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Transcript

THE REGISTERED NUTRITIONIST’S EVIDENCE-BASED GUIDE TO SUPPLEMENTS · No Forking Nonsense - The Nutritionist UK

• 0:00
  @paulthenutritionist: Welcome to no forking nonsense. The podcast that slices through the nonsense and serves you straight talking nutrition advice that actually works. I'm Paul, a registered nutritionist and your host. And every episode, I'll be debunking diet myths, breaking down confusing food advice and giving you practical science back tips to help you eat better, feel better and get your edge back. There'll be no fans.
• 0:24
  Before we get started on this episode about supplements, I just wanted to say if you want five days of completely free coaching from me, a registered leading nutritionist, for free straight in your inbox, go to tinyurl.com/kickstarter26 and you will get five days of completely free coaching straight in your inbox just by clicking that link. So if you've enjoyed anything that I've ever said, go to tinyurl.com/kickstarter26. Let s get into the episode. Hello and welcome to another episode and this episode is one that probably will be my most listened to podcast. Why?
• 1:10
  Because it is about supplements, it's the kind of the shortcut that people are after regardless of your goal. Most people want to know what a registered nutritionist takes, what he thinks about when it comes to supplements, what works, what's the hype, what's dangerous. So we're going to unpick that, everyone wants a magic pill for energy, fat loss, focus, muscle gain, even sleep these days, but the supplement aisle is a minefield for marketing claims and very little science, so I'm going to cut through all of the shite and talk about what actually works, what's pointless and why the market sells fantasies. Okay, so firstly I want to preface this with I am a scientist in terms of the way that I look at things. Everything I say is backed up with research, I try not to recommend anything unless I've got receipts for it, so hopefully you find this really helpful.
• 2:09
  We need to start by saying that the word supplement actually has a meaning that we probably need to consider when we buy supplements. Supplements are exactly that they supplement ideally a decent diet, they don't replace one. So most people think that supplements will fix poor eating, sleep, stress or training when actually it's not going to do that. I often talk about this when we talk about multivitamins. I have a high quality multivitamin as an insurance policy, taking just that is probably not going to make too much of a difference.
• 2:51
  Marketing of these types of things are very clever, s a reason why it s like a multi billion pound industry. So the marketing will sell outcomes whereas the research measures the mechanisms because marketing will say it'll boost testosterone, will maximise fat loss, will make your brain like limitless and it's a super supplement or whatever, whereas the research will tell us that some nutrients will have modest well studied effects or many have no meaningful benefit or some are very context dependent or only help if you're deficient in something. So what we want to do is we want to make sure that there is a clear correlation to strong scientific evidence, those which are really well backed and then we need to ensure that we kind of park those with very limited evidence or perhaps no evidence at all or evidence which has since been debunked. I think of oh what was that one by CLA and BCAAs which we might talk about later on. So let's start with the most researched supplements with strong evidence.
• 4:04
  I did a video on this on Instagram at PaulNutritionist whereby I spoke about creatine monohydrate and the research with creatine, we know that it's good for strength and power, so multiple meta analysis shows that creatine increases maximal strength and power versus placebo resistance training. We know that it's good for muscle mass, safe and effective for increasing lean mass when combined with resistance training, but perhaps more significantly and probably more relevant to everybody is that creatine, there are a lot of recent research tells us that it may improve short term memory and intelligence tasks performed under stress, especially in tasks requiring high demand. There's also research recently about those who are sleep deprived taking about ten grams of creatine and their focus and alertness increases as well. Creatine increases are phosphocreatine stores in muscles in your brain, supporting what's called ATP regeneration under high demand. What that means is that we ideally want to be taking about three to five grams daily for maintenance.
• 5:18
  No need to load like a lot of people say, it can speed saturation but it's probably not necessary. The marketing often adds kind of odd blends, so like performance complexes or caffeine stacks, and I wouldn't go for those. Creatine's really cheap, really accessible. Get the powder, not the tablets, because the tablets are about as big as your head. You just need creatine, monohydrate, nothing else.
• 5:44
  The second one caffeine. So you're probably taking caffeine anyway, but perhaps you don't know why caffeine is probably one of the most well it is the second most researched supplement if you like and why it is a supplement so it increases cognitive performance, so acute caffeine, improves alertness attention, reaction time in multiple, multiple placebo versus controlled trials, but it also can improve exercise performance, enhances endurance and short term high intensity performance, but only if your bloodstream isn't saturated by caffeine anyway. What caffeine does is blocks the endocene receptors reducing the perceived feeling of effort and fatigue. The research tells us that you probably, if you're taking it for activity, you want about three mg per kilogram of body weight, about thirty to sixty minutes pre activity, but the problem is that if you're taking it from pre workouts they usually chuck a load of shit in it like an energy blend, so it's usually the caffeine alone that has the best research and the best impact. So if you are taking caffeine pre workout, be mindful not to take it within seven hours of bedtime and just have an espresso, you don't need really expensive pre workouts.
• 7:05
  Vitamin D3. It amazes me how many people find themselves really miserable, depressed, low between, I don't know, about October, November until about April, and they're surprised when I say that's because you're low in vitamin D3 that we get from the sun. And of course we have very little sun in this country. I am, as I speak to you here, going to The Middle East for some winter sun that I do every year because although I take vitamin D3, I need heat, I need sun. I also have on my desk now a daylight lamp which again is simulating daylight because I'm so conscious of getting enough light in my eyes.
• 7:56
  But what the research also tells is that vitamin D3 is essential for bone health and calcium homeostasis, there's strong evidence throughout lifespan, linking immune function and mood, as I said observational links to reduce respiratory infection risk as well. I remember over Covid there was a lot of research about how symptoms can reduce with increased vitamin D low vitamin D status is associated with poorer cognitive performance in studies as well. And vitamin D, what it does is it modulates calcium absorption, immune cell function and gene expression. I would recommend most people take a minimum of two thousand international units, I take four thousand international units and I'm seventy eight kilograms. And it's super important because it's fat soluble that you take it with food, otherwise largely pointless.
• 8:46
  Some products advertise megadoses but without proper testing this risks kind of sometimes toxicity and can be unnecessary, but if you are in England you're probably safe to take about four thousand international units. Omega-3s and fatty acids, so you want EPA and DHI here. So many, many, many of us don't eat enough fish, I certainly don't have enough oily fish, so I take four grams of omega-three fish, little bit fatty acids, for cardiovascular health. What you don't want is shit cod liver oil from Tesco, it will do very little for you, make sure you're getting high quality omega-three fatty acids with EPA and DHA. The research tells us it's great for cardiovascular health, associated with reduced triglycerides and reduced risks of sudden cardiac death in high doses, that research is really clear.
• 9:41
  Cognition as well, some evidence for benefits in mild cognitive impairment or age related decline. Although the results kind of vary depending on the study you're looking at. I take it primarily for those things but also super super super important. I have arthritis really badly in my family. I actually have arthritis.
• 10:04
  So I once injured my ankle playing rugby. Went for an x-ray and although I had a little crack in my ankle, remember the foot man, what they called the foot doctor, he said I'm not worried about your ankle, I'm worried about your feet because you have the feet of a 90 year old man. And he said I recommend all you do is swim and walk. I said well obviously that's not going to happen. But I looked into a lot of research and I genuinely feel if I don't take four grams of fish oil for three days in a row, my feet and my hands just like they're just unbearable.
• 10:38
  And I have really low flexibility in my feet as well so really good for inflammation EPA and DHA can modulate inflammatory markers so that's why they're strongly linked between arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis and taking fish oil or having oily fish within your diet. Evidence tells us that one to two thousand mg combined EPA and DHA daily typical for general health but four grams daily may be used for triglyceride management or for inflammation markers. Again, take it with food because you'll get fish burps otherwise. With regards to marketing, so there's many kind of fish oil blends, but they contain tiny amounts of EPA and DHA, so always check the label there. So other moderately supported supplements, so those three are probably the most researched but we're dropping down now into the moderately supported supplements.
• 11:42
  It's a difficult one and I've kind of toyed with whether we talk about protein powder because although it's a supplement it's also a food as well, and we know that we probably don't consume enough protein, and protein obviously improves recovery and growth when combined with any resistance training, but it's so important for appetite, it's so important for our hair, our skin and all these things. Really protein powders are just an effective and efficient way to just reach your protein targets. I'd say I have vanilla whey in my smoothies first thing in the morning but other than that I don't ever really drink protein shakes. But it, you know, it works because it is quite literally a food and that's the bottom line to it. It helps you hit your protein need, it's not inherently better than whole foods because it is a food.
• 12:46
  I d recommend it, but I d recommend it because it s a food and it can help if you re short of protein and I certainly aren someone who avoids it. Beta aniline, so for those of you who work out, beta aniline is, you will find that in most pre workouts paired with caffeine. It's that thing if you've ever had a pre workout that gives you an itchy, tingly face and I quite like that. Haven't feeling it. Can't remember what it's called, it's called like para bloody hell, para can t remember but it gives you an itchy face.
• 13:15
  But what it does do is it improves high intensity performance lasting for sixty to two forty seconds. It cuts through acidosis by increasing what s called Cardenacine levels and it can be really effective kind of explosive power that you might need if you re resistance training, if you a sprinter or if you do anything that requires of exposed sensitivity, taking it, anything from three to six grams daily, spit it throughout the day and as I say it causes that kind of harmless tingling at higher doses. But people seem to pull it in pre workouts because you get like a physical sensation, people think, must be working' I don't know. It's good, well researched but you know unless you're doing unless you have like specific athletic goals it's there's no benefit for like general cognition or health. So then we move to the little or zero evidence, so pay attention my friends because branched chain amino acids do absolutely fuck all, so there is absolutely no added muscle growth benefits when total protein intake is adequate and most people taking BCAAs are probably consuming too many protein shakes anyway.
• 14:36
  The marketing, I mean it's died off a little bit now, but I remember back in the day marketing position BCAAs is like muscle sparing, but all the research disagrees if you already have enough dietary protein, because all BTAAs do are just trying to fill the gap is what they were saying of not getting enough branched chain amino acids, but you will do because if you have a whole protein, protein is quite literally made if you have complete protein are made up of all their amino acids, so you should be alright. Fat burners are absolutely pointless. Systematic reviews show that minimal effects on weight loss and often rely on stimulants for transient effects rather than having some magic bullet. I remember back in the day fat burners were massive so that's CLA, I remember Grenade, they started with their fat burners and it was basically just green tea, like how they got away with it I have no idea because they're basically marketed as these metabolism boosters when actually there's like negligible long term impacts on fat loss. And it's like it might have like a 0.5% impact on your body fat levels but the reality is if you just probably ate a little bit less, it'd probably be cheaper and easier.
• 15:57
  Testosterone based blend, so herbal blends, tribulus, I remember that tribulus test, what was it called, tribulus test or something like that back in the day, fenugreek, they show really inconsistent results and rarely produce meaningful increases in testosterone in non deficient adults, so the marketing claims are much stronger than any evidence there. Norotropic, L theanine, so to be fair, individual ingredients like L theanine or caffeine, they have modest effects in their own right, but this kind of stacks of neurotropics, they have loads of other ingredients in there which rarely have robust human trial backing, so you're often paying for a lot of noise and not really in effect. There's a lot of research and I'm not suggesting this, but there's a lot of research for non smokers taking nicotine paired with perhaps some caffeine and some altheanine that can help concentration. Again I'm not recommending this or any of the things I'm talking about here but there's research on nicotine having an impact on cognition and concentration at low doses. But yeah, in terms of like neurotropics, are like those limitless drugs, there's very, very little evidence telling us that the best neurotropic is just good sleep and a good diet if I'm on this, which is boring and most people don't want to hear about that.
• 17:27
  So that's pretty much it. We could talk about collagen, which again wastes time, there's very little evidence to support that that has anywhere close to the claims that it seemed to have last year, there was a lot of shite out there. Greens powders, again very expensive, especially athletic greens, very expensive but it's mostly spirulina which you can get a lot cheaper, so I wouldn't worry about that. I think the most important thing here to say is that supplements are regulated as foods. Companies do not have to prove effectiveness before selling them and that's the problem because marketing departments can make structure and function claims without kind of human trials and that's why you see words like supports energy helps cognitive function, which are quite vague because meaningful claims require actual science which they often don't have.
• 18:22
  If you want to evaluate supplements, would probably firstly go to examine.com which is like a it's an independent resource base where I get all my research when it comes to supplements and they basically collate every nutrition sorry, every supplement research that exists and it's fantastic. But you can ask yourself is there human data with meaningful endpoints? Is the dose in the product what the research used? Is the mechanism plausible? Does the ingredient have safety data?
• 19:04
  Am I actually deficient or is this improving my baseline performance? If you can't answer yes to these, then probably be sceptical. I'd say some practical takeaways are, as I said supplements supplement, they don't fix anything, they support your good habits. Creatine, caffeine which you probably have in vitamin D, omega-3s have the best evidence for real outcomes. Protein supplements can help as a food and they help meet your protein targets, but many products on shelves have very little evidence, so just be mindful of that.
• 19:35
  Final thing to say is if you want five days of free coaching, go to the link in the description below, which will give you absolutely free five days coaching straight into it for this episode of no talking nonsense where the fluff gets binned and the facts get served. If you found this helpful share it with someone who could do some clarity from an expert. That's me by the way. And make sure you hit follow so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you want more straight talking, no nonsense nutrition advice, come and find me on Instagram at Paul, the nutritionist.
• 20:09
  Until next time, eat smart, feel human again, and stop falling for the forking nonsense. See you next time.