Misfit Podcast
Misfit Athletics provides information and programming to competitive Crossfit athletes of all levels.
Misfit Podcast
Supplements that Actually Work - E.361
When it comes to supplements, the fitness industry is flooded with products promising everything from superhuman strength to rapid fat loss – but which ones actually deliver results? In this comprehensive breakdown, we cut through the noise to reveal our evidence-based tier list of supplements that truly work.
We start by establishing the critical foundation: supplements should only enter the conversation after you've dialed in the fundamentals of nutrition, sleep, and training consistency. No pill or powder can compensate for poor habits in these areas. With that crucial disclaimer in place, we dive into our S-tier supplements – the elite options with the strongest scientific backing.
Whey protein earns its top-tier status through its complete amino acid profile and superior digestibility, while creatine monohydrate stands as one of the few supplements with an "A" rating for strength improvement. Caffeine proves its worth through consistent performance enhancement, especially for power output, while ashwagandha emerges as a versatile adaptogen that simultaneously reduces cortisol while improving testosterone levels and athletic performance.
As we work our way through the A, B, and C tiers, we explore supplements like beta-alanine, vitamin C, spirulina, fish oil, and magnesium – explaining their benefits, optimal dosages, and the specific situations where they provide the most value. Throughout the episode, we emphasize that supplementation effectiveness varies dramatically based on individual factors like diet, lifestyle, geographic location, and personal physiology.
Whether you're a competitive athlete looking to optimize performance or someone simply wanting to make smarter choices with your supplement budget, this episode provides the science-backed guidance you need to separate marketing hype from genuine results. Ready to transform your approach to supplementation? Listen now and discover which supplements deserve a place in your daily routine.
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We're all misfits. Alright, you big, big bunch of misfits. You're a scrappy little misfit just like me.
Speaker 2:Biggest bunch of misfits I ever said either into another episode of the Misfit Podcast. On today's episode we are going to run through my list of supplements that actually work. I actually did not wear this shirt intentionally today for this podcast, but I used to own a supplement company and I think part of why I started a supplement company is related to what you'll hear in this episode today, but luckily now there's no advertisement attached to it. So I'm just telling you guys you know what I think works, all that good stuff. Before we get into the supplement talk, as always, a little housekeeping, a little live chat.
Speaker 2:As for housekeeping, the next episode on this podcast is going to be the phase zero podcast. That's right. We are heading into the final weeks of off season, block two, and then Monday, july 28th is the official beginning for all athletes of the 2026, you know sort of season plan that we have for everyone and that begins with phase zero. Phase zero is actually quite a bit different this year, um, which is intentional for for multiple reasons, but keep your eye out for that. We will go into sort of that deep dive, go in depth on what it is and what you can expect in next week's episode, the Wolf Team Misfit.
Speaker 1:Team Misfit, that's not the name of it, the Wolf.
Speaker 2:Misfit Affiliate Phase is live right now. You can head to teammisfitcom, click on the sign up now button and you get two week free trial at StreamFit, sugar, wad or PushPress. Also a little bit of a teaser the Misfit Athlete shirts for the 2025 season Presale is coming up here pretty soon. You can put two and two together based on the logo and the number what the ode is to, and we can get into the maybe controversial elements of that, but there's a vibe and an energy to who this is an ode to and I think it'll resonate with the right people. So keep your eye out on Justin LaSala, kelly Clark, paige Semenza and Erica Folos' social media, as well as ours, for those shirts. All right, hunter, what's?
Speaker 1:up. What's up? I'm on a new linear progression which I know has piqued your interest. I'm here for this progression which I know has piqued your interest. I'm here for this. The actual mechanism may pique your interest less. The linear progression is slowly whittling down the time between the execution of an abysmal golf shot and the point at which I no longer care. Currently that timeline is too long, on the order of minutes to potentially hours, depending on subsequent abysmal golf shots. So the linear progression is Hunter hits bad golf shot. How much time can?
Speaker 1:I like what can I shrink that time window down to? From hits bad golf shot doesn't care, because yeah, it's what's the current acceptable timeframe Eight hours.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it uh depends on the day. Oh, you'll get beginner gains, yeah, yeah, the yeah, the beginner gains are real, but, um, it's like it, it depends on the day and, like you, you have good days where, like that time is really low. A lot of it depends on, like, well, was the very first shot I hit abysmal? And like, was the second shot? So, like when those things stack onto each other, like I find that that time frame gets longer, and then, like the point at which I know this is no longer tenable is like when I'm driving off the golf course. Or I even, like, get home and like an hour later I'm still stewing about a bad round of golf, which just isn't great for a recreational golfer despite my desire to be competitive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I need to. I'm going to start. I've been thumping the ashwagandha pretty good, so maybe, maybe a little bit of curcumin, but yeah, but I I did have a glimpse of the positive effects of that this week where I, like I was telling you earlier, I started off the round, I was six over par, through four holes and, like at none, such you start on the back nine um.
Speaker 1:The first hole is a par five with like out of bounds off to the right. So like I, I do everything I can to avoid that miss. But like just having a bad day 40 minutes into my like early Sunday morning and I'm like you can't, like you can't let this ruin your entire Sunday.
Speaker 1:And it will like I'll let it, like I'll do that for sure. But took a couple of deep breaths and after I was like no, you know, you're just kind of, you're just one, one good shot away from like turning it around. Just like you know, I tell anybody who's doing something with their nutrition or something like that you fall off the wagon for a day, for a meal, whatever it's. You're always only one meal away from kind of getting back on the wagon. You, you're out of the gym for two weeks because of life. Like, hey, you're just one day away from resetting that habit and getting back into the gym. So, trying to take kind of that mentality onto the golf course with a little bit of like self-coaching, and lo and behold, I managed to string together 13 really, really excellent holes of golf. So put up a couple of 77s this weekend and I took home, yeah, two sweeps victories both Saturday and sunday.
Speaker 1:One sweet so yeah, uh, it's sweet basically each day like a golf course. I don't know other. I'm sure other like clubs or whatever do this too. But like on saturday you pay, you go into the clubhouse, you pay ten dollars and there's like a daily game. So the game might be like best, just your best, whoever shoots the best score across the entire day. You basically take a scorecard, you write the scorecard, you have people there like in your group to kind of validate it and then you turn it in and at the end of the day all of the scorecards like get racked and stacked and there is like actual financial payout. It's in like the form of shop credit, but it's a payout to the winners.
Speaker 1:Saturday was like a blind draw, so let's say there were 10 golfers. You pay the money, you play your round, you turn in your scorecard and then at the end of the day the shop like randomly pairs you up with another score. So let's say you shot really well but you got an unlucky blind draw with somebody who played horrendously Like that's just just kind of. So a different game every saturday and sunday, just an opportunity for golfers to like win money. And then there's like a season long like sweeps race so kind of like fedex cup sort of vibe, or even like a another sport. Whatever it's got a season long race. So your boy is currently sitting in first place in the overall with three event wins.
Speaker 2:So that's a smart from their point of view too, from, like I'm thinking in the business side I was actually thinking like how could I do?
Speaker 1:could you do that? Like at a crossfit gym, like with? Like there's a weekly workout, like members can choose to throw in like five bucks and like it's whatever the wednesday workout is.
Speaker 2:Like would be, would be the, the part where you have to delineate. Could you, yes, should you? Maybe not? You know what I mean. Sure, like, is that the vibe you're you're going for? Yeah, you know, people are start whispering that so, and so did 19 wall balls, and yeah, you know things of that nature.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it has not got any further past the uh in the in the vehicle planning stages, but yeah, it's a fun. It's a fun, it's like a fun thing and like, honestly, for someone like me it's like a fun, recreationally competitive thing that I can kind of hold myself to and like it's like you compete once a week sort of thing and see how well you play over the course of an entire year. But yeah, that's the uh, that's the current linear progression whittle the time down from bad golf shot to you're more of a like an internal temper kind of guy, though right, you're not really like a snap the club and punch the person in the car next to you in the face, kind of no, yeah, I can, I, I can do both.
Speaker 1:I've been, I'll, I'll, I'll dig a. I'll dig a wedge into the earth. I've yet to wrap one around a tree. But um, I was, I was talking to Palmer and he was. I was like, yeah, man, it's just for me, it's like I just get so fucking irritated when I'm playing badly, Like, and he's like, really Like I would have thought you were like the stoic, like mentally tough, like sort of vibe, and I was like I don't know what to tell you. Man, I'm a fucking I hate, like I hate being bad at it.
Speaker 2:You know, like I just hate hitting a bad shot and like just frustrating in a special way. Though here's I'll push back a little bit, just by saying, like we say to people here you are choosing A ridiculous challenge, that tiny ball going that far and making it in a tiny hole and you're holding sticks in your hands yeah, the ball is nowhere near your fucking hand.
Speaker 2:You've no. Like like the just just listening to professional golfers talk about like they're like you know they get interviewed and it's like you're gonna win this weekend. And they're like I don't. They get interviewed and it's like you're going to win this weekend and they're like I don't know if I'm going to get the bounces or not.
Speaker 2:Like if it's really probably statistically definitely not right Like how good you have to be to overcome like playing against essentially mother nature in a lot of ways is like in physics and the universe and all that like that tough. So I think you've leveled up the challenge of what it takes to bring that mentality to something, because you have chosen something absurdly frustrating as your hobby the only hobbies I have are completely yeah well, so it's the worst.
Speaker 1:It's so dumb so yeah, yeah, no, and it's, it's complete. Like it's completely irrational. Like I could, in theory, like step out, like, finish around and then just say, like I'm going to put on like my coach hat and coach athlete Hunter and be like you did that poorly, you did that poorly, like, why did you like nice job on that, like, like, but I can't, I can't be both at the same time. I can't coach myself the same way that I would coach somebody else to just like hey, let's just move on. Like hey, did you know that 50% of tour players hit the green from 150 yards away? Why are you upset that you missed the green? You nine handicap idiot.
Speaker 2:Well, because you can and then you don't. And it's like what the fuck Like you walk out there and that old fucking 225 deadlift is sitting there and if you didn't pick that up, that'd be weird right, yeah what the hell is going on with you. Yeah, the level of the level of difficulty is certainly there. I am probably more on the side of. I would choose adrenaline over that.
Speaker 2:I think, like flying down a mountain on my snowboard is is that's like, that's the like, cheesy, like movie line of like everything goes quiet, like yeah that like that kind of thing, because with challenging stuff.
Speaker 2:I just have to prove to myself that I can do it and then I don't feel I don't feel the need to repeat it at all. So like I would play golf again for one summer so that I could shoot in the 40s on nine holes, and I would never and it wouldn't bum me at all. I don't know why I am that way. I don't know if it's like an adhd thing, but like once I know I can do something if you.
Speaker 1:I'm like if I'm good and I don't.
Speaker 2:That's it's weird yeah, I don't know, I uh I like check a box off and then.
Speaker 1:I, I feel like, I feel like golf is one of those things that you think that might be the case, and then it's like, nah, I can, I left one out there Like I could do a little bit better sort of thing. But yeah, maybe not the adrenaline rush. The it's a it's a slower burn. The adrenaline rush is like I'm just like you're just flushing the golf ball and you're just in that, just in the zone, literally just in that flow state.
Speaker 2:And I've never. I can't do anything wrong. That is never. I've never played enough for that to yeah, ever, ever ever take place.
Speaker 1:I've played enough to feel it a couple times and be like holy fuck. Yeah, Give me Sear the like.
Speaker 2:Y'all got any of that, just y'all got any of that birdie snoss yeah exactly. I have a for for my life chat. We're gonna. We're gonna try this again.
Speaker 2:So three summers ago, you, me and sherb try to explain to the listeners what the dew point was to ask chat gpt, because it didn't exist back then to explain it to us like we're children yeah, let's see if we can figure this out, because it's something dumb like, like I don't know, you're boiling water and it fucking fizzles out at I don't know. I remember it being very esoteric.
Speaker 1:Explain dew point to me as if I'm a 10-year-old. Imagine the air around you is like a sponge that can hold water. Okay, on hot days the sponge can hold a lot of water. That's why it can feel sticky and sweaty. On cooler days, the sponge holds less water. Now the dew point is the temperature. When the sponge, the air gets so full of water it can't hold anymore. When that happens, the extra water comes out of the sponge as dew, like the drops you see on the grass in the morning. So if the dew point is high, the air is holding lots of water and it feels humid and sticky.
Speaker 1:If the dew point is low, the air is dry and feels cooler and more comfortable. Fun fact if the temperature drops to the dew point, water appears as dew fog or even clouds, so that explains how?
Speaker 2:because in Maine we associate high temperature with high dew point, but that's typically because of humidity levels. Because, like in, the desert, the dew point is like 40 when it's 90. And here it can be 80 and the dew point can be 75.
Speaker 1:So I just yeah and I followed up. How is this different from humidity? Right, because that sounds like so. Dew point is the actual amount of water in the air. A dew point of 70 degrees means there's a lot of water in the air and it will feel sticky. A dew point of 30 degrees means the air is pretty dry. So that's not the ambient temperature, that's the dew point but it's also measured in degrees Fahrenheit.
Speaker 2:So that was a go ahead.
Speaker 1:It's also measured in degrees Fahrenheit. So that was a go ahead. I was just going to say humidity is about how full the air is compared to what it could hold at that temperature. 100% humidity equals the air is full like a soaked sponge. 50% it's half full. Yeah, and it's, and it's, it's, it's as a percent. Here's the trick. Warm air can hold more water. So 50% humidity on a hot day still feels humid, compared to 50% on a low day. Dewpoint how much water is in your cup. Humidity, how full your cup is compared to how big it is. So humidity, I guess, is relative, Is relative.
Speaker 2:I'm a fucking idiot 10-year-old. I'm the dumbest 10-year-old.
Speaker 1:I've ever met in my fucking life.
Speaker 2:They literally just said you have two cups and they're each filled with a certain amount and one of them is dew point and one of them is humidity, until they said that the cup so dew point is the absolute is at an absolute number.
Speaker 2:Humidity is a relative measurement so yesterday in Maine, we're getting up to a point where like I'm not intended're getting up to a point where, like I'm not intended, we're getting to a point where, if you look at the endurance chart, they tell you 75 and above for a dew point is like, basically like, if you want performance, don't do it. And we don't adhere to that shit out here Like, come in, breathe heavy, if your numbers are off, your numbers are off.
Speaker 1:My numbers were off yesterday. Fucking dew. Point yourself out of the gym if you're worried about the fucking dew point.
Speaker 2:But that's I've taken. I take one to two classes a week and in the last two weeks the dew point has been 74 and 75. So one degree below, don't do it and then don't do it. And yesterday the workout was alternating full rounds with a partner AMRAP 28 minutes, five back squats at 225, one E-calorie row, six burpee getovers. I did standing C2 bike calories on a 10 damper, five Instead of no. I ended up doing six because I was like, okay, so if I go at like, I do it that way to make myself go harder, like I was trying to stay above 2 000 cals per hour, because you don't get to not try on a back squat, right. That's why I make dumb rules for myself and that is like I. If I can't do this this way, then I should. My rope should suffer. That's how the workout would actually go.
Speaker 2:So I found that if I went like really hard, I could get seven calories, you know, starting from zero, but like if I had to back off at all, that would have taken 20 seconds, which I wouldn't have wanted.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and in rounds, so we did. I did six total rounds, I believe, I think, and rounds five and six were at that heart rate where I'm like I can keep going, but something like bad, like such like tension, like an anxiety type feeling in my chest I was when I was on the rower and I looked down I was, you know, 177, like in that area, something like that, and I think I topped out at like 180, which for me is close to max heart rate, but I think it was the amount of time. And then in my last round, my last rest period, right before, at two minutes into my rest period, my heart rate was at 159 like my body was just like I, probably fully recovered yeah, I probably didn't have enough water like my body was not doing a good job of cooling off, um, but man, that was a fucking like.
Speaker 2:I know life chat's supposed to be not crossfit, but my like, like I'm less crossfit, so it actually can't just talk about the dew point. Really we're talking about the dew point really, but it was fucking. That was special just that feeling yeah, but it did because of how well it was written that that 20 calorie number was perfect yeah, yeah, it was kyle's.
Speaker 2:Dropped a couple bangers in the last, like two to three weeks we we can hat tip to kyle when he's not around. I'm sure he'll hear this episode, but we, the members, insinuate that he has kind of that simple destruction quality in his workouts, like a little.
Speaker 1:Let him listen to the meetings kyle we don't, we don't need multiples of 13 just to make this, this. These lines look beautiful, okay guys, that is true 39 calorie.
Speaker 2:Assault bike I'm gonna be here for symmetry regularly, yeah so yeah, that was fucking special man that was. Yeah, yesterday was one of those days where I knew that I needed that environment to work yeah. Very much needed, like go out there, it's a group of people You're either you're not going to, definitely not going to skip the workout, you're just going to stand there and say like, nah, I'm good, you're not going to half-ass it because you've got a partner, you're not going to quit, like those were.
Speaker 2:Those were the like me negotiating with myself. I know that, even if I have to make some kind of weird modification, that I need to get my ass out on the floor in those days yeah, chris actually said something similar after he finished the workout.
Speaker 1:He was like that was a really good workout because it was like right on the line where I could like. Like I think when you get on the rower you can kind of decide how that round's gonna go for you. Like you can really hammer it and potentially put yourself in a hurt locker or you could like coop was that 1600?
Speaker 2:round one, by the way, I'll throw that out there, not a girl coop um, I mean as, as he does he didn't hold there's no other option, uh what?
Speaker 1:but he was also like but it was also like the right amount where I could, like, felt myself getting fitter. I think is what he said, because it wasn't like just a complete annihilation sort of feeling. Then you get to rest and then do it again. So yeah, bottom line I wouldn't don't misfit affiliate, it's too hard for your gym, you can't hang it, you can't handle it.
Speaker 2:Just us no no, you don't want it, those. You see six getovers and you're like please, and then you're doing those six getovers.
Speaker 1:Dude, I thought the same thing. I was like why did we only make these six? This is fucking softer than puppy shit. I got off the rower and I'm like, okay hear me out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like 10 too many would have been slow. Yeah, that's how basically the whole workout felt. Each tiny piece was like. I said to one of our members you can, but you don't want to is where we draw the line and interval work like this, like oh, should this barbell feel heavy? And it's like yes, but every time you go to pick it up it's like I can do five. I just don't really want to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the that's.
Speaker 2:And same thing for the pace.
Speaker 1:You know you have to like it, but you do have to do it Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, All right. So here's this. This could get a little dense. Hunter's job is to potentially keep me on track here. The list of supplements is not short. It's not crazy long. I could have gone further. I only went S tier through C tier. Apparently this has something to do with video games. I don't fully understand it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I need your. I even I like it was like ABC. It's like what's the?
Speaker 2:S ABC is kind of obvious, right.
Speaker 2:Well, that's why you get a B, you get a C, yeah, S tier is top tier and that's like a meme video game, like other people understand it, and I fucking don't. We'll age ourself here. But if you do the like, if you google the tier system, you'll see the photos. And you've definitely seen this graphic online before, where it's got like the red s at the top and then it shows it ranks, you know whatever the fuck. So I'm just showing how hip I am with my rating system here. Um, I'm gonna put you on the spot.
Speaker 2:Hunter Hunter. Where should I, where should we start?
Speaker 1:How do we format this? We're doing our production meeting live on the podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, I'll ask this question because I'm not going to tease it and then wait till the end to ask it, maybe the primer is. So we have a list of 22 supplements ranked from like most valuable to like not least valuable, but like hey, this isn't critical, let's not put the cart before the horse. Speaking of putting the cart before the horse, at what point does an athlete and you could take this like are we thinking like athletes in general? Are we thinking more competitive athletes? The question is like at what point does an athlete need to care about supplementation versus the other stuff?
Speaker 1:yeah, because and then we could probably, I think it makes sense to roll right into like the most important stuff, honestly yep.
Speaker 2:so at what point? I don't want to make people think about for me to tell them that collagen peptides are c yeah, I might start cutting you off in the fucking C tier.
Speaker 1:Yeah For a preamble here, ys, not just A+. S comes from Japanese games, where it stood for super or special.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I read this morning special. But yeah, I don't know, it's an internet thing. But then I'm going to be able to make a graphic for it that will catch people's eye, so we'll take it All right thing. But then I'm going to be able to make a graphic for it that will catch people's eye, so we'll take it All right. So we'll do the pretense here for this list. It's very imperfect because there's the idea that Hunter referenced right. Are we getting 8,000 to 12,000 steps a day? Are we getting our sunlight? Are we eating what would be our maintenance calories in whole foods? Are we doing the things that we need to do before getting into this?
Speaker 2:And there's a speech that I've given a couple of times in different places called the 99, and the one the 99 is the stuff that we're talking about on a lot of episodes. We're talking about at the affiliate level. This is the 1%. This is I've exhausted my resources when it comes to dot, dot, dot dot and now I'm going to go try this. Now that's where some of this personalization comes in and why something like vitamin C would be in an A tier, vitamin D would be in a B tier and zinc would be in a C tier, because the level at which someone would need something like that varies a lot, like when we're looking at, you know, creatine and caffeine and whey protein and these other things like a lot. When we're looking at creatine and caffeine and whey protein and these other things, a lot of times there's a dosage that we're looking for that's going to be effective. And then there are just pieces to this where it's like do you even need it and if you do, how much do you need specifically?
Speaker 2:And that's what makes it not sit, sort of, at the top of this list? I would say that the S tier starting there is also not burying the lead, because I'm probably saying, like, if you're listening to this podcast and you have the means to buy these things, you should like I'll put that. I'll put that out there. I know that that can be controversial because people are just like, like, do we need to say that this?
Speaker 1:is not medical advice on this podcast. At some point I think so. Hey, this isn't medical advice.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, yeah, this is not in place of a doctor and, honestly, one of the best ways to figure a lot of this stuff out, when we start to get into some of the science-y jargon, is getting your fucking blood work done and having a professional look at it and be like, okay, this is a good idea, this isn't a good idea, this isn't a good idea, you're doing too much of this, you're not doing enough of this, that sort of thing, all right. So in our S tier, our super special tier here, we have whey protein, creatine, caffeine and ashwagandha.
Speaker 2:We have the three supplements in this that have an A rating not to be confused with our rating system here from scientists on making you stronger the only three supplements that can make you stronger according to science at that level and the A rating comes from. How many studies are there? How well did it work like? How repeatable it was, like? There's a lot that goes into this. If you're a nerd and you have a little bit of extra money that you can put towards this, examinecom is the most fun place ever and I probably shouldn't say this on here but, hunter, I can give you my login. Don't tell anyone. So this website if I'm looking at whey protein right now, I get an explanation of what whey protein is, I get dosage information and then the examine database reads like this health condition and goal. So the top one is metabolic health. The health outcome would be losing weight, improving your triglycerides, total cholesterol what grade did it get the evidence? So how many studies? So there are 22 studies that say that there is a small improvement in your triglycerides, just as an example, and that makes it a B level because it's highly repeatable, but the actual delta on it's a little bit smaller. So basically it works, but not in this crazy way when it comes to lowering your triglycerides. So we can because I'm already on this page here we can start with whey protein.
Speaker 2:What we're looking at with whey protein is there's all the arguments that we have about like can you get the amount of protein and amino acids on a vegan diet, on a vegetarian diet, et cetera, and you always get those charts of the amino acid profile in foods. And whey protein is like twice as much as every everything else really incredible amino acid profile. It has the full gamut of what we're looking for. It's incredibly digestible. So if we think about like the exact opposite situation, like the toughest steak you've ever eaten in your life, think about you doing all that work and providing the saliva and the digestive enzymes, and then what takes place in your body and how much work it takes to get the protein and amino acid content from that food, whereas, gulp, gulp, gulp, this crazy amino acid profile is making its way down the bioavailability A lot of it's there because of the quick absorption, because liquid has a lot of surface area, so it's just being sucked up essentially into a sponge and there's a little bit of an insulin spike here and people get scared of saying things like cortisol and insulin and all of this stuff has a good use in our body.
Speaker 2:It's when things go wrong and we get dysfunction that there's a problem. But when we get that insulin spike, we get to deliver this stuff to our muscles. One of the reasons why we would add to whey protein a little bit of carbohydrates not necessarily to replenish glycogen yet it's to have that insulin spike so we can use it as a delivery system. So that's why we would typically look for a one-to-one ratio. So something that's not on here that could help you out would be carb powder. You do your 30 to 50 grams of protein from whey, 30 to 50 grams of carbohydrates from whatever maltodextrin. If you want to pay some company that has a proprietary supplement that's exactly the same that they swear is the best, because they pay people to say it is, go for it, but it just works and go ahead.
Speaker 1:do you know if all like you? You alluded to the idea that, like essentially, whey protein is a complete protein, meaning it has the full complement of amino acids that comprise it. Is that apply? Like I can't imagine that applies 100% to every protein, whey protein that's out there, or? I guess whey would indicate that it's a milk product as opposed to like a plant-based protein powder.
Speaker 2:Whey protein is two high-quality proteins derived from cow's milk specifically. So that's what whey protein is two high-quality proteins derived from cow's milk specifically. So that's what whey protein is. The thing that we would bring up is that whey protein concentrate. So we have concentrate isolate hydrosolate.
Speaker 2:They are essentially processed more and more and what we would normally recommend would be the isolate and then, if it still bothers you, to take a digestive enzyme with it, and those are cheap. So basically, the more they process it down, the easier it is for absorption. But because there's more levels to it it costs more money. And hydrosol it tastes like shit.
Speaker 1:And it doesn't taste as good Usually it smells fucking wild.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's basically tried and true. Of course you want to source it from a company that you trust, Like if you go to the store and you buy the stuff that ends up in consumer reports for having heavy metal content.
Speaker 1:I think it can be an issue. Yeah, it's also probably important and you could probably speak to this from the proper stuff like the supplement industry is not regulated the same way that the food industry is, so like they're not regulated because basically all I have to say is we're not regulated Like you get just the word recovery or recover.
Speaker 2:On our old packaging had the little like thing next to it and on the back it said this is not not evaluated by the FDA.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, yeah, so it's just that the point there just being like you can like hey, not buying a protein powder, a supplement that has just a shitload of fillers and garbage, and like the laundry list of ingredients.
Speaker 2:Yep. So you have your, you know your NSF rating. You know they send it off to a third party. We can have sending it off to a third party. That would be more just like hey, is this actually protein? Is this actually creatine? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And then there's, you know, safe for sport, like that sort of stuff. So if you are a competitor, it just makes sense to spend the extra money. And, luckily, if you are a high level competitor, you can normally at the very least be like hey, give me free protein powder and I'll tell people that I buy it from you.
Speaker 1:So whey protein is just I think it's also the most studied supplement one on this list, and maybe like, like, ever like, and it's just like. There's just that and creatine. There's really almost no negative side effects to it, assuming you don't get a dog shit like brand right one that you know you feel validated as a meathead.
Speaker 2:Now that, like the like yogi influencer on instagram is telling you to take creatine finally christ it's. It's kind of annoying. You feel almost like a creatine hipster, like hey, no shit everyone fucker.
Speaker 1:I've been taking creatine since now.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah you used to have to like promise your parents that it wasn't steroids, even though though it's in meat and it's as close to it as you can get. Yeah, so creatine works really fucking well. It is a molecule that is produced in the body from the amino acids arginine, glycine and meth Wow, I can't say that, methionine.
Speaker 1:Methamphetamine. Hold on a sec.
Speaker 2:These phosphate groups are donated to ADP to regenerate ATP, the primary energy carrier in the body. Honestly, I should have led with this grade on strength improvement. Moderate improvement, which is the second highest rating you can have A grading on essentially being an exercise-induced antioxidant. Moderate decrease Obviously, we wouldn't want oxidation to be happening. And this one I'm going to read because it will explain some of the other stuff. Surprise, surprise. Muscle creatine content a large increase. There are a lot of supplements that don't go in the body and do what you think that they would do right. Like cholesterol just becomes cholesterol. Fat just becomes your body fat. Like protein just becomes your like. There's a lot of. There's a lot that happens in terms of the entire ecosystem versus a single mechanism. So it's important to know that when you take creatine in the form of creatine monohydrate at five to like 15 grams a day, you get a large increase, a massive increase in muscle creatine content.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and like as far as a functionality perspective here, like understanding. So creatine and then your energy, your most powerful energy system is your phosphocreatine energy pathway, which powers you for like up to 10 seconds. It's your one rep max, it's your sprint, it's even like pushing a little bit. It can be pushed a little bit longer, but this is where, like, the difference might be like, hey, week one you do a five rep max back squat and two weeks taking. You know, a couple weeks later taking creatine, you come in and you do the same thing and it turns into an eight rep max. Basically helps recycle, like your body's ability to produce ATP, adenosine triphosphate, which is like that quick, quick energy source. And, like you again, you probably know a little bit more about this, but like there's a shitload of benefits that are completely unrelated to exercise with creatine as far as brain health, neurodegent, neuroprotective stuff and yep fuck so I keep one other one but go yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I keep reading these things and I keep telling you there's an, a rating, and because we're starting at s tier, it's like okay, great, you will hear close to none in the rest of the episode once we get into the lower tiers. Right, it's B rating, it's small improvement things that can help. When you have these four supplements that I'm referencing, it's just like definitely 100% works in all of these different ways, can be, really helpful.
Speaker 2:So muscle mass that sounds great. A moderate improvement there on muscle mass. We have a B rating on influencing body fat. We have a B rating on influencing anaerobic capacity, a B rating on influencing power output. Let me get down into some of the. We have a B rating on human growth hormone. That's fun. Sleep deprivation symptoms are improved at a B rating. Memory is improved at a B rating, fatigue symptoms subjective well-being at a B rating, and the list just goes on and on and on. We could do a fucking episode on this. Typically what we're looking for here. One other thing that it does is improves total body hydration really well, and then this is the one that I was looking for. The final A rating Very few A ratings here. Depression symptoms an A rating very few A ratings here. Depression symptoms an A rating moderate improvement.
Speaker 2:That's typically going to be in a higher dose.
Speaker 2:A little advice for people that are looking to take it for the cognitive benefits Once you reach that kind of saturation point, you're going to have to find out what your stomach can handle.
Speaker 2:So if you start taking, you know, 15 to 20 grams of creatine a day, but you're taking it all at once or even just split into two doses, you're going to hit a certain point where you're going to reach some gastrointestinal issues because your body's just like dude, we get it Like, I've got it, like we got enough of this, that sort of thing, and that'll sort of depend on how you are absorbing it. But you would be looking at, like, if you're the kind of person that can this is also another thing that's going to come up a little bit later in the episode If you're the kind of person that can make themselves do something, you know, three, four times a three times a day, and you're looking to improve things like cognitive function, depression symptoms, things of that nature, then go for it. But just like, oh, I'm supposed to take 20 grams, let it rip, it's probably not going to work for you I mean people right, you would just recommend like five grams a day, right?
Speaker 1:Just a standard scoop.
Speaker 2:So here's the issue. Issue five grams a day makes sense at a certain body weight level, but the idea that um we use as an example caroline spencer needs the same amount as jason hopper, yeah, okay, that you know what I mean that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:So we would be looking in the five to ten gram range when we're looking at things like muscle mass and power output and things of that nature, and then we would get into the 10 to 20 range when we're looking at depression symptoms, cognitive function, things of that nature. All right, we arrive at the final one that has an A rating on improving strength and that is caffeine. So this is an interesting one. We have an A rating for power output, a B rating for increasing training volume, testosterone, lowering heart or increasing heart rate, obviously, blood lactate, adrenaline attention you know really good studies on people using it for attention fat oxidation or anaerobic capacity. That's the only one in the anaerobic capacity that has an A rating and it has moderate improvement there.
Speaker 2:Strength, and we've talked a little bit before, more of in a joking way, honestly talking about the Olympic weightlifters that talk about how many milligrams per kilogram that they take depending on. I want to PR today. I already feel good. I don't feel good that sort of thing. So it's an interesting thing because it's obviously can be addictive and can be, you know, something that can fuck up your sleep and keep your cortisol too high. It's very dose dependent that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:But it works really well and I know like a lot of power lifters will not take it leading up to a meat and then take you know six, 700 milligrams of caffeine going into it and they, you know, pr at a considerable level because their tolerance has changed. I don't actually know the data on whether the tolerance thing is kind of necessary or not. I think this is probably a bit of a guess and check for people. I think if you're going to use caffeine for performance, figuring out what works best for you in relation to literally just using it for power output, to anaerobic output, would be your cube test to does it help me or hurt me when I go to do toward a misfit that sort of thing? You've got to know what's going to work for you and what's not going to work for you. And just deciding on competition day because there's a lift to take 600 milligrams of caffeine, then you shit your pants and don't sleep, it's probably not a very good idea.
Speaker 2:So it works really really well but it's you know it's just your own tolerance yeah, for sure I have played around with more caffeine, for, you know, an hour-long bike ride all the way down to like a one rep max and in the neighborhood of 200 milligrams more than I would normally take is there's. There's a fucking difference there is definitely a difference.
Speaker 2:But again, what time of the day are you training? What's your normal caffeine input or intake like? Like that sort of thing is definitely important, so works really well. But it's kind of a user beware situation. Like you know, use a linear progression model. Maybe you know you go to. You've been struggling with your, with your Texas method back squat, so you decide that instead of the 150 milligrams you normally take, you take 500.
Speaker 1:Again, that could be an issue instead of the 150 milligrams you normally take, you take 500. Again, that could be an issue. Yeah, I mean, you also have to like put it into context. Right, you're like, okay, I'm going to do my five by five back squat at 5 PM. It's like, okay, you felt great for your back squat, but you just didn't sleep and you didn't recover. And now you're like torched for the next three days, like, was the caffeine like worth it or necessary?
Speaker 2:so there's a timing aspect to that too all right, our final s tier supplement here is a fucking absolute jack of all trades and honestly the like how efficacious it is.
Speaker 2:Again, just those a ratings and the repeated studies over the course of these different things or what slides it up into an A tier, whereas something like a spirulina or curcumin would end up in a different tier. It works too well in too many different places and is not like another piece. None of this is break the bank type stuff, like it's not going to be S tier if it's pretty good and costs an arm and a leg right, like that's going to. There's a specific ingredient that only does one thing and costs too much. That's on this list that we'll get to later. But we have an A rating on reducing cortisol and in today's day and age I'd say that's a pretty fucking good thing.
Speaker 2:We go down to just in staying in the health condition and the stress-related stuff. We have a B rating on heart rate, stress signs and symptoms and anxiety symptoms. We have a B rating on heart rate, stress signs and symptoms and anxiety symptoms, and you would think that we would stop there. We go to infertility. We have a B rating on testosterone, sperm quality, sperm count, seminal motility, luteinizing hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone. We go down to general athletic performance. We have another A rating on power output. So we're talking about something that lowers cortisol, calms you down, increases testosterone and sperm count and somehow increases power output. That's kind of what I'm talking about here, with how this could be sort of listed as A tier.
Speaker 2:We go into more heart health stuff. We get the B rating on lowering triglycerides. We get a B rating on oxygen uptake, aerobic exercise metrics, power output, once again A rating on sleep quality, a rating on anxiety symptoms. Those are both in insomnia studies. You just make your way down this list and it's like executive functioning has an improvement. A lot of people that have issues with executive functioning get misdiagnosed. With ADHD it's a little bit different. That can help with that and, honestly, this page is way too long to go over, which is a good thing. It's been studied in so many different ways and has A, b and C ratings for an absurd amount of lists or topics that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:So it's a plant and if we're looking at this is probably one where we should talk a little bit about dosage. So in studies in adults, 18 to 65, ashwagandha given in doses of 120 to 600 milligrams per day for four to 12 weeks in duration has shown effectiveness for relief and stress and cortisol. Um, and as you make your way down through this, you know, for sleep it's anywhere from 120 to 1250 milligrams a day. Um, hormonal health in men, 600 to 5,000 milligrams a day. Um, so I'm going to pull up. I normally don't do this, but I'm going to pull up for you guys what I take and how often do I take it.
Speaker 1:I'll interject while you do that real quick. This is also one of those things just listening to those numbers reminded me. So I take ashwagandha and I'm almost certain that one pill is 500 milligrams.
Speaker 2:That would be pretty high.
Speaker 1:Is it yeah?
Speaker 2:that would be pretty high. All right, I take Solgar, which is 300 milligrams per pill, and I take a pill twice a day, so two total pills. So I'd be in that 600 milligram range that I referenced before, sort of for the like cortisol, stress relief sort of a thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, so I'm, it is.
Speaker 2:And it's, and it's only you know it's 60 servings for $15. So again, you get that list and you get it for 15 bucks, which is nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I was correct. One pill in what I get is was 500 pieces, because the suggested serving is two capsules and that results in 600 milligrams of organic ashwagandha root extract and 400 milligrams of ashwagandha root powder. Not entirely sure about the exact difference, but the net is a thousand milligram. I only take one. My point was is that, like you just listed off a bunch of like potential dosage recommendations. Keep in mind also, like if you're about to take this, like a supplement company has a vested interest in you taking more of their shit than like you might need, or maybe you need more than like the serving, the dose recommends. This is where it just becomes like you have to do a little bit of experimentation on your own and not necessarily just believe the supplement, the label that says like you need to take like 30 or 40 of these a day and like, by the way, we have a subscribe and save model, so, like you know, there's that element too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like the. I like the supplements where they talk about if this doesn't work for you, it might be like a like, a like a building up of tolerance as you go, so make sure you keep taking it and increasing.
Speaker 2:And I'm like that's just what a fucking, what a lovely little red flag. That is All right. So quick recap whey protein, creatine, caffeine and ashwagandha are on the S? Tier. You know ashwagandha could be, you could argue that it might not need to be on the list for your everyday gym goer, but if you're like, $15 a month isn't really going to break the bank, it's probably going to be pretty fucking helpful for you.
Speaker 1:Well, let me ask you this, because I was a little bit surprised that that example was on the S tier and something like in your note.
Speaker 2:Vitamins C and D are lower than that right, there is an explanation attached to it, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so then we can just get there. But yeah, all right.
Speaker 2:So A tier. We have beta alanine, vitamin C, spirulina and rhodiola rosea. All right, let's talk about beta alanine. It's real interesting. It's in the B tier because you need to take 6.4 grams a day for six weeks for it to work every day so I can't just fucking thump it in my pre-workout.
Speaker 2:And it works, it has what is the effect that they call that? There is no momentary effect. There's a better way to explain that, and I can't think of the word that they use when they talk about supplements. There's no single-use effect to beta-alanine. It's put in pre-workout. Because what is it called Paraplegia? Something like that? The Tingly Boys, the Tingly Boys, the Tingly Boys makes people feel a sense of urgency. Honestly, it kind of works for me.
Speaker 1:Take this it makes you panic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, there's a bit of. I definitely want to be active. I don't want to be scratching my fucking head. You know, what's funny is a lot of me getting into this world and when we did have proper was based on um again, nerd rabbit hole derrick more plates, more dates on youtube owns a supplement company called gorilla mind and this dude just goes deep on stuff. But he is like an avid like. If you don't take the dose that you're supposed to, you're a fucking moron, and if you want your butthole to itch like that's on you. I've never I've taken too much before and it's never made my butthole itch, but apparently that's a thing. Well, you like literally, yeah, like literally like they, because because there's there's so many blood vessels down there, it it gets a little weird.
Speaker 2:I do remember some athletes making that comment about the float tank. They're like I can't go in the float tank. It stings my butthole too much. I'm like what are you talking about, guy?
Speaker 1:Because of the salt.
Speaker 2:So anyways, butthole talk's over for now. Anyways, we have a B rating on muscle endurance, fatigue symptoms and anaerobic capacity. Sounds like a pretty fucking good idea for a CrossFit athlete, right? Can you take two doses of this so that you don't want to scratch your eyeballs out? Or, honestly, another thing where, like, if you split it up into three doses, you probably would get to a point where it wouldn't bother you at all to take it. You know, just over two grams, that sort of thing. But are you going to take it seven days a week for six weeks to just get it to work and then continue to do so? There are athletes that do that Fantastic.
Speaker 2:But again, like, a lot of the dosage is going to be three grams, five grams, like that sort of thing, and the literature just doesn't support it. So it works if used properly. So that's what slides for me, slides it down into the A tier from the S tier, like, if you want to commit to it, fantastic, get after it. But like, are you gonna? Like you're going to to it, fantastic, get after it. But like, are you gonna, like you're going to forget your doses and then it's going to be like I'm kind of starting over here, sort of a thing and I'm not saying that I know exactly like if you skipped one, quit like never, never, take it again, sort of a thing. But that's you know.
Speaker 2:The five to six week range at 6.4 grams is what we're looking for. So I'm I personally take 3.2 grams twice a day, but it's one of those things where you got to ask yourself like it works. It's cheap. If you don't take it with food, your scalp itches, but like. So I don't know if you have an opinion on that, hunter, just from like, is that annoying for the benefits?
Speaker 1:I didn't, I didn't know the uh, like just the recurring nature of that in order to get it to work. I mostly I kind of just assume, like if it's beta alanine in pre-workout, I get the tingles, maybe I feel better, maybe I don't. I'm not, I'm probably not fucking carving out three doses a day in perpetuity. Like I've got my little morning stack that I take and it's like one pill a day perpetuity. Like I've got my little morning stack that I take and it's like one pill a day I'll. I take my creatine, like whenever I'm like I'll put it in a water bottle and I might it might take six hours to drink that I might slug the entire thing.
Speaker 1:But like I I don't know again, I I feel like it's one of those, it's one of those supplements where it's like are like have there's so many other things to check off before we're getting even into like the A tier and below? It's like now we're talking about such a specialty sort of thing and it's like you are counting your macros, you're getting your sleep, you're doing your recovery, you're doing A, b, c, d, e, f all the way down to Z correctly. It's like, okay, here we can continue to try to optimize and get that 0.01% benefit. We can continue to try to optimize and get that 0.01% benefit.
Speaker 2:Or you can go to bed an hour earlier and put your phone down, and maybe we'll feel better in the gym from a performance perspective. That's a very much. That's like an S tier for the 1%, right yeah exactly, even the S tier stuff.
Speaker 1:I mean, I guess I think there's a difference. I almost thought about saying some of this should be divided almost into like here's like like general recommendation, because like I'll tell, like I would tell my mom to take creatine for the general population regardless. Then there's like the you know I'm here for exercise, and then maybe there's like a both column, but yeah, I think the the beta alanine is like.
Speaker 1:Again, we're kind of getting into the weeds a little bit as far as extracting fractions of a percent here all right, we're gonna move on to yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean it was cool forever because it was in, like in high school it was in all the pre-workouts. But it was in the pre-workouts and we would all be like, ah, like my face, what's my face? Itch. It's crazy and at that age you're dumb enough to be like if my face itches, watch me bench press. Yeah, watch this. And then the real thing there is that confidence is actually a very belief is a very important thing when it comes to the movement, the placebo effect is real.
Speaker 2:I would say that these next two, spirulina and rhodiola, are like the A-T.
Speaker 1:You skipped vitamin C. I'll get there. I'm going to put that last, just to sort of explain it on its own.
Speaker 2:It's like the A-T or ashwagandha it's another jack of all trades. Maybe not surprising that these are all compounds, sort of outside of the body sort of a thing, whereas a lot of this stuff that we talk about is usually like a single ingredient and kind of has a single thing that it's supposed to do with inside the body. So spirulina, commonly known as blue-green algae, is a non-toxic cyanobacterium that is rich in various nutrients and bioactive pigments and polyphenols. I am going to skip the dosage real quick and talk about so we have. These are all related to kind of obesity and heart health. So we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 B ratings, which is pretty crazy Triglycerides, appetite, blood glucose, body fat, ldl, hdl, insulin, vldlc and total cholesterol.
Speaker 2:We go to metabolic health. We have an A rating on oxidative stress biomarkers. We go down to immune health. We got the LDL again. We have the natural killer cell content. It has a B rating. I mean B rating on blood pressure.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of these supplements that we're going to talk about moving forward have an effect on blood pressure and I'm sure chat GPT could do a better job of me here, but like if it's going to improve something, that is a sort of a sign and a correlation of you having a healthier heart, which from in terms of like cardiac output and stroke volume and stuff like that, from a performance side that's always going to be a good thing. And again, I'm just I'm not going to like spend all the time we're going to be rating on muscle endurance, nasal congestion huge improvement. Allergy symptoms huge improvement. I don't know what interleukin is, but apparently it's great for that. So this is another jack of all trades.
Speaker 2:I would say it really just sort of slides from like all of these A grades to B grades and a lot of them. So spirulina is usually dosed in a range of two to 10 grams daily. Extracts are sometimes used, but they're less thoroughly studied in the range of four to 10, as a higher dose is effective for lipid profile and reducing fatigue symptoms during endurance exercise. The lower dose of two grams helps symptoms of allergic rhinitis. That's what I was talking about there with like the nasal congestion sort of a thing. So another kind of jack of all trades. I do remember when I was studying to become a health coach there was something magical about the like density of nutrients and like effects of things that are in the ocean and I was just like like talking about like seaweed and algae and things of that nature.
Speaker 2:They're these like absurd superfoods, like there's the like fish collagen that has just crazy you know sort of numbers to it and in my mind I'm like, well, like the earth's been like kind of like underwater sometimes and not, and I guess these are just the things that have been around for the longest and have been able to to to evolve the most.
Speaker 2:But this seems to this is kind of the number one, the number one thing when it comes to all that stuff. And there's a bunch of different variations of it. You know there's. I think you can get into the sort of hipster land here when it's like if you're not taking brown seaweed you're an idiot. But like this is the most well-studied form of that whole world and it works really fucking well. It's also not expensive, which is nice.
Speaker 2:All right moving on to, rhodiola, is a plant in the genus rhodiola that's used as an herbal supplement with adaptogenic properties that help provide general resistance to stress. We have A rating in fatigue symptoms and cognition, b ratings in subjective well-being and cortisol, so we're getting a little bit more into the mental health side I do want to talk a little bit about. So we talked about how caffeine was really good for attention. Rhodiola is also really good for attention and one of the things that we won't talk about on this podcast because it's a little bit too niche and still needs to be studied a little bit more. Something called alpha GPC, which would live in like the nootropic world, a little bit has been taken by power lifters for a long time. When you are really focused, when you're training or performing, that's going to make it a lot easier to get into that flow state, to sort of go into your body, do that sort of thing. If you are distracted because you are fatigued, that's going to be an issue there. So anytime I see something pop up related to attention, I'm not just thinking of you know, sitting in my office staring at spreadsheets I'm thinking about remaining focused through you know, like that's why when you have the like gel pack on, like a you know a half marathon, you have the gel pack that has caffeine and carbs in it. Like there is the way that your mind feels after you know 25 to 50 milligrams of caffeine when you're kind of beat is pretty crazy. Um, so just something. Just something to kind of take into consideration. There and again we make our way down here. We've got worked really well for depression, got a B rating for aerobic exercise metrics. Already talked about the fatigue symptoms, b rating for muscle damage, one of the only ones that where, if you took it prior to exercising, tissue breakdown would actually reduce a little bit and soreness wouldn't be as bad. So that could be something that could be used in relation to, you know, sort of recovering a little bit faster, especially close to having to kind of go again in terms of like a competition setting All right.
Speaker 2:Last but not least here this is an interesting one. I didn't know what the fuck to do with it, so we're just going to talk about it. Vitamin C the everyday person that is not stressing their body out like a competitive athlete can definitely get enough vitamin C through their diet. So like incredibly important for immune function. That's kind of where we're like. I could scroll down through this and tell you what other stuff it helps. I don't think that's entirely necessary. I think that athletes, specifically in times of the year where they think they're going to get sick or the volume goes higher, supplementing with vitamin C is a really good idea.
Speaker 2:It works really well. It's another one of those things where hey, guess what, if you take vitamin C, you have more vitamin C in your body. The actual absorption of it is significantly higher than a lot of supplements. So that's plasma vitamin C A rating large increase. So it's one of those things that you definitely need. But are you getting it through your diet or are you getting into a period of high stress, whether that's mental stress, physical stress, or you feel like you need to sort of stockpile a little bit, because, like this is something where I would take, you know, one to two grams leading into, during and a little bit after travel something of that effect also going to get that through a lot of if as long as you're eating like fruits and vegetables, that's where a lot of those a lot of these like our nutrients come from.
Speaker 1:Like exactly that's where fruits and vegetables, even though their caloric density is relatively low, like the micronutrients that you're getting, are substantial. Also got a little bit here that says for athletes vitamin c neutralizes free radicals produced during intense exercise. Helping to protect cells from oxidative damage, potentially reducing soreness and fatigue. So, and then also collagen synthesis, for formation of collagen which supports connective tissue.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it's got a. It's got a C rating, for there was one study that one good study that showed that it had a decrease in the muscle damage and then the antioxidant enzyme profile. So part of that the C rating isn't necessarily because it doesn't work, it's because each one is linked to one good study and science repeatable is definitely important when it comes to that.
Speaker 2:So you know exercising three to five times a week, you know at your local affiliate and you get your whole foods, keep it around and use it when you need to. Athletes who are in you know really getting after it training wise. I think it's a really good insurance policy. Somewhere, you know, in the range of one gram to two grams a day is going to be, is going to be super helpful. A tier was beta alanine kind of an asterisk there spirulina, rhodiola and vitamin C. All right, so here's's the issue.
Speaker 1:We are one hour and nine minutes into this podcast and while we are less than 50 of the way, yeah, we're halfway through the tiers.
Speaker 2:We are not halfway through, so we're gonna go a little bit more rapid fire. Now here's our b tier citrulline beetroot, vitamin d, fish oil, magnesium, curcumin. I will categorize vitamin d, fish oil, magnesium, curcumin. I will categorize vitamin D, fish oil and magnesium into that same sort of category as vitamin C, whereas how much of it you need to take and when you need to take it is not relative from one person to the next. So, like someone who has issues with cardiovascular health markers DHA incredibly important in terms of which side of the fish oil you're looking for People with cognitive.
Speaker 2:They're worried about depression, adhd, they've got Alzheimer's in their family, cognitive dysfunction, things of that nature. Epa is going to be what we're looking for there and that would be in the one to two gram range. I do take the, the, the one from gorilla mind. Um, that's where I get a lot of my stuff now, just because I know that it's kind of coming from a similar place. Um, as to what I was trying to do with proper Um, and I will typically take it in the effect of um, a maintenance dose would be the. I've got it sitting right in front of me right now. Actually, a maintenance dose would be two pills, which is going to get me 1200 milligrams of EPA, um, and then, if I'm looking for again more help with the mental side, um, I would double that dose and get to the two grams. There's some pretty good research there.
Speaker 2:Vitamin D what is your skin tone, where do you live, how much are you outside? And then how is it absorbed within the body? It's a S tier what it does inside of your body, but that doesn't make it an S tier supplement, right? So, keeping track of things like that and knowing if you live in a place like we do you live in Maine you better have your you know, 5,000 IU D3 ready to go. Reminder, fat-soluble vitamin. Eat it with food that's got fat in it. Typically there's going to be a small amount of fat in the pill itself, but the absorption isn't going to be as good. So something you want to take with a meal and you know it's one of those things where blood work is gonna gonna be really helpful in terms of figuring it out.
Speaker 2:And another reason why it's not a tier with vitamin C is because too much is not, it's not good Like too much. Vitamin C isn't, isn't really the end of the world. If you're like like a hypochondriac and you are taking the one gram per day, we're not going to see as many issues as overdoing it with vitamin D. Um, doing it with vitamin D. Another one magnesium. I can get you guys the form of it really quick here that we're looking for. The absorption on magnesium citrate seems to have the highest bioavailability, but it's one of those ones where you look at the dose and it's like kind of all over the place a little bit.
Speaker 2:So you have your recommended dietary allowance, you know, getting into the, you know 400 to 500 milligrams per day, like how great is this? How great are the RDA recommendations that we get? How much are you getting from food? How much are you absorbing that sort of thing? So it'd be another one where a blood test is going to be really helpful for you and a medical professional can help you figure out, like where you want to do that. Luckily it is again at that bioavailable level, like you have a moderate increase, so an A rating, but moderate increase in serum magnesium, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:So helps a lot of stuff really important within the body. Do you need it and how much you need is going to be definitely be personalized a little bit more. I can probably put citrulline and beetroot together. They work for what they work for, but the list is very short. The improvement is kind of small You're going to get you know this is directly. Both of these are directly related to exercise performance and are going to be helpful. But I'm just another thing that it's like how far have I gone down the line in terms of trying to find performance and if you're not very fit and you don't have a very good diet and you're not sleeping very well and you're like I take my citrulline and my beetroot Hunter's probably going to giggle or cry, who knows Come through the ceiling and punch you in the throat Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and curcumin is the B tier version of ashwagandha, spirulina and rhodiola. It's another one of those things that it's a jack of all trades, but the amount of studies that it's working on and the amount of increase in these things that it actually does are going to be a little bit lower, so that'd be sort of a way to put it there. Last but not least, any questions or comments on the B-tier Hunter? No, I think we're pushing time.
Speaker 2:Keep cruising here yeah, c-tier, l-cartanine, hmb, coq10, sodium bicarbonate, collagen peptides, zinc, branched chain amino acids and theanine. Here's the thing. The title of this episode is supplements that actually work. Those supplements do work. There are most of those video game fucking Gen ZXY, whatever they have. All the way down to F, it felt like it wasn't necessary to go there.
Speaker 2:All of those supplements work. Hmb would be one of those ones where I believe it is the only one that has the A rating for muscle damage, b rating but a moderate decrease. So three studies. So basically, you would take this prior to exercise and muscle tissue breakdown would be less. It is expensive. It is essentially like the hydrosolate of leucine. It is broken further down, so it's one of those things that has a extremely specific use. It costs quite a bit of money, like is it really worth it for you to take? Again, how far do you want to go down the rabbit hole? Can you get a sponsor to give it to you for free? I'd probably take it if it was free, but I'm not going to go out there and buy.
Speaker 1:I do remember do you remember blonix?
Speaker 2:I don't know if they're still around, but I remember like that was just such a whole thing and it's like, yeah, this like tastes like ass and it's really expensive and what does it do like like hmb creatine, like if we're gonna I was gonna ask hmb is just like a, is it like concentrated creatine or just a loose?
Speaker 2:the leucine is going to be the amino acid that's going to improve muscle protein synthesis the most, but what are the Kings of muscle protein synthesis? You know, all the way back up to whey protein. It is also like the great thing about whey protein is a lot of people need to get 150 to 225 grams of protein in a day. Like you slug down a drink that's got 30 to 50 in it. Like that that actually works really well. Like it's just got too many sort of benefits there.
Speaker 1:There's also a lot of those BCAAs that are already in a lot of the whey proteins that are out there whether it's in the dose that you need or that a study might indicate as necessary as like you have to look up. But a lot of that stuff is in the dose that you need or that a study might indicate as necessary is like you have to look up. But a lot of that stuff is in the protein. That's why it was like leucine was improper, you know.
Speaker 2:Exactly. So, yeah, these again, these lists. What makes a lot of what's happening down in the C tier is like it works, but it works for a specific thing and it's like a slight improvement, that sort of thing. That's how I thought about this, and I did leave the episode saying that this list is very imperfect, but I tried to put out there where the thinking came from, Because a lot of these things are very specifically tied to athletic performance. But then there's your ashwagandha, your spirulina, your rhodiola, where it's like this is just a little too good not to like bring up on the episode, like the science is really there.
Speaker 2:Zinc would be another one where incredibly important, but the type and the absorption and what you already have and like, like it's really good for depression but it turns out it's for treatment resistant depression. When someone is so, so someone's something else doesn't work. So try this. Yeah, also, that's a. That's a whole nother. That would be a whole nother. Rabbit hole that world, I think. I think the best stuff works 50 percent of the time and what they classify as working is, I feel, a little better. That's how low the bar is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my terms of my final thoughts circle around that, that concept, heavily. That's how low the bar is in terms of mental health. My final thoughts circle around that concept heavily. That's fucking wild so if someone 50% of the time, it works for some people based on their feelings.
Speaker 2:Yeah, crazy Collagen peptides. That was the one I believe that actually does, the only one that has the A rating for the muscle damage thing. But again, they're kind of expensive. They don't know if they work in the way that, like your health guru would say, like I drink my collagen and now my connective tissue and my fucking you know my lines in my face are gone they have no, no evidence that it works in the way that they say it does. I don't know, that it's been completely disproved, but like is bone broth collagen.
Speaker 1:I get bone exactly. Yeah, so you get so you get really good glycine um and collagen content from that yeah, you could pay for your collagen, or you could just take that fucking costco rotisserie chicken carcass, boiler down and tons of it yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So those are supplements that actually work. I feel pretty good about the list. My real list is like a probably a nine hour episode If we wanted to get into what everything is. People will be listening to this and we'll probably have questions and, lucky for you, I like to talk about this shit, so just you know. How many of these do you take of that, of the entire list let's see I take in the neighborhood of 10 regularly and like have a lot of the other ones.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, I was. I might actually take more than I thought that I did. Whey protein creatine I guess caffeine depends on like I drink coffee. So yeah, you're nay ashwagandha c d.
Speaker 2:I do recommend just once hunter like, very deliberately, take 200 milligrams of caffeine above what you normally would for like a weightlifting day, just to see if it does what Okay yeah. Yeah. And I find that it's more in a strict press in a back squat, in a deadlift, Whereas I guess maybe less technique focused would be like there is the attention benefit.
Speaker 2:So you would see the effect of, like I can stay locked in on my form, I think, more than you would something else, yeah, that sort of thing. But I do definitely recommend that people play with that, because that's the reason why I put it in the S tier. It could have been slid around, but it just straight up works. You're not going to find a study that's like eh, we think caffeine might actually not work.
Speaker 1:It works really fucking well.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I would say, if we're going to circle all the way back to the beginning and go over final thoughts, you just have to have this massive asterisk with this stuff. And I'm speaking from personal experience, right? So if you think I'm talking shit about you, I am also talking shit about myself and a lot about my former self. There's been a version of me that probably had every single one of those in the cupboard, and it's honestly just not sustainable, especially for someone like me, to remember to take 20 fucking supplements a day, like that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:And then, are we really looking deep into what is the interaction between these things? Am I taking them at the right time of day? Am I taking the dose that's actually working? It's a lot to stay on top of, whereas if, like if, we went into so one of the cool things about examine is, like you can also click on resistance training and it will tell you what resistance training does for those same health outcomes so do you lift weights?
Speaker 2:do you? Do you really give a shit about your sleep? Are you cutting your caffeine off at this certain time of day? Like I think epa and dha from fish is absorbed at a nine to one ratio compared to fish oil. Like, hey, eat fish. Yeah, go have a piece of salmon, exactly that sort of thing. So, and the cool thing is, with these tools we can go find out, like, if you really want to know what fish have the highest and you'd be surprised sometimes have the higher you know contents, just look it up. All of that information is available and out there for you.
Speaker 2:So we have to have this disclaimer of these things should come after right, like how whey protein is like a fucking stop gap If you get 75 grams of dietary protein it is meant to supplement your diet, right yeah? Exactly so. It's a these things work. These things do help. They work really well if you've exhausted other options because your body's really working in the way that it's supposed to when they're introduced. A bunch of pills and powders when you're not healthy makes, absolutely positively no sense.
Speaker 1:You've got it backwards, so again.
Speaker 2:I think this is useful information. I think people will get something from this episode. But don don't even erase all of this from your mind if you're not taking care of yourself in the way that seems kind of obvious in our community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think my final thoughts are along those lines. There's also like you have to think about a little bit of this. This is one of the reasons that I have like a little I take a little bit of exception to a lot of studies that talk about the effectiveness of a certain dietary protocol or exercise regimen is because the problem with the study is the same problem with the medical system going to treat an individual problem as opposed to like a whole. It's like I have high cholesterol, I have diabetes, I have high blood pressure, so here's, here's a pill for each individual thing, rather than looking at the problem holistically and saying like you don't eat well, you don't exercise, you don't move your body, like let's, let's approach, let's attack this from like a holistic approach and lo and behold, like all of those things are tied together and they're going to improve. With supplements, I like, or with studies that take these supplements into account, like things that you have to think like okay, so the the study accounted for, like you know, individuals taking maybe 20 grams away protein versus 50 versus 100, or something like that. But what the study can't and doesn't account for is like what's the actual health status of those individuals. Like what training are they doing, what sort of training are they doing, what is the quality of their training and all. Like you can just I can just poke holes in every single study and it's way easier to knock a house down than it is to build one. But the point being is like you really have to like experiment a little bit with this on your own, within like confines of being responsible and safe and, like you know again, we're not doctors. Talk to your doctor about this sort of stuff. But like doing a little bit of the research and doing a little n equals one experiment because, regardless of how many studies back up the efficacy of a supplement, it's not going to reflect how it impacts you and, like I alluded to in the beginning and you just talked about too like I will, you will never convince me.
Speaker 1:Like someone comes and talks to me about supplementation. It's like, are you eating meat, vegetables, nuts, seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar and doing all of the super simple things? And like, lo and behold, you get your vitamin C. You get your. You get sufficient protein intake. You get your vitamin C. You get sufficient protein intake, creatines found in food. You get all of these things by just doing what you hopefully what we aspire for people to do when they come into a CrossFit gym, which is adopt that lifestyle of like okay, I'm doing all the right things. And then when we start talking about trying to eke out another one, two, 3% of performance, it's like, okay, now we can start talking about these weird supplements and stuff like that. But until you're eating real food as part of your diet, you have that. You're eating the right food and the right quantities at the right quality. You're actually training, you're recovering, you're prioritizing those sorts of things.
Speaker 2:You are just like my opinion you're flushing money down the toilet unless you're doing those things first and then gradually adding the little things to again supplement what you're doing, uh, the other 95 of the time, yeah, I completely agree, and I would say that we just don't know how to use the medical system more than, like, I don't know, they're just they're so when you are in a situation where you need them, they're so fucking incredible like and they work. These, you know, they work under the fucking fluorescent lights and they've got, you know, a fucking rough life you know doctors, you know yeah being like, yeah, yeah, like that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:So I've been around it enough to, I just like. And again we're talking. You know we could be talking about fucking insurance companies, or God knows what medical system?
Speaker 2:But if we can understand that when something goes really wrong, that they're legitimate fucking superheroes. And when you are trying to do the things that we are referencing, like not medical advice, that is, the doctor's office is 20 feet from our fucking doors, you know we go out there. We, you know, on the gym floor we get the. We get the vitamin D that we're talking about a bunch of the time. We get that social interaction that's missing in today's society. We get the movement that's missing. We get the education on, like, like it just happens naturally. Like coach, I had my beginner gains and they're kind of stalling and it's like all right, fucking start taking pictures your food or writing out your dot. You know that sort of thing like it's accepted as part of the culture, right?
Speaker 1:someone goes and rips a cigarette out back, it's like that's kind of weird man.
Speaker 2:It's like that's not part of the culture here like.
Speaker 1:Part of the culture is like yeah eating the right things and like recovering and like like, oh, I got my, I got good sleep, like all those sorts of things, and like how many videos of their of glassman out there.
Speaker 1:It's like I break my arm, like I want to go to a doctor. I get into a car accident, I want a fucking surgeon who's going to be able to patch me up. Like the medical system was not meant to treat just like chronic lifestyle related things, because people you know are putting, whether it's known to them or not, like crazy chemicals into their body and just like eating like a dumpster and like a lot of that's educational, but like that's not. Like we can do so much better by just like coming into a CrossFit gym. Then we start talking about the supplementation and stuff like that, but like the doctor is not meant to tell you to stop eating mcdonald's and, you know, start exercising. It's like did you know that you can? Um, I don't remember where I heard this, but it is like a doctor can legally prescribe exercise as like a, as like a form of treatment.
Speaker 2:I'll have to let me see if I can get it, write it down on the pads. Yeah, we're gonna get. Yeah, we're gonna get. Hunter a fucking pad dude fuck, I got so many fucking prescriptions get the fuck over.
Speaker 1:Here you form a line single file people, most people know better.
Speaker 2:All of us need help in one or two or three or four or five of these categories. Right like it's not that someone walks in. We're the only people that know that movement and social interaction and real food and sunlight and fucking sleep work. Right Like, at this point in today's day and age, like your algorithm, no matter what's probably going to get hit with that. But like people on their own, either completely like isolated, are going to make not great choices because our bodies and minds don't know what to do with that. Or if you're surrounded by people where your culture is like, yeah, we buy the most, the cheapest. It's like calories per dollar. Like that's the way that we survive and that's the way that we have survived. And like, yeah, I probably know that. Like you know, chicken breast and avocado and vegetables is probably like a better fucking meal for me. But where do you even buy that? How do you? How do you open this fucking avocado?
Speaker 2:like how do you cut into it like like, people need help from one another, and that is to me where a lot of the magic comes in like if this was. If this was one-on-one out here, it would not do the same thing. Or if it was just go do your own thing, we'll slightly supervise or not supervise at all, it would not do the same thing.
Speaker 1:Or if it was just go do your own thing, we'll slightly supervise or not supervise at all, it would not be the same thing I mean it'd just be a fucking commercial gym where people come into their three by ten bench, press at the same weight 40 minutes of cardio and leave.
Speaker 2:Imagine how scary crossfit would be if, if it was like a known, well working methodology that didn't get coached, that would be fucking wild.
Speaker 1:No, I don't. Don't tell me, can you make me?
Speaker 2:I'm gonna start a crossfit gym somewhere that doesn't have classes there's so much blood flow to my, my butthole, it's it's itchy, it's tingling, we gotta go.
Speaker 1:yes, doctors are able, and increasingly encouraged, to prescribe exercises treatment protocol. Much like prescribing medication, the process is called exercise prescription and follows evidence-based guidelines that specify the type, dose, frequency, intensity of duration. Hear that doctors out there? Yeah, dr Hunter treatment, give me that insulin. Well, I'll probably hold onto that for a little while, but let's get you doing a couple of back squats and then we can wean you off. That Did we, do, it we did it.
Speaker 2:Thank you for tuning into another episode of the Misfit Podcast. If you are looking for individual programming, you can hit the link in bio on social media. Get signed up for our programming on Strivee or Fitter Reminder. Phase zero baseline testing for the 2026 season begins on Monday, july 28th. The next episode of this podcast will cover what that means TeamMisfitcom. Click on sign up now. You can get two weeks for free on Stream Fit.
Speaker 1:It's too hard, Don't do it. Your members don't want to get fit. Push press.
Speaker 2:We may or may not know what dew point means. We will try again three years from now to explain to you how much water is in your cup and whether your cup is the same size as.
Speaker 1:I got sponges hanging out outside. I'll tell you what the dew point is like tomorrow Later.
Speaker 2:See you next week. Biggest bunch of misfits I ever said either.