Conference pasta::flex

    another quarter ended and I waited a day and taped this morning.
    
    I put on another 1/2 inch on my chest 1/2 inch on my quads, 1/4 on my
    bicepts, 1/4 on calves.  Waist is the same as well as forearms. I am
    also up 5 lbs to a whopping 185 not bad for my 5'7" frame.
    
    I also added 100 lbs more to my leg work and increased my chest
    workouts by 40 lbs benches and 90 lbs using hammer strength machines.
    
    The point of this note is to say in 3 quarters I have put on 1 1/2 inch
    on my chest alone without supplimentation other than protien shakes.  I
    no longer take chromium, ephidrine, phosphagen, creatine monohyrdrate,
    any kinds of suppliments other than the shakes and I read those to
    ensure that there is no additional suppliments in them.  
    
    An 1.5 inches on my chest may not seem like much, but for me gains are
    very very difficult and this gain came only by increasing my protien
    count by at least 50 grams a day.
    
    so all of you folks out there kicking out big bucks for those
    suppliments, whats your gains?   I started this note months ago, to
    challenge all of you taking suppliments to participate in a somewhat
    more formal research.  No one has put in real hard information about
    their gains based on spending hundreds of dollars per months.  Is this
    because when you actually tape yourself your finding out that the $100
    dollars you spent this month on Creatine Monohydrate didn't give you
    any  measureable gains and when you look at your workout log, you find
    you really haven't added any more weight to it?
    
    I know I am being aggressive in posting this note again, but I want to
    know through measurable gains if supplimentation really works.  When I
    say measurable gains I mean I added 1 inch to my pecs in 4 weeks, not
    Oh I feel pumped, recurperate faster, feel stronger.  Heck I feel that
    the minute I walk in the door of the gym.
    
    So people, post your measured gains lets see what really works and what
    does not.  
    
    Brian

<--- oooh! ogre in training! watch out folks, i taught 'im all he knows. hehehe

ogre.

================================================================================
Note 234.215                    I Love It When...                     215 of 216
POLAR::TYSICK "Prying Open my Third Eye"             10 lines   8-MAY-1997 08:55
                              -< More questions. >-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Brian,
    
    I'm 6 ' and hoping to reach between 185 and 190 lbs.  And no, I haven't
    tried adding any extra protien to my diet.  I guess if I want stuff to
    happen, I'll have to take this a little more seriously?  
    
    Can ya tell me if this is a good deal for Creatine Monohydrate, it's
    35$ for 360 grams (Canadian)?  It says it's 100% pure, no fillers.
    
    	Jay

    Jay
    
    Rather than rat hole your question on creatine in the I love it note.
    
    Scott was correct, I don't believe in supplimentation other than
    protien.  I have yet to have anyone enter results of their
    supplimentation in this string.  To me that means your wasting your
    money on suppliments.  
    
    I believe again suppliments work like a placebo.  You spend big bucks
    on suppliments and so you convince yourself your making huge gains,
    loosing bodyfat and getting rock hard or recovering faster.  I say
    great put in hard facts here about how much poundage you added since
    supplimenting, how much inches you have added etc and we can see if
    supplimentation really works.
    
    As I said Jay.  I have added the stats of mine from just increasing my
    protien diet by drinking a protien shake.  I have put on 15 lbs in
    mass, and some inches all around.  Show me your stats and if they show
    better results than my protien supplimentation, I'll start considering
    supplimenting.
         
    I beleive supplimentation other than steriods is a waste of money.
    I can show you my notebooks from 3-4 years ago going back more years
    when I supplimented with stuff like creatine and other junk and guess
    what, the gains I made back then were great in the very beginning when
    I first started weight lifting, then flattened out and became very slow
    afterwards no matter what expensive and sometimes dangerous (ephidrine,
    coffee and aspirin) suppliments I took.  The only time so far in all
    these years that I have really gained quickly was when I increased my
    diet and took more protien.
    
    So Jay, why don't you put in your stats starting with taping your
    measurements and let the rest of us see how $35 dollars a month
    increases your size and the poundage your lifting.
    
    For that matter I really would like you supplimenters to add your
    information.  I would love to be proved wrong and that if I take X
    suppliment I can add more inches without having to consume one more
    chicken breast 8^).
    
    Brian

    Brian,  You should probably clarify that what you are looking for is
    anecdotal information.  Double blind studies need not apply  ;-)
    
    --Scott
    

    Cool.
    
    	I'll measure up on the weekend.  Post 'em.  And see what kinda
    gains I make in a month, with out the Creatine. And just try protien.
    
    	Jay

even though i don't sup with anything other than a protein drink and extra 
vitamins, i personnaly can't see the diff between drinking a cuppa creatine or 
eating a coupla extra chicken breasts/egg whites/side of beef.  all that solid
protein is made up of creatine and someone has just figured out the best way to 
extract to most efficient to use creatine from the solid, powder it [or capsule 
it], and add it to water or juice [grape is the best to use], and drink it.

even after a full meal, the idea of an extra piece of meat or anopther solid 
meal a coupla hrs later make a lot of people cringe, but the idea of having a 
drink is much more appealing.  i believe it'll work in the end, it just depends
on whether you want to eat or drink and if it's drinking, are you willing to
put forth the extra bucks on creatine vs the solid stuff. [even there i question
whether it's a waste of money as the cost for either prolly comes out the same, 
or close to it.]

mho,
reg.

    Creatine monohydrate can be obtained from red meat (I haven't seen
    anything that suggests that its available in any reasonable amount in
    eggs or chicken); however, cooking degrades it, and you need to eat
    *pounds* of meat each day to even get close to an amount of creatine
    normally needed to have any effect (I'm in Chelmsford right now and all
    my books are at home, I'll try to look up exact amounts next week if
    anyone is really curious - I do remember you have to eat a really
    significant amount of red meat to get a minimum dose of creatine).
    
    ymmv,
    --Scott
    

<--yes, Scott, i do believe you are right! that little diddy refreshed my memory
immensely.  it's the "pure" creatine that's derived from meat and in the 
powdered form is forced into the muscles easier than digesting the beef product
itself.  heating does destroy it which is why it's reccommended to be drank with
juice or water.

but the excess creatine that'd taken in the powdered form doesn't necessarily 
add size to your body as much as it voluminizes the muscle cells making yiur 
skin feel tighter, your clothes fit better, your strength increases some [but i
don't believe it increases any more than on a steady high protein diet]. it's
not reccommended that you take it continously, but that you should cycle it [at
which point you'll watch your muscle fullness shrink, while your strength should
stay the same, after all- you have been lifting while consuming, right?]

reg.

    Hey I took Creatine for about 6 months and the tape showed no real
    difference and my poundages on the bar did not increase past the usual
    amount without creatine.  I followed that dosage to the letter.  I
    front end loaded which meant the first whole bottle in one week and
    then the maintenance after that.  I felt in the beginning super hard
    and felt I could recover quicker, but hey guess what thats entirely a
    subjective response.  the real measure came when I measured at the end
    of each quarter and reviewed the bar weight at the beginning and at the
    end.  No difference.  The point I keep trying to make is no one here
    has any solid anectdotal evidence that this kind of supplimentation
    really results in any change except the thickness of your wallet.  I
    can tell you for a fact that since I have been consuming more whey
    protien, I have definitely added inches, mass and pounds.
    
    The other point also is that the places where most of us get our
    information is from the muscle mags.  These magazines are sponsored and
    paid for by EAS, TwinLabs, Weider Products etc.  Everyone of those rags
    has advertisers including MM2000.  If you carefully read all those
    studies cited including the footnotes, your going to find almost zero
    information.  I can guarentee you that it will say a study done on burn
    victims resulted in a noticible gain in muscle mass and fat reduction. 
    Or some such fact.  In other words most of those studies were done by
    colleges to research something else and oh by the way they found out
    this side effect.  You will also note the side effect was often not
    studied beyond the first test.  I wrote to manufacturers asking for
    test results to find out 1. they don't test at all and 2. they cited
    these college studies done for something else.
    
    If you use pure logic and look at the top pro's those guys are huge and
    freaky from juice.  They may suppliment like hell because they get them
    as freebees, but they juice.  If creatine Monohydrate really worked,
    not a one of those guys would juice or use growth hormones would they? 
    If this stuff really worked, almost everyone in the gym I know would be
    massive, huge and freaky.  But as much as the gym is filled with
    plateheads no one looks like Yates or Levrone.  Lets face reality, I
    would gladly pay $50 a month if the stuff made me look like Yates and
    was as harmless to my body as eating steak.
    
    My two cents worth.
    
    Brian
                             

>    Hey I took Creatine for about 6 months and the tape showed no real
>    difference and my poundages on the bar did not increase past the usual
>    amount without creatine.
    
    2 possible reasons; what you were taking wasn't creatine because the
    supplement company ripped you off.  Or...  I recently read that some of
    the research groups studying creatine have found that there's a small
    group of people (number, not size) which do not seem to realize any
    benefit from creatine supplementation.  They aren't sure why this is,
    but it is being looked into further.  Of course this information was
    probably from an article in MM2K, which probably precludes it from
    having any basis in fact, regardless of the fact that they and EAS seem
    to be spending a large amount of money having some University studies
    performed specifically on the effects of various supplements on weight
    training athelete.  I must remember to surf the EAS web page when I get
    home and see if they final study results on the creatine study are
    available.
    
    As far as anecdotal info goes, I can't provide you with what you want
    in terms of hard numbers; I haven't been supplementing for about 6  months
    now, because my workout schedule hasn't been very good, and I consider
    it a waste of money to supplement if I'm not going to focus on heavy
    lifting (besides, I've been saving money for a family vacation); I will
    say that I don't think I've made the same kind of gains without
    supplementation, but then my focus hasn't been on intense lifting, so
    which is it - I don't know.
    
    Anyway, I was just informed that I'm late for a meeting, so I've got to
    run.  More later.
    
    --Scott
    
    

> it's
>not reccommended that you take it continously, but that you should cycle it
    
    Reg, do you remember where you read this?  I have never seen anything
    that suggests it's necessary to cycle creatine.  Vanadyl yes, because
    of its slightly toxic effects on the liver, but not creatine.
    
    --Scott

Scott,

pretty sure mm2k had it [and m'n f] when they were talking about creatine, hmb
and v2g [-- ?]

reg.

    Well, I just was flipping thru the March 97 issue of MM2K and on page
    121:  Creatine Monohydrate...this is definitely a year-round staple
    supplement.  So.  ymmv.
    --Scott
    

    Another question then
    
    With juice you stop and you loose that mass because without the
    artificial hormones your body cannot retain it naturally.
    
    If creatine is not something you can get normally, ie digesting from
    meat etc, then do you loose whatever big gains you made when you stop?
    
    At least protien supplimention is a concentrated form of protien, but
    your getting it via the normal digestive tract and your putting on mass
    based on this.  I doubt you'll loose a lot of mass when you stop
    drinking suppliments.
    
    Also the other thing I worry about is the side effects from long term
    usage of suppliments like creatine.  If I understood some of the
    previous notes, you can't get this naturally, in fact your body has no
    way to get the same dosage your ingesting from this suppliments.  Since
    this is not a natural form of food, are there side effects?  I mean
    juice can ruin your heart and liver, ephidrine can cause heart failure,
    phen/fen heart problems etc.  So I have to believe that ingesting any
    substance your body cannot get directly from nature, has to have some
    kind of impact on your eco system.
    
    
    Brian

>    If creatine is not something you can get normally, ie digesting from
>    meat etc, then do you loose whatever big gains you made when you stop?

Actually, you can and do get creatine normally, just not normally in the amounts
that have any significant cell volumizing effect or that would significantly
effect glycogen levels in the cells.  So yes, when you stop using it, you lose
the effect - at least that's been my experience; I don't get as much of a pump
(as large) and I notice a decrease in my ability to lift as heavy as I was
previously able to.  I just don't have this well documented in my training
records - sloppy record keeping, sorry.  However, what I did not lose was the
muscle mass that I gained because I was lifting heavier during the time I was
using creatine.

>you can't get this naturally

Let's qualify this to say it's harder to get levels sufficient to have any
effect from naturally occuring sources such as red meat.  But it does occur in
red meat and in fact the body can synthesize what it may need from the amino
acids arginine, glycine and methionine (from the article I found earlier today).
Sorry if I confused things in an earlier posting. 

As to the other concern about duration of use, as I recall, there are a few
studies being done to look at long term effects of higher than normal dosages,
but I can't recall reading about results.  Generally creatine is considered to
be one of the safer supplements to use.

I've been re-reading this article on ABCDE, and it looks really neat.  I'm
definitely going to have to take some time to try it out this summer.

--Scott