Supplements advice - Good or Bad?

John-- I am very intrigued by your weekly yardage. On one of the other threads--the weekly mileage poll thread--I posted some questions for hyper-mileage swimmers on injury rates, social life, etc. If you have a chance, can you take a look and reply? Thanks. In terms of creatine, here's an excerpt from an article I wrote on ergogenic supplements for the erstwhile MH-18 magazine (part of the Rodale empire): The hottest product of all, at least at the time of this writing, is creatine--a naturally occurring substance found in meat and fish and which many athletes believe can help them enhance explosive strength. "The last time I looked, there were over a thousand Internet sites that sell it," says Wadler. Indeed, in the eight years since British sprinters publicly touted creatine at the 1992 Olympics, an estimated 2,750 tons of supplemental creatine have been unloaded upon the American public. Sales last year alone topped $400 million, and it's not unusual for coaches to offer "group discounts" on creatine to athletes as young as sixth graders. One big reason for its popularity: creatine is one of the few supplements that has actually been studied in well-designed experiments. "Of all these supplements that are being sold to the public," says Yesalis, "and there are literally thousands of them on the market, creatine is the only one that's been shown to work in well-controlled studies in human athletes. Period. All the rest of them make claims based on suppositions, or how they might function in a guinea pig, or on isolated case reports. My gut level instinct: many of these other products are total quackery." And even creatine's documented effects are, at best, modest--rating at most a15 or 20 on a scale of 1 to 100, says Yesalis. Creatine has no benefit whatsoever on endurance events, nor does it appear to boost power during a single burst of effort, such as a sprint or maximum bench press. What it has been shown to do--at least in men riding a stationary bicycle in the laboratory--is increase power during a series of repetitive sprints. During the first 15-second burst of effort, volunteers on creatine proved no stronger than those taking a sugar pill. However, on subsequent sprints alternating with rest periods, the creatine-powered cyclists did gain a slight advantage. Marketers, of course, have been quick to suggest that this can allow guys to work out harder during strength training in the gym and therefore gain more muscles. Even if such claims have a grain of truth, the question remains whether marginal gains are worth creatine's costs and known side-effects, which include weight gain due to water retention and at least one documented case of kidney failure.

John-- I am very intrigued by your weekly yardage. On one of the other threads--the weekly mileage poll thread--I posted some questions for hyper-mileage swimmers on injury rates, social life, etc. If you have a chance, can you take a look and reply? Thanks. In terms of creatine, here's an excerpt from an article I wrote on ergogenic supplements for the erstwhile MH-18 magazine (part of the Rodale empire): The hottest product of all, at least at the time of this writing, is creatine--a naturally occurring substance found in meat and fish and which many athletes believe can help them enhance explosive strength. "The last time I looked, there were over a thousand Internet sites that sell it," says Wadler. Indeed, in the eight years since British sprinters publicly touted creatine at the 1992 Olympics, an estimated 2,750 tons of supplemental creatine have been unloaded upon the American public. Sales last year alone topped $400 million, and it's not unusual for coaches to offer "group discounts" on creatine to athletes as young as sixth graders. One big reason for its popularity: creatine is one of the few supplements that has actually been studied in well-designed experiments. "Of all these supplements that are being sold to the public," says Yesalis, "and there are literally thousands of them on the market, creatine is the only one that's been shown to work in well-controlled studies in human athletes. Period. All the rest of them make claims based on suppositions, or how they might function in a guinea pig, or on isolated case reports. My gut level instinct: many of these other products are total quackery." And even creatine's documented effects are, at best, modest--rating at most a15 or 20 on a scale of 1 to 100, says Yesalis. Creatine has no benefit whatsoever on endurance events, nor does it appear to boost power during a single burst of effort, such as a sprint or maximum bench press. What it has been shown to do--at least in men riding a stationary bicycle in the laboratory--is increase power during a series of repetitive sprints. During the first 15-second burst of effort, volunteers on creatine proved no stronger than those taking a sugar pill. However, on subsequent sprints alternating with rest periods, the creatine-powered cyclists did gain a slight advantage. Marketers, of course, have been quick to suggest that this can allow guys to work out harder during strength training in the gym and therefore gain more muscles. Even if such claims have a grain of truth, the question remains whether marginal gains are worth creatine's costs and known side-effects, which include weight gain due to water retention and at least one documented case of kidney failure.