Introducing Coach Vance! Let's Chat About Supplements

Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching, courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person. Real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. All right, folks, DSO here with another episode of the Dad Starting Over podcast. With me today is the latest member of the Dad Starting Over family, team, however you want to call it, our tribe, and that is Coach Vance. Coach Vance, welcome.

How are you?

Doing well, thank you for being on the show. And you are part of our coaching team now, but your expertise is a little different from the rest in that you have made your living off of the world of health and fitness, for lack of a better term. Can you tell us your background and what you bring to the table?

Yeah, so, um, basically since 2009 I've made my living mostly as an Olympic weightlifting coach. Um, I'm a senior international coach for USA Weightlifting. I'm also the head Olympic weightlifting coach for Brewton-Parker College in South Georgia. I actually last week was in Ecuador for the Pan American Championships, and in December I'm going to Uzbekistan for the, the World Championships with Team USA. I'm also the sport and exercise science program coordinator at Brewton-Parker College. I'm hopefully a year away from my PhD. I get to say I'm a PhD ABD, which means all but dissertation. So I just have to go through the horrible pain, which is to do your final dissertation. But I've done all the coursework and, and that sort of thing. So we've just been approved to have a sport and exercise science here at the college, and I'm coordinating it, kind of wrote the program from scratch. So I'm on the academic side as well. I, I never really wanted to be in coaching, actually, or that wasn't the, the initial plan. I actually wanted to be a biologist. So I'm really interested in the, the science part of athletics as well. So I've just kind of been pushed into the coaching role, uh, throughout my life. People kind of recognize my intelligence and my leadership skills. And I was kind of always just kind of picked for those positions, just kind of fumbled my way into what I do now.

Very cool. So short but sweet. Yeah, you're qualified in this realm. And that's important in this world, isn't it? Because with the internet being what it is and the fact that this world of health fitness, which has been— and we'll talk about this some more— it's been kind of taken over by the, uh, bodybuilding world a great deal. It always surprises me when I have, um, 50-some-year-old men who read my book, for example, and say, time to get in shape. And, uh, they will just go right into supplements, um, you know, body split this and that, and they just really get lost in the weeds. And it very much— it's driven by a lot of the popular culture, bodybuilding magazines and stuff. I grew up in— I was big into the bodybuilding world in the late '90s, early 2000s. Um, Dorian Yates, for example, was my man, and before him, the Mike Mentzer, Lee Haney, and all that, all that world. Um, I went to— to give you some background, I got really into— I went to the Arnold Schwarzenegger Classic and actually shook hands with Arnold himself. I sat down and chatted about an hour with Dan Duchaine. I don't know if you know that name.

I do.

And talk about an interesting character, but one of the nicest human beings I ever met. But the more you learn about him, old Dan had a problem. We could go on about him for quite a while. He was, um, he was a, uh, he wasn't a scientist if I remember right. I think he was an amateur, very intelligent guy who knew a little bit too much and was a little dangerous with his knowledge. And he introduced some not-so-good compounds to the world of bodybuilding too.

Yeah, his thing was self-experimentation and while experimenting on others who would let him. Um, but yeah, there's, there's— since the 1960s, there's not a whole lot of research on anabolics above the, um, the medical dosages. So of course, so he was, what, what can we do? You know, let's look at these 7 different vectors of, of anabolics and see if we can exploit them. And, um, a lot of self-experimentation and a lot of trial and error. That's how it worked. No clinical trials.

No clinical trials. That pretty much summarizes the world of bodybuilding. And to its credit, the world of bodybuilding kind of makes fun of itself, where they will call this level of Dan Duchesne-type expertise bro science. Familiar with that term? Where, uh, you know, you'll be in the gym And if you see a guy that's got some muscle, and with the male ego being what it is, all you got to do is ask that guy, what do you think about fill in the blank? And sit down and relax, because that dude will tell you hours worth of probably 90% of it's nonsense, but he's very sure of himself and he's— it's worked for him, etc., etc. So we could go down— the difficulty with these subjects is there's so many different avenues to go down. We could go down the world of drugs and anabolics, we could go down the world of workout splits and what works and what doesn't and fat loss. But for today's episode, I wanted to talk about the world of supplements. And this is something when I talk about, I'm surprised at how many men jump into the world of, of bodybuilding so deeply. The one avenue they probably jump into right away is supplements, which shows me that the supplement companies have done an excellent job of putting the product in the man's face feeding upon his insecurities and telling him, pay the $49.95 for this— who knows what the hell's in this bottle, which we can go into, no one's quite sure— and it'll give you the edge that you want to really achieve. For most men, it's fat loss, muscle gain. Um, so let's talk about it. Um, in general, the supplement world— is it safe to say, Professor— is Um, 90% bullshit. Is that a good summary, summation?

Uh, yes, yes, definitely.

Yeah.

Um, I would say yes and no. In, in context of making great improvements in body composition and performance, yes. I would say, um, most of, most of the supplements are— have some kind of backing in terms of clinical trials or research that they do something, you know, they take some mice, they inject whatever substance into them, they do some measurements, and they find that it does something. But then once they, they bottle it, make it in oral form, and a bunch of fitness people take it, Essentially, it does nothing. And there's, there's very little— honestly, there's very little research on, on supplements, like good research, because the only, the only people who have a vested interest in that research would be supplement companies. You know, pharmaceutical companies spend billions and billions and billions of dollars to do their own research, but Funny, the supplement companies won't fund a lot of research into these things because they know, well, even if it— you find out that it works a little bit, they're saying, you know, it's gonna improve this by 500%. And once it's in— once it's been researched and found that's not true, now they're liable for their marketing. Essentially. So even if it— even if they find out that it does work, it hurts their marketing campaign. The worst thing that could happen is they find out— they fund the research and they find out it doesn't work. Well, then they have to take their product off the market or continue to just sell it anyway, even though they funded bad research. Yeah.

And when you— when you hear some of the behind-the-scenes stories of some of these companies, it's pretty nefarious stuff. And sometimes it's as bad as, we got a warehouse full of XYZ chemical, which is pretty innocuous. It's not gonna really— it's not toxic. It's not gonna kill anyone. Go see if you can dig up some studies that show that this is gonna help somebody in some way. And they'll find some. Well, there was a study back in 1976 that showed in a small population of men, their testosterone increased 12%. Boom, test booster. Put it on the market, slap a funky label on it. And put it in the GNC, buy some ads in the muscle magazines, and away they go. That's how a lot of these start. Um, what's interesting though, it even gets more nefarious the more you dig into it, is what's on the label, it's not necessarily what's in the bottle all the time. And there are some third-party companies that have realized this and have taken some of these products and put them in the lab and said, guys, be careful, you don't know what you're putting in your body. Which begs the question, Here in the States, don't we have laws in place to protect me from buying a bottle of XYZ test booster and taking something I don't know, you know, that could hurt me in the long run?

Yeah, so I'm not a lawyer, but I do know that there's a couple ways to kind of get around the FDA. One is that they can say it is a nutritional supplement. Supplement. So if it's a nutritional supplement, then it doesn't really have to pass, um, the kind of the clinical trial stage as an actual, uh, drug. Um, the other way is, is they, they say it's, uh, well, real gray areas, they say it's a research chemical. So, um, but you're— and it's not for human consumption. So you can even like put— you can even put on your bottle that you're not supposed to take this. This is just for research purposes only.

With a wink wink, we all know what it really is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And but people are of course gonna, gonna take it. So technically, no, there's typically no laws. And even, even companies that kind of violate the FDA rulings, the FDA is so busy, especially now with with the whole pandemic and stuff like that. You know, waiting lists to get approval is like 7 years for like a drug that even when they find out that it's good clinical backing, it works, it can save lives, it's still typically a 7-year waiting period to get it on the market. So they're not worried about it. If somebody reports them, if that this company is selling something, they'll send a warning letter and that might be it. Or then they might check, sometime later and send another one, or they might say, hey, take it off the market or we're gonna fine you. But it's not usual that like, you know, the FBI is raiding supplement companies and all that kind of stuff. But I'll tell you that quality control is also an issue for sure. I won't throw anyone under the bus, name any names, but a friend of mine does run a supplement company, and right now it's, it's a good one. Um, I would trust, I would trust him, I would, I would trust his product. But when he was first starting, he was, uh, he was capping this stuff, making this stuff, uh, in his kitchen, which is not a sterile environment. Your kitchen is not— no, even though you eat what you're, you're making, it is not a sterile environment, um, to be putting pills in, you know, in bottles and, and all this kind of stuff. So, um, and you kind of see it. You, you open, you open this up and you can kind of tell which were kind of made in it with like a little handheld machine, or which ones were made with like a, a good, um, pharmaceutical-based machine. You can kind of tell the difference.

Now sometimes the companies would, uh, I remember this was back in, I believe, in the '90s Somebody got busted putting some stuff in there that they weren't supposed to do. Well, why the hell would they do that? Well, if you put a little bit of anabolics in your test booster, whatever product it is, um, and then some, you know, people feel some legitimate changes and, you know, something that can only be brought on by a hormonal product, well then sales are going to go through the roof. And some people— I don't remember any specific names— got busted actually putting anabolics in the products. And selling this to the general public. Kids at GNC were buying oral anabolics. That's huge. Um, we saw something within our Dad Starting Over group where we had a gentleman, he was very adamant about there are natural supplements that can significantly boost your testosterone levels, to which I'm going, eh, be careful, you don't know what you're taking. And no, there's really no genuine substitute for the real thing, which is if you're just a naturally high testosterone guy. If you're well rested, you're hydrated, and you're eating right, that's what you got, versus taking a shot in the butt or a cream or whatever. That's about it. Taking Testo Boost 5000 or some magnesium supplement, I think is what he was taking— no, good luck, but no, you're not going to get to the level. Well, he said, oh yeah, watch this. And he shared his blood test— or yeah, his blood test values that he got back, and it showed that his testosterone was through the roof, and his estrogen was down to nothing. He's like, well, that explains why I don't feel so good. And this was Exhibit A for you don't have any clue what it is you're taking. And what you and I both saw there was this is something he's taking akin to an aromatase inhibitor, obviously something that is shutting down the production of this estradiol. And in turn, with the way the body works, trying to balance things out— I know that's oversimplifying it— you will notice the subsequent rise in your testosterone. And that's what he saw. And we never heard back from him on what happened with that. I would tell that guy, stop taking whatever it is you're taking immediately. But that was Exhibit A for who knows what the hell you're taking and what results could be. Be careful out there.

Yeah, and in, in fact, the Olympic Committee now actually has, um, products that they certify. They wouldn't do it for a long time because they didn't want to be liable for that sort of thing. But now they have actual companies that have third-party testing go through this process so that people know what they're taking is in there. Because it's, it's hard to know what actually went on, how many people just said that they were taking contaminated or ended up with contaminated supplements when they were taking the real thing and actually cheating. But the Olympic Committee has been warning for— since the beginning of the supplement industry that, you know, these tainted products exist. Um, something is as simple as, uh, they're also making anabolics and they don't clean out their mixers, that sort of thing. A lot of these products are made in China where they are making these things as well. Or like you said, um, you know, your product, if you put D-Ball, you know, Dianabol, in, in your product, it's going to work. And so people are gonna keep buying it. So if they take this thing and they feel nothing, which Dynaball, you're gonna feel too. After, you're gonna get some water retention, you're gonna look bigger like almost immediately within a week. That's not muscle, that's actually water retention, but you don't know the difference. You just go, I'm 10 pounds heavier all of a sudden and stronger. So yeah, that's always always a risk that they're gonna be putting stuff in there that you don't know what it is. People ask me, like, they wonder why I would recommend, like, an actual pharmaceutical drug for health purposes versus, like, a supplement. Well, first of all, a lot of these supplements, they work in the same pathway as the actual drug. For example, red yeast rice. Is a supplement you can buy to lower your cholesterol. It works in the same pathway as like a statin, so like your Lipitors and your Lovastatin. Actually, Lovastatin was designed off of this red yeast rice. You know, it's been used in Chinese medicine for 1,000 years. They looked at what's the actual ingredient that works, they synthesized it into an actual pharmaceutical. But, you know, if I go to the pharmacy and it says 10mg of Lipitor, I know I'm getting 10mg of Lipitor. If I get this red yeast rice, I don't know what the dosage actually is when it ends up in the, in the pill. Could be like way overdosed, could be way underdosed. So why would you take that risk? Why would you— I'm going to take a crappy version of Lipitor when I can get the real thing from my, from my doctor. So in that sense, I always recommend— I know the pharmaceutical industry has their own problems, but typically you get what's on the bottle. Yeah, for the most part.

Yeah, you know what it is you're putting in your body. Um, you know, some people listening to this may say, oh, somebody's putting Danabol in, into a supplement. What's the name of it? Let me, let me write this down. Um, these are serious compounds. An oral steroid has a whole host of issues you don't want to introduce into your body unless you absolutely need to. Um, Danabol, for example. Yeah, you want to watch your estrogen shoot through the roof and, and have water retention and then subsequent high blood pressure and everything, go right ahead. Um, so it's not good. I just want to get that out of the way, guys. We're by no means, uh, saying that this is a good thing. In fact, any doctor worth their salt will say stay the hell away from that stuff. Um, We know— let's just throw out the number, which could be conservative— 90% of this stuff is just— you might as well throw into the garbage. There's also another level of supplements which, yeah, they work, but is the degree to which they work worth the $75 or whatever you're going to pay for the bottle? This stuff is expensive, especially considering the cost of what goes into making— the margins are, I would assume, pretty huge on some of these things. You know, you got a warehouse full of some powder from China that costs, you know, pennies per pound, and you're selling a bottle of it for $79.95. It's a pretty good markup. Um, for example, some of the most common supplements that I hear out of, uh, members' and readers' mouths are, uh, for example, pre-workout. I took some pre and I couldn't sleep. You know, here's— that's the vernacular you'll hear guys say. And, uh, and I was running around the block and I hit a PR after I took my pre-workout. It's a stimulant. And some of those stimulants are, wow, pretty major stuff. That in itself could be dangerous for some guys. You got high blood pressure and you're taking the equivalent of 8 cups of coffee in one shot. Be careful. Now, with that being said, sometimes when I go to the gym and it's 4 PM and I'm dragging a little bit, I will take a little— I have espresso machine, a little espresso. That's my pre-workout. So there is some viability to it. Um, some other ones that there's viability to, uh, creatine, creatine monohydrate, for example, if to be specific, has been a, from what I understand, a well-studied supplement, which has its benefits and their strength gains. And the mechanism to which it works is what exactly? Is it the water retention? Is it the— can you shed some light on why creatine does work?

It's probably a combination of things, but mainly it works in the, the what's called the creatine phosphate cycle. So high-intensity training, you can, you can last about 6 seconds at your highest intensity before it kind of depletes, and you actually need to— you require other energy systems, carbohydrates and fat, to actually supply energy to the body. So like with strength movements, you only get that, that short burst. So creatine essentially prolongs it, like literally just milliseconds, but that's enough for possibly an extra rep or two if you're talking about weights. It could be like a couple more steps at a higher speed if you're, if you're a sprinter or something like that. So I always, I always make this point. So do you need those extra couple reps? If you're— because creatine works and it's so cheap that I, I now that I, I recommend if you just get the plain creatine, no, no bells and whistles in it, just plain creatine powder. You can put in some juice or something like that, or it's already flavored, that's fine. But it's so cheap that it's probably worth it for for anybody who doesn't have like a kidney issue or something to prevent them from taking it. But I always ask, like, you know, if you're kind of new at this, you're kind of an average lifter, you're the 3-day-a-week-in-the-gym type of guy, what is those extra couple reps you're gonna get actually doing? Yeah, yeah, you're not an elite athlete. For somebody who's been training for 20 years and they're trying to eke out like the 1% gain they have left in their, in their life. Or, you know, they're a competitive athlete where, you know, 1% is winning or losing or something like that.

Yeah.

Or even if you're a recreational athlete and you're really into it, you know, maybe. But yeah, for the average gym goer, I mean, does it, does it really matter? I mean, most of the, the, the studies that we have with untrained individuals, a lot of these things show no differences because if you're untrained, you just make so much progress anyway that adding something else doesn't equal more progress. Your, your body can only grow so fast anyway.

So yeah, what's the end game here is what I say often to men. What are you looking— really, it boils down to, I want to look good naked and I want to be healthy. Well, that supplement— and these guys, some of these guys are spending hundreds of dollars a month on stuff that when you look at it scientifically, may give you a 1% edge. I don't think 1% edge for a father of 3 who's 40, 50-some years of age— spend the hundreds of dollars elsewhere. So, I mean, it doesn't make any sense to me. And there again is that culture of the bodybuilding culture infiltrating the what used to be the normal healthy, you know, like a Jack LaLanne 1980s aerobic type. Used to be cardio used to be it. And I'm not sure where all of a sudden it became bodybuilding is it. And it's not necessarily it for everyone. There's a place for resistance training, I think, in probably everyone's exercise repertoire, but it's not the be-all and end-all. And I— it surprises me when I'm talking to 50-some-year-old guys. And I had to laugh at one guy that I think it was last year. He was genuinely despondent because he was finding it very hard to hit his target of 225 grams of protein a day. I'm like, who told you? And why? Well, how much are you eating? Well, I got up to 150 today. I'm sure you're fine, Mr. Guy Who's Sedentary 95% of the Time, right? You work— you work out 4 days a week, an hour at a time. 4 hours you're exercising every week. I, I think you're going to be fine. I genuinely don't think if you got that extra 75 grams of protein, a couple of extra chicken breasts that day, you wouldn't notice any difference whatsoever in your physique, in your health, or anything. So don't, don't sweat those little details. And I think, thank you, uh, what's, uh, Joe Weider, thank you, uh, Bill Phillips and all these other guys for instilling in everyone these little bodybuilding things that don't amount to anything for 99% of us. It's a little ridiculous. And the supplement world is a perfect example of that. Separating people from their money, preying on our fears and insecurities. Take this. This guy's taking it. That's another thing. The guys talk in the gym. Whoa, dude, you just hit that 315 like it was nothing. Yeah, it's the creatine blah blah blah I'm taking. But let me write this down. What's it called? And they're on Amazon, and they're just— I see it. I see it at the gym all the time. It's nuts. But I get it. I was in that world too. I've taken egg protein, whey protein, creatine. I'll get into this— the world of the— oh, what were they called? Prohormones. That was an interesting little world there for a little while, thanks to Patrick Arnold, was his name, the chemist who came up— where's he from? Illinois, because I lived not too far from him in Illinois. And yeah, he came up with the androstenedione. That was the first one, basically an oral steroid. Yeah, it took over the professional sports world, specifically the baseball world, you know, by storm. It was, that was the real stuff. And they kept changing the compound and, and making it so it wouldn't aromatize, if I remember all going by my memory from the '90s. But that was a big deal. And old Patrick ended up in jail over it.

Yeah, well, I mean, he also worked for Belcol.

That's right, the whole—

they were doing the full-blown, yeah, anabolics, designer, yeah, designer steroids for, for athletes as well. Yeah, so, um, the prohormone is, it was, is basically what, um, metabolizes into testosterone. It's like the— you have this family tree, you have testosterone here and there's like a million steps. Like, you know, on paper you can write out like there's like 7 or something like that, but eventually— but there's actually like thousands of enzymatic steps. But eventually you get testosterone. Well, androstenedione was like right before that. So, um, it was just kind of— it was a way to sell steroids, um, without 'Cause, you know, at least in the United States, steroids are a Class C drug, and that started in 1992. So that's coincidentally about when the prohormones kind of hit the market. So like, you couldn't, you know, you could face serious jail time for using steroids or trafficking and all that kind of stuff. So we'll just go one step below. Testosterone will go to androstenedione, which kind of worked, I guess. It had all the same side effects as an oral steroid— liver damage, skewed your lipids, water retention, shut down your, your production of natural testosterone. And because there was no people weren't taking testosterone on top of their, their androstenedione, then they were getting low estrogen and all that horrible, horrible, uh, stuff as well. So by the time it actually worked, you're probably in such bad shape that it's probably going to stop working as well. So you'd be better off just taking the real thing. Just, just, you know, again, things that have had clinical trials and are used for medical purposes— I'm not saying they're good, but Um, they're, they're better than the, the gray market supplement for sure.

Exactly. And then we've seen here in recent memory— I don't know how many years it goes back now, several years— another round of this kind of pseudo, if you, for lack of a better term, pseudo-anabolic world, the SARMS. S-A-R-M-S, selective androgen. I can't remember.

Yeah, this, this I get questions about constantly, the selective androgen receptor modulator.

That's it. Yeah.

So for medical purposes, um, first of all, none of them have been FDA approved. Uh, the ones that are on the market are basically the throwaways. They've gone through clinical trials either with mice or actual humans, and they decided, um, they're not good enough to be taken to market yet for medical purposes. So those are the throwaways. Somebody's just reading papers about them and they're like, oh, I can make this. In a laboratory and sell it, and that's basically what's happened. So those are usually considered research chemicals. So technically they're not illegal, they're not a Class C drug like steroids, but they're also not FDA approved. So there's a lot of questions about whether they're legal to sell or not, and probably lawyers probably don't even know at this point. But they, I mean, they will, if they turn out to be good, if they develop some good ones, they'll be great for the medical community because the issue with wasting diseases and cancer and trying to prevent muscle, uh, muscle loss is in the past all they've had were anabolics. Well, what about women and what about children? So selective androgen receptor modulators work on the androgen receptor, meaning they cause protein retention so that you can maintain or build, build muscle. And they're supposed to not have the same side effects. They're supposed to not cause liver damage. They're supposed to not change your lipid profile, cause shutdown. But all the, all the research now shows that they do. So again, Anything that, that stimulates the androgen receptor will probably cause some level of side effects, maybe not as much as your anabolics. But they'll be used in the future for, for women and children. But again, it's kind of like a weaker steroid that has the same side effects. The reason people are taking them is because they can get them, you know, you don't have to go to the guy in, in, in the alley behind the gym and, hey, what do you got? What can you help me with? Um, and face jail time and all this kind of stuff. You can buy them online, so that's why they've become popular. But again, it's like a— it's a weaker steroid that has the same side effects. So if you're gonna do it, you might as well do the real thing. But I would stay away from them, period.

Um, and SARMS are oral. Taken orally, I assume, right? That's also, that's also a big thing for a lot of these supplements is that they prey on the fear of needles because a lot of these guys are one step away from jumping over the line into the steroid world, but they don't like the idea of injecting themselves. And these supplement companies and the research chemicals, SARMs people, they know that fully well. And you can get the same thing just by putting it in your mouth. And when you go down that pathway of taking something orally Uh, you, you tell me, uh, being processed by the liver is a concern, or being filtered through by the liver, and so which could lead to some not so good things.

Yeah, the only way they've been able to make those things bioavailable is they have to have— they go through this, um, enzymatic process of change by the liver, which over time just creates damage. Now the liver is a little bit more resilient than other organs like your kidneys and whatnot, but yeah, um, so the, the big issue is, is the lipids, I would say. So liver damage is a big concern with, with those type of oral drugs, but, um, the biggest issue is the oral drugs change your HDL, lower your HDL by 50% or so over, over time. So you're— that's where you get the atherosclerosis and, and, you know, all these bodybuilders dying of heart blockages and whatnot is, is really because they have low HDL pretty much year-round because they're on those, those type of things. So the liver bounces back. I mean, it's, it's much worse to drink every day, drink alcohol every day, than probably the oral steroids. But it is something you have to concern— be concerned with. But yeah, I worry more about their, their cholesterol good and bad cholesterol, takes a big hit with those oral drugs.

And that's a silent killer, as they call it. It's, uh, you start in the age of 20-something and accumulates over time. And by the time you're in your late 40s and going to the doctor and they say you've got 80% blockage here and your blood pressure's through the roof, etc., etc., that's when you go, oh shit. Um, it's, again, we want to reiterate The taking of anabolics, anything of that realm— we're not telling people, uh, you're taking a minor league version of the real thing, you might as well just jump over the line and take the real thing, it's probably safer. No, there's downsides too, and we can cover that in other podcasts. There's downsides to jumping on the old anabolic train for sure, as any man like myself who's on testosterone replacement therapy will tell you. There's pluses and minuses, and there's way to manage, and it can go overboard in a hurry, and you can go under, and a whole host of issues. So it's nothing to be taken lightly, which is precisely why with these supplements, be careful what you put in your body. You have no idea, especially, you know, this— well, this is a real tangent, but this is a perfect illustration of just because it's legal and just because you see an ad for it in the magazine doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to take this and one, it will work, and two, it's going to be safe for me. The, uh, the cannabis world has really taken off here recently, and what we're finding is there's a select group of people that really don't tolerate marijuana very well, and it sends them into the world of— the fun world of schizophrenia. Oops.

Um, part of the issue has been the idea of, well, it's all natural. Um, so snake venom is all, all natural.

Well, exactly.

There's this idea where people tend— some people tend to be, like I said, kind of drug-phobic. So I'll take the supplement instead for my health. Um, the doctor said I should take this, but I'm going to take this instead. You know, they go to the doctor, the doctor says you have high blood pressure, um, you need to be on this blood pressure medication. You say like, oh, I'm just going to go to GNC or Walmart and get this for blood pressure instead because it's all natural. Um, but all natural doesn't mean no side effects. You really have to do your research and figure that out. And the problem is, again, they haven't gone through long clinical trials. So even if you take something and you like, you're tracking your blood work and all this kind of stuff, you don't have any negative side effects. But how about, you know, 2 years from now? You don't know because there's no long-term studies on it. Like, you know, a lot of blood pressure medication like Lipin— like Lipin— like Prinacil or whatever have been on the market for 20, 30 years. So we have something that's, that's been there. We can see, oh, this guy's been taking it for 20 years and it doesn't have any side effects. You don't know what these supplements are gonna be as well. I mean, a lot of these pharmaceutical drugs end up after a few years, they get recalled. Because they've gone through the short-term studies and then they figure something out after somebody's been on it for a couple years and then they recall it. Same thing can happen with those supplements as well.

Mm-hmm, exactly right. Okay, with all that being said, do you have in your mind a small list of supplements that are safe, effective, and worth the expense?

I do. Um, So we mentioned creatine. Again, that's one I suggest if you wanna go that route, and it's really just because we know it works, and it's really cheap, and we don't have a lot of data that shows that it's dangerous. Unless you have a preexisting kidney issue, then you shouldn't take it. But other than that, it's been on the market for a long time. Nobody's showing up at the hospital with creatine-related illnesses and that sort of thing. So that's the one. Vitamins, I mean, that's a big one. A lot of, a lot of guys don't know that they might be vitamin deficient. They might have B12 deficiency, folate deficiency, iron deficiency, all kinds of deficiencies, yet they're spending $150 on all these other supplements, but they're vitamin D deficient. So I always suggest vitamins in the morning and minerals in the evening, and usually like a B complex that'll have vitamin B12, vitamin D. I suggest niacin, especially for, for older men, because it has a good effect on cholesterol. We have a lot of research on that. Um, and then in the evening, zinc and magnesium. And that's, that's pretty much it. A lot of people are zinc and magnesium deficient, B12 deficient, and vitamin D deficient. The typical American diet seems to cover everything else. Um, you know, there's no scurvy or anything like that. Um, Vitamin C, you can, you can, you can take 500 milligrams of that. Sometimes I recommend that too, especially if you have joint pain, because it's, it's a very good antioxidant as well.

And that about covers it.

Wow.

Yeah, out of the quite literally thousands of different things that you can take, there you go.

Yeah, the, this— I mean, we know stimulants work. Um, I'll just say that, that these pre-workouts, the main ingredient is caffeine.

Yeah.

Um, a lot of the other stuff, the herbs, like, that stuff scares me because I don't think they've had a lot of research on those things, and you don't know how it interacts with— because they put in so many different stimulants all at once, a lot of those pre-workouts. So, um, less is more, I would, I would say, if you're looking for a pre-workout, because you don't know how those things interact. Is it 1 1 2, or is it 1 1 5? Because we know from like the old, like, ephedra, caffeine, aspirin stack that they used to sell, that was how it worked. The aspirin was actually donating— it's called methylation— they were— it's donating chemical material to the other stimulants in there. So it's, yeah, it's 1 1 5, and you're, you're essentially doing crystal meth if before you train, and it worked.

It worked for sure. But what were some of the name brands for your cardiovascular system? Uh, Ripped Fuel, that was a big one. That was basically—

yeah, those are huge, those type of things. So, uh, caffeine is the main ingredient. I would start there, you know, try drinking a cup of coffee before you work out, see how you feel. Take a 5-Hour Energy or whatever before you work out, see how you feel before you go right to the, the Jack3D, right?

Um, and with all these products, it really boils down to just cut the BS. What is your end game here? And most of you say, I want to look decent and I want to be healthy.

Is—

are all these products that you're going to take worth the— I got an extra rep on my bench press. So what? You're, you're not a competitive bodybuilder. I keep saying that to guys, one of my standard phrases. You're not a competitive bodybuilder. You're not a model. You're not making your body or your money with your body. You're not being in a contest anytime soon. You're not a weightlifter that, you know, one more repetition or one extra kilo is the difference between silver and gold medal. You're just an average dude. You want— yeah, you want to look your absolute best possible, and you want to be as healthy as humanly possible. Let's put that first. But I personally don't see— and this coming from experience— um, well, if I could save all those hundreds of dollars that I spent as a kid back in the '90s and stuff, be nice if I had all that money back, because it didn't do me a bit of good. Um, I think a lot of it's a placebo effect, to be quite honest with you. I take this, I think it's going to work, therefore it works.

Oh yeah, the placebo effect is huge. Um, in fact, they've even done studies where they, uh, they gave two groups, uh, sugar pills and they told one group that they were steroids and one group that they were nothing, right? And the group that they told, um, were steroids, they made tremendous progress.

Wow.

In comparison to the other one, which kind of shows the placebo effect of putting anything in, in your mouth as well. So I ruined it by, by telling everybody that their supplements don't work. Um, but yeah, I think the belief is the bigger, bigger contributor than, than the supplement itself.

And the, the fact that they want to believe, you know, you could put study after study in front of a guy's face that said that thing you're buying is completely worthless Then he goes to the gym and his buddy who beat him on the bench press or whatever said, dude, it's that Test Boost 5000, man, I'm telling you. And he's like, maybe I'll give it another shot. Maybe there's something to— they just want to believe. That's all there is to it.

Uh, you know, they take something, they train, they get better, and they get— they, uh, give credit to this.

There you go.

Yeah, I hear that all the time. Uh, you know, they'll ask— somebody will ask me, what do you think about this product? And I'll say, I haven't seen any evidence that that product works. And they'll say, but I put on 10 pounds. I'm like, well, good, you worked out hard and you ate a lot. Worked out, you ate more, um, you took care of yourself, but it probably wasn't that, that product. And that's why I say, I usually just go, okay, you know, if, if they want to continue to take it, take it. But you asked me.

Yeah, yeah, if it works for you Sure, go ahead and keep on taking it as long as it's not hurting yourself. And as we've said, you may very well be hurting yourself and don't even know it. You're ingesting something in your body that you don't know the long-term effects for. Good luck. Yeah, so, um, any parting words? Any, um, we know there's a handful of supplements that may do you some good. Really, it depends on where you're, um, where you're, uh, what's the word, where you're lacking. Um, do you suggest guys take a blood test to show them what minerals and vitamins they may very well be lacking, um, before taking something? Hate for you to take a lot of B12 if the blood test comes back and said, dude, you're maxed out on B12, you're good to go. Well, don't waste your money on a B12 vitamin.

Yeah, definitely take a blood test and, and, and see where you're deficient. Um, especially, um, you can, you can figure that out by especially just get your red blood cell count. You know, if that's low, then there might be an issue. If it's high, then, then probably not. You're not— probably not deficient in iron. You're probably not deficient in B12 or folate. I know there's been a couple guys in the group that have had a kind of low red blood cell count or hemoglobin, and I helped them, you know, get that up. So It's something to look at, but also vitamin D. And that's pretty much, pretty much it, because, you know, it won't hurt you. I mean, they're water-soluble vitamins, B vitamins. You'll, you'll be alright. The one you have to worry about is iron. Taking too much iron is a real problem because it causes blood clotting.

Yep.

It's actually a cause of heart attack. Sometimes, you know, you take a trip to the hospital and the doctor says, they look at your iron levels and they're like, whoa, you know, what's going on here? So that is the one you have to be concerned with, but the others seem to be okay. So yeah, I would get your iron checked, your B12, your vitamin D, and that's pretty much it. The big thing is, is eating well is expensive. So if you can take that money that you're spending on supplements, buy your chicken breasts and that sort of thing, you'll be way better off.

Yeah, exactly. But that's not very sexy, is it? That's not as exciting as— it's— there you go. It's work. It's not as— it's not as sexy and exciting as going to GNC and buying that bottle for $30 that gives you that extra edge. That makes you excited and awesome versus a tray of chicken breasts. Wow, kind of tired of chicken breasts and steak and whatever. But hey, that's the nature of the beast. We're not going to pull any punches here. That's why I said I want to title this, you know, the No BS Chat with Coach Vance about all, all world, all things in the world of the fitness and health. So looking forward to more of these. We'll talk about fat loss, gaining muscle, talk about diet, we'll talk about hormones, all those things that we hear questions from the guys on a daily basis about. So looking forward to it, and thank you, Coach Vance. Appreciate it, buddy. Yeah, thank you, and, uh, hope you have a great day.

You too.

Have a good one.