Both highly trained athletes and recreational or “weekend warrior” athletes frequently turn to athletic performance enhancing substances.<\/p>\n

The use of enhancing substances can be as simple as drinking a highly caffeinated energy drink to getting injections of prescription hormones.<\/p>\n

Only a handful of these substances have actually been shown to improve measures of athletic performance…caffeine, anabolic steroids, erythropoietin, sodium bicarbonate.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many of the enhancers are unsafe<\/strong>…stimulants such as bitter orange and ephedra, steroids and precursors, erythropoietin.<\/p>\n

Most research on “natural” performance enhancers has produced conflicting or negative findings, with only a couple exceptions.<\/p>\n

Some evidence supports the use of creatine for improving muscular power during repeated, short, maximal energy bursts<\/strong>.\u00a0Beta-alanine<\/strong> might also help reduce muscle fatigue and increase time to exhaustion.<\/p>\n

Whey protein<\/strong> seems to increase lean body mass, strength, and muscle hypertrophy.<\/p>\n

Some research suggests that pycnogenol<\/strong> might improve treadmill performance, but this is still preliminary.<\/p>\n

Most drugs and many natural medicines used to enhance athletic performance are not permitted in organized sports.<\/p>\n

Here is a wonderful\u00a0chart<\/a>. Use it to supplement your 4-Hour Body!<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Provided by
\n4hourlife.com
\nBased on
\nNatural Medicines Comprehensive Database<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

You can sign up to receive updates via\u00a0RSS<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0email<\/a>\u00a0or join us on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>. \u00a0Don’t forget to sign up for the upcoming\u00a0\u00a04 Hour\u00a0University<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Both highly trained athletes and recreational or “weekend warrior” athletes frequently turn to athletic performance enhancing substances. The use of enhancing substances can be as simple as drinking a highly caffeinated energy drink to getting injections of prescription hormones. Only a handful of these substances have actually been shown to improve measures of athletic performance…caffeine, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[32,3,211],"tags":[258,212,46,14,1128],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tiSR-CK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.4hourlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.4hourlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.4hourlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.4hourlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.4hourlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.4hourlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.4hourlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.4hourlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.4hourlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}