Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Can Alpha-GPC Make You Stronger and Smarter?

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

This podcast is all about alpha-GPC, which is one of my favorite supplements. That’s why you can kind it in my pre-workout Pulse and my nootropic Ascend. Alpha-GPC has promise as both a performance enhancer and a cognitive booster and preserver. It’s also well-tolerated with very few side effects, which is not something that can be said about a lot of other nootropic supplements. So, should you try alpha-GPC? Will it help you push a little bit harder in the gym without the side effects associated with stimulants? Find out in this podcast. Timestamps: 5:27 - What is Alpha-GPC? 8:36 - What are the power and strength benefits with supplementing with Aplha-GPC? 11:57 - What are the cognitive benefits with supplementing with Alpha-GPC? 14:23 - What are the growth hormone benefits with supplementing with Aplha-GPC? Mentioned on the Show: Shop Legion Supplements Here: https://buylegion.com/mike Want free workout and meal plans? Download my science-based diet and training templates for men and women: https://legionathletics.com/text-sign-up/

Hello and welcome to Muscle for Life. I'm Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today to learn about one of my favorite supplements, one of the rising stars of the supplement space, and that is Alpha GPC, which is in a couple of my products. It's in my pre-workout pulse, it's in my nootropic ascend, and it has promise both as an athletic performance enhancer and a cognitive booster and cognitive preserver. Future evidence could indicate that this is the thing you want to give to your mom to help her stave off cognitive decline when she gets older and also slip into your pre-workout to go hit a new PR. Another thing I really like about alpha GPC is its safety, its lack of side effects, how effective it is and how well tolerated it is.

And if you are interested in its nootropic effects, its brain boosting effects in particular, then that should be music to your ears because a lot of the stuff that people take to try to enhance their cognition comes with unwanted side effects, especially if you try to stack multiple nootropics. I've experienced that myself and I've stuck to just the natural stuff. I haven't messed with any of the drugs and even a handful of the common natural products taken to enhance cognition made me feel off. I started to have strange dreams, regular nightmares, which I basically never have normally. And I was experiencing not anxiety, but I was feeling a bit higher strung than usual. It was harder for me to focus, harder for me to relax, which of course made my

work harder. And that was the opposite of what I was trying to achieve. And so I stopped my little nootropic experiment there. And that is a good example of why the kitchen sink approach to supplementation is generally not a good idea. There are a lot of products out on the market now that have a lot of ingredients. And some of these products I've come across, I know are expensive to make. I know that people are actually not trying to cut corners on their budget. They just don't know what they're doing with their formulations. And they are throwing everything that could possibly improve physical performance in the case of pre-workouts, including ingredients that may be seen, including some popular ones that have long labels, lots of ingredients. And some of those ingredients have been proven to boost cognition in humans. Some of them have not, some of them are very speculative. And when you do that with a nootropic in particular, and you start messing with brain chemistry, if you don't know

what you're doing, the kitchen sink approach can cause unwanted synergisms between ingredients or conflicting mechanisms. And counterintuitively, then you can have a formulation where each ingredient may have good evidence for efficacy, but not if you combine them all together or not if you combine certain ingredients together. And so sometimes fewer ingredients in a product is actually going to produce better results. Anyway, let's end that tangent and get back on topic alpha GPC and why you should consider getting some to see if you can't push a little bit harder in the gym without any of the unwanted side effects associated with stimulants. Also, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere,

definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which, thanks to the support of many people like you, is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. And we're on top because every ingredient and dose in every product is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent. There are no proprietary blends, for example, and everything is naturally sweetened and flavored. So that means no artificial sweeteners, no artificial food dyes, which may not be as dangerous as some people would have you believe, but there is good evidence to suggest that having many servings of artificial

sweeteners in particular every day for long periods of time may not be the best for your health. So while you don't need pills, powders, and potions to get into great shape, and frankly, most of them are virtually useless, there are natural ingredients that can help you lose fat, build muscle, and get healthy faster, and you will find the best of them in Legion's products. To check out everything we have to offer, including protein powders and bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more, head over to buylegion.com slash Mike. That's B-U-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N dot com slash Mike.

And just to show you how much I appreciate my podcast, peeps, Use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 20% on your entire first order. All right, so what is this stuff? What is alpha GPC? Well, that is the short way of saying alpha glycerophosphocholine. And that is the combination of the nutrient choline and the molecule glycerophosphate. And it should be mentioned that while choline is a nutrient that's not an essential vitamin and mineral, it is found in many foods, mostly in meat products, and it's essential for optimal organ function. It's very good for your brain, for example. If you have ever heard of methylation, maybe when looking at folic acid or B12 supplements, choline is a big player in that

process. And choline as a dietary supplement is found in different forms. You have some forms that are used as health-promoting molecules like choline bitartrate, And then you have something like CDP choline, which is usually designed with cognitive benefits in mind. And alpha-GPC is also one of these choline-related supplements that is often promoted as a brain booster and a workout enhancer or a physical performance enhancer. And CDP choline and alpha-GPC are molecules that can reach the brain tissue after oral ingestion. A lot of things can't do that. They can't pass the blood-brain barrier. Now, what happens when this alpha-GPC molecule gets to the brain? The CDP choline molecule also does the same thing, but I'm just going to focus on alpha-GPC because that is what this episode is

all about. Well, what happens is it's a choline delivery agent, right? And so it helps the body then produce more of a neurotransmitter that requires choline called acetylcholine. And that chemical is a major player in learning and memory and is the most important neurotransmitter for muscle contraction. Now, I mentioned a couple of minutes ago that alpha-GPC is choline and glycerophosphate. Now, glycerophosphate is a component of cell membranes, but it's not very well studied as a dietary supplement, so we're not sure if it has benefits unto itself. We know that it is not bad for the brain. It is not bad to ingest orally, but we don't know if it contributes much or anything at

all. Similar to the malic acid in citrulline malate, there is a little bit of evidence that it alone may have performance enhancing effects, but it's mostly just a question mark. We know the citrulline is good and we know that citrulline malate works, that form of citrulline combined with malic acid, but we don't know if the malic acid is helping or not. So similar here with alpha-GPC, we know the choline is good and it does good things when it gets into the brain. The glycerophosphate, we don't know. Okay, so alpha-GPC, we can think of it as a choline delivery agent, an effective way to get

choline into the brain, better than if we were to just take choline as a supplement or if we were to eat choline-containing foods. And it comes with this other little good E-glycerophosphate, which may or may not do something as well. So what are the benefits of supplementing with alpha-GPC? Well, it's interesting because a lot of the research that we have on it is with animals and it's in vitro research and there's not much in vivo in living organisms, human research, which is what we need to really know whether something is worth taking or not. Because while we share most of the DNA with rats, for example, we are not big rats. Things that have positive effects in rats don't necessarily pan out in humans. Look at the most

popular weight loss supplement of all time, for example, Garcinia cambogia. That is great for helping rats get shredded, but not humans. It does not work in us. That said, there is enough human in vivo research to warrant alpha GPC's use and its inclusion in different types of supplements, primarily pre-workout and brain boosting nootropic supplements. So why? Well, let's start with power output. So the first evidence that alpha GPC, at least the first evidence that I know of that alpha GPC can increase power output was a study. It was a poster presentation that showed a 14% increase in power output assessed by bench throws, which are basically bench presses, barbell bench presses with no weight, where you press the bar up

explosively and you actually throw it. So you release the bar from your hands and then you catch it and you bring it back down. And that was interesting. That was kind of creative because throwing a barbell is similar to a bench press. If we load weight and we lift explosively, which is what we should be doing, that is a very similar type of movement. But then there was another study that found a benefit to strength. And in that case, they were using 600 milligrams of alpha GPC. And after a week of supplementation, the improvements were seen and they were assessed by isometric mid-thigh pulls, which is a strength test that's similar to like locking out on a

deadlift. And then that was later expanded on in another study where the researchers compared 250 milligrams of alpha-GPC to 500 milligrams, and they used caffeine and placebo as controls. And they found surprisingly that 250 milligrams of alpha-GPC every day was better at increasing power and velocity compared to the placebo, once again, using isometric mid-thigh pulls, among other tests. So while the evidence is limited, it's also encouraging for us meatheads who like to bang weights because of how the studies were designed. They did not use Wingate tests for power. They did not use cycling tests, basically, for power. That's usually

how power is assessed in studies. Instead, the methods are more relevant to those of us who lift weights. And also the benefit came pretty quickly. It only took about a week of use of alpha GPC to produce those benefits. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you, is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. Now, what about the cognitive side of AlphaGPC? What does that look like? Well, that one is even less cut and dried because the research on alpha-GPC and cognitive effects has revolved around aging. And this was first seen in aged rats, where alpha-GPC was able to restore the structure

of damaged neurons and revitalize choline signaling. And the reason scientists thought that that may be able to help us humans is the likely mechanism was increasing phospholipid synthesis in neurons, which are what the membranes of the cells are made up of. And since Alzheimer's and dementia are associated with reduced phospholipid synthesis, scientists figured, hey, this could be a beneficial supplement. And human studies have noted that very high doses of alpha-GPC, so we're talking about 400 milligrams three times per day, so 1.2 grams per day, have been able to reduce symptoms of Alzheimer's after six months.

And that's really it, which is disappointing given the potential that alpha-GPC has shown. There's another study that showed that that 1,200 milligrams per day was able to help improve the rate of mental recovery after a stroke, but there is not much research on the topic. That said, it is reasonable to assume, or at least hypothesize, that an alpha-GPC supplement could increase cognition in those of us who are not elderly and who do not have some sort of disease. And the reason for that is that acetylcholine, which again, acetylcholine levels go up when you take alpha-GPC, it plays a very important role in different brain functions, like I mentioned, learning and memory and overall brain health. And so if you take alpha-GPC regularly, it may be able to improve the function and the health of your brain. Again, the evidence is not there.

Of course, there is not evidence to say that that is not the case. But given the mechanisms that are in play, I would not be surprised if one day we have good scientific evidence of that being the case. So alpha-GPC's most reliable benefits are going to be related to power production, and that's great for those of us who like being strong in the gym. It also may improve the function and the health of our brain. Now, there is another benefit that is often promoted to sell alpha-GPC that I want to talk quickly about, and that is related to growth hormone. Alpha-GPC is often recommended as a way to increase growth hormone levels, which is supposed to help you gain muscle faster, supposed to help you burn fat faster, supposed to help you burn fat faster,

supposed to have anti-aging effects. And here's the thing. There are a couple of studies that show that alpha-GPC can do this. There is one where 600 milligrams taken before a workout was able to boost the exercise-induced growth hormone release. And 1,000 milligrams have been seen to increase growth hormone levels even without exercise. So technically, I suppose, yeah, taking alpha-GPC is going to increase growth hormone secretion in your body, but that doesn't mean that anything meaningful is going to happen in your body. For example, growth hormone has been seen to increase in the short term, so we're talking about two hours or less, when you take many different types of supplements, including L-arginine, L-citrulline, even creatine. And some

of those have even reduced growth hormone levels acutely, like L-arginine and creatine. Cool, paradoxical results. But none of those changes in growth hormone levels are going to lead to more muscle growth or faster fat loss. And that is true of the arginine, the citrulline, the creatine, and the alpha GPC, because we're talking about very short and relatively small increases. If you want to boost your growth hormone levels and you want to actually get real benefits from boosting your growth hormone levels, you need to be increasing them basically from boosting your growth hormone levels, you need to be increasing them basically 24-7. I mean, not literally, but you have to do a lot more than just a single slightly larger pulse here and there. And none of the supplements, including AlphaGPC,

have any 24-hour data on them, only for single pulses that are too short to matter. It's just not enough extra juice to make a difference. And that, by the way, is why Legion doesn't make a hormone boosting supplement. I mean, we have DHEA in a supplement called Vitality, and that can increase testosterone production in older men and estrogen production in older women, but it is not sold as a testosterone or an estrogen booster. The best case scenario is it helps optimize your hormone profile if you are middle-aged, if you are 40 plus, and if your testosterone or your estrogen, if you're a woman, levels are low. Now, if I was purely in this for the scratch, I could put together a testosterone booster, a formulation for that, and I could put some ingredients in there and show some research that would back them up. Like for example, diaspartic acid for raising testosterone levels.

There is some research that it can do that. But what I wouldn't mention is that the effects are gone within a couple of weeks. So if you want to have slightly higher testosterone levels for a couple of weeks, diaspartic acid may work. It also may not work because that is the nature of natural supplements. Some people respond well, some people respond poorly, some people don't respond at all. But even if you do respond well to diaspartic acid, the effects are going to be gone within a couple of weeks. And I can attest to that. I tried diaspartic acid years ago when I first heard about it. And my experience was right in line with the research. For a couple of weeks,

I noticed a little bit more energy, a little bit better sleep, a little bit more sex drive, and then it was gone. But of course, I wouldn't mention any of that if I was trying to sell you on my test booster 9000. I would simply talk about diaspartic acid. I would share a couple of studies showing that it increases testosterone levels. And I would hope that none of you really looked into the details and noticed that it is short-lived. And I could find a couple of other ingredients that I could massage in the same way. And so the same thing would go for growth hormone. If I were a shady pill and powder pusher, I would put alpha-GPC in my growth hormone booster. I would pixie dust it though,

because the stuff is very expensive. I would not put the hundreds of milligrams, if not a thousand milligrams per serving needed to replicate the research that I would cite. I would come up with a proprietary blend, of course, put some alpha-GPC in there, reference a couple of studies, and again, hope that you don't really look into it and question the value of one small increase in growth hormone production that lasts maybe an hour or two. So that's it for alpha GPC for now. I hope there is more research that is done on this in the future because it is one of the more promising under-researched molecules in the sports nutrition space that we see in a lot of products that has gained enough popularity

that people go looking for it. So hopefully there is more funding in the future. Who knows? Maybe I'll be able to provide some of that funding. That'd be cool. Anyway, if you want to give it a go and see if it can help you in your training and maybe give you a little bit of a cognitive boost as well, then 250 milligrams to 500 milligrams per day is enough for both of those things. That's in line with the research. And as far as individual products, you of course can buy it as a standalone supplement. You can buy it as pills. You can buy it as a powder. If you want to get out your little itty bitty measuring cups or your very fancy measuring scale, or you can buy a pre-workout with it. My pre-workout pulse has alpha GPC, 250 milligrams per serving. You can find that over

at legionathletics.com and my nootropic, which is called ascend also has alpha GPC in it. If you don't want to do pre-workout, I should also mention that Pulse comes both with and without caffeine. So if you are sensitive to caffeine or if you're like me and you prefer to get your caffeine from espresso, you can just take the caffeine-free version of Pulse, which has the AlphaGPC. And you can also find AlphaGPC in my Nootropic Ascend, which has 300 milligrams per serving, as well as several other ingredients that improve brain health and function. And what's cool is you can take both. You can take Pulse and Ascend and not blow yourself up with too much alpha-GPC. Together, that's 550 milligrams

per day, which is again, perfectly in line with the research that we have on alpha GPC use. All right. Well, that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don't mind doing me a favor, please do leave a quick review on iTunes or wherever you're listening to me from in whichever app you're listening to me in because that not only convinces people that they should check out the show, it also increases search visibility and thus it helps more people find their way to me and learn how to get fitter, leaner, stronger, healthier, and happier as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any new stuff. And if

you didn't like something about the show, please do shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com, just muscle, F-O-R, life.com, and share your thoughts on how I can do this better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, even if it is criticism. I'm open to it. And of course, you can email me if you have positive feedback as well, or if you have questions really relating to anything that you think I could help you with, definitely send me an email. That is the best way to get ahold of me, mikeatmuscleforlife.com. And that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode. And I hope to hear from you soon.