for that mother of two or the perfect testosterone booster for the serious gym rat. So I was excited to say the least, my knowledge when it came to actual fitness (exercise and nutritional science) was non existent and was even lower when it came to supplements. So off the bat all I had was my limited bro-science and what my fellow employees and manager told me, which if you can guess was nothing less then amazing when it came to supplements and especially our own company's brand. Not too long after getting the job I wanted to be able to answer most of my customers questions, "what does this do?", "how will this affect me?". So I started to do my research online and make my own cheat sheet for the most common supplement ingredients. This was a mistake but at the same time is what helped me open my eyes. My "research" was nothing more than googling the name of the ingredient and reading the first one or two links about it. Now, the mistake was that this wasn't real research, this was nothing more then me looking at information that I wanted to see, I was heavily biased that these ingredients worked (so information that proved my bias to be right was all I looked at).
So I have been there, wanting to help people with supplements, the belief that supplements actually did what they said, I even spent usually half my paycheck on protein powders and muscle builders believing that was what I needed. Thankfully about eight months into my job my views started to change with actual evidence being presented to me, at first I disregarded the evidence since it didn't agree with what I thought, thankfully after sometime I was able to see that the supplements really didn't work, it helped that anecdotally I saw hundreds of people continue to waste 30-80 dollars every few weeks with no change visually over the span of almost a year. Once the knowledge was presented to me my whole mind set of work changed and I saw things how (I presume them to be) they are, supplement companies don't care about 80-90% of their consumers as long as about 10% are showing progress (just being consistent and not from the actual product) they could continue to advertise as flowery as possible to sell their products to the 80-90%. A few months later I quit my job because I couldn't stand the amount of half truths and lies that supplement companies and employees spew to their customers.
Ive gone through it, I have gone in blind believing every hype and passionate speech from the huge companies, to seeing the truth of what most educated people see the supplement industry as, half truths, overpriced and corrupt. So yes because of my experience my bias does lean toward not favoring supplements, but my opinion is not just based off of anecdote but actually data that is available at this time.
Advocare, Herbalife, Nutrilite, BSN, Muscle Pharm etc, the list could literally fill up a page because the amount of supplement companies around continues to grow because of the growing market. The rest of this article will be a “detailed” breakdown of why most companies are the same and supplements in general are a waste of your time, even with all the scientific "evidence" for them.
I will breakdown supplements up into 3 categories (no doubt a case can be made for more and companies undoubtedly make more to try to set them apart); health, weight loss and muscle gain. Lets me start with weight loss, for weight loss to occur our bodies need to be in a caloric deficit, this is probably nothing most you have not heard of, a caloric deficit is made through extra activity, eating less or more favorable a mixture of both. So how do weight loss supplements fit into the above equation? Most weight loss supplements are usually sold as aids (it isn't hard to find marketing that sounds as if the pill or shake does all the work), fat burners are usually marketed to add extra calories expended through thermogenesis, weight loss shakes are nothing more than protein meal replacements that can help with lowering calories through eating less with higher levels of satiety. Let me go through some of the most popular ingredients in weight loss pills and lets see what the evidence actually says.
1.Caffeine
2. Synephrine
3.CLA
4. Garcinia Cambogia
5.Raspberry Ketones
6. Alpha Lipoic Acid
7. Yohimbe
Caffeine
Look at any thermogenic and caffeine will be in there in some form or another. Caffeine is a easily obtainable drug found in coffee, teas and sold in pills at your local pharmacy for relatively low cost. Caffeine is a pretty well researched drug, we know that most effects of caffeine are habitual (effect weakens longer we use it) even its thermogenic properties. So, yes caffeine is thermogenic but how practical is it when looking at weight loss? A typical dose is around 200 mg with the upper threshold being 400 mg, with 200 mg depending on body weight you can see an increase of about 8-14 kcal/h(1,2). To lose weight one has to be in a caloric deficit this will mostly be done by reduction in calories and increase in activity, now taking a pill with caffeine might show a small advantage for a limited time, but will it even be worth it with all other variables being on point? (http://examine.com/supplements/Caffeine/)
Synephrine
Synephrine is a similar product to the famous ephedrine that was banned from sale in the united states around 15 years ago. Unlike ephedrine synephrine is not as strong, but does show a slight increase in resting metabolic rate (75 minutes) about 65 kcal with a single dose of 50mg(3). Synephrine does seem to synergise well with caffeine with the hypothesis of increasing the effect of both products(4). Again the effect is quite small and not 100% positive to be effective in men and women(5), so again its up to the consumer to decide if the product is worth their time and money. (http://examine.com/supplements/Synephrine/)
CLA
Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) is marketed as a healthy fat that reduces body fat without stimulating the CNS. The researched dose amount is anywhere from 3,200mg to 6,000mg. There are a few human studies done with CLA to look at its effectiveness on weight loss and the consensus leans toward ineffective to very unreliable(6,7,8,9). (http://examine.com/supplements/Conjugated+Linoleic+Acid/)
Garcinia Cambogia
Garcinia Cambogia (GC) is another highly marketed non stimulant fat burner, similar to CLA the consensus is that GC has a very limited to no effect on weight loss(10,11,12,13). The idea is that GC inhibits the de novo lipogenesis pathway allowing more stored fat to be used as energy. This seems to be very prominent in rats but when done on humans with a typical dose of 3,000mg (50% HCA) spread out with meals we really don't see an effect(12). One study did show a slight difference with the GC group losing an extra 4%(13), but remember one study does not prove or disprove anything, the whole scientific consensus and available knowledge needs to be taken into account, and as of right now its pretty negative when it comes to Garcinia Cambogia. (http://examine.com/supplements/Garcinia+cambogia/)
Raspberry Ketone
Very similar to GC it is highly marketed and over rated. A majority of the studies are done on rats (14), and we can only make hypothesis based on rat research not factual jumps and conclusions. Its is speculated that taking Raspberry Ketone (RK) orally may not be effective. One study with RK taken by humans in conjunction with other ingredients Caffeine, Capsaicin, Garlic, Ginger and Citrus aurantium had a positive outcome, an extra 5% weight loss was recorded from the supplement group compared to the placebo group (15). This is interesting as the cocktail of ingredients seemed to be effective but RK by themselves have no evidence of having any benefit in human trials. (http://examine.com/supplements/Raspberry+Ketone/)
Alpha Lipoic Acid
Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA) is a fatty acid mainly seen in the mitochondria, its been researched very well with positive evidence in appetite suppressing. ALA as an appetite suppressant is usually seen in doses of 300-600mg, I will not be discussing its appetite suppressive behaviors any more, but here is some ample information about it (16). Now when it comes to ALA effecting fat loss it seems to be through AMPK inhibition (17) but more research is needed to fully understand. One study looking at weight loss took one placebo and two ALA groups (1200 mg, 1800 mg of ALA), both ALA groups saw increase in weight loss and it was significant at the the higher dose of 1800 mg (18). More research needs to be done to really understand why and how effective ALA may be pertaining to fat loss (besides through suppressing appetite) before claims can definitively be made.(http://examine.com/supplements/Alpha-Lipoic+Acid/)
Yohimbine
Yohimbine also known as yohimbe is a stimulant that has high promise for effecting weight loss in obese and lean individuals. Yohimbe seems to work through thermogenesis by acting on aregonic receptors by increasing enzyme catalyst (19) and by increasing adrenaline (20). There seems to be some evidence that the spike of increase adrenaline fades over time (2 weeks), but thermogenesis from aregonic receptors seems to stay. There are mixed results of yohimbine in human trials. One study showed an approximate 2kg fat decrease in soccer players taking 20 mg of yohimbe compared to placebo (21), but another study has shown null results in healthy individuals (22). It seems fair to say that the evidence is unclear as of right now and more interventions are needed to expand the evidence. (http://examine.com/supplements/Yohimbine/)
If you haven't noticed I have placed the link to the supplements page from Examine at the end of each paragraph, they go into greater detail and over more areas of the supplement then I ever could. A recurring theme for most weight loss supplements is that more research is needed and what research we do have shows a minor effect on weight loss through thermogenesis (if you are lucky maybe an extra 200 calories burned at the end of the day). So what you have to ask yourself, is the price worth it? For some I understand that supplements may be more helpful psychological (buying that supplement once a month keeps you going to the gym/motivated), but that doesn't mean we can just discard all the lies and half truths supplement companies are saying about their products (and how long will that motivation last?). So its seems that caffeine and yohimbine are some of the most reliable and potent “fat burners” from the above list, remember you can cheaply buy caffeine from walgreens for almost ⅙ of the price compared to your typical name brand thermogenic. My opinion is that when it comes to weight loss supplements, if you are in caloric deficit and doing some type of activity the weight will come off and adding in a thermogenic pill will have a small effect that you wouldn't be able to even realize you are taking it (I know people scream that they can feel the fat burning off or after starting the pill the weight just started dropping but I would argue that they are BS you or just giving all the credit to the pill).
Part Two on Muscle gain/building supplements will be out soon
