The top 5 worst supplements
Pee in the western world is becoming more and more precious. In the Netherlands, this is partly due to drug use, but also due to the large amount of supplements we take that you immediately pee out again, because your body cannot do anything with it. Very sinful of course. What are the top 5 worst supplements. Supplements that damage the body and / or your wallet, because your body immediately pees them out. Let's start with the top 5 worst supplements.
1. Multivitamin
This is probably the supplement that most people take, but in 9 out of 10 cases it is best to just throw it in the trash. This has several reasons. First of all, of all the supplements it contains, it often (therefore in 9 out of 10 times) contains the lowest quality and there is a huge difference between low and high quality supplements.
Take magnesium as an example. When I started taking magnesium supplements I took magnesium oxide. Why? Because it was the cheapest form. But the only thing I noticed was that I got diarrhea every day. Then I switched to magnesium malate. The diarrhea stopped and I noticed that it had the desired effect as a muscle relaxant, which also reduced my muscle knots after a hard workout. In addition, the absorption of these low-quality supplements is also much lower, for example with magnesium oxide the absorption is only 4%, where the absorption of malate is between 50 and 80%.
Onestudy for example, found that taking a multivitamin has the same effect on your health as taking a placebo pill. The study also warned that the amounts of some vitamins are very high and that they do not yet know the long-term effects of many vitamins.
In addition to being of low quality and containing too many of the vitamins, some supplements also have the opposite effect, or rather they cannot be absorbed into your body at the same time. There are some receptors in your gut that can absorb different nutrients, for example magnesium and calcium. When you get them in at the same time, 1 of the 2 will always be peed out. So all in all, take the supplements you need and don't take them all at the same time in cheap multivitamin supplements.
2. Weight gainers
Yes, I have a problem with it too. With arriving. Many friends of mine too. Still, I always advise everyone to start with weight gainers. Weight gainers are powders that you can drink with water, containing the cheapest (mainly) carbohydrates/sugars to help you gain weight. Often it is a little bit of protein powder, with a lot of sugar. This is going to help you gain weight, but not build muscle. It mainly makes you fat. Hopefully you won't eat sugar cubes to gain weight as quickly as possible, so why wieght gainers? Besides making you fat, it makes you feel tired all day long, because of the large insulin peak after drinking a weight gainer, it is also incredibly easy to make cheaper and healthier wieght gainers.
I did this myself by taking olive oil shots, but you can also mix 100% peanut butter, a banana and coconut oil with milk in the blender and if you want to make it a little less healthy (but tastier) add chocolate milk . The fats of the peanut butter and coconut oil are a lot healthier than the sugar in the wieght gainer, so you will feel fitter during the day and there are also more proteins in it. So stay away from the wieght gainers.
3. Melatonin
We go from hot to her, but do you ever have trouble falling asleep? Melatonin is the most popular supplement to take. And it works, too well actually. It ensures that you become dependent on the supplement to fall asleep.
Of course you can take it once, for example during a long flight, but when you start taking it more often, your body becomes dependent on it and you have to take more and more for the same effect. That's why melatonin is in the top 5 worst supplements.
4. BCAA
In other words, branched chain amino acids, or three different amino acids; leucine, isoleucine and valine. When you supplement this you probably do this for the protien synthesis effect, or the creation of protein molecules. But because BCAA only contains 3 of the 9 amino acids, as described above, this ensures no or a short-term protien synthesis. On the other hand, whey protein contains all 9 amino acids, so your body will then produce more protein molecules.
BCAAs are especially popular among people who fast. They think you can take these amino acids and still stay in a fasted state. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. Research shows that the leucine in the BCAA also causes your insulin to rise, so that you are no longer in a fasted state. Because when your insulin is high you store fat, the other way around when your insulin is low (and your glucans are high) you burn fat, so when you take BCAAs you are out of the fasted state and you no longer burn fat.
If you still have BCAAs lying around, take them in your next whey protein shake or with a meal, then it will be well absorbed by your body and increase the protein content of this meal.
5. Casein and beef protein
These are two different protein powder forms, neither of which are worth buying. Starting with casein. For example, people take this before going to sleep, since it is marketed as a protein that is slowly absorbed by your body, so that you do not have to do without protein all evening. This does not work for two reasons. First, there are fewer of the various amino acids (including leucine) in casein proteins than in normal whey proteins. In addition, your protein synthesis with both casein and normal whey protein is 3-4 hours. So that it works better during sleep than normal protein is apparently not true either.
In addition, you have beef protien powder. They say this comes from cow meat where whey protein comes from parts of milk. Unfortunately, beef protien does not come from the right parts of the cow, which you can also enjoy eating in a restaurant. The cheap, popular beef protien powders are ground cow bones, hooves and cow noses. Here they add normal proteins and sell it for a more expensive price, so not recommended.
So that was the list of the top 5 worst supplements. If you have any additions or questions, let us know below in the comment. For supplements that you do want to take, go to r Smeets & Graas or look here.