Transcription
You're actually paying extra for a less effective product, and at best, a similarly effective product. But you're paying more money, and supplement companies love it. No offense to supplement companies; they're doing a great job in most cases. If you talk to the CEOs, they're like, "Look, people buy them." You know, and they're not bad. It's tough for supplement companies to stop selling you BS if you just keep demanding and buying BS.
Hey folks, Dr. Mike here for the RP Strength YouTube channel. Welcome! Hello, how are you? Good, Dr. Mike! We're doing great. Oh, okay, sweet.
Good news, bad news: many of the supplements that you are currently using—and yes, this was a Jedi mind trick—might be worthless. What? But they cost money, and I expect them to work. Let's dig in and make sure we're using the right stuff and not the wrong stuff.
So it turns out that most supplements, when you walk into a normal health food store—you know, like where the lady that sells them is very sweet but clearly peaked in the '70s as far as her intellectual understanding of the world—she has, you know, all her astrological signs on display, that sort of thing. Most of those supplements in that store, most 90-some percent, do nothing measurable in the human body whatsoever. I know it sucks, but she's a sweet lady.
A lot of people in the fitness industry, especially in the evidence-based sphere, kind of know that part already. Like, okay, find all these grasses or whatever, these African roots and flowers—don't do shit. Fine, we knew that. But fitness folks still use some supplements and still discuss some supplements en masse that do hardly anything at all or possibly nothing.
And this isn't just me on swag points; this is measured scientific studies that say this doesn't do anything. Many of them, almost all of them. So I'm going to give you four supplements today, and we're going to chat about each one of these four supplements that maybe you could stop taking or consider stopping taking so you can stop wasting your money.
Because above all else, even though I'm an exercise science professional, I'm also genetically Jewish, which means if you're wasting money, it hurts me personally on a deep level. Maybe it'll be even difficult for you to comprehend.
So let's go through this list. First on our list—and sorry if I hit up your favorites—might be, you know, you can't all be a superstar.
Hey, Scott's video guy, remember that show was called "Cat's Eye," where there was a lot of teenage girls competing to be in a girl band? Oh yeah, yeah! And they were also nice, but not everyone can kind of make the cut into the band of five at the end.
Yeah, would they start like 36 or something? They started with a lot of people, and there were a lot of tears, bro. There were—they were very emotional.
Yeah, so if this girls' group was replaced with supplements, there'd be a lot of amino acid powder tears. My favorite was the old Korean man who was mean to them and told them they were bad.
You're going to be that guy? Ruthless!
And can I just say it in Russian and get the translation? So it's not only insulting, but it's also grotesquely impersonal. Like, oh, what the Mr. Korean man said was that you're just not pretty enough, straight up. Sorry, your voice also sucks. I love that guy.
What is the other quality? Dancing?
Yeah, yeah, yeah! Scott, how do we think I do in a women's 18 to 22-year-old? You know, I can sing, dance—why not?
And I'm done!
All right, rank one—and this is not a ranking you want to make—amino acid powders. These are powders, sometimes drinks, usually made from a protein source like whey protein, but broken down into individual amino acids for you.
Because whey protein is a bunch of amino acids in a string, really, in kind of a curled-up string. But the string uncurls in your stomach, gets chopped up, so on and so forth.
So the individual amino acids that make up a protein—it sounds dope because they broke up the amino acids for you, and it's like they did you a real solid. You don't have to break them down yourself.
But it turns out that your body actually has receptors in your intestinal lining for multiple amino acids and groups of amino acids to translocate at the same time.
Which means that in reality, you can absorb actual undigested whey protein that you eat and digest yourself better and more completely and faster than you can absorb individual predigested amino acids.
This is something we've known for a really long time, by the way, which is curious because people still sell individual amino acids because people still buy them.
So if you take an individual amino acid shake, like, you know, aminos or whatever, versus just whey protein, then you're actually paying extra for a less effective product.
And at best, a similarly effective product, but you're paying more money. Amino products are nearly categorically more expensive than whey because if you think about it, just packaging whey and sending it off is dope.
But if they have to break the whey down into the aminos, they're going to be charging you for that stuff because it costs them money to do it at the factory, and it gets to be labeled as more exotic, etc., more "high quality."
So you get charged more money—not ideal.
The best thing to do in this case, folks—and this is kind of one of these things that's like, really? But it's kind of cool in the end—my recommendation is to stick with whey proteins if you're going to be having those and forget the individual amino acid stuff.
Whey concentrate is totally cool, isolate's totally cool, hydrolysate's totally cool, BCAAs are totally cool, and all of those are totally fine. Just pick one that you like the taste of, you like the price, and it sits well with you digestively.
If that's the deal, you just don't need individual amino acids broken down for you. So you can skip the aminos, save your money, and potentially not spend your money on this next thing, which is our number two overrated supplement.
And this might hurt some feelings. [Laughter] Here, beta-alanine. I know, I know, stay calm. I can explain.
Beta-alanine is an awesome supplement for middle-distance performance athletes, like 400 to 1600-meter runners, because it helps a little bit with locally buffering the acids that sum up when you're trying really, really hard.
It can thus improve your anaerobic endurance. To put this in layman's terms, if you run as fast as you can for 400 to 600 meters with no pacing whatsoever, at some point, you're going to cramp unbelievably hard because the acid concentration in your muscles rises so high that it just leaves your muscles to cramp up and just do nothing else.
That cramping is preceded by an insane burning sensation, which all of us have known from high-rep lifting. And if you've ever done middle-distance running or longer sprints, you know how that feels.
What beta-alanine does is, if you take it for a long while—and I mean weeks and months in a row—because it slowly adds up on your cells, it's not something you get an effect of right then and there.
What you can do is push back when that burn hits and push back when you cramp and fall over by several seconds.
Now, several seconds—I don't know how that matters at all in lifting; probably doesn't, which is probably why I'm saying you don't have to use it in lifting.
But in competitive middle-distance running, several seconds of being able to push the pace before having to be like, "Oh crap, this isn't sustainable," means you can literally cut several seconds off of your best times.
Which, if you're a highly competitive athlete, man, that makes a ton of sense. If you're a soccer player at a decently high level, being on beta-alanine for the season means that you have just a bit more juice at the end of all of your long sprints.
You're not quite as tired towards the end of the game. That's a big deal for performance athletes, so that's awesome.
But remember, those are longer-term cumulative effects that only result after weeks and weeks of taking the supplements. There are studies that show elevation of levels 12 weeks and longer of taking the supplement.
So it's not something that you're going to take and then immediately get the results of. Matter of fact, you take it, you immediately get almost nothing, except you get that skin-tingling sensation, which people like in their pre-workouts.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news; that skin-tingling doesn't really mean anything. It means your skin is tingling, and you can feel like your pre-workout's working.
But by working, we mean just tingling your skin and doing nothing else unless you take it for weeks and weeks and weeks, and the levels add up.
So from the direct research literature—and they've done plenty of studies in this—it's just not clear if beta-alanine helps you gain muscle. Some of the studies say it might help you gain a little; a lot of the studies say it doesn't do really anything.
If I had to give you a real good case for using your money, it would not be beta-alanine.
Right? Imagine if someone—you go to a car dealership, and you're like, "Hey, like, is that car dependably safe? Like, has it been tested?" And the guy goes, "It could be safe, but we're not sure."
What the hell would you buy that thing for? Same with beta-alanine. It's totally safe, but it could help you with muscle gain, but the literature is just insanely unconvincing.
So the direct data leaves a lot to be desired. And logically, you know, we have some reason to believe through animal models, through some human situations—not a ton of data, but some decent hypothetical kind of logic there—to believe that the summation of metabolites, the burn itself, might grow a little bit of muscle for you, might stimulate some muscle growth.
So beta-alanine actually, like, reduces that. And so there's kind of a little bit of counter-logic there. Like, why would you take something that buffers out your metabolites if the metabolites are the things you want to grow anyway?
Not a really solid reason to dunk metabolites—or sorry, to not do beta-alanine by itself. But if the reasoning for doing beta-alanine was really strong and the data just wasn't that great, you could be like, "Well, okay, I'm comfortable with reasoning itself. I'll take a risk or I'll take a chance."
But if even the reasoning doesn't make sense and maybe slightly backwards, if you think about it, there's other ways to think about it that rationalize it, but it's just not a good start.
So what I would say is this: just buy creatine instead. Because while beta-alanine might have some upsides, the upsides for getting you jacked—which is more muscular and leaner, etc.—just might not exist.
And things cost money, so I would say this is not a supplement you want to go to all the time, and a lot of people buy it and probably shouldn't be.
All right, number three: branched-chain amino acids, aka BCAAs—valine, leucine, and isoleucine. There are three of them. They have been studied into the ground extensively—dozens and dozens and dozens of research studies on these, which is cool.
So we know a lot about them, and they are very anti-catabolic. They profoundly reduce the experienced muscle loss you have in the several hours after you drink them, which is really awesome, right?
Well, there are two problems with this. One is that they are very anti-catabolic; they prevent muscle loss, but they are not remotely pro-anabolic. They don't actually supply the amino acids you need to grow muscle, and so they don't really help you gain muscle.
They can help you reduce muscle loss, and you're saying, "Wait a minute, that's one of your two detraction points. How's that a detraction?" They still help you prevent muscle loss. Isn't that good?
It is, but check this out: if you consume whey, egg, casein, and many other complete proteins, which are composed of BCAAs and all of the other amino acids, these protein sources not only reduce muscle loss just as well as only BCAAs taken by themselves, but they also help grow muscle in addition to that.
In a sense, buying BCAAs is like buying a car without a roof or a trunk. Yeah, it does some car stuff; you can go places with it. It has an indicator light, it has an engine, it has wheels, it has a steering wheel.
But everything that car does, it does at least as well as or worse than a normal car, and nothing better. So if you are to get in whey protein, that is, you already have a normal car. You already get enough BCAAs and better effects still.
So if you're consuming whey protein and many other complete protein sources, you're already checking the box of BCAAs and all the boxes of the other amino acids that help you grow muscle and do all the other wonderful things proteins do.
So it's like if you already have a car at home that has a trunk and has a roof over it, and someone's like, "Hey, I want to sell you a car that has not two of these things but everything else," you're like, "Why the hell would I do that?"
Which is exactly why BCAAs don't make a ton of sense to buy.
Right? Now, some people say, "Good news, BCAAs are pretty cheap." But the reality is that a lot of BCAA products kind of cost a lot of money.
And any money spent on BCAAs, where you could have just stuck to your whey protein supplement that you take anyway, is just kind of money burned out to the wind.
Now, I know some people get cheap BCAAs. Your boy, when I used to take BCAAs, I never do the cheap thing.
Let me tell you my formula for how I get in my BCAAs. First of all, only goat's milk. Everyone knows that goat's milk's better than cow's milk. And by knows, I mean feels. And by feels, I mean has consumed way too much naturalistic BS.
But goats weigh only, and for my personal goats only. I don't trust anyone else except for me and my goats. And these are genetically modified goats that have a fur that's made entirely of platinum strands.
Because your boy doesn't f*** with that gold or diamond bullshit; that's for poor people to deal with. And these goats of mine, which I know personally by name, are open pasture-farmed sustainably inside of one of my oil-powered Zeppelins at 30,000 feet in the air at all times.
You probably can't afford that sort of thing, darling, so you're stuck there consuming cheap BCAAs. And even if they're cheap, zero money spent is better because whey already has them in the mix.
Folks, don't fall for the hype. BCAAs have been overhyped for literally 20 years now, and supplement companies love it. No offense to supplement companies; they're doing a great job in most cases.
But a lot of people that sell BCAA supplements, if you talk to the CEOs, they're like, "Look, people buy them." You know, and they're not bad; they do have anti-catabolic properties.
And you talk to them more, and you're like, "Do you know whey does all the same stuff?" They're like, "Yeah, we also sell a whey product."
It's tough for supplement companies to stop selling you BS if you just keep demanding and buying BS. So stop buying BCAAs; supplement companies will stop selling them.
You'll just buy whey protein from them. You can afford awesome, high-quality whey. It's going to be better for everyone.
Don't follow trends that have already been debunked 20 years ago. Don't become a statistic. Like, "Oh, where's Frank?" "Oh, you didn't hear? BCAAs got him. He's not with us anymore."
Oh Jesus, not Frank! Who's next? Frank's mom is crying and shit, you know? It's a funeral; it's raining.
Scott, you know that graveyard in Queens that overlooks Manhattan? Like John Wick shit, except it's Frank in the casket and a giant Catholic funeral.
You know people come to your funeral that you didn't know when you were alive type of shit, but they're all wearing like really slick, super high-end fashion black everything.
And like, you don't want people to see you cry, but it's a good excuse for you to put on your super expensive sunglasses. Funeral chic is a thing, isn't it?
It really is! Like, you see Zoolander? Also, funeral chic—I mean, that's a lifestyle.
In any case, BCAAs—they ain't it.
The RP Hypertrophy app has dozens of pre-made workout templates to help you build a plan faster than any other training software allows, which you can customize each plan exactly to your needs by prioritizing and deprioritizing any muscles you like to train, choosing the exact exercises you'd like to use, and customizing the volumes you employ at every single step of the process.
If you're looking to bring up lagging muscle groups, look no further than the RP Hypertrophy app. Click on the link in the description of this video to get started.
Last one, number four, is glutamine. Glutamine was taken by bodybuilders for like 30 years, and then in the 1990s, exercise scientists started really intently researching its effects to try to find out, like, "Well, hold on, does it do stuff?"
See, everybody swore by glutamine for generations. We found convincingly that individuals with certain types of pretty extreme bowel disease, intestinal disease, glutamine can help in at least four ways.
First, it fuels your intestinal cells. It's a primary fuel source for cells called enterocytes, which are the cell linings of the intestinal walls. It helps maintain the integrity of the intestinal barrier. That does awesome, really, really good stuff for you if you have intense intestinal disease.
Number two is they have anti-inflammatory effects to the gut itself, to the intestinal wall, which is really awesome. If you have conditions like Crohn's disease, you can benefit greatly in many cases from glutamine supplementation.
If you do not have Crohn's disease, glutamine does nothing at all because you get tons of glutamine from almost every other food that you eat, and it is not a limiting factor.
If you have not diagnosed intestinal lining disease, glutamine also helps support the mucosal barrier, which does all kinds of really good stuff, helps protect the intestines.
And glutamine even helps maintain the tight junctions between your intestinal cells. So if you have leaky gut, glutamine can actually reduce that impact of that disease.
If you do not have leaky gut, glutamine again does functionally nothing whatsoever. In study after study, we have found, as a scientific community, that if you don't have digestive problems, glutamine doesn't help you with your gut.
And on top of the gut stuff, which is all good and well if you have those problems, glutamine does not grow muscle. Glutamine is just one amino acid and is usually—usually, I said that; I'll say it even stronger—it is almost never the limiting factor amino acid in protein construction for your body.
It's kind of like you have, uh, you're building a house, and you have piles of metal, piles of electrical wire, piles of bricks, little sheets of glass, and little window frames, and then a giant pile of sand.
Once you put the sand in the bottom for the foundation or whatever, you still have a huge pile left, and someone's like, "How's the house construction going?" "Good, I've got everything I need."
They're like, "Do you want a lot more sand?" You look at this giant sand pile, and you're like, "I actually think we don't even need that."
They're like, "I'll get—let me get you a couple truckloads of more sand." "I don't want no, no, no, no more sand."
But you could put sand in all kinds of stuff. Like, we could have a sand pile in the kitchen. You're like, "You're out of your mind."
That's what glutamine is to the human body in almost all cases. If you don't have some kind of diagnosed intestinal condition, you just don't need any more glutamine.
Good God, glutamine—you could use more gluten, though, because it's delicious.
Scott, I was with some folks having dinner, and one of them had celiac. And we had like a cake dessert that they brought us out, and a couple of us tried it, and she couldn't have it because she had celiac.
And she was like, "How was it?" And I was, you know me, man, I was going to lie and be like, "It's not that good." But one of the guys was like, "It's unbelievable! Don't tell her that!"
Yeah, gluten is dope, though. The level of puffiness that gluten can make is just gluten-free—it just doesn't add up.
So glutamine doesn't grow muscle, and if you don't have digestive problems, it doesn't help you with those either.
Now, there are no doubt nicer ways to put what I'm going to say, but glutamine for lifters is like damn near just burning your money.
At least physically burning literal cash in public. Like a rich guy flexing—that might keep you laughing on the other end.
Buying glutamine and eating it is not a flex; it's just kind of dumb. You do get a membership into a club if you consume glutamine regularly and pay your money for it.
It's the Mark Ass Bitch Club. Trust me, the benefits are not great.
You might have a problem with this whole list at this point. You could say something like, "But Mike!" And I'm like, "It's Dr. Mike, okay? I didn't go to PhD school for nothing."
By the way, I'm not one of those people. If you ever see me in the street, you can call me Mike.
F***ing God, you can call me whatever you want. If I turn around, I'm yours.
But Mike, I have more money now because I'm not spending it on BS supplements anymore. Where can I spend my money instead?
I have a few helpful suggestions. First, you can send it to my cash app as a donation. I'll even send you a nude pic back. How about that?
The address is Mike's cash app desperation. Uh, Mike's cash app desperation—hit me up; your boy needs money.
Scott, wouldn't it be funny if people actually sent money and requested nude pics, and someone actually had that account or started it because of this video?
Listen, start the account; you could be into some cash as long as you send nude pictures back.
Yeah, AI can draw those for you now. Remember, my genitals are preposterously large and always erect, so draw me accurately.
Number two, you can buy a cat. It won't love you like a dog will; it doesn't really know you're human, it doesn't care about you, and it'll probably eat your body if you die.
But at least you can pretend to have another living thing finally caring for you for once. Me personally, I have nothing and no one, so I would like a cat. If you could send me a cat to my cash app, I would be greatly appreciative.
Another thing you can do with your money that's fun is get a Super Soaker squirt gun and put water and permanent red dye—the kind of stuff that sticks to people's clothes a ton—into it and go into the subway and shoot people that are G on their way to work.
It's fun! Fun during the workday; they'll get it—it's a funny joke.
And the last thing is invest it! For the love of Jewish wisdom, my God, how is this even a question? Low-risk ETFs—start putting your money in there now.
Nobody playing! That's all I got, folks. That's about it.
If you'd like to actually spend your money on more fitness stuff, we have the RP Diet Coach app, we have the RP Hypertrophy app. They can help you with all of your stuff; the links are right in the description.
Um, they'll actually get you results for your money instead of these BS supplements we just talked about.
And remember, this is super weird to say because my marketing people will kill me for this, but please only get the app if you're really ready to work and you really want to succeed with them.
We don't need any more app subscriptions; we have plenty of money. We need people to get awesome results and feel like they didn't get ripped off.
So don't just buy the app and leave it cold; buy it if you're going to use it. We'd love to have you; it's going to help you a ton.
And if you don't have a ton of money sitting around, you're like almost everyone else except for me and my butlers, which literally are right now.
Scott, you smell that? They're burning money again, right on time! I told them to burn money today, and they never do.
Miss, you can accomplish a ton of stuff just with the free info that we give out on this channel and a ton of other great evidence-based YouTube channels.
And we'll be back with more free content tomorrow and the day after and so on.
Unless supplement companies hire cyberpunk assassins to get me, and then it's been real, and I've loved every single one of you like a hardworking father of 15 back in the 1920s loved his children, barely recognizing them by name.
But he shows up, doesn't he? See you next time! [Music]