Anabolic Drive

Have you ever wondered how companies “prove” the claims listed on their products? The vast majority borrow third-party data to support their claims. For instance, even though virtually all companies claim to have proprietary blends of this and that, very few of them actually test those blends. In fact, most of them make claims based on the science published on a single ingredient in the formula.

So when companies actually do research on their actual product, we as consumers should applaud them. Below are a couple of studies, published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (www.jissn.com), showing that, indeed, certain products do work as claimed by the brand.

Scientists led by the leading muscle physiologist, Darryn Willoughby, Ph.D., determined the effects of 28 days of heavy resistance exercise combined with the nutritional supplement NO-Shotgun on body composition, muscle strength and mass, markers of satellite cell activation and clinical safety. Men trained four times per week for 28 days while also taking 27 grams per day of a placebo or NO-Shotgun 30 minutes prior to exercise. What happened? Some amazing things.

The NO-Shotgun group experienced greater gains in mass and total muscle protein, as well as a ginormous increase in the myogenic regulatory factors, or MRFs. In fact, this was the first study on a finished product to demonstrate MRF gains. No significant differences were found in any of the whole blood and serum clinical chemistry, which is an index of the product’s safety.

In case you’re wondering, MRFs are proteins that regulate myogenesis, which is the creation of new muscle tissue. The investigators also found that satellite cells—stem cells of skeletal muscles involved in the repair of damaged muscle as well as making muscle fibers bigger—were activated with this preworkout supplement. By turning those cells on, you turn on the molecular and cellular machinery of muscle hypertrophy. For bodybuilders that’s a damn good thing—imagine a supplement that turns on the genetic machinery of a cell!

The authors concluded that “NO-Shotgun effectively increases muscle strength and mass [and] myofibrillar protein content, and increases the content of markers indicative of satellite cell activation.”1

Another investigation sought to test the effectiveness of the dietary supplement BounceBack on delayed-onset muscle soreness, or DOMS, after standardized eccentric exercise. They discovered that subjects taking BounceBack capsules for 30 days experienced a significant reduction in standardized measures of pain and tenderness following eccentric exercise compared to those who did the same exercise but took a placebo. This product also appears to have a good safety profile.2

Editor’s note: Jose Antonio, Ph.D., is the CEO of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (www.theissn.org) and is a sports science consultant to VPX/Redline.

References

1 Shelmadine, B.; Cooke, M.; Buford, T.; et al. (2009). Effects of 28 days of resistance exercise and consuming a commercially available preworkout supplement, NO-Shotgun®, on body composition, muscle strength and mass, markers of satellite cell activation, and clinical safety markers in males. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 6(1):16.

2 Udani, J.K.; Singh, B.B.; Singh, V.J.; and Sandoval, E. (2009). BounceBack capsules for reduction of DOMS after eccentric exercise: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover pilot study. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 6:14.