Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - This Is Everything You Need to Know About Ephedrine

Episode Date: October 20, 2017

No matter how hard you train, how dialed in your diet is, or how smartly you supplement, losing weight is a pain in the ass. The leaner you get, the more you have to deal with hunger and cravings, the harder your workouts become, and the less you have to eat to keep the needle moving. That’s why many people turn to drugs like ephedrine for help, which has a special place in the hearts of bodybuilders everywhere. If you’ve spent any amount of time in the gym, you’ve undoubtedly heard that it’s as close to a weight loss “magic bullet” as you can ask for. Ephedrine purportedly kills your appetite while also dramatically increasing your metabolic rate and fat burning, which means you’ll not only lose fat faster but will also have an easier time of sticking to your meal plans, as well. Even better, we’re told, ephedrine is just as safe as caffeine but, unlike the world’s most popular drug, gets more effective the longer you use it. Poke around online, though, and you’ll find the opposition party, who claim that ephedrine is middling at best as a fat burner and not nearly as safe as many people think. The more strident critics even claim that it can significantly raise the risk of anxiety attack, heart attack, and stroke. And so, like with many things related to building muscle, losing fat, and getting healthy, you’re stuck in the middle, wondering whom to believe. How effective is ephedrine, really? How serious are the side effects and health risks? And if it’s safe, how should it be dosed and how long should you take it for? Well, you’re going to get answers to all of those questions and more in this episode. You’re going to learn exactly how ephedrine works, how good of a “fat burner” it really is, what the literature has to say about its safety, and more. Let’s get to it. 3:34 - What is Ephedrine and how does it work? 9:28 - Is Ephedrine safe? 10:07 - Why is Ephedrine labeled dangerous? 12:41 - How much Ephedrine should I take? 14:56 - Is Ephedrine legal? 15:46 - Is there another product similar to Ephedrine? Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

No matter how hard you train or how dialed in your diet is or how smartly you supplement, losing weight is a pain in the ass, let's face it. The leaner you get, the more you have to deal with hunger and cravings, the harder your workouts become, and the less and less you get to eat if you want to keep the needle moving. And that's why many people turn to drugs like ephedrine for help, which has a particularly special place in the hearts of many bodybuilders. If you spent any time in the gym, you have probably heard of the ECA stack, ephedrine, caffeine, aspirin stack, and you've probably heard that that is about as close to a weight loss magic bullet as you can ask for. If you are to believe the hype, then ephedrine

can kill your appetite while also dramatically increasing your metabolic rate and fat burning, which means that you're not only going to lose fat faster, but you'll also have an easier time of sticking to your diet as well. Even better, people say ephedrine is just as safe as caffeine, but unlike the world's most popular drug, gets even more effective the longer that you use it. If you poke around online though, you will find the opposition party. You will find people who claim that ephedrine is middling at best as a fat burner and not nearly as safe as many people think. Some people even say that it can significantly raise your risk of anxiety attack, heart attack, and even stroke. And so as it goes with many things related to building muscle,

losing fat, and getting healthy, you're stuck in the middle wondering whom to believe. How effective is ephedrine really? How serious are the side effects and health risks? And if it is indeed safe, how should it be dosed and how long should you take it for? Well, you are going to get answers to all of those questions and a bit more in this podcast. By the end of the podcast, you're going to know exactly how ephedrine works in your body. You're going to know how good of a fat burner it really is, and also what the scientific literature has to say about its safety and much more. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I'm not big on

promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm just going to quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my high quality sports multivitamin Triumph. Now Triumph was designed for athletes and physically active people who want to optimize their health and fight off stress, fatigue, and overtraining. It contains 21 vitamins and minerals, as well as 14 additional ingredients that improve overall health and wellbeing, enhance physical and mental performance, and help protect against disease. All that is why Triumph has over 500 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average and another 180 plus on my website with a five star average. So if you want to plug any nutritional holes in your diet, improve your mood and mental and physical performance and boost your

resistance to stress, sickness, and disease, then you want to head over to www.legionathletics.com and pick up a bottle of Triumph today. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code podcast to check out and you will save 10% on your entire order. All right, so let's start this episode at the top. What is ephedrine and how does it work? Well, ephedrine is a stimulant and it increases your metabolic rate and thus it can increase fat loss. In short, it increases the amount of energy that your body burns and a lot of that comes from fat. The molecule itself is extracted and refined from a shrub that grows in China called Ephedra sinica, which is why you will also sometimes see it referred to as Ephedra. This plant has been popular in traditional Chinese medicine

for a long time because it makes breathing easier by relaxing the muscles around your airways. So it can be used to treat various conditions like the common cold, coughing, and the flu. Here in the West though, ephedrine is found in asthma medications for the same reason, because it makes breathing easier. Now, how does that relate to your metabolism and to fat burning, you're wondering? Well, basically ephedrine works by binding to receptors in your cells that respond to chemicals called catecholamines, which include adrenaline, noradrenaline, and dopamine. And when any of these molecules attach to cells, they trigger your body's fight or flight response,

which increases heart rate, decreases hunger, and accelerates fat and glycogen burning. Ephedrine also helps reduce fat stores that are naturally more resistant to mobilization than others. Stubborn fat cells, if you're not familiar with that, it is a thing. And it does this by increasing the activity in a cellular receptor known as a beta receptor, which triggers the release of energy stored in the fat cell. And if you want to know more about that in particular, head over to legionathletics.com and search for stubborn fat, and you will find an in-depth article that I wrote on it. So all that being what it is, obviously then most people take ephedrine to benefit their body composition. They take it to increase their metabolic rate, to lose fat faster, and to

blunt their appetites. There's also evidence that ephedrine can increase strength, endurance, and power, which isn't exactly surprising because it is a stimulant, and that it may be able to help spare muscle mass while dieting as well. The latter effect though isn't clearly understood or established. It may just have inherent muscle sparing properties, or this phenomenon may simply be a by-product of its potential performance enhancing properties. Because if you can maintain a high training intensity while you're dieting, you're going to be less likely to lose muscle. Either way, what we know is that people that take ephedrine while cutting seem to hold on to a bit more muscle than those who don't.

Now, unlike many fat burner supplements on the market, the science is very clear with ephedrine. It most definitely can help you lose fat and, of course, weight faster. Research shows that it reliably and significantly increases fat burning, and it also works synergistically with caffeine, which can also accelerate your weight loss. So in other words, when you combine caffeine with ephedrine, you can lose weight faster than if you took them separately. And in terms of how much faster, one study found that the EC stack, the ephedrine caffeine stack, can increase your

metabolic rate by about 5%, which would translate to about an additional one third of a pound of fat loss per week for the average person. That's not game changing, of course, but it is the equivalent energy expenditure of about 30 minutes of vigorous walking per day, which isn't bad for a couple pills. Ephedrine is also a rather unique fat burner in that it gets more effective over time. Unlike caffeine, for example, which loses its fat burning mojo the longer you use it, studies show that ephedrine's effects are actually amplified by continued use because it appears to increase your body's sensitivity to catecholamines, to the adrenaline, noradrenaline, and dopamine that is

produced. And this is particularly beneficial when you're cutting because the longer you remain in a caloric deficit, the less energy your body burns both at rest and during exercise. And that's one of the primary reasons why people just inexplicably stop losing weight after dieting for some time. They don't realize that they're not burning nearly as much energy through their activity and just their natural metabolic rate as when they started. Ephedrine then helps compensate for this through its compounding metabolic effects. Yet another major weight loss benefit of ephedrine that has been verified by scientific research is indeed appetite suppression. It's not uncommon for people who take ephedrine for the first time to feel satiated on just a few hundred calories per day, which I definitely don't recommend, but it does illustrate how powerfully it can suppress

your hunger. Now we know that these effects do diminish over time, but most people report a noticeable reduction in overall hunger and cravings for as long as they take ephedrine, many months in some cases. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for

Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. So far, so good, right? Ephedrine is sounding pretty amazing, but the next question is safety. Is it safe? And like every stimulant, ephedrine definitely has side effects. The common ones include elevated heart rate and blood pressure, nausea, insomnia, dizziness, jitters, hand tremors, the stuff that you would expect from a stimulant. And while that may sound pretty ominous to you, the story is more or less the same for other stimulants like caffeine and yohimbine. And research does show that these reactions do tend to subside after the first week or so of taking ephedrine. Why then is it often labeled as dangerous and tarred with the

same brush as much harsher drugs like clenbuterol and DNP? And there are a couple reasons for this. The first reason is taking ephedrine does come with risks. The risks may not be as serious as some people would have you believe, but the reality is ephedrine is a drug and every drug comes with some sort of risk. Some people just don't respond well to ephedrine and experience very serious side effects. And that's why as of 2004, the FDA had recorded over 18,000 complaints from ephedrine users. Now that said, most of these cases involved preexisting health conditions and also super dosing it, taking way too much, and then also combining it with other recreational and pharmaceutical drugs like alcohol, cold medicines, and even ecstasy. Definitely do not recommend any of that.

So as you can imagine, some pretty nasty things happen to people who are taking ephedrine. Some people died, including a 23-year-old baseball player named Steve Belcher. And in 2004, the FDA said enough and just banned its use in all supplements. This then gave rise to unfounded fears about its general safety, which is kind of ironic because plenty of people have died from caffeine overdose as well, but millions of us use and some of us abuse caffeine every day without even giving it a second thought, but would consider ephedrine far too risky or otherwise bad, mainly because it's found in asthma medications and not allowed in supplements. So the bottom line here is this. Studies show that when it's taken responsibly, ephedrine is generally safe and without serious side effects.

If it is contraindicated due to preexisting health conditions though, or if the dosing is too high, or if it's combined with other drugs like alcohol, large amounts of nicotine or MDMA, it can be dangerous or even deadly. You should also know that most of the research that has been done on ephedrine only lasted a few weeks or a few months. So we don't know if things change for the worse when it's used for longer period. Now, of course, most cuts don't go for more than two or three months or shouldn't go for more than two or three months unless you have a lot of fat to lose. And if that's you, or if your cut is going to go for a while and you want

to use ephedrine, you can always cycle on and off it to minimize the likelihood of experiencing any complications. Speaking of taking ephedrine, the next question, of course, then is if you're going to take it, how much should you take? And the answer is the most common dosing protocol that you will find for weight loss in the scientific literature is three servings of 20 to 25 milligrams of ephedrine per day. And those are usually given in the morning, around noon, and then in the early afternoon. Your standard EC stack in bodybuilding circles combines each of those servings with about 200 milligrams of caffeine, which is fairly high. I might add that's probably too high for regular

long-term consumption. I personally would probably cut that in half. Some people also include aspirin as well to make the ECA stack because there's some evidence that suggests that it might further increase fat burning in obese people, but research has demonstrated that it doesn't appear to do the same thing in leaner people. There are also some safety concerns to take into account here because taking significant amounts of aspirin over longer periods of time is probably not a good idea. So I'm going to recommend that you just leave the aspirin out. Now I mentioned cycling ephedrine if you're going to be cutting for a long time, but many people also wonder if you should

cycle it, even if you are cutting for shorter periods of time. And the reason for this is most stimulants do become less effective over time because your body simply builds a tolerance to them, which then requires that you take more and more to continue feeling their effects. Clinbuterol, for example, becomes significantly less effective after around four to six weeks of continued use. And that's why many of these types of stimulants are cycled, especially when you're trying to lose fat, because it allows your body to reset its sensitivity and responsiveness to them. As you now know, though, ephedrine is different. It's the opposite. Actually, it becomes more effective the longer you use it. So it doesn't need to be cycled to

maintain its potency. That said, again, I will say that we can't be sure as to the long-term side effects of ephedrine use. So if you want to play it as safely as possible, then I would recommend you take a week off every four to six weeks or so. And for bonus points, if you are also taking caffeine with your ephedrine, come off that as well, because it will help maintain its efficacy as a fat burner. Another point worth touching on here is the legality because many people wonder if it's legal or not. As you know, it's not allowed to be included in supplements. And that's why the only legal ephedrine containing products that you can buy, at least here in the US, are asthma, allergy, and cold medications like bronchade and primatine. There are also limits as to how much of these drugs you can buy at any one time

because it's possible to manufacture methamphetamine from large amounts of ephedrine and other similar drugs. Ephedrine is also banned by most sports organizations, including the NCAA, MLB, NFL, and PGA, as well as the International Olympic Committee and World Anti-Doping Agency, because as I mentioned earlier, it may slightly enhance athletic performance. Now, as useful as ephedrine is, I think you should consider taking something else instead, which is called sinephrine. Sinephrine is a natural compound extracted from the bitter orange fruit that's chemically similar to ephedrine and produces the same type of effects in the body, but it's not a drug. One study found that a single 50 milligram dose of synephrine increased basal metabolic rate by about 65 calories over the next 75 minutes. And then when it was combined

with two other natural molecules, which are called naringin and hesperidin, that number jumped to about 180 calories. Now, that may not seem like that much, but it's actually pretty comparable to what is seen with ephedrine. It's about the same amount of energy that you burn during 20-ish minutes of jogging. And if you were to do that every day, if you were to take sinephrine, naringin, and hesperidin in the right amounts every day, that would add up to about 1300 additional calories burned every week, which is about an additional one third or so of a pound of fat loss per week. Because sinephrine is chemically similar to ephedrine, it can also help you lose stubborn fat faster in the same way. it can also help you lose stubborn fat faster in the same way. It inhibits a cellular mechanism that blunts fat burning. It also increases the thermic effect of food, which is the amount of

energy it costs to digest and process the food that you eat. And it also can reduce your appetite as well. Another reason to choose Sinephrin over Ephedrine, and I think the most compelling reason is research shows that it's extremely safe to take. Multiple studies have found that Senefrin does not increase blood pressure or heart rate like ephedrine. And that's why it's generally considered one of the safest stimulatory weight loss supplements that you can take. So the bottom line is if you want to lose fat faster without taking a harsher stimulant like ephedrine, then I highly recommend sinephrine. And I also highly recommend combining it with naringin and hesperidin and shameless plug. If I

may, you can find all three of those in the right dosages among some other goodies in my 100% natural fat burner Phoenix, which you can learn more about at legionathletics.com slash phoenix if you are interested. So the bottom line on ephedrine is this. It's a stimulant. It can help you lose fat faster by increasing your metabolic rate and blunting your appetite. There's evidence that it may also improve exercise performance, and it does appear to help preserve lean mass while dieting as well, although those effects are not clearly understood or established. It's also pretty unique in that it becomes more potent over time, whereas other stimulants tend to drop off with continued use. And while ephedrine is generally safe and it's generally

well-tolerated when it's used responsibly, common side effects do include elevated heart rate and blood pressure as well as jitters, but these things do tend to dissipate after the first week or so for most people. Where ephedrine gets dangerous is if you take too much of it or if you combine it with other drugs like alcohol and nicotine, or if you have preexisting health conditions that contraindicate its use. So if you want to speed up your fat loss and you aren't afraid of the potential side effects, or you just want to see how you respond, then including ephedrine in your regimen can definitely make sense. If you're like me though, and you prefer to stick to natural

supplements whenever possible, then you should check out its natural counterpart, sinephrine, which can also help you burn more calories and burn more stubborn fat and feel less hungry without having to worry about the potential downsides or long-term health risks that may be associated with ephedrine. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and

learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. So please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode. And I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously, though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I

don't personally use and believe in. So instead instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my high quality sports multivitamin Triumph. Now Triumph was designed for athletes and physically active people who want to optimize their health and fight off stress, fatigue, and overtraining. It contains 21 vitamins and minerals, as well as 14 additional ingredients that improve overall health and wellbeing, enhance physical and mental performance, and help protect against disease. All that is why Triumph has over 500 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average and another 180 plus on my website with a five star average. So if you want to plug any nutritional holes in your diet, improve your mood and mental

and physical performance and boost your resistance to stress, sickness, and disease, then you want to head over to www.legionathletics.com and pick up a bottle of triumph today. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code podcast to check out and you will save 10% on your entire order.