While the world of professional and elite sports comes to terms with illegal steroid use, many everyday athletes wrestle with whether legal supplements can build their muscles.
Creatine, protein powders, other amino acids and androstenedione top the list, but some athletes add whey, little liver pills and anything else that seems to work for the person next to them in the gym.
Their widespread use raises questions: Do they work, and is it OK for teenage athletes to take them? They’re also pricey–a jar of creatine that lasts a month can cost $30.
“I get bombarded with questions daily,” said Jacob McClendon, 23, a trainer and bodybuilder studying nutrition at Georgia State University. “Parents ask me. The athletes ask me: ‘Is there anything I can do to help me out?’ “
There’s reason for the confusion. The nutritional supplements field has doubled to a $16 billion industry since 1994, when a landmark federal law gave wide berth to supplements. That law–the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act–laced the onus on the government to prove that a supplement is unsafe, rather than requiring its manufacturer to prove that it is safe.
Supplements sprouted like alfalfa. Shark cartilage, yam cream and protein powders line health food stores across the country.
For athletes, the supplements that reportedly build muscle are the most appealing, with creatine leading the pack. Creatine sales have skyrocketed in the past eight years, with sales soaring from $50 million in 1996 to nearly $1 billion in 2002.
McClendon said he began using creatine about seven years ago when he played cornerback in high school. It is impossible to see a dot of fat anywhere on his 5-foot-8 frame–even though he weighs 177 pounds.
Researchers, however, are not convinced that supplements work for the rank-and-file athletes.
“We have been unable to identify anything that’s legal and effective [in building muscle],” said Wilkie Wilson, professor of pharmacology at Duke University and co-author of the book “Pumped” with Cynthia Kuhn, also a professor of pharmacology at Duke. “Creatine might pass that test, but it’s the only one that falls into that category.”
An article in the Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association in 1999 said that creatine, an amino acid that occurs naturally in the body and is important in muscle restoration, “may possibly” aid performance in high-intensity, short-duration spurts, or those less than 60 seconds, such as sprinting and powerlifting.
It went on to say, however, that clinical trials have not proved creatine to be effective, and the article also raised questions about whether in large doses it could cause kidney damage. “We just don’t know the long-term effects,” said Dr. Ed Laskowski, co-director of the Mayo Clinic’s Sports Medicine Clinic in Rochester, Minn. “We know it can cause muscle cramping, because it diverts water from the body to muscles, and it can be related to dehydration, but we haven’t studied the long-term results. And that’s what we’re most concerned with.”
Physicians and researchers also worry about dosages of creatine and other supplements and the purity of the products. “The doses are all over the place,” Laskowski said. “You can have 10 different products of creatine, and they’ll all have different levels of it. Sometimes, they’ll have inert products in them that someone can be allergic to.”
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Edited by Cara DiPasquale ([email protected]) and Victoria Rodriguez ([email protected])