Just Eat Well – The £250m Gym Supplement Industry Isn’t Delivering Results

I am always impressed by the wide range of sports nutrition products available for sale in gyms and sports centres. No matter what time of day it is, it seems that gym goers are always drinking a shake. The sports nutrition market in the UK has grown rapidly in the last few years. For example, in 2012 it was worth it approximately £260 million.

These products have many health benefits, including faster recovery, increased muscle mass, fat burning, improved muscle definition and a better “feel-good” experience.

With so much of this news, people seem to want to separate the good from the bad. As a sports scientist, I am often asked which ones people should be consuming during training. In my opinion, supplements are unnecessary, as you should be able to meet all of your nutritional needs through a proper diet.

But since that answer never seems to satisfy, in what follows we’ll look at some of the most popular supplements and the data on their importance to exercisers. This isn’t aimed at professional bodybuilders, but at people who work out several times a week.

Protein

The main reason to take protein is to augment muscle mass, as it stimulates the body to produce muscle protein. This is well-established, but there is often debate about how much protein is enough, what type to take, and when is the best time to take it.

The best type of protein seems to be protein powder. It is absorbed to the gut more than 70% faster than other options like casein or soy protein supplements. This means it reaches the muscles faster, which increases the rate at which the body builds muscle protein by more than 20% compared to other options.

When it comes to timing, many gym-goers swear by something called the “anabolic window.” The claim is that protein must be consumed within minutes of completing exercise to reap any benefits. Simply put, that’s just overkill. The Window it is probable last closer to 24–48 hours, not a few minutes.

When it comes to the amount of protein consumed, recent study It was found that newborn men weighing between 80kg and 85kg (12st 8lb and 13st 4lb) who regularly strength trained needed 20g of whey protein to achieve the best possible result – what we in the industry call “maximum stimulation”.

Taking more than 20 g of protein seems unnecessary, at least in this population. It just leads to the excretion of a lot of extra protein in the urine.

Creatine

Creatine has been a popular supplement for many years, although it is also found naturally in red meat, eggs, and fish. Quite a vast amount scientific evidence supports muscle growth and regeneration.

Science tells us that when creatine is absorbed into the muscles, it helps generate energy. This allows the muscles to contract and continue to exercise. This can lend a hand augment muscle mass and strength gains in response to strength training.

However, the effect of creatine on athletic performance is less convincing. increases water storage in the bodywhich increases body mass. In sports where body mass is critical, this counteracts the benefits to muscle and means that there is unlikely to be any benefit overall.

Vitamins

It is often assumed that vitamins are good for your health. While this is true, taking too much can have the opposite effect on both your health and your exercise.

In particular, vitamins C and E, which act as antioxidants, have been shown to hinder the body’s adaptation to physical training. The last two studies I discovered that In people who took high doses of both vitamins (1000 mg/day of vitamin C and 267 mg/day of vitamin E), no improvement in aerobic capacity or exercise performance was observed.

This level of consumption was 250 times higher than the recommended daily intake of vitamin C and 80 times higher than the intake of vitamin E – although it was within the range of doses of commercially available supplements.

The study yielded another critical finding. Two benefits of regular exercise are that people’s bodies become more sensitive to insulin, meaning that a person is less likely to develop diabetes; and they can produce more energy by creating more “workhorse” units in cells, which are known as mitochondria.

The people in the study who took vitamins found that these benefits were somewhat diminished. This suggests that these supplements may do more harm than good, especially if you take them in vast amounts.

Caffeine

People take caffeine not to lend a hand their body adapt to training, but rather to improve performance during a single exercise, such as on race day.

Taking caffeine supplements will actually augment your endurance during exercise. Coffee lovers I will be happy when I find out that you can get the same benefits from drinking coffee, although I’m not sure I can imagine people sipping it on a treadmill.

Energy drinks

Carbohydrate-based drinks have been around for a long time, and have long been considered valuable for the way they boost energy and hydration. But in recent years, evidence has emerged to support their ability to improve acute exercise performance has been questioned.

While I am sure these drinks will come in handy during long, intense workouts lasting around two hours, they are also often consumed during shorter workouts when needed. will probably bring little benefit.

There It was also There has been a lot of concern in recent years about newborn children consuming these drinks, getting little exercise and unknowingly increasing their sugar and calorie intake, which may be contributing to the obesity crisis. These drinks also often contain caffeine, which is also not recommended for children.

Other supplements

There are several other supplements available that claim to benefit exercisers. These include things like beta-alanine, fish oil, conjugated linoleic acid, L-carnitine, L-arginine, nitrate, and vitamin D. Current evidence suggests that taking such supplements does not provide any apparent benefit.

Supplement contamination

IN recent study 10% of the supplements tested contained banned substances such as steroids. It is clear that not only is this a potential drug test failure issue for competitive sports, but it is also extremely concerning to me that these substances could be found in health products that you can buy at your local supermarket.

In tiny, this brings us back to square one. Nutritional products can be beneficial for exercisers, but there’s so much misinformation out there that you could be wasting money or even hurting your body’s performance.

If the question is, “what supplements should I take to improve my training?” the uncomplicated answer is: Nothing. Exercise, eat a balanced diet, and enjoy it!