John: I think it should be based on your personal goals. For example, if you want to put on as much muscle as possible it would make sense to take creatine. Creatine is well researched and shown to help increase muscle mass. The available research indicates it is very well tolerated, effective and safe for use. If your goal is muscle mass or strength, you’d be short changing yourself if you didn’t take creatine.
With that said, not all supplements are as well researched and as effective as creatine, and this is where the confusion about supplements come in. Even though two supplements can sit on a store shelf side by side, there is no guarantee that they have the same level of research supporting their efficacy and safety. So you really are left to the mercy of each supplement manufacturer hoping that they are honest people and won’t try to screw you. And I would say most big brands are doing their best to produce a quality product. After all, it is not in their best interest to make a product that makes all of their customers sick. It wouldn’t be long until they were out of business and being sued by everyone and their dog.
Rusty (Follow-up): John…It sounds like creatine is a unanimous winner when it comes to gaining muscle. Back in the early 90’s when it exploded onto the scene it was popular to mix it with grape juice. What is your recommended approach to using creatine? Do people really need to load it for 5 days?
John: Loading isn’t necessary, you can just start taking one dose per day and you’ll see results after a week or two, loading might get you there a few days faster, but by the end of 3 or 4 weeks it won’t make any difference if you loaded or not. If you are going to load creatine you don’t need to do it for five days, you can get the same result just loading for 1-2 days tops and then drop down to one serving per day, five days of loading is total over kill and totally unnecessary.
Brad: No not at all. I think they are an industry that have grown by leaps and bounds over the last decade, and as they become bigger and more regulated their products will probably do very little harm, but for now there is always a small risk associated with supplements. As supplement companies become more and more profitable they have more and more money to spend on investigating new and novel ingredients that I believe are really beginning to touch on the realm of pharmaceuticals. Yet, despite this advanced technology they do not need to conduct pharma style phase trials, and do not need to do tetrogenicity or drug interaction studies prior to marketing their product (this is not to say that some companies don’t do this, just as this time, to the best of my knowledge it is not required). The bottom line is I think it is only a matter of time before one of them stumbles upon something very potent that could possibly have very dangerous side effects.
Rusty (Follow-up): Brad & John…I heard a rumor a few years back that the FDA was going to regulate all supplements like
pharmaceuticals. It takes years for a drug companies to get a drug approved, do you think anything similar will happen in the supplement industry? Do you believe that legislation will tighten up at all when it comes to supplements?
Brad: I hope so, but I have my doubts. Firstly, the supplement industry has some very effective lobbyist groups working for them. Secondly, with the exception of the ephedrine scare, supplements haven’t really hurt too many people. Sure, there is the empty promises and hit to your wallet, but to my knowledge its not like they are killing hundreds of thousands of people. The sad thing is that regulation would make the industry better. I know with 100% certainty that many of the big companies already have excellent safety assurance and quality assurance programs in place. They could easily survive in a more regulated climate. It’s the small “look what we made in Jim’s basement” companies that wouldn't survive – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
John: Trying to predict what the government is going to do in this area is tough. I don’t expect them to regulate them as strictly as drug simply because most of them aren’t anywhere near as effective as drugs and therefore the demand just isn’t there. My guess is that the few products that show true drug like effects will get regulated on a case by case basis and perhaps get removed from the supplement category and moved into the drug category of regulation. The rest of the products that don’t seem to do much but are also basically benign will remain in the obscure category of dietary supplement, not a food, not a drug.