Dear colleagues: Dr. Debra Reid and Maj Darrell Menard recently had the opportunity to attend a conference entitled "Hot Topic in Sports Nutrition." The event was sponsored by the Gatorade Sports Science Institute and was highly informative. The topics discussed have wide application for soldiers who are trying to stay fit, preparing to deploy or training for an athletic competition.
The sale of nutritional supplements is now a $17-billion/year industry in the US that is largely unregulated. Many of the companies marketing these products employ psuedo-science to make unsubstantiated claims for their products and millions of people buy them thinking these magic potions will answer all their needs. The truth is that very few of these products actually work and some of them are potentially dangerous. With this in mind, we thought it would be helpful to prepare a summary of the conference and send it to a wide audience of fitness, sports and health care professionals.
We hope that you find this information useful and encourage you to share it with others.
Debra and Darrell
Symbiotropin
Dietary supplement companies have begun marketing symbiotropin as a version of human growth hormone. They claim that this product offers all the benefits of human growth hormone with none of its side effects. These benefits include increased muscle strength, fat loss, healthier skin, hair and nails, improved sexual satisfaction and optimal body composition. There is no published research to support these claims. The side effects of symbiotropin use include elevated blood pressure, increased fasting blood sugar and increased rate of cancer growth. To date, studies using actual human growth hormone have shown it can alter body composition but it does not promote performance gains in athletes who are doing either aerobic or resistance training.
The bottom line is that while actual human growth hormone can change composition it does not improve physiologic function and there is no scientific evidence that symbiotropin works at all. |