canklecat

Turns out maybe Popeye really was strong to the finach because he eats his spinach. But not because of iron, as speculated for decades. It might be due to ecdysterone, found in some veggies, aquatic critters and some insects.

So, anyone here tried it for cycling fitness? Any recommendations for legit brands? There's a lot of junk in some supplements. And most Amazon reviews for any supplements amount to "Mayyybe it works." Pretty much the same thing with the DHEA, pregnenolone, magnesium lactate and other supplements I use. Maybe it works. Hard to be sure.

I'm leaning toward the BulkSupplements brand (yeah, that's their name for their generic bagged powders) because of their reputation for lab testing and low hype.

Meanwhile, I'm gonna stock up on Glory brand seasoned spinach and greens. Because it's delicious. And while I've made traditional southern greens from scratch, it takes a lot of fresh greens and big pots just to make a little bit. Glory is already good and reasonably priced.

wolfchild

98% of supplements which promise gains and increases in performance are a scam and don't work. Save your money and spend it on real food.

rosefarts

I've never understood why someone would cook spinach.

DrIsotope

Ecdysteroids. It's interesting reading, actually. Genuine research is being done on it, so it's possibly not just some questionable extract of a fruit no one has ever heard of, like most supplements that claim GET GAINZ.

Apparently, it's kinda like a steroid (though non-anabolic,) and what influences molting in insects. There are a bunch of newsfeed articles about people pushing for it to be banned as a PED, like this one from just yesterday.

"According to DW, the researchers conducted a 10-week study of 46 men, who were each given either a placebo or a daily supplement that contained as much ecdysterone as 8.8 pounds of spinach. The participants all followed the same strength training program, but the men who received the ecdysterone pills developed more muscle mass, and had up to three times the strength gains as the placebo group. “Even more relevant with respect to sports performance, significantly more pronounced increases in one-repetition bench press performance were observed,” the authors wrote in their abstract. “These data underline the effectivity of an ecdysterone supplementation with respect to sports performance.”

Hermes

I did a globaldro.com search and non of the substances turned up as prohibited and in fact, there were no matches. As the sight indicates, even though it is not found, one cannot assume it is okay. However, anything that is proven to be anabolic in nature will not be allowed. It is doubtful that spinach will be banned but they could put a limit on the amount of chemical found in the blood stream that would correspond to eating X amount of spinach.

If one is not subject to WADA then it does not matter except for any impact on ones health.

DrIsotope

I dunno if a person could eat 4kg of spinach a day and survive the aftermath.

Hell, I already have to take a bunch of pills every day. I’d try it, but I’m a cheapskate. Stuff be expensive.

Hermes

Beet juice is very popular as a NO supplier and performance enhancer. There are small studies that support this. However, small studies have also found that as one gets in better shape the effect of beet juice diminishes and ultimately goes to zero in highly conditioned athletes. I think that is our fate with most of these substances and even the banned stuff. It just does not work that well, if at all.

Cyclist0108

I did my undergraduate thesis (many years ago) on ecdysterone regulation and Drosophila development.

If you really want to go down this route, it might be more efficient to just start eating fruit flies.

DrIsotope

The County will come to your house and put a fruit fly trap in your citrus trees, free of charge! Get your ecdysteroids for free! All the flies you can eat!

Cyclist0108

It might be more efficient to cultivate a family of botfly larvae.

DrIsotope

If I'm going to be eating flies for their precious hormones, you can bet they're gonna be free range.

Cyclist0108

The beauty of the botflies is that their larvae hatch in your skin, and secrete ecdysone directly into your bloodstream as they develop.

Shimagnolo

How many kilos of flies per day do you recommend?

Cyclist0108

It depends. How quickly do you want to pupate?

canklecat

Good to know. I'll start saving the fruit flies I catch in a kitchen trap under the bananas. But I'll pass on the botfly direct injection for now.

Also, why cook spinach?
1. E coli.
2. Have you tasted Glory greens? They're delicious.

Cyclist0108

Time flies like an arrow.

Fruit flies like a banana.

canklecat

I ordered a batch of Brundle Fly and some sort of two-part mixer. Apparently the Brundle Fly supplement goes in one end of the mixer and I go in the other. Not really sure how that works.

Carbonfiberboy 

My guess is that these chemicals do work. Looking at reviews of this stuff sold online, apparently none of those supps contain any steroid at all. I think the real stuff costs like $200/g.

canklecat

From reading various sources, some reasonably credible, it appears the concentrated ecdysterone is pricey because it's expensive to isolate and without much demand there's no economy of scale to bring down the price.

So most of the readily available supplements are just powdered greens and bugs to concentrate it for an affordable price.

I've been trying the Bulk Supplements brand ajuga turkest extract for a week, just adding it to my usual creatine/BCAA drink mix. The flavor isn't bad, sort of a cross between smoked kale and leather. And I'm eating a lot more canned greens (hey, I like Glory greens anyway, so it's no sacrifice).

Does it work? Eh, doesn't hurt. My health is still in a sort of transition phase. It took about 6-8 months after my surgery for thyroid cancer to get my med level reasonably normal. My endocrinologist was very conservative and it took months of gradual, incremental dosage increases to get to this point. They were also concerned about bone loss (my bone density scan showed a little more osteoporosis than normal for my age). So I can understand the caution.

So maybe I'm feeling better because the thyroid thing is finally under control. Maybe the Popeye bug stuff works too. Mostly I've noticed my recovery time is much quicker now, between sets in the gym and afterward. Before the past couple of weeks, I did nothing else on PT days. I rode the 6 mile round trip to and from PT, did the hour long session, took a nap when I got home and was usually too tired afterward for another bike ride. I treated the bike ride to and from as an interval training session, because the hills are spaced out perfectly for 15-60 second full blast bursts, followed by coasting and soft pedaling. Usually I was pretty tired after those. But the past week I've taken longer rides after resting for 2-3 hours after PT.

Ditto, bike rides. For a couple of years my nemesis was recovery time between hard efforts on the club's 50+ mile rides. Eventually the many short, steep climbs would wear me down and I'd bail out early. But on the past few rides I'm recovering within minutes and the one day I bailed out a couple of miles early was because of neck cramps and a sore butt, not because I was tired. That's a significant improvement over 2016-2018.

But, again, that could just be coincidental to the thyroid improvement.

But the Popeye bug powder from Bulk Supplements wasn't expensive so no big deal if it's not really doing much. I'll finish the bag and wait a few weeks before trying it or another supplement again. Assuming my thyroid thing is stabilized that'll give me a better baseline to evaluate supplements.

Carbonfiberboy 

Turns out I was wrong about this in my previous post. Further research shows that it's available and not all that expensive. I didn't know the correct search terms. Try "Ecdysterone Cyanotis Extract" and/or just "Cyanotis Extract." Seems to be quite a bit of demand.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5144001/

canklecat

Interesting. Seems like that study implies the supplements marketed as spinach or plant-based sources for ecdysterone may not be genuine. I'm guessing the implication is that it's actually more insect-based or something consumers might find more appalling than appealing. I've eaten bug-based foodstuffs before so it doesn't bother me. I'd rather see the supplements marketed with complete sources.

Carbonfiberboy 

AFAIK, all those supplements are extracted from plants, at least 3 different plant species. I thought the study a bit amusing because apparently buyers might think that spinach is more OK than some Chinese plant they never heard of, so they brand it "spinach" but it's really the Chinese stuff. So these researchers do all this work and analysis to find out, sure 'nuff, consumers are being lied to. Yeah, OK, never heard of the happening, right?

Cyanotis Arachnoidea: