Protein, Creatine, BCAA Supplements DEBUNKED & What We Should Take

Hi guys, let’s clear some supplement confusions especially about protein, creatine, bcaas. Here’s why we shouldn’t take them and what supplements should you be taking. Stick around to find out!

Protein

Most of us know protein is a very overrated nutrient. But by how much?

On average, we get 70% more protein than we need everyday. Including those on a plant based diet. Only 3% of Americans are protein deficient but 97% of Americans are Fiber deficient. So we don’t have to worry about protein at all, we should instead be asking ourselves if we are getting enough fiber.

But if you still want to take protein supplements for whatever reason, do be aware that almost 50% of protein supplements have lead concentrations above the safe limit.

So we don’t need protein supplements at all, get your protein from whole plant sources which are risk free as well. To me, protein supplements are known as expensive pee.

Creatine

Creatine acts as a quick energy boost when your oxygen and blood sugars are running low. Creatine has been shown to improve memory in vegetarians but decrease memory in meat eaters. This maybe because meat eaters have down regulated creatine synthesis because they get it from eating animal muscles. But plant eaters are making supplements all the time so taking creatine supplement gives them an extra boost.

Also, half of the 33 brands of creatine supplements have been shown to contain contaminants and heavy metals. The link to the study will be in the description below. So I’d be on the safe side and stay away from creatine supplements as it’s something we don’t really need anyway.

BCAAs

It’s a very similar story for BCAAs, there are studies showing the effectiveness in improving muscle protein synthesis but there are also other studies showing a lowering of synthesis. So whether BCAAs actually help us is questionable. But here’s why we should not take BCAAs at all.

Our body can’t handle refined foods very well such as refined carbs raising your blood sugar, refined oils, thickening your blood, and also refined protein, raising IGF1 which fuels all stages of cancer.

Yup, so BCAAs might not actually be good for you after all.

https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12970-017-0184-9

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07315724.2015.1132019?journalCode=uacn20&

Iron

Too little iron causes anemia, but if we absorb too much, we maybe increasing our risk from colorectal cancer, heart disease, neurodegenerative disorders and inflammation.

Iron from plant sources can be regulated by the body if you take too much. But if you take too much iron from animals, heme iron, the body can’t regulate it and will pass through the intestinal walls. Why is that bad? Iron is a can induce oxidative stress, DNA damage and has cancer causing abilities.

A recent study found that a significant increase in oxidative stress in women taking iron supplements. So we should be getting our iron from plant sources together with vitamin C to help iron absorption.

Omega3s

Omega 3s have been shown to minimize brain shrinkage but helping heart health is questionable. However, we should not be taking omega 3s from fish and fish oil because the same fish has mercury and other toxic compounds that will impair your health instead.

So we should ideally be taking a contaminant free source of Omega 3s. Doctor Greger recommends 250mg a day either from a plant derived supplement or a tablespoon of flaxseeds everyday.

Multivitamins

In 2013, a meta analysis of 21 Randomized Controlled Trials covering 90000 people showed no significant association with heart attack, stroke or mortality.

Americans spend over $11 billion a year on supplements, that should have been spend on actual sources of vitamins which are fruits and vegetables. So multivitamins are just a waste of money.

Vitamin C

200mg of Vitamin C a day had the lowest stroke risk and it’s the optimal daily intake. Vitamin C supplements had no effect on lifespan, heart attack risk, stroke or cancer risk.

So, vitamin C supplements are just a waste of money as well. You can get up to 200mg of Vitamin C with just 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, which isn’t that hard to do.

Vitamin B12

We need Vitamin B12 for optimal artery function and better brain health. And it’s recommended to take 250mg daily or 2500mg a week. Vitamin B12 isn’t produced by plants, it isn’t made by animals either. It’s produced by bacteria and micro-organisms like yeast and algae.

So if you want a pollutant free, fat and cholesterol free source of B12, you can get it from nutritional yeast, fortified cereals and the cheapest is taking a B12 supplement. And yes, eating B12 supplements actually has positive effects on arterial and brain health. It’s less than $10 a year so it’s one of the only few supplements worth taking.

Vitamin D

This is also another supplement worth considering. 9 out of 10 people fail to reach the optimal daily value of 2000IU a day. Vitamin D as we all know, is produced by our exposure to sunlight. We get enough Vitamin D by exposing ourselves to just 15 minutes of sunlight.

However, that may be true if you’re living in ancient times. Now, we have harmful UV rays which does more than damage our skin, there is also a cancer risk, causes cataracts and makes you look older.

Plants and animals don’t produce Vitamin D either. Only UV exposed mushrooms actually, but if you eat them everyday, it can get expensive. That’s why we are better off taking Vitamin D supplements at 2000IU a day, 3000 units if you are older or obese, and costs around $10 a year.

So Vitamin B12 and D are the only 2 nutrients that isn’t commonly found in our diet and taking supplements actually have a beneficial effect. And for around $10 a year, there are simply no reasons why we shouldn’t buy them until proven otherwise.

How to boost your Immune System – Simple and Easy!

After coming out of a cold, I realized my immunity may be quite bad. So I went to look into the research to find out how I can boost my own immune system.

What surprised me was that athletes may actually have a weaker immunity because of the stress and inflammation during exercise.

So in this article, you’re gonna find out 10 different things you can do today to boost your immune system.

And it’s gonna be no surprise that most of them are going to be healthy foods. But what you might not know is how and why that may boost our immune system. Alright, let’s begin!

1. Green Tea

Number 1 is Green Tea. You’ve probably heard that green tea has many antioxidants and everything. That’s all good and gives even more reason to drink green tea. But what is green tea’s effect on immune cell production? In a study, people drank 6 cups of green tea a day which led to a 15 fold increase in gamma delta T cell production within a week! The gamma delta T cells act as the first line of defence against infection. In the same study, coffee had no effect on immune cell production.

Another study gave healthcare workers green tea compounds, and they had 3 times lesser flu than those who weren’t given.

2. Cruciferous Vegetables

Number 2 is Cruciferous Vegetables. This study dropped kale on human cells and they produced more antibodies, almost quadrupled. Also, cooked Kale worked even better.

Our Intra-epithelial lymphocytes (our protective gut cells) has 2 functions: condition and repair epithelial barrier AND provide a front line defence against pathogens.

This study found that Broccoli contains the key which fits on our AHR receptors in our Intra-epithelial lymphocytes which then activate our intestinal immune function.

3. Garlic

Number 3 is Garlic. Garlic increases the activity of natural killer cells and production of T and B cells. In a randomized study group, those who ate garlic had 60% fewer colds and faster recoveries. 1.5 days instead of 5 days and also fewer symptoms.

Another study showed that garlic boosted different mRNA proteins within 3 hrs of eating it. They compared different cooking methods and found that raw garlic was the best, boiling had a 3 times drop , and the allicin protein were totally wiped out when even just a single minute of stir frying.
What was interesting was that even though roasting is hotter than boiling, it preserved twice as much allicin.

4. Blueberries

Number 4 is blueberries. We have an average of 2 billion natural killer cells in our bloodstream This study showed that people who ate blueberries for 6 weeks, their natural killer cells were boosted from 2 billion to 4 billion.

During prolonged exercise, your natural killer cells drops by half to 1 billion. This study showed athletes that ate 1.5 cups of blueberries a day had a decrease that wasn’t as bad and they had a less oxidative stress after running.

This study put black pepper on cancer cells in a lab and nothing happened. But when they added natural killer cells, the black pepper boosted killer cell activity by 10 times with the same no. of cells.

5. Mushrooms

Number 5 is mushrooms. It’s been shown that white button mushrooms accelerates immunoglobulin (IGA) secretion. That’s a type of antibody in our mucus lining in our digestive tract.

This study had a group who didn’t eat mushrooms and a group who ate about a cup of white button mushrooms everyday for a week. After a week they collected their saliva and measured their IGA levels. The group without mushrooms had no change in IGA but the group with mushrooms increased their IGA levels by 50% and stayed up there for a week even when they stopped eating the mushrooms. before dropping back down again. This suggests that a continuous intake of mushrooms is necessary to maintain an increased level of IGA secretion.

6. Fruits

Number 6 is fruits. This study split elderly into two groups. One ate 2 or fewer fruits and the other group ate at least 5 fruits n vegetables. The group with at least 5 fruits had more immune response by having more antibodies.

7. Sleep

Number 7 is sleep. This study showed that people who had more sleep were 3-5 times likely to beat common cold.
Even if someone with the cold sneeze directly at you, you may not even get sick.

8. Exercise

Number 8 is exercise. 95% of infections are protected by IGA, an immunoglobulin antibody found in your saliva, preventing infections from penetrating the body.

In this study, elderly women had 50% chance of getting upper respiratory tract infections in the fall, those who walked 30 minutes a day had 20% chance and those who ran had less than 10% chance.

However, sustained, intense exercise had an opposite effect like a U shaped curve. Those who exercised at a moderate intensity had less risk than sedentary people but those who did intense exercise or over trained had the most risk. In fact, they had a 2-6 times the risk of URTI for several weeks.

9. Zinc

Number 9 is Zinc. Zinc has 3 ways it can slow down the proliferation of corona viruses.

It blocks the attachment of the virus to your throat, it blocks replication of RNA viruses, boosts immune system.

What are foods high in zinc? Wheat, oats, dark green vegetables like spinach, nuts and seeds especially squash, chia pumpkin seeds. Also, beans, rice and mushrooms.

Foods high in zinc and their amounts here: https://www.myfooddata.com/articles/zinc-foods-for-vegans-vegetarians.php

10. Nutritional Yeast

Lastly we have Nutritional Yeast. This study showed that after 2 hours of cycling, there was a dip in monocytes in their blood. Monocytes are our body’s first line of defence. But those who ate 3/4 of a teaspoon of Nutritional Yeast, their monocytes were even more than when they started cycling.

In marathon runners, a daily spoonful of nutritional yeast cut their upper respiratory infection rates in half and they were also less tensed, fatigued and less aggressive.

But what was it in nutritional yeast that’s so good? It’s the beta glucan that boosts number of monocytes, 250mg of yeast was good and 500mg was even better.

CONCLUSION

As athletes we already are putting ourselves at higher risk by exercising at high intensity or long duration for fitness gains. So it’s even more important to boost our immunity especially when there’s a pandemic in the world now.

So here’s a short recap. 6 cups of green tea a day led to a 15 fold increase in gamma delta T cell production within a week. Cruciferous vegetables like kale and broccoli produce more antibodies and activate our intestinal immune function. Garlic increases the activity of natural killer cells and raw garlic was better than boiling or stir frying.

People who ate blueberries for 6 weeks had their natural killer cells boosted from 2 billion to 4 billion. Black pepper also boosted killer cell activity. White button mushrooms accelerates IGA secretion. Elderly who ate at least 5 fruits a day produced much more antibodies than those who didnt.

People who had more sleep were 3-5 times likely to beat common cold. Exercise reduces the chance of getting upper respiratory tract infections but intense training increases the risk.

Zinc can slow down the proliferation of corona viruses by preventing attachment of the virus to your throat, it blocks replication of RNA viruses, boosts immune system. Lastly, nutritional yeast increased cyclists levels of monocytes even after a long ride.

Thanks for reading all the way till the end. I hope I’ve helped at least one person today. Comment below if this has benefited you in any way. I love to hear your comments. Stay safe and healthy everyone!

The foods to avoid to Lose Weight

These foods will come as no surprise but I still see many of my friends, even triathletes, still eating some of the foods listed below. So this just serves as a checklist to see how many of these do you avoid?

Sausages
Processed carbs (pastry, donuts, fries etc)
Cakes
Energy Drinks (coke)
Fruit juice (From syrup)
Chicken Skin
Too oily stuff in general
Fast Food (Macs, KFC, Burger King etc)
Too much chocolate (a bit is fine)
Pork
Alcohol
Nuggets
Instant noodles
Potato chips
Ice Cream
Dieting Pills
Barbecue

I still eat some of these on an occasional basis just to treat myself but Mac Donalds shouldn’t become a weekly affair especially if your goal is to lose weight and become fitter.

You might be eating junk food and still be fit, but imagine how much fitter you could be if you had eaten proper food.

Antioxidants for Athletes

Antioxidant is the buzz word for the 21st century. But till now I’m still pretty much clueless about what it does and what are the best foods with high antioxidants. If you’re like me and only understand antioxidants role to reduce risk of cancer, then we’ve started off on the same page.

Let me share what I have discovered about antioxidants online.

What are Antioxidants?

Everyday, whether we are exercising or sleeping, our body metabolises food using oxygen from the air we breathe. And its the metabolism process that creates free radicals causing oxidative stress on cells. The same thing that happens when oxygen is exposed to an apple making it brown, or iron, turning it rusty.

Oxidative stress is said to be the mother of all diseases, including cancer. The free radicals formed during metabolism have one less electron and thus very unstable. Which makes free radicals steal electrons from other atoms and cause them to become free radicals too. The process repeats and leads to health problems.

So antioxidants come into play. They have an extra electron just to donate to the free radical to make them stable. Thus preventing oxidative stress.

Factors that increase free radicals include inflammation (exercise), or external factors such as UV radiation, smoking, radiation, carbon pollution.

Benefits of Antioxidants

They can reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, arthritis, stroke, respiratory diseases, immune deficiency, emphysema, Parkinson’s disease, and other diseases.

Antioxidants also reduce signs of ageing by reducing oxidative stress in the skin.

Also, they reduce inflammation from workouts for faster recovery. It has been argued that the free radicals are needed to damage the muscles first before fitness gains. And antioxidants inhibit fitness gains. But it was shown that antioxidants are

One study showed that eating antioxidants BEFORE the workout showed lower levels of free radicals than eating antioxidants AFTER the workout. My guess is that the free radicals are removed because of the antioxidants already inside the body.

So drink some tomato juice before exercise.

Antioxidant rich foods

What is interesting is that apples and bananas do not have a very high ORAC score, meaning less antioxidants in the fruit. But eating an apple with the skin on can increase its score to 3000+ in some charts. So eat apples with skin on!

The other foods are not too surprising, like berries, prunes, cherries, broccoli, spinach, acai, cocoa have high ORAC scores, they’re called super foods after all.

Personally, I try to eat at least some antioxidants each day. I try to eat prunes, grapes and raisins as snacks, and cherry tomatoes as part of meals. Often I’ll eat broccoli or spinach as part of meals too. And I’ll often eat a plate of fruits consisting of oranges and apples for breakfast.

Thoughts on losing weight as a triathlete

I never really cared about my weight only until recently when during the trip to Clark, I hear that athletes taller than me are lighter than me.

At first I thought they were just made that way. A stick since since young. So I didnt think my body shape could be as lean as them too.

But as usual, I was wrong. Many triathletes are so lean because they control what they eat. Obviously right? But even though their fat burning abilities are inhuman, studies have found exercise does not play as much of a role to weight loss as diet does.

So that made me begin thinking what am I doing wrong in my diet?

Im not eating unhealthy. I dont eat fast food. I dont drink soda and hardly ever eat ice cream. But I still can grab a handful of belly fat.

What I was eating was healthy stuff, but too much of it. In the Clark trip, I realised I was eating more than the other athletes too.

When I came home, I weighed my usual portion size and it was 650g of food. Rice, veggies, meat, tofu.

Wow that was more than half a kilogram. So I decided to eat 450 to 500g of food every meal. And I feel I still have enough energy for the day and im not restricting myself of energy.

Also, I began increasing my veggies to 200g and lowering my meats to 100g, that way I get a much healthier plate too.

It has been 2 weeks since I changed and I had lost an average of 1.5kg. And finally managed to hit sub 58kg for morning weight (57.8kg). Usually it can be anywhere from 59-60kg.

And notice I havent mentioned anything about micro nutrients because research has shown very little correlation between micro nutrients and weight loss specifically. So Im not planning to go vegan or keto anytime soon.

I’ve also heard high fat diets are good when youre really fat efficient and youll have much more energy than carb only guys. Thats why theres a trend to go high fat now. But its too easy to screw up this diet and possibly have adverse effects. Perhaps something I’m not trying now until I’m truly convinced and fully understand the diet.

But for now, Im pretty happy with my results and I still enjoy the occasional chocolate and ice cream (:

Fuel during workouts

Trying to find the perfect hydration electrolyte drinks can be difficult. Especially when there are so many brands saying their product is the best. But it depends on your sweat rate, salt loss and the type of event you are doing. Obviously you’ll definitely need to consider nutrition when doing an event more than 1hour +. So in this post im taking a look at the different offerings and their nutritional content. And see which ones sufficient for a high sweat rate person like myself and which is a better and cheaper alternative than the branded products.

Liquids

Water

Accessible, inexpensive. But no carbs and electrolytes in water and can be very bad for your health as it consuming more and more water with a body depleting its salt content further worsening the salt concentration in the body. Hypoatremia – the state of the body where there is too much water than salt so cells in the body will swell up with water and explode. Basically taking too much water is bad especially when losing so much salt when exercising.

Scratch Hydration Mix

A very popular hydration mix for athletes and heres what’s inside:

What’s important is the 380mg of sodium, 38.5mg potassium and 20g of carbs. So making your own sports drink should have similar amounts of each mineral.

Gatorade

Lionel Sanders drinks Gatorade Endurance for all training and racing (No solids)

This is Gatorade Endurance, which has 2x more sodium and 3x more potassium than normal gatorade. (taken from the Gatorade Website) Its also selling for $28 on amazon. One container has about 38 servings (13.3L) https://amzn.to/2DvBqn3

Normal Gatorade VS Gatorade Endurance

Gatorade endurance has similar nutrition mix as Skratch hydration but its potassium levels are way higher with a slightly lesser sodium concentration.

No wonder Lionel does not really need to take solid nutrition in training & racing. There is enough of carbs, sodium and excess potassium in Gatorade Endurance to sustain him.

Pocari Sweat/ 100 Plus/ H20 & Others

 

Pocari Sweat has 171mg of sodium, 70mg of potassium and 21.7g of carbs per serving(~350ml). Its almost half the amount of sodium and potassium of Gatorade while having a similar amount of carbs.

100 Plus has 148mg of sodium, 67mg of potassium and 19.6g of carbs per serving(~350ml).

H2O has 137mg of sodium, 56mg of potassium and 24.5g of carbs per serving(~350ml).

As a fun comparison, Coke has 45mg of sodium and 39g of carbs. Thats almost double the carbs from Gatorade Endurance.

All of the above energy drinks have significantly much less sodium and potassium than gatorade endurance but they have comparable amounts of carbs. The above energy drinks would still be better than consuming only water.

Solids

Recommended 2 servings of carbs per hour, a serving typically consists of 20-22g of carbs.

Skratch Energy Bars

Heres the nutritional information of a typical energy bar:

 

It has 30g of carbs, 120g of sodium and 75mg of potassium in a 50g bar.

Science in Sport Energy Gels

A 60ml packet of gel contains 22g of carbs and 10mg of sodium. Hardly any sodium at all but packs a lot of energy from carbs (87 kilo calories).

PowerGels

A sachet of 41g contains 107kcal, 26.7g of carbs, 205mg of sodium and 3.8g of protein.

Even though Powergels are lighter than SIS gels, they contain less water and packs more nutrition in it.

Banana

While low in sodium (1mg),  bananas have huge amounts of potassium (358mg) and a good source of energy from carbohydrates too(22.8g).

Examples:

GCN’s Dan Lloyd typically takes: 1Energy, 1Water, 2Energy Bars, 2Energy Gels for a 2h+ long ride. Perhaps a few coffee stops in between too. For a short 1h ride, Si brings along 1Energy bottle and 1Energy Gel with him.

So thats about 60g of carbs, 100mg of potassium and 300mg of sodium per hour of riding.

An update a few months later (April 2019), Im now using H20 non carbonated drinks for my electrolyte solution. 2/3 water, and the rest of the bottle with H20. Its pretty diluted but my stomach doesnt get upset. Which is the most important thing.