It probably is. 

Although this lawsuit was filed back in May, it just made it across my radar screen… and it’s too good an illustration of this principle to pass up.

Claim to boost testosterone meets class-action lawsuit
Posted by Hugo Ottolenghi

The company says that its product will boost testosterone levels by 10,000%. The plaintiffs says the product is snake oil marked up to $70 a package. So begins a class-action lawsuit filed in California superior court May 6. The suit says that Musclemeds makes false advertising claims about Arimatest and that the product creates a false result when tested.

Scott J. Ferrell of Call Jensen & Ferrell of Newport Beach, Calif., represents two California men plus others who would qualify for class-action status. The suit seeks “to recover millions of dollars generated by defendants via the false and misleading claims.”

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More evidence of an FDA crackdown on steroid-based supplements.

Thursday’s raid followed a two-year criminal investigation into the company and corporate officers, including founder Ryan DeLuca, by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, according to search warrants filed in U.S. District Court.

The searches were conducted at Bodybuilding.com’s headquarters at 2026 S. Silverstone Way, Meridian, and its warehouse off Gowen Road in south Boise…

…Between February 2008 and last August, Robert Blenkinsop, an FDA special agent based in Boise, made four purchases from the company, he said in an affidavit filed in support of the search warrant.

Of the 31 products he bought, 23 tested positive for one or more of five anabolic steroids: madol, tren, superdrol, androstenedione and turinabol, he said in the affidavit.

Local news video here.

I got the call today from the freight company – the Prowler that I purchased for John’s birthday (10/8) will be here tomorrow.

What’s a Prowler?  LOL!  It’s a “functional fitness” conditioning tool: a heavy sled that can be pushed along the ground.  It’s going to be integrated into our “Play Heart” workout activities.  Check it out at the beginning of this vid:

Looks like some fun, eh?

Years ago, I happened to read “New Guinea Tapeworms and Jewish Grandmothers” by Dr. Robert Desowitz, an entertaining little book about… parasites.  Or rather, how ecological perturbations affect human relationships with them.  Not surprisingly, many of Dr. Desowitz’s anecdotes concerned well-intentioned but poorly thought-out interventions in the 3rd world.  For example, dams erected to provide cities with hydroelectric power frequently increased the incidence of schistosomiasis (”snail fever”) – a debilitating parasitic disease transmitted to humans by snails flourishing in the man-made reservoirs.  Likewise, irrigation systems often became breeding grounds for the mosquitos that transmit malaria. 

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John and I started the Alpha Male Challenge program this week.  Although we’re both veteran gym rats, there are elements of this program that we haven’t done for a while, so it was a good change up.  It also left us a bit sore, but that’s par for the course.

We continued with our usual early a.m. cardio routine for the “Play Heart” requirement.  We’ll be adding in other, more “playful” activities as we go along (like using the Prowler – lol), but figured the current routine was good enough to begin with.  Since he’s a corporate warrior, John was able to follow the suggestions in the book for his “Work Heart” points, but since my “office” is at home, I had to improvise.  I got my points by jumping rope, doing calisthenics, and hooping at intervals throughout the day.  This is stuff I often do anyway, as it helps perk me up (I can only sit in front of the computer for so long…).  So, nothing really new on this front.

The weight sessions were another story, however – I haven’t done whole body workouts in a long time.  The first “Wave” of the “Alpha Wave Training” emphasizes muscular endurance, so there are a lot of 20 rep sets… with only 1 minute rests between them.  Needless to state, there was a certain amount of guess work involved in choosing the weights, although I pegged it pretty well.  John had a tougher time with this – he frequently started too heavy, and had to lighten up as he went along. 

Despite the intial fumbling around, the workouts moved along at a pretty good clip.  We’re working at “Level A”, so there are 30 sets per workout.  That’s a fair number of sets, but it still only took about 75 minutes (including the dynamic warmup).

One downside of the “Challenge” is that my workouts are now tied to John’s schedule, rather than my own.  This means hitting the gym between 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. during the week - definitely not my preferred time.  But it does help to have a workout partner/spotter around for this sort of workout, so I’ll manage.

All in all, it’s a challenging workout – I was definitely feeling it at the end (hell, I’m still feeling it NOW… time to go put my feet up for the night!).

This should clear up any lingering questions about Aspartame…

Expert advice is that aspartame – found in more than 4,000 products – is safe to consume.

However, a number of people have reported sensitivity to the product including headaches, dizziness, vomiting, diarrhoea and fatigue.

…Professor Stephen Atkin, who will lead the new research, said: “This study is not to determine whether aspartame can be consumed safely; this has already been established, but rather to see whether certain people are sensitive to it.”

The Hull team hope their work will lead to a larger international study to pin down the issue once and for all.

…Andrew Wadge, Chief Scientist at the Food Standards Agency said: “The study will address consumer concerns, including anecdotal reports that have linked a range of conditions to aspartame.

Personally, I’ve never had any problems with aspartame, nor have I known anyone who has.  It’s certainly not hard to find reports of adverse effects, however.  It will be interesting to see if there are genuine chemical sensitivities behind these reactions.

Paul sent me a link to this YouTube vid from skeptic, author and professor Michael Shermer.  No, it has nothing to do with supps, diet, exercise or health per se… but it IS relevant to those subjects.  Basically, the vid is about the kinds of questions people need to ask themselves when confronted by claims… so the mental steps Dr. Shermer discusses are quite applicable to the claims made in supp ads and other health-related info you find on the internet.

It’s a tad long, but worth every minute.  Enjoy!

Ok, we all know that smoking, high blood pressure and high serum cholesterol levels are likely to shave some years off your life, but – according to the BBC - University of  Oxford researchers were able to come up with a pretty good estimate of how many.

And it ain’t just one or two, either.  On average, it’s 10 – 15.

The UK study looked at more than 19,000 civil servants aged 40-69 and traced what happened to them 38 years later.

The Oxford study, in the British Medical Journal, said men with these three risk factors could expect a 10-year shorter life from 50 years of age.

…The researchers from the University of Oxford focused on smoking, high blood pressure and cholesterol because they are the main cardiovascular risk factors.

But when they broadened it out to look at all risk factors including obesity, diabetes and employment grade, they found a 15-year life expectancy difference between the 5% with the highest number of risk factors and the 5% who had the lowest number of risk factors.

I don’t know about you, but I could get a lot of living done in 10 – 15 years.  If that’s not a good reason to quit smoking and get other risk factors in line, I don’t know what is.

Full study here.

There are times I’m alternately fascinated and repelled by the stuff the food industry comes up with.  On the one hand, I can’t really object to entrepreneurs pushing healthier versions of not-so-healthy-but-extremely-popular food products… but on the other hand, it seems somewhat exploitative too.  Marketing better quality  junk/snack/convenience foods as “healthy” implies that consumers don’t really have to change their eating habits… just their product choices.  In other words, they can have their cake and eat it too… or in this case, pizza.

The gut health market is growing, driven predominantly by yogurt shots from household names like Dannon, but if the vision and plans of a New Orleans-based archaeologist-turned-entrepreneur come to fruition, the gut-health market could soon be colonized by pizzas.

Naked Pizza started in 2006 and is the brainchild of Jeff Leach, an archaeologist by trade and head of Paleobiotics Lab, a New Mexico-based independent research group investigating the implications of dietary and nutritional evolution and its bearing on modern health.

…The pizza crust is formulated with 12 types of whole grain, including amaranth and buckwheat, and fortified with Beneo Orafti’s Synergy1 prebiotic, and Ganeden’s heat resistant Bacillus coagulans strain, said Leach.

A two-slice serving delivers a Bacillus coagulans payload of one billion colony forming units (cfu) and five grams of Synergy1, he said.

If you’re going to eat pizza, then one with added whole grains, prebiotic fiber and probiotic bacteria will certainly be superior to what Pizza Hut or Papa John’s has to offer, although I’m politely skeptical that palliatives like “Naked Pizza” will ultimately “change the health of the nation.”

But, we’ll see.  The company recently got a major boost from the Kraft Group, and is planning to expand nationwide.  If a franchise eventually opens nearby, I’ll have to check it out. 

In my local supermarkets, nutrition/energy bars are big business… Fred Meyer, Safeway and Albertson’s all devote a decent amount of shelf space to them.  At Freddy’s – where I shop most often – they’re in the “Health Food” section… after all, they’re so healthy!  Right?

Kinda sorta.

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I’m not sure why the NYT titled this article “New Concerns Over Dietary Supplements” – the military has always been vehemently opposed to supps.  In fact, the only thing I find “new” here, is that the doc they interviewed, Col Erin Edgar, sounds refreshingly rational, and isn’t foaming at the mouth like some other military docs I’ve come across.

The problem with supplements, Colonel Edgar said, is that they often contain substances that can make users susceptible to heat stroke. Many products include stimulants, like caffeine or ephedrine, that increase metabolism but also raise the heart rate and blood pressure — not necessarily good thing for troops in combat or a hot climate, he said.

Colonel Edgar, who is assuming leadership of the Army’s 18th Medical Command, said “elite troops,” including Special Operating Forces, seem to use the supplements more cautiously and therefore have fewer problems. He is most concerned, he said, about soldiers who over-consume the supplements, which they view as “magic bullets” that will make them muscle-bound overnight.

This strikes me as a pretty legitimate concern, but one that also should also be manageable through education… objective education, that is, not the “creatine is a gateway drug” jeremiads you typically see from the military brass.*

*ok, I’m exaggerating… but not by much.

Ok, not the REAL Mt. Kilimanjaro… the “Level A Kilimanjaro Walking Climb” from the “Alpha Male Challenge.”  John and I are officially starting the program tomorrow, although we tried this cardio workout yesterday, just for the hell of it.  We were curious to get a taste of what we were in for.

I made it all the way… John did too, although he had to hang on to the treadmill to get through the highest elevations (12% and 15% respectively).

But while I did it fair and square, I didn’t enjoy it – which means I’ve got some work to do!  But that’s the point of going through programs like this – it’s rather different than the workouts I’ve been doing, and I expect it’s going to make me confront weaknesses I didn’t know I had (I shudder at how humbling those 20 rep squat sets are likely to be).  But I already made a commitment to the program – not just in my heart or on paper, but to Rick – one of the co-authors - so I’m officially scr… stuck.

I think it’s gonna be a long 10 weeks… but let the games begin!

LOL – I didn’t write that, just so you know.  It’s one of the comments posted in response to this article in the Sacramento Bee.

A sweeping statewide study released today points to soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages as one of the main reasons why we are fat.

“For the first time, we have strong scientific evidence that soda is one of the – if not the largest – contributors to the obesity epidemic,” Dr. Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, said Wednesday.

…”Bubbling Over: Soda Consumption and Its Link to Obesity in California” – a joint effort by the California Center for Public Health Advocacy and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research – interviewed 42,000 Californians of all ages.

…The study found that 24 percent of adults drink one or more non-diet sodas a day, and these adults are 27 percent more likely to be overweight.

The results for children were worse, researchers said. Sixty-two percent of adolescents ages 12 to 17 and 41 percent of children ages 2 to 11 imbibe at least one sugar-sweetened drink a day.

The report is here.

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According to this NYT discussion of current research, the answer may be yes…

For some time, researchers have known that exercise changes the structure of the brain and affects thinking. Ten years ago scientists at the Salk Institute in California published the groundbreaking finding that exercise stimulates the creation of new brain cells. But fundamental questions remain, like whether exercise must be strenuous to be beneficial. Should it be aerobic? What about weight lifting? And are the cognitive improvements permanent or fleeting?

…Why should exercise need to be aerobic to affect the brain? “It appears that various growth factors must be carried from the periphery of the body into the brain to start a molecular cascade there,” creating new neurons and brain connections, says Henriette van Praag, an investigator in the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging. For that to happen, “you need a fairly dramatic change in blood flow,” like the one that occurs when you run or cycle or swim.

The kicker is that it may need to be fairly intense, aerobic exercise – the kind that most people aren’t currently in condition to do.  But, it’s certainly possible to train up to it. 

As noted elsewhere on the blog, there are benefits to higher-intensity exercise that have NOTHING to do with weight loss (as desirable and beneficial as that may be)…this adds to the list.  Thus, it’s as good a reason as any to turn up the heat in the gym, even if you’re happy with your current weight.

BBC News is my home page, so I’ve been keeping tabs on comedian Eddie Izzard’s latest exploit: running 43 marathons in 51 days – 1,100+ miles – to raise money for the British charity Sport Relief.

Izzard’s no athlete – he started with only 5 weeks prep under his belt – so the fact that he’s still standing and walking around is pretty astounding. It’s not something that I’d undertake happily… it’s an impressive feat of endurance.

He’s one of my favorite comedians (I’m a sucker for British comedy) - if you’ve never seen his act, here’s a sample:

From a personal health perspective, I was fortunate in my choice of career… since I worked with bacteria, viruses, animal blood/tissue samples and a large number of hazardous chemicals, I rapidly unlearned certain involuntary gestures, like unconsciously scratching my nose, brushing the hair away from my face and/or rubbing my eyes.  My hands had to be kept away from my face at ALL times when gloved and/or gowned.  It was especially annoying when working within a higher level biohaz lab, as there was NO way to – say – blow my nose, without going through a specified decontamination process.  Sometimes it was easier to just endure it… a disposable surgical mask hides a multitude of sins.

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A two year study conducted by researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine demonstrated that intensive nutrition/health education can improve body composition and lipid levels in overweight/obese children.

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Just like “natural“, “wholesome” is a marketing buzz word.  It conveys the impression of “healthy”, but in a noncommittal sort of way.  So it’s always worth reading the fine print, to make sure an allegedly “wholesome” food product really merits the description.

Like Kraft’s new, “wholesome” Lunchables, for example.

But I invite you to scan the rest of the ingredients in the new Turkey + Cheddar Sub Sandwich Lunchables. Does it look “wholesome” to you? Kraft has managed to turn a simple turkey and cheese sandwich, something every caretaker able to buy a Lunchable ($3.49) can easily afford and quickly slap together to stick in a lunchbox, into a chemistry set. Just reading the list of ingredients — I stopped counting at 119 — is exhausting; perhaps they figure we’ll just give up.

…But as for that lovely “spring water,” Kraft takes its time mentioning the artificially sweetened drink mix that comes with it. The touted 2 percent cheddar cheese turns out to be “2% milk reduced fat cheddar pasteurized prepared cheese product.” And about that “bread made with whole grain.” Would that be the white wheat bran that appears far down the list of the bread’s ingredients, long after the “enriched bleached wheat flour”?

The WaPo writer isn’t kidding about the ingredients.  Here’s the list.  In addition to the deficiencies she mentions, I couldn’t help but notice that there’s only 11g of protein, vs. 32g of sugar (more than 1/3 of the total cals).  Ugh.

In this case, “wholesome” appears to mean “better than the original ‘Lunchables’” – but that’s not saying much.  And considering what they charge for the damn things, you’ll be better off making your own school lunches for your kids.  They’ll be better off for it, too.

Interesting blog post by Monica Reinagel, over at NutritionData.com:

Saturated fat and red meat seem to prevent expanding waistlines

Danish researchers studied the links between consumption of various food groups and change in waist size.  Why are they worried about waist size? An increase in waist size signals an increase in visceral, or abdominal, fat. This is considered the most dangerous pattern of weight gain because abdominal fat is strongly linked to increased risk of heart disease, cancer, insulin resistance, and diabetes.  In fact, the association is so strong that a waist measurement of more than 35″  (for women) or 40″ (for men) is an independent risk factor for heart disease.

Surprisingly (to some), they found that women who ate more butter and high fat dairy products gained less weight around the waist than those whose diets are lower in saturated fat. A similar association was observed with red meat–that is, those who ate more red meat had smaller waistlines. The researchers seem to be at a loss to explain these findings.

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As y’all know, I moderate two private fitness forums: one focused on fat loss, the other on building muscle.  Thus, I frequently field questions about supplements: both individual ingredients and branded formulas.

Here’s the deal: every so often, a new member will join one of the forums, and proceed to ask question after question about supps.  They almost never ask for feedback on their nutrition or workouts…just supps.  And as soon as I give ‘em a reality check on one brand, they’re back with another.  And then another… wash, rinse, repeat.

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