How to Choose Safe and Effective Products

Alyssa: We have these third parties who can go through and look at this bottle of creatine, and they can confirm. Okay, the bottle says it has creatine in it. That’s all we found in it. It doesn’t have heavy metals. It doesn’t have steroids. It doesn’t have cocaine. It just has creatine.

Steve: Yeah.

Alyssa: It’s a funny example, but I mean, these are all things that have been found in supplements. It’s very scary.

Steve: Wow.

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Steve: Welcome to the Uphill Athlete Podcast. I’m your host today, Steve House, and I’m here with our dietitian, Alyssa Leib. Alyssa, thank you for joining us again, and today we want to talk about, I want to ask you what we look for when choosing a supplement. In a previous episode, we talked about smart supplementation. We talked about everything from vitamin and mineral supplements, all the way down to bicarbonate, and a few things in between. So, let’s say I want to supplement with protein or creatine, as you recommended, how do I, and I go into the store, and there’s all these, all these products, how do I know what to buy, what to use?

Alyssa: That’s the million-dollar question, Steve. We, I guess the first thing I will say for this is the unfortunate reality is if you want a legit supplement that, you know, has been tested and is safe, you are much more likely to find it online than you are in a store. That’s, that’s the unfortunate reality of the matter, for better or for worse. But, my, you know, my general approach to supplements is there are a few questions to be asking yourself, um, before you decide to take a supplement and as you choose one. And I’m happy to talk through all of these questions in more detail, but just as an overall overview, question number one, does the supplement do what it says it’s going to do? And the caveat or the sort of addendum to that is, is it something that I need a supplement to do, um, versus, you know, can I get that from somewhere else? Um, the second exactly like food or sleep I know that’s a really big one. I see is all these supplements that you know, the purported benefit is improve your energy levels, which is great. But the number of athletes i’ve talked to who are struggling to get six hours of sleep a night, who are turning to some of these supplements my question is well, can you prioritize sleep a little bit better?

No supplement is going to, you know, overcome that physiological need to just sleep. So, does the supplement do what it says it’s going to? And is that something that I actually need? Is the supplement safe? So, there are sort of two components to that that we can dive into. And then the final question, and I think this is a really important one that gets overlooked a lot of the time, but does it fit my budget? You know, the reality is a lot of supplements are very, very expensive, and ultimately I can’t make that decision for you, but, you know, for, some people, if you are not in a financial position to spend $200 a month on supplements, there’s probably another route you can take.

Steve: Okay, so I need to know if it’s going to do what it says it’s going to do. What would be an example of a supplement that we might want to take that is really difficult to shop for?

Alyssa: Yeah, I think collagen is a good example of this. And you know, this is especially one that I bring up because it is so common for people to hear, Oh, well, collagen is good for my joints. So I’m going to take it. The reality is, we don’t have that great of data pointing toward collagen being beneficial from a joint perspective. Collagen is pretty well researched and it’s pretty well established that it’s effective for things like skin, nails, hair, that sort of thing. But when it comes to actual joint health, the research is very mixed. So, you know, for every research study out there that says, “Hey, we gave all of these people collagen and, you know, we measured X, Y, Z measures of joint health afterwards, and there was a benefit of collagen supplementation.” Um, you will also find a study that says, “Hey, there was actually no association whatsoever.” So the research is very mixed. People on the internet love to cherry-pick studies and say, well, you should buy my collagen supplement because it’s backed by research here’s a study that shows that it helps. But if you actually look at the full body of literature, that’s not what the full picture shows. So, I think collagen is a really good example there of, well, it might help, but it also might not, it may not do what you think its going to do.

Steve: So, you’ve mentioned third-party testing of supplements. Why do we need that? Why is that important?

Alyssa: Yeah, so, the supplement industry, in the U. S. and, I believe Europe is very similar, is pretty much not regulated. It is truly the Wild West, which is really terrifying, because our pharmaceuticals, our medications are regulated really, you know, heavily by the FDA. Our food is regulated really heavily. But supplements fall into this weird gray area where there really is no oversight. There’s regulation around the types of claims that can be made, can be made about a supplement. So if you look on, you know, supplement labels, they’ll never say, “take this supplement because it will cure your diabetes.” That’s considered illegal, but they’re allowed to make claims like “this supplement is beneficial in reducing blood sugar,” which ultimately is something that is related to diabetes. But when it comes to what’s actually in the supplement, there’s very little regulation, which is concerning for a lot of reasons.

You know, kind of the best case outcome of this is you buy a bottle of creatine. It says it has creatine. And in reality, the whole thing is sawdust or the equivalent. So, you’ve been taking a supplement every single day. You’re not actually noticing the benefits of creatine because there’s no creatine in it. That’s kind of funny to think about, but then there’s sort of this other scarier end of the spectrum, which is you have this bottle, it says it has creatine, but in reality, it has banned substances. It has pharmaceutical drugs. It has steroids. It has heavy metals. That’s a really big one with a lot of supplements is, you know, high levels of lead and cadmium.

And there’s no regulation, so you don’t really have a way of knowing unless you are going to go into a chemistry lab and do all of this testing yourself and figure that out, which I’m not doing. You’re not doing. Nobody’s doing that. Um, so enter third-party testing. And essentially, what this is, is we have these third parties who do all of that testing for you. And essentially, they can go through and look at this bottle of creatine, and they can confirm, “Okay, the bottle says it has creatine in it. That’s all we found in it. It doesn’t have heavy metals. It doesn’t have steroids. It doesn’t have cocaine. It just has creatine.”

Steve: Yeah. Yeah.

Alyssa: It’s a, it’s a funny example, but I mean these are all things that have been found in unlimited supplements. It’s very scary

Steve: Wow. Wow. Okay. Well, you scared me into making sure that I have, uh, supplements with third-party certifications. That’s for sure. I knew about it from like competitive athletics, where people get drug tested. Um, you know, they obviously have to be very careful that they’re not getting something in a supplement that could trigger a drug test besides, you know, assuming then, you know, not taking any performance enhancing drugs, which I’m most aren’t. So, that made sense to me, but I had not heard or was not aware that this was such a big issue with kind of, you know, let’s say, toxic ingredients.

Alyssa: Yeah, it’s um, it is interesting and I think that like everything there are trade-offs and we all kind of have our own Level of risk that we are okay with. So, similar to doing anything in the mountains, you know, we have differing levels of risk willingness.

Steve: Mm hmm.

Alyssa: And I think there are ways, you know, does every single supplement you take have to be third-party tested? Not necessarily.

I will say that when I am sending supplement recommendations to my clients, I always find something that has been third-party tested. If it exists, there are some kind of like functional supplements where there’s only a couple of brands making them, and then it becomes this question of, okay, well, are the benefits worth it to outweigh potential risks of cross-contamination, that sort of thing.

But I, I do think that’s an important, uh, consideration too, Steve, is just the idea of if you are competing, if you are getting drug tested, wanting to make sure that you’re avoiding all of those things. So there are a couple of third-party testing agencies that do specifically test for WADA and USADA-banned substances so that they can make sure that it’s not included in there.

Steve: That’s great. So, what about supplements interacting with drugs that people might be taking for a pre-existing condition of some kind? I mean, a lot of the athletes that we work with are later in life, many of us are taking some kind of medication and so on. How do we understand if, as a consumer, how do we know? Is there a way to check inter interactions – there’s obviously ways to check drug interactions – but are there ways to check supplement/drug interactions?

Alyssa: Not in a good or easily accessible to the public way. Which is part of what makes the supplement world so scary, because there are so many supplements out there, they’re so unregulated, and it’s not super clear-cut what is going to interact with what. I’ll give an example of this, too, because it’s not just drug interactions that we’re looking at, but there could be a case where a supplement interacts with a type of food that you eat.

So it’s not always as clear-cut that way. But a really good example of this is St. John’s Wort. Um, so this is an herb, which I think a lot of people have a perspective that if it is natural, if it’s an herb, then it can’t hurt me. And that’s not always the case. So, St. John’s Wort is pretty well established has demonstrated benefits on mental health. So reducing depression, anxiety.

However, it can also react with a protein that we find in aged and fermented foods. So things like blue cheese, kimchi, tofu, like pretty common foods that people eat. And a potential outcome of this interaction is that it can cause high blood pressure that is so high it is life-threatening. So it’s pretty scary because I think a lot of people see that marketing for St. John’s wort, and they go, I have anxiety. It would be really great if I can take this natural thing to just lower my anxiety. And in some cases, maybe that is, you know, a preferred option to taking like an SSRI or some sort of pharmaceutical medication. But I think it is very important to just keep in mind that there are these interactions that maybe are not as obvious as we think.

So in the context of taking a medication, I always recommend just talk to your pharmacist. They are the experts in drug interactions, and so whether it’s food/drug or herb/drug or supplement/drug, they are going to know better than pretty much anybody else because that’s what they spend most of their training doing.

Steve: That’s a great tip. In the previous podcast, we talked about whey protein. And I know that this has been a product that has been found to have high rates of cross-contamination. Can you talk about that? How, how that affects us as consumers?

Alyssa: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I think partially I call out whey protein in, in this conversation just because it is probably the supplement that is most taken. And so it is something that can affect a lot of people. Uh, and studies have really shown they’ve gone in and basically taken a bunch of different whey protein supplements from different brands and done all of this testing and they found really high rates of lead and cadmium, you know, among others in these supplements.

And This is, this is an interesting, I guess, side note, because I know this is something that has come up, uh, in other things. You know, dark chocolate was under fire, maybe two years ago, for the same reason. Um, there was all this testing, finding that dark chocolate had these really high rates of lead and cadmium, um, and I will say from a personal experience, as somebody who is a connoisseur of dark chocolate, I actually went to the doctor and got my blood levels checked because I was a little bit concerned about it, and my levels were all completely normal. Which I share here just to raise the point that everybody metabolizes these things differently, and so it isn’t necessarily true that if you consume this lead-contaminated whey protein powder, you’re going to get lead poisoning and you’re going to have health effects from it. But, I do think that it’s important for us as consumers to be aware that that is important, that is something that happens – that is something to just be aware of, and so that you can be the one who makes that risk assessment and decides, okay, well, I prefer to continue to eat my dark chocolate. And so because of that, I’m going to choose a protein powder that does not have lead so that it balances out or whatever that looks like for you.

So that is really where, you know, choosing a supplement that has been third-party tested is so important because it does prevent you from being in that situation where you maybe are unknowingly consuming high levels of lead that may or may not have a negative health effect for you there.

Steve: Yeah, and so who are these third parties that you’d look for?

Alyssa: There are a lot of different companies out there that are doing this, and I admit that I am not as familiar with what’s going on in Europe as I am in the U. S., so I apologize to all of our European listeners. But the, the primary ones that I recommend for athletes are NSF and Informed Sport, and if you Google both of those, they both have databases online where you can search for products and see what is going to be certified.

So, for example, if I wanted a whey protein, I could go to the NSF website and find their database. It’s normally like the second or third result on a Google search, and just type whey protein. And then it will give you a list of every single whey protein powder that they have certified with their stamp of approval, which is really nice because it helps you narrow things down.

You know, another thing that I really like about the NSF and Informed Sport certifications, too, is supplement companies, for better or worse, kind of use this third-party testing as a marketing ploy. So, there are in in a positive way, I think Um, it just makes it a lot easier to find these products So, you can Google. You don’t even have to go to the database, but if you just Google whey protein powder NSF, normally, you know and always double check whatever link comes up, but often what will happen is you’ll get a bunch of results of websites that are saying, “Hey, here’s my protein powder. It’s NSF certified.” I know that’s something people are looking for. So it’s something that you can find in the search terms.

Steve: Yeah. Okay. So, one of the things that I wanted to ask you about protein is the difference between a protein isolate and a protein concentrate.

Alyssa: Yeah. So a protein isolate is basically a higher concentration of protein. Um, so, you know, when we think about how protein powders are manufactured, um, we’re really sort of taking different components out. So a whey protein starts as milk, and they remove it liquid, obviously, they remove the carbs, they remove the fat, they remove the casein, which is another, uh, of the main proteins that’s found in milk, and essentially what’s left is the whey, and there’s different processes for how they do this, but essentially an isolate, gives you the most pure form of protein. So, that whey protein is almost entirely, I want to say, like 98 percent protein, and then there’s maybe 2 percent of those other components of milk that are still in there, versus a protein concentrate is a lower percent, where they’ve just sort of taken fewer things out. So, that protein isolate is a little bit higher quality because you’re, you’re mostly just getting protein there, versus the concentrate is a little more similar to milk. Um, the isolate uh, another kind of benefit of it is if you are lactose intolerant, there’s very little lactose that ends up in that isolate versus concentrate. Um, and this is something like look at the back of the bag or the, you know, container of, of protein powder, and it’ll usually say under the ingredients, whey protein isolate or whey protein concentrate, so you can know what you’re getting there.

Steve: Okay. Good. And with creatine, are there different types of creatine to look for or to be aware of? Is there a particular gold standard among creatines?

Alyssa: Yeah, so there are a couple of different ones that you can find. The one that you want is creatine monohydrate, um, and, you know, when, when we talk about what form of different supplements we want, um, mostly what we’re looking at is, A, is it doing the job in your body that it’s supposed to do, but B, we’re also looking at how well does your body actually absorb and digest this thing.

So, when we talk about protein powder, whey protein is considered the gold standard just because our bodies absorb it so easily. Um, and so creatine is kind of a similar thing. We want creatine monohydrate, um, specifically.

Steve: Okay. And what about collagen, if someone is going to take that? Like, I need to grow out my hair a little bit, so maybe I’m going to start.

Alyssa: So, there are a couple of different types of collagen; the kind that you want for your hair may not be the kind that you want for your joints, which sort of adds to all of the confusion. Um, I’m actually not as familiar with the kind of specifics around for, for hair, specifically, but I guess when it comes to collagen, and I, I like that you ask this because I still get people who ask me and they say, I know collagen, you know, maybe doesn’t work, but I, you know, I’m really struggling with joint pain and I just want to make sure that I’m covering my bases. So if that is you, um, your number one priority before you take that collagen supplement is to make sure that you are eating adequate protein. If you are not eating enough protein overall, and you take that collagen supplement, basically your body is just breaking it down into amino acids, using those amino acids for whatever else it needs them for in the body, making hormones, repairing cells, those sorts of things. If you are eating enough protein, there’s more chance that that collagen is going to get remade into collagen in your body.

So, that’s number one. And then I always recommend take it with a source of vitamin C. So again, collagen is sort of made up of these amino acids, but we need vitamin C in order to actually construct it. So, take your collagen with a source of vitamin C and then take it either before or after a workout, um, just to really support your muscular recovery and your tendon and connective tissue recovery in that process. So, if you are going to take collagen, those are the things I recommend to maximize the likelihood that it’s going to actually do something.

Steve: Ok, good, good. So, is there anything with the timing on collagen?

Alyssa: Yeah, just before or after a workout. There doesn’t really seem to be a difference there, but the idea is that you’re kind of taking it around the same time that you’re using your muscles. And creatine, by the way, is sort of the same thing. You want to really take it, uh, and it doesn’t really matter if it’s before or after, but just around the time that your muscles are actually working and your body sort of in that, um, metabolic state where it’s really supporting muscle building, tendon recovery, that sort of thing.

Steve: Great. All right, everyone, well, you heard it here to be checking your supplements for NSF certifications, or what was the other one

Alyssa: Uh, Informed Sport.

Steve: Informed Sport. So let’s, let’s all be looking for those, those labels next time we’re shopping for our protein. So thank you very much, Alyssa. This has been super helpful and informative on how to choose a good supplement. So thank you.

Alyssa: Of course, happy to talk about it.

Steve: Thank you for listening to the Uphill Athlete podcast. I’ve been your host, Steve House. We’re not just one, but a community. Together, we’re Uphill Athlete.

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