Rider_1

I agree with this except for the protein powder, with a caveat. If someone is trying to build muscle, it's almost impossible to eat enough protein through regular dietary means.

Also, creatine gives me a very noticeable boost.

livedarklions

"Supplements" are a category of drug created for the sole purpose of getting around the safety and effectiveness requirements for drug approval. Let that sink in a while.

Also, they are so poorly regulated that the resemblance between the ingredients listed on the label and what's actually in the product might as well be entirely coincidental.

Some people have conditions that require supplementation for particular vitamins, etc. Otherwise, this whole field is dominated by people who have been masters at selling cheap basically useless crap at high prices.

wolfchild

Not being able to get enough protein from food is one of the biggest lies ever invented by supplement manufacturers, it's a marketing strategy used by supplement manufacturers to sell more protein powder...In reality it is very easy to get more than enough protein from food. Protein deficiency doesn't exist and most people are already eating more than enough. Protein powder is not some magical substance that will build muscle. Foods such as meat, fish, dairy products, eggs are the foundation for building and maintaining muscle.

Rider_1

Sorry, but I disagree. I'm pretty aware of advertising hype, but when it comes to weight training to gain muscle, it's very hard to eat enough protein through meat, fish, dairy products, and eggs. Sure, it can be done, but the volume of food needed would be too much, certainly on a regular basis, not to mention the cost. I've tried. I'm not talking about maintaining, I'm talking about building muscle. How many grams of protein per day do you think that requires?

Also, " Protein powder is not some magical substance that will build muscle". Protein is precisely what muscle is built from.

PoorInRichfield

Supplements certainly are a tricky topic... I fully support anyone who refuses to take them and anyone who has an entire closet full of them!

I personally think that if a person eats a healthy diet that is heavy in organic veggies and perhaps sprinkled with some "clean" meat, a person can go a lifetime w/o needing any supplements. Your body gets more out of real food than it does processed foods and supplements.

If a person is considering supplements, I'd suggest looking at your diet first and improve that. A steady diet of Krispy Kreme's with the world's most expensive multi vitamin doesn't make any sense. If you're eating well and are still having some issues and concerns, targeting the concerns with specific supplements makes sense (to me).

I had been taking a rather expensive multi-vitamin and recently stopped. I figure that just pouring supplements into my pie-hole with no metrics to prove that they're doing any good is probably a waste of money. I haven't given-up on supplements, but I now only take them to address specific conditions. If they condition doesn't improve after a few months of taking the supplement, I stop or try something else.

I used to be anti-supplement until I gave vitamin D3 a try years ago. I live in Wisconsin where it's dark 99% of the year (kinda) and I have an office job, so I don't get a lot of sun. I noticed that since taking D3, I rarely get colds any more. Heck, I rarely get sick. I have since learned about taking vitamin K2 with D3 to help your body push calcium into your bones instead of your veins. (I'm not a health professional, so please do your own research on this you're not familiar with K2 MK7.) I've also experienced that magnesium certainly helps move food through the body (and out the other end!), but if I eat enough fiber rich foods, I don't really need that.

An unusual supplement I still take is called Mind Lab Pro. It's a nootropic (brain supplement, so to speak) that I've been taking as I'm in software development and keeping my brain sharp is a priority. I don't think this nootropic is for everyone, but after quite a bit of research on the product, I'm comfortable with thinking it's doing me more harm than good.

More related to the caffeine topic, I was coffee-free for the first 45 years of my life. I then started experimenting with Bulletproof coffee (my own version of it) with my wife and we both love it. We now just drink BP coffee for breakfast and nothing else. The fats in the coffee keep us satiated well past lunch time. Heck, I just did a relatively hard 30 mile bike ride on nothing more than a 16oz cup of BP coffee. I'm not saying BP coffee is a good training food compared to carbs, but switching to a high fat diet vs a high carb diet does some cool stuff and I'm sticking to it!

While not a supplements, I regularly take Glucosamine for a knee issue. It took a while to work, but it does work and is very cheap. I also take stinging nettle root for prostate irritation and this also works quite well.

Ok, I'm done giving everyone my health history.

jjafterdark

I timed how long it took to finish all my supplements after lunch. It only took 5 minutes. I had to drink a couple of cups water along with it which is also probably beneficial since it curbs hunger a little bit. All in all, at most a minor inconvenience.

wolfchild

I weigh 160 pounds so I am aiming at getting about 130-150 grams of protein per day by eating 3 meals per day. I also do strength training and conditioning workouts besides riding my bikes. I am not interested in looking like a bodybuilder and I don't train like a bodybuilder, I just train to maintain general fitness and athleticism.

livedarklions

First of all, you can definitely get a very large amount of protein through food, I can't for tthe life of me see any advantage to taking in bunches of whey over eating nonfat greek yogurt for example.

Second, like all other supplements, when you eat them, you really don't know what you're actually consuming because the regulation is so lax. Lab analysis is finding actual toxins in some of them. No thanks.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/stayi...rotein-powders

Third, it's not clear that eating a purified protein doesn't cancel itself out by blocking the absorption of amino acids from food. The science on that is conflicting, so it's an issue worth following as the research continues.

unterhausen

I think my multivitamin was mostly industrial waste. I thought I was getting some benefit from it, but then I realized the only effect I was seeing was from the potassium. Which makes no sense to me in a supplement. It's like taking a salt pill and thinking it's making you healthier. I have taken most of the fad supplements and never seen any benefit from any of them. Which is weird, because most of them have fans that swear by them.

MoAlpha

Two comments:

1. Protein supplementation works. I have replaced my entire body several times over with whey protein and I keep getting better looking.
2. There is no good evidence from the many meta-analyses of the field that supplementation of any vitamin or micronutrient is beneficial in individuals without a proven deficiency of such.

Rider_1

I'm not talking about bodybuilding per se, but there are times when I try to put on a bit of size. I find it difficult to eat as much food as would be necessary to get the amount of protein needed, and far too expensive. We're talking supplements, not replacements. I use extra protein to meet the goal, on top of a healthy, balanced diet. I agreed with what you said, and added that I feel like a protein supplement helps.

This is true. It's a risk, but I don't use protein regularly, actually not that often at all. In fact, I rarely use any supplements, other than I was taking D3 for a bit before the weather got better and I could get out in the sun. I'm a pretty firm believer that a good diet gives you what you need.

Solo_rider

To be honest, I've never felt any difference (feeling better or having energy, or lack of it) when taking/not taking vitamins/supplements. And this is from a guy who eats only one small simple meal a day and no meat- meaning I hardly ever get my body's needs of nutrition. Someone like me should barely be able to stand up -according to what they tell us about "eating healthy", yet when I work, I work like a mule (very physically demanding job), and then when the weather's good I ride my bike after work for about 2 hours and ride it like a maniac. That's without taking any supplements or eating "healthy". For the past couple of months I've been taking "meal replacement" (like Ensure) once or twice a day and also some times after I ride my bike I take a scoop or so of Whey protein (30-40 grams) and have also been taking multivitamins and again the difference is ZERO. I don't even know why I take them because to me, they're like a waste of money but then what do you do when you only eat one meal a day (I just don't like to eat) ?

Orlando

I think much of what you've been advised here has merit but I also think that some critical points have not received any consideration. Fist of all, your age. Older folks tend to lose the ability to absorb some nutrients the way they did when younger. Secondly, you need to consider your current diet and nutrient intake. And finally you need to give some thought to your level of physical activity. If you're burning 4k Kcals/day or more your nutrient intake is going to be very different than if it is say, about 2.5 Kcals/day. As some have pointed out, the supplement business is not covered by the Federal agencies in the USA. They lobby the government heavily and are allowed to make their own rules. Some companies are honest and give good value, some others... not so much. So it's 'caveat emptor' for the consumer. If you are serious about this you should probably have some blood tests done to see if you in fact have any deficiencies. Then a review with a qualified dietician would be a good idea. Finally, remember, the thing with vitamins and minerals in your body is that a deficiency can effect you and needs correction but having a surplus in your system will only give you expensive urine and some a too much of some vitamins and minerals can be detrimental to your health. Good on ya for thinking about this subject. It was interesting reading all the different viewpoints. Ride on!

veganbikes

I like a nice cup of EPO in the morning.

livedarklions

Needs a testosterone chaser.

greatscott

If you ask your personal doctor they'll tell you that if your diet is good you don't need supplements. I've never taken any supplements in my entire life and I'm still alive and well after 67 years.

Of course if you have some sort of problem that was diagnosed by a doctor and they're telling you that you need to xyb supplements, then do as the doctor told you.

veganbikes

Of course...what else would you do. Only the best.

Juan Foote

First off, don't consider a daily vitamin a "supplement" per se, in light of a discussion like this. Nutritional additives and supplements to help enhance performance or strength are different things to me.

Some years ago, after my accident, and while I was trying to move past the riding by myself getting into group rides stage, I had hit a wall that I was completely unable to get over as far as energy and strength to move past. I went up to the local GNC and picked up a couple of boxes of a "pill" blend of additives that was probably six pills by itself. Another box of pills that were a "workout enhancer" (we find often this is something akin to MDMA with lifters, commonly), and the final thing which was a protein and something else that won't come to me, one of those your body produces naturally, but strength building is helped with a short run of....dangit...anyway. I took the cocktail for about six months to varying degrees and really jumped up in performance for the short amount of time. It helped me a lot.
I will say that the enhancer portion of the cocktail had to be cut down significantly from it's recommended dosage. It was potent. I also eliminated the additive to the protein powder and went to a straight whey blend.

Mistiorr

I guess that any supplements are not good for a health

RiceAWay

Well, I am 75. I did some work for the military many years ago that had to do with programming the detector to measure the presence and density of poison gas. This was used to protect our soldiers while they were recovering those WMD that the leftists said never existed. (We only discovered 100,000 tons of them). In any case you had to put the device inside of a chamber and allow poison gas into it in measured quantities so that I could test the accuracy of my program. I could NOT get it to measure accurately. Up at full strength is was fine but at lower levels, the most dangerous kind, it would not measure correctly. Finally I decided that the physicists were wrong so I dug out the texts on calculus and did all of the work myself and discovered that they were, as usual, full of crap since it wasn't their lives on the line. Coming to work the next day I was excited to test my calculations and I changed the program and I had to get the device out of the gas chamber so I pumped it out. Normally you would pump it out for 45 minutes but since I'm and engineer I know that anything as dangerous as that you ALWAYS give a 100% safety margin. Since I was excited to try it out, I only waited 30 minutes which would have given it a 50% safety margin. I pulled the device out, re-programmed it with the correct calculation and reinstalled it in the chamber and went through the entire process of lowest to highest and indeed it measured absolutely correct. I tested it a dozen times and every time it followed the gas curve with total accuracy.

To make a long story short - since that 45 minute pump-out had been designed by physicists who themselves would never have stepped foot inside of that chamber, they had left no safety margin at all.

I had burned and scarred my lungs with poison gas without even knowing it until the next bike race. Then it became more than obvious since I couldn't keep up with the lantern rouge.

I went to the military pulmonary specialists and they spotted the damage immediately and told me that it would never go away. And as far as I could tell it never did. Then when I had a concussion one of the things they did was an X-ray and CAT scan and said that I didn't have any marks on my lungs! Well that was good but my hematocrit had been low since the original problem and I can barely keep up with the slow guys.

I was taking C3 and iron to try and increase my hematocrit since Lemond had said that is what helped him. It didn't seem to do anything at all for me. Then this EPO-BOOST came along and I started using it. I used it for about 45 days and started getting weaker and weaker and slower and slower. Finally an 88 year old left me so far in the dust he had to stop and wait for me to catch up. I knew that something was really wrong. Looking at the label on that bottle it was nothing more than vitamins and iron and some plant matter which was supposed to be an artificial EPO. But there was no C3 in the list of vitamins and without that you cannot metabolize iron. So I stopped taking it and within a day there was a huge improvement and after 4 days I could honestly say that stuff had been poisoning me probably with iron build up.

Now I take anti-seizure medication for a concussion I sustained and there might be some interactions but that is very doubtful. Whatever is in that stuff is pretty bad over time. Furthermore, before I stopped taking it, I had a complete blood work-up and there was absolutely no change in my hematocrit, red blood cell count etc. I also had a chest X-ray and the specialist said I appeared to have scars in my lungs. Now I can't figure out how Stanford could have missed that.

Furthermore, if you order that EPO-BOOST from them they put you on an "automatic reorder" and it is hell trying to get off of that.

I am still a great deal slower than when I started taking that stuff. I don't know why and riding more doesn't seem to change that. But I suppose that eventually I'll get back to ground zero. I can tell very slight improvements with each ride. Topping the climbs now I'm not completely exhausted. But before I started taking that stuff I would only be miserable for the last couple hundred meters.

My advice it to NEVER take any "magic pills". You have absolutely no idea what this crap might do to you but you could pretty much guess that a well balanced diet would beat anything in a bottle.

tomato coupe

I guess you showed them.

Clipped_in

Me too, but there are a few things that have proven to provide benefits for me.

BCAA powder--definitely helps with recovery from longer rides at my current age of 57.
Whey protein--during strenuous rides of over 2 hours. Helps to avoid protein synthesis of muscle and combined with the BCAA during riding improves recovery.
Glucosamine + MSM--I just use the Costco/Kirkland brand. Keeps my joints healthy. It took this for a few years and wondered if it was doing anything. Then I stopped for a couple of years and began to have problems with bursitis in my knees. Started taking it again, and no bursitis whatsoever for the past two years.

These things work for me, but I'm still very skeptical of most supplements.

Mulberry20

Supplements do work and the most studied and effective are:

1) Whey Protein, within an hour after a hard work out. No other source of protein can be absorbed as quickly as whey. Totally safe and the older you get the more important it is. Good ones have BCAA’s.

2) Creatine, 5 grams a day does wonders for muscle strength and endurance. The older you get the more important it is.

3) Citrulline, this is a natural vasodilator that increases blood flow. You can use beet juice or beet powder too for nitrates. Both increase nitric oxide in your blood. Check with your doctor if you have low blood pressure or are on a medication for high blood pressure. This amino acid is in watermelon and a few veggies. It works.

4) Caffeine, an hour before no question it helps with stamina and concentration.

The Pre Jym supplement by Dr. Stoppani is a really good product before working out it has all the above and O/N Gold Standard Whey is my go to whey. Cost per month is about $35 maximum.

jay4usc

waste of money. Eat veggies and fruits.

jack pot 

I do 1 or 2 glasses of HUEL per day