Home Posts tagged "Creatine"

CSP Elite Baseball Development Podcast: Making Sense of Supplements with Angie Asche

We're excited to welcome sports dietitian Angie Ashe to this week's podcast. Angie does an outstanding job with nutritional counseling for a variety of athletes, and has a lot of experience working with baseball players in particular. In this episode, we delve into the controversial topic of nutrition supplementation.

A special thanks to this show's sponsor, Marc Pro. Head to www.MarcPro.com and enter the coupon code CRESSEY at checkout to receive 10% off on your order.

Show Outline

  • How Angie goes about starting nutritional conversations with her athletes and teaching them what they can do before looking to dietary supplements
  • Why athletes should be maximizing what they are eating and drinking before worrying about what supplements they should be taking
  • What supplement story initially sparked Angie’s interest in the world of supplements as a dietician
  • Where athletes can be misguided by the hype around supplements
  • What supplements Angie sees as must-haves in all peoples’ diets
  • What boxes Angie looks to check before recommending dietary supplementation in youth athletes
  • Why individuals need to be aware of the post-market testing model exploited by the supplement industry in order to understand the importance of buying third party verified products
  • How being conscious of ingredients on supplement labels can make it easier for consumers to identify safe and ethical supplements
  • What supplements are a complete waste of money
  • What athletes need to know about popular supplements such as BCAAs, collagen powders, probiotics, and glutamine
  • What to look for and stray away from when investing in protein powders
  • What guidelines Angie recommends for consuming creatine and how it can be used to improve athletic performance
  • With the heightened popularity of preworkout and energy drinks, why athletes should be cognizant of the source of their caffeine consumption and what Angie recommends for caffeine intake in one’s diet
  • What research says about the benefits of drinking coffee and how obtaining caffeine from healthy sources is often overlooked for healthy living and improving human performance
  • How individuals should be concerned about consuming more processed protein sources as more people are moving away from animal consumption and towards alternative diets
  • Where Angie goes to learn more about nutrition and stay up to date on the research of the field
  • What Angie’s go-to smoothie is for skinny individuals looking to gain weight
  • Where Angie sees future research in the nutrition community heading

You can follow Angie on Twitter at @EleatNutrition and on Instagram at @EleatNutrition.

Sponsor Reminder

This episode is brought to you by Marc Pro, a cutting-edge EMS device that uses patented technology to create non-fatiguing muscle activation. Muscle activation with Marc Pro facilitates each stage of the body’s natural recovery process- similar to active recovery, but without the extra effort and muscle fatigue. Athletes can use it for as long as they need to ensure a more full and quick recovery in between training or games. With its portability and ease of use, players can use Marc Pro while traveling between games or while relaxing at home. Players and trainers from every MLB team - including over 200 pro pitchers - use Marc Pro. Put Marc Pro to the test for yourself with their new "Try Before you Buy" program, and use promo code CRESSEY at checkout at www.MarcPro.com for 10% off on your order.

Podcast Feedback

If you like what you hear, we'd be thrilled if you'd consider subscribing to the podcast and leaving us an iTunes review. You can do so HERE.

And, we welcome your suggestions for future guests and questions. Just email elitebaseballpodcast@gmail.com.

Thank you for your continued support!

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Can You Trust the Research You’re Reading?

Today's guest post comes from the bright minds at Examine.com, who just released their new continuing education resource, Examine Research Digest. I love their stuff, and I'm sure you will, too. -EC

The internet is one of the last true democracies.

It’s a place where anybody with the necessary tools (a computer and an internet connection) can actively shape the perception of information...even if they have no qualification to do so.

Though the democratization of information is a good thing, one would assume that certain topics like scientific research would remain steeped in their foundations, because...well...that's how they remain reliable.

Unfortunately, in efforts to keep up with the demands for new, sexy content, many writers have taken to regurgitating information with little to no understanding of its context or how it affects you: the end reader. This is one of the many ways information gets skewed.

It’s often said that misinformation is a symptom of misinterpretation. The very definition of words can mean different things to different people.

questi8-n

One example of this is during research when a conclusion is reported as "significant." When scientists use this term, it implies "statistical significance." What this means is that the probability of the observations being due to the intervention is much greater than simply by chance.

This is very different than the general understanding of “significant.” Think of it this way: if your deadlift goes up from 405 to 410, that could be considered statistically significant in science. Would you say "my deadlift went up significantly," though? Probably not!

Now imagine how this simple misunderstanding of a term can impact the interpretation of a study. Something that may mean very little to a researcher is taken out of context by a well meaning blogger, eventually ending up as a eye-catching headline in your Facebook timeline.

A second way that information becomes misinformation is through the process of simplification.

When scientific studies are written, they are done so to most effectively relay their findings to other scientists, facilitating future studies and discoveries on the topic in question. If you’ve ever read a research study, you know that this approach to writing hinges on the use of precise terminology and complex verbiage so that nothing gets misinterpreted.

Unfortunately, this approach is less than ideal for relaying important findings to the people who can apply it. This leaves a few options:

1. "Dumb down" the content, hoping nothing gets lost in translation.

2. Keep as-is, with the understanding that it won't be able to reach as many people as intended.

3. In the most egregious option, data gets turned into "sound bites" that are easily transmitted by traditional media outlets.

Once one or more of these things happen, all traces of relevance to the original source get lost and misinformation starts to get spread. Moreover, another equally insidious way misinformation gets spread is by shifting focus onto one study (cherry-picking) rather than the entire body of evidence.

The internet has rapidly increased the speed of the news cycle. Information that once had time to be verified has taken a backseat to "as-it-happens" tidbits on Twitter. For the media to keep up, more factually inaccurate information gets disseminated in far less time.

Now, appreciate the fact that a news organization only has so much air time or so many words to talk about a new publication, and you can see how there isn't enough time to allow an adequate in-depth analysis of past studies or how the new study fits into the overall body of evidence.

Remember the media screaming “a high-protein diet is as bad as smoking?” Or that “fish oil caused prostate cancer?” These are perfect examples of two well-intentioned studies blown way out of proportion.

Pills

This leads to the fourth and final way misinformation gets spread: the reliance on controversy to gain an audience.

Earlier this year a blog post theorizing the connection between creatine consumption and cancer took social media by storm. The writers were savvy enough to understand that a title proclaiming creatine to be harmful had far more appeal than yet another post confirming its athletic performance benefits.

This sort of thing isn’t a new occurrence, but for some strange reason, audiences never tire of it. Once an controversial article starts getting shared, a case of broken telephone comes into play, transforming once-quality research into misinformation. As an industry, this is a problem we need to address.

"Epilogue" from EC

In spite of all this misinformation, there are people still fighting the good fight - and that's why I’m a big fan of Examine.com. They wrote our most popular guest post ever (on the science of sleep). And, whenever people ask me about supplementation, I refer them to Examine.com.

To that end, for those who want to be on the cutting edge of research, and want something that counters the overwhelming amount of misinformation, I'd recommend Examine.com's fantastic new resource, the Examine Research Digest (ERD).

ERD-intro-images

Before a study is presented in ERD, it's analyzed and reviewed by the researchers, then all references and claims are double-checked by a panel of editors. Subsequently, a final pass is done by a review panel of industry and academic leaders with decades of experience. Because you have a panel from different backgrounds, you know that you’re getting the complete picture, not the analysis of a single person.

Needless to say, I'm excited to take advantage of this resource personally to stay on up-to-date on some of the latest nutrition and supplementation research - and its practical applications for my clients and readers. I'd strongly encourage you to do the same, especially since it's available at a 20% off introductory price this week only. You can learn more HERE.

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The Question I Hate to Be Asked

There's one question that I get almost daily, and in spite of the fact that it drives me bonkers, I still do my best to answer it:

What supplements should I take?

The problem isn't that there aren't some supplements out there that can really help.  Anyone who's done even a cursory review of the research can speak to the value of supplements like Vitamin D and fish oil.  And, anyone who has ever reviewed the typical teenage athlete's diet can appreciate that a greens supplement would go a long way.

The bigger issue is that this question is an example of the carriage getting put in front of the horse.  In other words, the people asking the question are usually getting way ahead of themselves and need to focus on proper diet first. 

If you don't know what a healthy diet actually includes, how can you know what you need to supplement (dictionary.com: "to complete") with to get to where you want to be?

It goes beyond that, as the supplement question opens a big can of worms for several reasons:

1. The margins in the supplement industry are absolutely absurd - As a result, there are a lot of unethical people who flock to this industry in hopes of making some serious cash, playing on people's ignorance and insecurities. This is why you see bold advertising claims, doctored-up before/after photos, and - shamefully - products that don't actually make their ingredients list.  Some companies may use cheap fillers to keep their costs down, or include banned substances unbeknownst to the consumer in order to improve efficacy.  As a result of all this, you can't just recommend a supplement anymore; you also have to take the reputation of the brand into account.

2. It's a dynamic industry - With big money and potentially world-changing discoveries to be made, the game is constantly changing.  New research is published daily, and new products enter the market just as frequently to complement the daily influx of brands.  Plus, new uses for old supplements are always being introduced.  As an example, we once thought creatine was just a supplement for athletic performance, and now it's being looked at as a valuable supplement in treating many chronic disease states. Unless you're reading journal articles full-time and asking around in the industry, it's hard to stay on top of all the new information.

3. Dosing matters - Using the creatine example again, we were once all taught that we needed to load creatine for the initial period - and most of us who did it spent the first 7-10 days on the supplement with gurgly stomachs and diarrhea.  Now, we know that's not really necessary.  And, contrary to what we were told back in the 1990s, you don't need to crush a load of simple sugars to get the muscles to "suck it up." How much you take, when you take it, and what it's taken with all impact a supplement's efficacy.

4. Supplements mean different things to different people - If a person is financially comfortable, he or she can likely afford a new-age and potentially marginaly effective supplement in hopes of some return-on-investment.  For someone else, that $40 might be a huge deal.  What works for one athlete won't matter nearly as much for another, too; the baseball players with whom I've spoken haven't really benefited at all from beta-alanine supplement, but the competitive cyclists and soccer players have thrived on it; the metabolic demands of the sport are entirely different.

Additionally, everyone has a different social perspective on what supplements mean.  I once had a mother ask me about creatine for her son, and she commented that she viewed creatine as a "gateway drug" like marijuana.  This backlash is only getting worse and worse because of the unethical actions of a few professional athletes (blaming supplements for positive tests) and supplement companies (not living up to label claims).

For all these reasons, I really outsource my supplement questions to people who stay much more up-to-date on the topics than I can.  At our facility, I'm fortunate to have a great nutrition folks who stay as up-to-date on the research as possible - and also has a great mindset from which to discuss things with athletes, coaches, and parents.

Fortunately for us, though, we also have the good folks at Examine.com and their expertise at our fingertips on this front, too. They're a 100% transparent, independent organization that scrutinizing supplement efficacy - and a whole lot more in the health and human performance industries. In other words, everything they publish comes from peer-reviewed journals and is without influence from supplement companies - so you don't have to worry about "bro science" infiltrating their findings.

Their offering has expanded dramatically since the site was founded over a decade ago, and with that in mind, I’m going to encourage you to check out Examine 2.0, the newly launched update to their flagship offering. Examine distills thousands of studies into actionable insights. They also include monthly updates of the latest research, helping you to stay on top of what’s new in the industry (and get CEUs in the process). Through 8/25, you can get a big discount as one of my readers at http://examine.news/cressey.

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Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 4/11/13

Here's this week's list of recommended strength and conditioning reading:

To Sell Is Human - This was a great book I finished last week.  The title is a bit misleading, though, as the author (Daniel Pink) actually talks predominantly about "non-sales selling:" how we "sell" our ideas to family members, clients, co-workers, and others. It's an awesome collection of social behavior research that definitely impacted me as both a coach and business owner. If you like the writing of Malcolm Gladwell and Chip and Dan Heath, you'll enjoy this.

Strength Training Programs for the Pros and the Joes: Not As Different as You Might Think - While I was on vacation, a guy I met asked how training professional athletes differed from what I do with normal folks who just want to be fit. I told him he'd be surprised at how many similarities there are, and this article from a while back outlines why.

New Uses for Creatine - This was an excellent review of the recent research on creatine supplementation. More and more, creatine supplementation is proving valuable for general health, not just performance.

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