Barbell Shrugged - Bodyweight Supplement Dosing: Creatine, Caffeine, Beta-Alanine and More with Doug Larson, Travis Mash & Dr. Mike Lane #838

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

In this episode, Doug Larson sits down with Coach Travis Mash and Dr. Mike Lane to challenge the "one-size-fits-all" approach to supplement dosing. They break down why most labels are effectively written for an average-sized person, and why that matters when you're 100 pounds soaking wet, or a 300-pound lineman. Using real stories (like a 450 mg caffeine pre-workout for a small athlete and the classic "I couldn't sleep" aftermath), the crew lays out a simple north star: doses should  scale with body weight, and you should take an amount specific to your body size. From there, they get practical on what works, what's overhyped, and how to time things. Dr. Lane explains beta-alanine as an intramuscular buffer (via carnosine) that helps athletes push harder in the anaerobic "pain cave," but only if it's taken consistently for weeks, not as a one-off. They compare that to sodium bicarbonate as a more acute strategy that can help performance but comes with GI risk if you don't practice it ahead of time. Along the way, they call out a common industry trap: under-dosed formulas, proprietary blends, and products that sound impressive but contain amounts too small to matter. They wrap by narrowing down the essentials: creatine as a daily staple for most people (and potentially higher doses for cognitive benefits, especially under sleep deprivation), plus basics like protein and targeted use of supplements based on training demands. The conversation also goes deep on magnesium, why many people are likely low, how it supports relaxation and recovery, and why the form matters (bisglycinate/threonate etc). The big takeaway: match the supplement to the goal, match the dose to the body, and build your plan on quality ingredients, effective amounts and repeatable habits. Links: Doug Larson on InstagramCoach Travis Mash on Instagram

Friends, Doug Larson here, and today on Barbell Shrugged, we discuss how to dose supplements relative to your body weight. As you likely know, many supplements have generic recommendations such as take five grams per day. And the problem is that some people weigh 120 pounds and other people weigh 300 pounds. And stating the obvious, those people need different amounts of various supplements for those supplements to be effective. We talk about creatine, caffeine, beta-aline, magnesium, and more. And so if you want practical advice on dosing supplements relative to your body weights, you're neither overdosing, more underdosing. This episode is for you. Enjoy the show. All right, welcome Barbara Shrug. I'm Doug Larson here with coach Travis Mash and Dr. Mike Lane.

We're going to talk about supplements today. Dostages for supplements are very standard. Like everyone says like five grams of creatine. It's just kind of like this blanket statement. Like everyone needs five grams of creatine as an example. And sometimes there's a lot of usefulness and having just like a generic standard. It's easy to say without having to explain yourself too much. But people are all different sizes. Some people are bigger than others. Some people are smaller than others.

So Mike Lane, you recommended that we dig into dosages relative to body weight and kind of dig into how much of a supplement, how much food, nutrition, macros, et cetera. You need relative to body weight because that's underdiscust, in my opinion. So I'm going to kick it over to you. Where do you want to start with this for supplements? I think we should start off on a good rant, which is whenever I was teaching, strengthening conditioning at Kansas through my PhD. I had one of my students who was really getting after it, really love lifting weights and was enjoying it. And she bought a pre-workout because, you know,

that's kind of like what she did and she took it. Now, this individual was maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. And they bought a pre-workout that had 450 milligrams of caffeine. And it was, yeah. So she rode the lightning hard. And then the next time she came in like, hey, I took that pre-workout and I couldn't sleep that night. And it's like, Yeah, because you took like nine milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body weight. And of course, you know, I used the communist unit. So she's kind of looking at me sideways. Like what does that even mean?

And it's like, yeah, we need to start off a little bit simpler because, you know, that's again, a little bit of pet peeve of mine. All supplements are usually weighed and measured for somebody that's like 170-ish pound. The average human. Exactly. And then from that, well, in America, the average American male is like 200 pounds now. So that's creeped up. So it's still one.

Average crossfitter. There you go. And if the oatmeal doesn't start until you're 200 pounds, bro. So when we're thinking about using any type of supplement, it's really important to have that north star of like, this is how much I weigh. And then this is probably what I need for an effective dose. And so mind you,

if you just follow the five grams of creatine a day, you're going to be fine. But if you're a 300 pound, you know, muscular, offensive line. thrower, you're underdosed. And then, of course, there's now the new literature looking into the effects of higher dosage on cognition.

And so it's really important. Like a lot of folks, when they think of creatine, they think three to five grams. But the dosing, if memory serves correctly, is something more like literally, like 0.03 grams per kilogram of body mass a day. So hence, you're really big, could maybe not have enough.

And then within there, you still have those variances. So, you know, that's kind of the place where I would like to start off. And I'm sure you guys have all, who here went to a little too heavy on beta alining the first time they tried it. I mean, I like the itchy feeling that. So that's cool. Yeah. Actually, my older brother, I told him about beta aligning years ago.

And he got some. And then he opened it up and couldn't find the scooper. And the scuba was a one milligram scooper. That's very tiny for anyone who's ever seen in one milligram scooper. at that thing you're like why did they even make this thing like what is this and so he didn't know so he just he just took a spoon a small spoon and just put two spoonfuls in his drink which like you know he he easily 10x what he should have done that day and was like driving to the gym and then just like got the itchies he didn't know about that either like he got his whole his whole head and

face was tingling like he was he was like scratching himself like he didn't know what was going on like he thought he was dying and called me later and told me and I was like like oh you fucked up like that you um and then showed him like you know picked over an image of what a one milligram scupor looks like and he was like oh got it okay and then recalibated for the next time yeah i'd always heard the point of oh yeah that's that's its own separate deal you got a nicen story oh yeah like you know in uh in college um you know i don't know if you've ever taken nice and and then you know tanned we were all getting you're a bunch of football players are getting ready to go. We were all going to, it was a Cancun, Mexico.

So we were trying to prepare and not get sunburned. We gave one of our friends like a double dose of niacin, and we all stood at the door waiting, and all of a sudden you start to hear him moving around, and then he starts screaming. Oh, man, do much nice, and it feels like you're like on fire, and inside you, and you can't do anything about it. This poor guy, he came out, He was so red and blotchy. I felt bad, but I couldn't stop laughing. Anyway, that's my nice. It's a B vitamin.

It's water soluble. You'll be fine. It's just going to be real weird for a little bit. A little bit. You've got to own it at that point. None of you can do it about it. Yeah. The paristhesia does not sound as miserable as it really is.

And yeah, I remember the first time I did Bate Alineine. It was more or less a spite move because the friend's like, hey, there's this new something I've been reading about, you know, just try a little bit. And of course, Bata Al-Aene is a chronic supplement. So taking it like a one-off doesn't have any effect anyway. It's like 3-18. So it's like, if we're going to do it right, we still got to take it for a month before we're going to really feel it. But, of course, I did that heroic dose as well.

And I remember doing bench, I was benching. And yeah, I was like the amount of pins and needles right along like my cheekbones. And like wanting to let go of the bar and it each my face mid-set because of just that drive was, yeah. And, you know, I'm from- What are the benefits of beta alanine for, you know, I let it before. So it combines with the amino acid histidine inside of the muscle to create what's known as carnazine. Carnazine works as an intramuscular buffer, so it keeps the pH from your muscle going too

low, because when the pH goes too low, it causes the literal enzymes that break down carbs anaerobically, so glycolysis to unfold so they don't work. And that's what caused you to tap out. So beta alonine is frickin awesome. you're a 400 meter sprinter, you're a competitive strongman, someone that is going to go really hard into that anaerobic paint to give you a little bit more before, again, you're just hard stop because metabolic you can't keep going. But it's one of those things that it takes time. Now, there's more recent research showing supplementing with actual carnazine with and serine

does allow you to take it in directly. But previously, taking carnazine by itself doesn't seem to have like really good bioavailability. So that's why you'd use the beta alenine, which is the rate limiter in that process. The amino acidicity is not going to be the problem. So what about like barricorinate, you know, like people taking like. Yeah, sodium bicarbonate. Now let's make a volcano out of your stomach. Yeah.

Oh, but like, yeah, I know you've got to be very careful with that, of course. Oh, yeah. So that is dose at about 0.3. It's a lot. It's like 0.3 grams. per kilogram of body mass. So you got to take in a crap ton of baking soda in order to where they have. But you got to be careful.

I mean, loading that because of what you said, like you can. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We had a 300 meter hurtler that would use that because the key thing is what shuts you down when you do those massive things is because you go so literally anaerobic in your pH drops. Your bloodstream drops low enough. Your brain thinks you're poison you throw up. You know, pH and your muscles drop low enough. those muscle fibers can't contract.

So either way, so if you can do the like one-two punch of beta aline and bicarbonate, you're going to really increase that. But you take 0.3 grams per kilogram of body mass per day. And you do that. It used to be old school is like one giant bolus. Do whatever you're trying to do after it's in your bloodstream and then probably immediately have diarrhea. Now, the more recent, better way of doing it is you just take it in chronically over the day

and that's still going to have that positive effect of bumping your pH a little bit higher in the bloodstream, which in turn is going to allow you to tolerate that anaerobic load. So if I was working with an athlete, I'd have them start drinking that, like the day before their event, like the 24 hours out. So we can kind of like push it because the body really likes to keep that pH in a really tight range. Like it is not going to screw around with that. So taking bicarbonate all the time is probably just going to be really annoying.

Plus, that's a lot of extra sodium to take. But if you're sweating, who cares, it takes care of itself. But, you know, that's the thing. And that's where, like, there's PR lotion and stuff like that where you can just do the transdermal. which sounds better because you're not doing the volcano effect of dropping a base and something that's really acidic. And, yeah, vomiting and other GI discomfort, very normal.

So for, for, like, wrestlers and 4mm sprinters and crossfitters, et cetera, like, again, it's an intramuscular buffer. And so as that acidity builds, your muscles are just going to shut down. And that's why, you know, you get to rep number 12 on a set of heavy back squats and, like, you can't hit rep number 13. Like, your muscles stop contracting. And this will, again, to Mike's point, keep that pH in the optimum range for a little bit longer where you can

eke out another couple of reps. And so you can do a little bit more volume. You can run a little bit faster for a little bit longer. You can wrestle a little bit harder for a little bit longer. The horror stories like Mike was talking about with the hurdle or that happens to wrestlers, too. I've heard, you know, high school wrestlers, you know, shit themselves on the mat and then just like sprinting off the mat, like heading to the bathroom. Oh, my God.

Mid-match. So you got to practice that one before you go out in front of a crowd. But if you can tolerate it, it works quite well for increasing high intensity performance and extending the pace that you can go at. But you also got to figure out how much you can tolerate gastrointestinally. Is it like basically pushing the lactate threshold slightly higher? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it just buffers it.

That's all it is. Yeah. So, yeah, your clearance is always, you know, slow twitch muscle, heart, everything else that's aerobic. But at the end of the day, this is where it's a great. tale of something you want to take chronically and something you want to take acutely. So you'd start that beta alenine about a month before the event, so to speak. Here we go. Yes. And you're doing that at a dosage of like a 0.05 grams per kilogram of body mass a day. And that matters because again, if we got 100 kilo guy, we're talking like 5 to 10 grams a day. Like that's a solid dose.

But if we're talking like a, you know, lightweight wrestler 110 pounder, you're talking now we're only doing two and a half grams to five grams and divide that in what you drink throughout the day. Now, of course, a rustling that might be cutting water. That's its own thing outside of this. But that way, they never have that paristhesis moment because you're just trying to tap or top off those stores. So as long as you're taking in consistently, you're going to be groovy. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the RTA program, which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garland and I have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the world's most elite performers

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That's A-R-E-T-E-Lab.com. Now, back to the show. But then the bicarbonate is... 24 hours out, 48, that's when you start going. So then they both hit on the same day. Because now this is maybe a little bit tinfoil haddy. By relying on those all the time, you're not really improving your own lactate tolerance.

You're getting more of a dependence, then you're getting a performance enhancing effect, just like caffeine. You take caffeine every single day. You're not going to get really much out of it. So part of the year, I just have most of my athletes cycle off-bate al-anine and then take it when it matters. Whereas, the same thing with the bicarbic. Well, creatine, take that shit all the time.

Like, that's just good to have those stores saturated. That's just improving recovery and a bunch of other things. But caffeine, try to use that as seldomly as possible. But practice it a couple times because the last thing you want to do is try bicarbon at the first time you get out there. And now you're, you know, using jet fuel. Yeah. Get yourself, you know, through the movement. I mean, no one wants to wrestle.

a guy covered in his own excrement. I can appreciate that. But at the same point, there is rules that I'm sure that don't allow you to use the Bronson defense when fighting another individual. So, wait, so wait, circle back to creatine for a second. So the original

body weight relative doses that you mentioned was 0.03 milligrams per kilo. So if you're 100 kilo-man, which is 220 pounds. 0.03 grams per kilogram. Grams for cubic, excuse me. And so for 100 kilogram, for 100 kilogram male, that's 220 pounds.

That's roughly three grams of creatine. And then if you're, but that's purely for like exercise for, you know, explosive power, speed, strength endurance, et cetera, which there's tons of research. It's very effective for those things. But all the more recent cognitive improvements are basically double that is my understanding. talking to Darren Canned out from, I forget where he's a professor in Canada, but he's one of the leading creatine research on cognition. And he basically says like double that number for brain enhancement. Yeah.

And I mean, some of the stuff I've seen is like 20 grams compared to the normal five. So you're almost talking 4X. So, you know, a couple things. By overdoing certain supplements like Bade Allene, you get paristhesis. Creatine, as long as you've got healthy kidneys, like it's really innocuous. And, you know, maybe a little bit more cramping, maybe some GI blow. but it's like your downsides are pretty low. Whereas caffeine, if you 4x your dose, you're going to not have a great time.

So, you know, and the nice thing is, creetting's cheap. So if instead of taking 5 gram, you take 10, you get no real changes in performance. Oh, God, instead of spending like 20 cents a serving, you spend 40. But whereas like other supplements, like, oh, dude, like you're chewing through some money by going and taking in 2, 3x, what you really need. And then, of course, how many people are taking microdosing? That's not how any of these things work. Like you're looking for the effective dose.

And then of course you look at the research as well, it's a bell curve. You know, what we're talking is the average. The average person needs this much creatine. However, that's going to be some folks that are actually going to respond better to a higher dose. If you're a vegan, Lord knows any amount of creatines are going to help you out because you don't really get any from your diet. You know, if you're somebody that's currently, you know, doing the carnivore diet and just

pound in red meat all day, you're on creatine just from the amount of red meat you're already eating. So, you know, it gets, as you can tell, there's some nuance and it gets complicated pretty quick, but I really do like the idea, you know, if you're working with that athlete, you're working with that individual, you can look at their diet ahead of time, but oh no, they took a lot of secreting. Now, the reason I said that units matter is I will not say my friend's name, but he was a caffeine researcher, and they screwed up their dosage and 10xed a subject. So instead of them having to, they were going to be dosed, at like four and a half milligrams for kilogram body mass,

which the sweet spot of caffeine is like three to six. And individual results very, everyone started with a three, see how you feel, and then you can titrate up if you want. So they gave him 45 milligrams for kilogram body mass. This person, looking over it. Yeah, like, once they found out,

they were like, you need to go wherever you're at and induce vomiting. And he's like, yeah, that person did not sleep for 24 hours. And like, you know, there's a, there's a lethal dose. of caffeine and they were flirting yeah i mean like what is the is there like a lethal like can you take too much caffeine and actually die yeah it's like 50 milligrams per kilogram body mass is when you start hitting lb yeah oh yeah the only way you do it is

straight up powder like the amount of coffee you'd have to pound to get there you'd be you'd probably risk hyponetremia beforehand from peeing too much from the fluid you're intaking it's like i would like god I want to know more about the whole cognitive enhancements. You know, I've heard Andy talk about it, but like, like, what could say so someone does double that instead of 0.03, it's like 0.06, I guess, grams per kilogram. Like, what could you expect from that? Like, are you going to do better on tests?

You're going to retain more information? So at the end of the day, it's one of, it's another energy system. And where creatine seems to have its biggest utility is one, sleep deprivation. and two, whenever you're older. And so the reality, and when you say older, we're talking like 60 plus. So that way we're not hurting our feelings on this conversation right now.

But sleep deprivation, always her parents, very real thing. You megadose the creatine that day, and this could be a placebo effect because myself who has a slightly over one-year-old, oh yeah, I'm running 15 grams of creatine a day,

and I can tell the difference in when it actually comes to my verbal intelligence, in my word recall is better. Whereas normally you guys know, when you're sleep deprived, you're like, wait, what's the, what's the word for that? I am right now, totally. Like last night, like one of the first nights of, I've been, I've had a really good sleep pattern for a long time now,

but ironically last night is the first night in a while where I struggled to sleep. And like, it's a difference right now. So I'm going to go take some extra creatine. Perfect. I mean, exactly. Just do, you know, just to be given your, your health and everything else, triple your normal dose.

See, you know, do you feel? feel cognitively a little bit more clear. Do you feel like you're a little bit more focused than you would be otherwise? You know, it's as much as we wish there was the limitless pill, and that's probably like modafinil and other things that are definitely controlled substances. But one of those things that, you know, at this point with the joys of having a young child that unfortunately is developing an immune system, it could be placebo. And if it's placebo, I'm still going to ride the extra creatine because it's helping me. And, you know, N of 1 is a bad way to do science, but that's what you do when you're working with the individual.

So, yeah, it's not, by no means you're going to be like completely jacked up. If you've got really good sleep hygiene, you've got really good nutrition, everything else is in line, you're not going to really feel anything because, you know, you're already, you know, for lack of a term, optimized in that area. But if you are, you know, your brain does not be able to do the cellular housekeeping like it normally would, hasn't cleared everything out at night because it hasn't had that duration of time. Maybe your deep sleep and REM sucks just because of the environment.

you throw in some extra creatine and markedly more than normal, your likelihood of seeing a benefit is definitely solid. Again, worst case scenario, you're not dropping crazy amounts of money and you're not risking anything than like taking essentially meth. I know that's being very lazy, but yeah. Pramodafel. Yeah, pro vigil is, I haven't had a chance to use it, but everyone that I've talked to loved it. I've heard it's awesome. Exactly. Yeah, with metafinol specifically, like some people can handle very high doses of that.

I'm not one of those people. Like 50 milligrams of medaphanel is a lot for me. That's like that's about all I can tolerate, which like normally like 200 milligrams would be like a standard dose of bandafinil. And even half of that is way too much for me. Like I'm very sensitive to stuff like that. I've tried a handful of times. And like even like a half a normal dose, I'm like, whoa, fucking get me out of here. It's like it's just too much.

I'm not jittery. Like you would be on. Adderall or something like that, but the even like 50 milligrams is too much for me. So it varies widely person to person. Some people can take fucking three times or four times as much of me and feel totally fine. And I'm just, that's me. I can crush those things. I love it.

Yeah. When you asked about cognitive enhancement or cognitive performance a second ago, were you, were you wanting to hear about caffeine specifically or were you asking about creatine? Mainly creetine, you know, just because I heard Andy talk about it. You know, it's kind of the newer thing. with creatine and so I just wanted to let our listeners know like what you know what to expect so yeah obviously I mean with caffeine is quite obvious you know I'm we've all when we were in college I remember

the first time I took vibran to study it was like a miracle drug so they went to Fedron but oh god remember when a Fedron was legal god was that amazing I know man like talking about making some straight A's it was great oh man these these these these these these These kids, man, they don't remember her life before TSA and they don't remember her life when a Fedra was still legal. Oh, man. The old school, the original hydroxy cut. Oh, yeah.

I remember in high school, we had Ephedron and we took it before football practice and football games. And then we somebody, somebody, you know, spilled the bean, so to speak. And the coach found out. And then it was like, it turned like a big thing. Like, you guys got to stop doing that. The parents heard about it, et cetera. And my mom heard about it.

And she asked me about it. And I was naive enough at the time where I was kind of mixing the names up. I was saying, I was saying amphetamines and ephedron, like, they were the same thing. And so like, I basically was telling my mom that like we were taking meth. But I was also talking about, I was also talking about like, like, mom, everyone takes meth. Like it's not a big deal. Like this like the whole team's doing it. Like we've been, we've all been doing it.

Like we all play better. We all, we all go to practice and like we all have, we all have, we all have more energy and it just seems to be beneficial. And my mom was like, my mom's like, he's not hiding this at all. And then like, I can see like the like the surprise on her face that I'm being like just

totally open and honest in this in this unique way. And then after the fact, I was like, oh no, like a Fedron. Sorry. Wrong supplement. Like you buy it over the counter.

It's legal. And she was like, oh, I got this. I could see the relief on her face. She just melted back on the couch. It was like, oh, okay.

who all right I mean don't do that either but that's not a big deal if my son Rock were telling me that I'd be about to have a heart attack yeah I'd be like you better get to the punchline quick man and then he switched over at Jack 3D original formula which was DMAA which was pretty much

that stuff was amazing we had a good time with that for a long time no I don't know anyone that did Jack 3D and didn't PR something the first time they took it everybody dude And then you got the pure DMA. Oh, yeah, totally. But then it sucks because then you need it to just have a normal workout.

Then it sucks. And then he stops sleeping. And then, yeah. And, you know, I could tell you a cool story about DMA. Like, like, I don't like any kind of, like, I want to know that. But anything with a little upper is kind of my deal. But DMA wants, gosh, you need to tell a story. I hope my wife doesn't listen.

But, you know, the dropper that comes with DMA is very little. I mean, like, it's the smallest of scoops. We're talking about those one milligram scupers. I've ordered pure DMA, and it's a 50 milligram scooper. It is so little. Which is like pinhead. It's like time. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it's a pinhead. And I accidentally spilled it into pre-workout. And I was about to give it, oh, man, I should have to talk about this. how do I and I was like I didn't want to waste it so I'm like what's the worst can happen oh boy it was it was bad I mean I ended up in the ER it was bad like I just took it anyway what you knew had then I mean I was like I couldn't tell how much it it's spilled I'm like what's the worst can happen like I'll just get it was bad though like boys and girls just throw it away just throw it away so but I just dry

scooped him like I'll be all right if for a split second life was better than it's ever been for a split second and then it went down how quickly then I start sweating and I'm like then I start throwing up and then it's bad then yeah it's bad you're very very riz tolerant over there mr. Ratt mr. Trousmash you're like out of be fine uh that was I will say this Doug that was the last time I've done almost anything like right then I was like okay enough enough it's uh I have it since that was like maybe five years ago i haven't you found the line yeah and my wife drew the line yeah sir you like and it's like enough i'm like you're right you're right and i feel

like we're now turning into a dare episode of like okay kids you know it sounds fun until it gets serious and it was serious a comment on appropriate drug use in general is always keep in mind you can always add more but you can't take away so it's an advantage If you're going to try, just caffeine. There are people that can't tolerate it. It just turns them anxious. That's it. It doesn't really, it's not a performance enhancement.

It's very much so. It's a nocebo effect, you know, because they're just, well, not even nocebo. It's like it literally lowers their work capacity. So it's ergolytic. At the end of the day, start with a low end. And then you can always titrate up. And so I know people that have had similar experiences with, I already told you how I did too much bait aline, which, oh no, it just felt weird. But I know people that do the same thing with the Okimbi.

And they went too, way too hard with the stimulant right off the jump. You know, they took a pre-workout and we're mindful of how much caffeine was in there. We talked about, you know, because I think a Federer is still legal in Canada. And, you know, I'm... Well, you can get it over the, you know, you can get it behind the counter for like, Bronx, you know. Oh, yeah, yeah. These freaking boomers, dude.

In the 1950s, you could go to the, well, aside from the steroid control act, so you used to be able to go to the pharmacy in the 80s and get antibiotics. But in the 50s, you would go get, I believe, benzene. which essentially was meth you know like the yeah like the Nazis were literally using Purvitin which was meth and so like you that was just stuff you could go in and get and then yolo I mean like the old school the original Coca-Cola had cocaine like yeah it's I would love to have some of that and just try it I would just want to try it but like in a wonder you felt great you know just yeah give yourself an nice little pump and go and

and therein lies the thing which is you know these substances have their own risk profile and everyone has different neurophysiology or you know you're slightly different brain chemistry so hence why you give adderall to someone with ADHD and also now they can focus and it actually calms them down right after all to someone that isn't you know of that type of neurodivergence and then also go yeah let's do all the things let's do all the things so you know hence you can always start off low and increase that dosage and that would be the last thing you know hindsight's 2020. What about you,

NBE? I mean, I've always, I thought that was very little, like, if any, like,

benefits. Yeah, benefits are not great, but it's a stimulant. And so it's one of those things that this person was a high responder, and they accidentally 10x their initial dose, and gave themselves a nice little,

well, let's just say they had their heart doing some random palpations for X and four hours. Yeah, you know, it's, again, I mean, you know,

I remember the first time it was, Um, was it endorush? The old school, I think it was not VPX, but it was one of the other companies that I just, I didn't read the label on the bottle because I figured every bottle is a single serving. And, uh, no, turns out that bottle was supposed to be like two to four servings. And I just shotgun the entire thing. And then I was like, well, I feel really good, feel really great. Like, let's go do it.

And I did that before my first, uh, strong man competition. And, um, it was, it was fought until it wasn't, you know. Exactly. ramping on all that stuff at once and you know hence i didn't read the label well that's another thing too the supplement world is like i mean even if you read the label is it right like you know who knows it's just not regulated so you make sure you're with a company you trust and you shout out max up for muscle i love core gregory i do believe that he's you know his ethics are high you know plus you know you got the other ones too like uh uh uh uh what you're

What is it, momentous, those guys. But like, some of those companies are just crazy. Like, they're literally putting drugs in there to get people hooked. It's crazy. Oh. We use a lot of momentous and Thorn and Designs for Health, designs for sport. Like, those are all great companies. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Make sure everything's quality control, like inform sport and form choice NSF. Yeah. Two fun. Thorne, my coach, you know, West Barnett is like one of the VPs for Thorne. So my first weight lifting coach. Two-time Olympian, he's a beast, but now he works with Thorne. That's awesome.

So I got to meet the guys who they essentially were from informed sport and form choice. And it was really interesting because one, yeah, the contamination story or stories that we have of like the old school ultimate orange. They probably put Anavar in there and that's why people love the first run. But the thing that was really interesting is talking with them is like companies like GNC, you know, They'll get their chocolate flavoring from this company. They'll get their wave protein from this company like da-da-da, and they then get it combined. And what the example I was given is imagine the night before,

the company that makes the flavorings is making peanut flavoring with actual peanuts. And they don't clean the machines very well. And they use the same machines the next day and to make chocolate flavoring. So someone goes and buys GNC chocolate protein. And then what happens? When they go and take it, then all of a sudden, they've got legitimately peanuts in

chocolate protein powder and boom you're talking about epi-pen reaction and bingo and that's not worth a lawsuit so pay these companies you know 20 grand a year to quality control every lot that comes out so one of every batch to make sure there's nothing

in there that shouldn't be in there because it's not worth GNC having an epipen or like some kid dies taking their chocolate protein powder because there was something that shouldn't be in there that didn't match what's in the bottle was on the label. And you're right, there's other companies that will do some, put a little extra sauce in there because they're a little fly-by-night, you know.

Yeah, man. It's so terrible. I mean, people die, though. With the peanut thing, it's probably of all the things, the most deadly. Yeah, and I mean, that's one that like when they told me that anecdote, I was like, okay, this makes sense. Because you know, you think of like, okay, what if instead they just don't put anything in there? And that's where like I hate proprietary blends on anything you see because it's by weight. And it's usually like the first thing in there is like multodextrin and then everything else.

So it's like if it's, you know, 15 gram proprietary blend, 14.9999 can be sugar. And then everything else is like one molecule of blueberry, you know, of anthocyan. one molecule of creatine, one molecule, technically on the label, but it's not, it's not going to have an effective dose. So, you know, that's another big piece of that of, you know, okay, like, and the same thing when we think about, like, post-workout protein. Like, I live by a Costco. I go hard there every single time. And I was sharing with you guys that I saw one of the products, which is, you know, protein soda. And of course, you know, in my mind, if it's less than 10 grams of serving, I, you know, food. And it was like the, and I can obviously be wrong here, but there's like three to five grams.

And I'm like, I don't want to have to chug four sodas post workout to get 20 gram and plus a molar. So probably need to do more like 40 anyways. So at the end of the day, you know, you can always look on the label and like how much we're really talking about? Like, you know, if your pre-workout has got more caffeine than it has creatine, you're not actually getting any real amount of creatine, so to speak, or you're going way too hard in the caffeine paint. And then, you know, another great one is citrylene. And that's, you know, something that is obviously gaining a lot of interest as far as being a vasodilator, helping with blood flow. But the dosage there you're talking about, like, you need to get, for guys our size, you're talking like six grams, maybe even like up to eight. So if it's got like, oh, it's got like 100 milligrams of citroline.

Like, all right, guys, we're going to get really hammered tonight. Everyone gets to have three drops of whiskey. Let's see how we get checked up. Nothing happens. Well, like, I mean, what are the supplements? Like, I mean, I feel like we should probably want, I mean, like, what are the supplements that people actually need? Like, you know, protein, creatine, you know, if you're a runner, we've already kind of gone to know ribeta aline, you know, by carbonate, you know. But, like, what do they really need?

I mean, back in the day, BCAAs were a big thing. Even Lane Norton, you know, I was a big proponent for those. Come to find out, it's not that big of a deal if you're taking protein. But like, what are the supplements people need? Okay, first off, you lay off my flavored water, okay? I like my flavored water. I like my blue water. I used to as well, but yeah.

But no, you're right. At the end of the day, the quick and dirty when it comes to BCAs is, Lucine is very important when it comes to turning on the cellular machinery to build muscle. The problem is you've got the machines on, but you've got none of the other raw materials. You still need all of your essential amino acids. And, of course, a complete protein is going to have all of your essential amino acids. That's why way post-workout, you know, soy, any of those things are great choices. So BCAs by themselves can help with shutting down catabolism.

That's why people use things like HMB as a thing there. as well, and that seems, H&B seems to be more useful with older populations. But at the end of the day, if we're talking longevity, you know, you're going to have a hard cell to tell me anything other than creatine is like a straight up, like I don't see a good reason unless you've got some type of kidney problems, which you already got kidney problems. Like we've got so many of your things to worry about than your supplements to take creatine every single day. And then, you know, from there, it's kind of like, okay, what are you trying to do? cituline can definitely be something to help a little bit with, you know, blood flow

evasive dilations or you can just eat your freaking vegetables. That's what I love like the beetroot powder. Like, you know where the beetroot powder comes from, right? You can just eat the beets. Beats. But, of course, that's a non-starter for certain people. So there's nothing wrong with, you know, you're getting in your nitrates, nitrites from another source.

And that's just going to be good for your blood pressure. It's also like a random fact of like if you go and use like really harsh mouthwash, like alcohol-based, it kills a certain amount of the bacteria in the mouth, which then causes you to activate the nitrates and nitrites in the actual like vegetables you eat, which in turn causes your blood pressure to go up. So now I'm not saying like go Kentucky cliches here and don't brush your teeth, just so we're clear. But maybe eliminate the alcohol based. You just don't need like the real harsh stuff.

Like you have floss, brush. But at the end of the day, like then it comes down to like get your blood work done. get all your information, see what you're missing, and then see what's going on there. Because there's nothing wrong with, you know, play around, throwing one supplement at time, see if it gives you something, see if it doesn't. And then understand, like, okay, if it's caffeine, I should feel something right now. If it is, you know, him being, you know, and you're one of those responders, like, okay, you'll, you'll feel that immediately.

But as Bate Alineine, you got to ride that for a month before you even know. And even then, I'd say your other precursor, not precursor, not pre-requisite, is you should already be training consistently. Because like all of us, if we only have a 2% bump in our performance, because we train consistently and we know what we can do, we'll feel that immediately. You know, meaning after

that month, you're like, dude, like, all of a sudden I'm like, I'm actually like cooking with gas now when I'm doing this. Whereas if you're just a newbie just working out and you've never really trained consistently, like it's probably just training consistently that's getting you better. It's not actually insert this influencer's

supplement. And it sure shit into testosterone. So, you know, at the end of the day, go forth and, you know, what's the potential downside? Oh, no, I took in too much magnesium. I maybe got a little bit of diarrhea, but probably helped me sleep a little bit better, helped me relax a little bit better. Like, you know, that's just a good thing. You know, mathematically speaking, your average American is deficient in, like, vitamin D and magnesium. Those are like the number one vitamin, number one mineral in the U.S. You know, the world, I think it's iron, is actually the bigger deficiency there. And from there, you know,

you're going to ask a question. Why would that be? Why would the rest of the world be, you know, iron but not us? It comes down to just food availability. You know, your average American has access to and eats a pretty decent amount of red meat on average. So iron is not so much thing. It's, you know, other places aren't as lucky when it comes to, you know, we can, we can obviously point out issues in foods that are affordable.

and everything else of the food supply, but there's not a lack of calories in the U.S. And no doubt. Exactly. So what about some green vegetables? Magnesium. That's the question I was going to ask you about, because I have a friend who, you know,

his whole company is based around magnesium. And like, what are the benefits? How much? Once again, like our shows about, but like, and then like, is one of the different ways that you can, like,

administer magnesium. can you really rub some stuff on you and then you know that you're gonna that's gonna work technically yes you can okay so let's talk about delivery mechanisms first you know straight up you can always just fill the syringe and plug it right into the bloodstream no question of whether or not you absorb it because this is your bloodstream there's no way around it however you did just stab yourself the chance that you maybe move some bacteria in there you've actually done obviously damage like probably don't want to do that too much all the time. You can go transdural.

If you're a, if you're a side athlete right away, you're in trouble because not allowed to use anything intravenous. Yeah. So, you know, yeah, so when it out, it's, the digestive system is really good at absorbing things. And I'm naturally, don't be wrong, if you get, if somebody's on an inhaler for asthma or otherwise, like, yeah, you need that. But as far as like people that are vaping or smoking and using their lungs as a drug delivery system, like, um, It works, but I would not want to use that all the time. So really with magnesium, for the most part, unless you're on a magnesium drip because you've got like preeclampsia or something, you want to be going forth and obviously ingesting it. Now, magnesium is literally what the iron is in the hemium unit in hemoglobin.

You flip that to magnesium and that's really the green part of chlorophyll. That's what fixes light as part of the caliphon cycle when it comes to photosynthesis. And if I fail that, we will attribute that to a Missouri state undergrad degree in biology. Now, most Americans don't eat a lot of green leafy vegetables. And the thing is magnesium. Calcium is the thing that binds to troponin, and then it moves tropomycin off of actin so that myocin can do its job and start right. Grab it.

Yeah. Then the power stroke. That's a muscle contraction for the audience. Magnesium is what binds with ATP to get myison heads to let go of And so hence, it's important in like over 200 different metabolic pathways in the body, but the number one thing for all of us is getting your muscles to freaking relax. And you sweat it out, just like you sweat out sodium, potassium, and chloride. So when you've got a hard training athlete in hot conditions who doesn't like to eat green leafy

vegetables or doesn't eat enough of them, the likelihood of a magnesium deficiency is pretty high because like, let's, you know, be a little acinine, run with stereotypes. Your average American is definitely not getting in that three to five servings of veggies every single day, unless we're going to count corn and potatoes as vegetables in there. So we supplementing with it, if your diet doesn't naturally have a high amount of it, go for it. Now, the then nuance is then what that means magnesium is bound to. It's magnesium oxide because of how quickly it comes apart in your GI. it's a really good laxative.

So I'm sure one of us, you know, I know back in the day, I'll take magnesium. Go to the store cheapest one to magnesium oxide. You take it, you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is, well, the river runs good. And so, exactly. That's where magnesium like this glycinate is a really good choice because it's still really bioavailable, but it tends to be more useful when it comes to just kind of muscle relaxation. Not that oxide isn't useful. It's just the way you digest it makes it not as good, so to speak, for that.

And that's where the research on magnesium 3NA is definitely promising, because that seems to be the one that has the best bioavailability for going into your actual nervous system, which also has a calming effect. This seems to be the tough part about magnesium in general is that there's what, seven different types of magnesium, and they all are subtly different. Something like that is more than that. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

That's the, every time someone asks me about magnesium, I'm like, well, it does do stuff, but I actually don't remember which exact variation does that specific thing. And I always need to go look it up and I never remember. Oh, yeah. Dude, you've got citrate. Obviously, you got bisglycinate. You've got oxide. You've got three and eight.

Always you got the tracks, which I didn't remember what that acronym stands for anymore. Like you've got a huge amount of them. But at the end of the day, probably don't do oxide unless you've got issues the constipation. Start off with a, start with a glycinate, because that's just going to be the one that's pretty, easy on your gut as well as it's going to help with just overall everything. But if you're one of those folks that anxious anxiety, have a hard time unwinding at night, experiment with some three and eight. Three and eight's more expensive. You know, oxide's cheap, but there's a reason it's cheap. It's the reason

why like I, if you got an athlete that has to take iron because they're low on it, maybe they're vegetarian, they don't want to do steak, like that's cool. And then they'll go to the store and they'll buy magnet or go by iron oxide. Iron oxide is rust. You know, what you want is ferrousulfate, and that's the one that's much better bioavailability because you're not doing hemiron, because obviously, again, you're under various reasons why people don't want to do red meat, ethically, physiologically, it's all good. So, magnesium glycinate, not that expensive. And the nice thing is you can go just buy the raw powder and slowly titrate up over time, you know, starting off with something low like 100 milligrams of the echo magnesium once you look at the weight of it,

and then kind of see how your body responds based upon the body size. So, you know, for me, I try to do like 200, yeah, about 200 milligrams of magnesium in a beverage that I drink before bed. You know, that's where you got like the sleep builder, supplement through spoken, which is just, you know, that thing is loaded. And that thing's dose for a pretty decent sized human with everything in there. And that's why most people that I know that take it absolutely love it. because it's not so much that they're going to have diarrhea the next day, but it's definitely going to help them downregulate because they're hard training athletes.

What about the types of magnesium that are actually present in various leafy greens? Like I eat a lot of cooked spinach, broccoli, I don't know if avocados fall into this category. Do you know with regard to magnesium specifically, what versions or variations are present there? So the magnesium in specifically kind of how it's fixed, and I believe it's a histidine dimer,

And I'm really sorry letting you down Dr. Tamasi and my other faculty that try to teach me that level of biochemistry. So you essentially, when you digest the protein around it, the magnesium is just free floating. So it's not actually bound to bond anything. But then, of course, in other cofactors and a bunch of different enzymes where it's incorporated throughout the body, it's going to be bound to an amino acid, hence the bisclosinate. It's like literally magnesium, two glycines. That's it. You know, magnesium oxide. It's one magnesium with one oxygen bonded to it.

And they're probably just a little bit of that. So if you take it in a whole food source, you're going to get that magnesium bound up to a lot of different things. And then it gets weirder because then when we cook the food, that causes a lot of those proteins to start to denature, which is probably going to cause more than magnesium to be free floating. But a lot of it is still going to be bound up. But at the end of the day, the likely you're going to get diarrhea from all of the, of the fiber in, you know, the spinach, the arugula and everything else you're intaking from the magnesium component that happens to be in there. So it's one of those things of,

if you're just eating a good, healthy diet, and then you're like, you know what, I'm going to try some magnesium supplementation. And all you get is the next morning is your movement's a lot runnier than usual. Congratulations. Like, you're not into, like, toxicity where it's dangerous, but you're obviously above that optimum part of the curve. So magnesium is not going to really have any utility. But if you take magnesium into that night, you don't find your low back cramping for no reason. You don't find yourself feeling really stiff.

Then try to titrate up a little bit more and then see how you respond because it's super dynamic. Like, you know, because each of us, you know, I'm over here in Kentucky, you're a bit south of me, North Carolina's own random number generator when it comes to weather. So if it's good,

cold out and you're not really sweating. You're not really going to be excreting as much magnesium through sweat. So your needs are going to go down a little bit. But we all know when summer comes around and it's 80 plus humidity and temperature, like it's not just that sodium, you've got to replenish. If you don't put that potassium back in there, you don't put all those other minerals that you're losing. Congratulations. You know, you're going to start cramping.

And it might not because of magnesium, it can be just straight up, not of potassium. Yeah. So close enough shop here on magnesium. You said between 100 and 200 milligrams. So just for easy math, that's roughly between 1 and 2 milligrams per kilo as like a starting dosage. Yeah. Yeah, that's probably a decent way to start off with that one. Yeah.

There you. Right on. We'll shut it down with that one. Dr. Mike Lane, where can people find you? Yeah, Mike Lane, PhD. And I am working on the website. At some point it's going to happen. So hopefully I'll announce that at some point.

All right. Coach Chaless Mash. Mashley.com. If you're in the North Carolina area, you can also come see me at Rise Indoor Sports. So love to have you. Beautiful. Right on. I'm Doug Larson. You can find me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. We are Barbill Strug. You can find us at Barbell underscore Strug. And if you want to work with us and the whole team at Rapid Health Optimization, including Dr. Andy Galpin, you can go to ArteeLab.com. A-R-E-T-E-L-A-B.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.