ANOTHER great one from the desk of Dr. Aaron Levin, Health Consultant to HSP:
A couple of weeks ago on a ride, (after Richter’s fifth flat tire) TH asked if I would check out the potential effectiveness of First Endurance Multi V, a sports specific multivitamin. To be sure, they make some big, bold claims. First, they offer “superior antioxidant protection… to protect endurance athletes from the stresses and demands of everyday training and racing.” Sounds good. Even better, they say that multi-V contains a patented enzyme that breaks down carbohydrates and “increases time to exhaustion by 43%.” Sign me up. Of course a little review of the scientific literature is never amiss, and that is what I did.
I’m going to start out by saying that multi-vitamins are a good thing, I take one every day—sometimes in the shape of a dinosaur, sometimes Betty Rubble. I might even start taking First Endurance multi-V. Why take a multivitamin in the first place? Everyone needs vitamins. They are essential nutrients, and without them people can suffer a variety of diseases, like scurvy and rickets. But vitamins have benefits beyond preventing bizarre illnesses. Many vitamins, including beta carotene, vitamin C, vitamin E, and the minerals sulfur and selenium are “antioxidants.” Antioxidants protect the body from “free radicals” which are chemicals that have been linked to cancer, heart disease, and aging. More antioxidants, fewer free radicals, more better. Ideally, a healthy diet contains adequate vitamin supplies. Not everyone eats a healthy diet, however, and the demands of athletic training increase the requirements of these basic nutrients. So vitamin supplements should be a no-brainer.
Recent studies show, however, that vitamin supplementation doesn’t reduce cancer rates. An article in the January 2010 Journal of the National Cancer institute noted that people who eat foods rich in antioxidants—like fruits and vegetables—do have lower cancer rates. Boosting anti-oxidant levels with vitamin pills, however, did not help prevent cancer.
But who cares about cancer, you exclaim? I want to win a bike race! Antioxidants can probably help you out there. The Journal of Sports Medicine had an article last year from the University of Limerick in Ireland. The theory was that free radicals contribute to exercise induced muscle damage, and that pretreatment with the antioxidant vitamins C and E could protect against such damage. In fact, they did find that people taking daily doses of the vitamins maintained muscle power on the days after exercise to a greater degree than a placebo group.
So far so good. The multi-V pills should help in muscle recovery. How about “carbogen,” the patented First Endurance enzyme which delays exhaustion by 43%? Well, lets put it this way. It probably won’t hurt. Carbogen is supposed to help break down complex carbohydrates into glucose for immediate use during exercise. Carbogen is the enzyme that fungi use to digest carbohydrates. (Your body makes its own enzyme which does this, called amylase.) They cite a study, from 2002, in which trained cyclists who took carbozyme prior to a 60 minute ride at 80% VO2max outperformed those who did not have the superfungus extract. The kicker here is that prior to exercise the athletes fasted for 12 hours, and then had a “meal replacement bar” with unknown ingredients. If the bar was a mix of protein, fat, and complex carbohydrates, it stands to reason that the carbozyme would help endurance in that scenario. None of those ingredients is an immediate source of energy, and unless you had the carbozyme to digest the complex carbs more quickly, you’d run out of gas.
In reality, most of us don’t lack for sources of simple sugars during exercise. Gels, gu, and my new favorite, EFS from 1st endurance, all provide readily available carbohydrate for use during a ride. And keeping your sugar level up during exercise will delay time to exhaustion. So if you like to have uncooked whole wheat pasta and sausage for breakfast before a race, and plan on drinking water all day, by all means, load up on the Multi- V with carbozyme, you’re going to need it. But even if you start with a latte and a scone, the Multi-V has lots of good things going for it. It may not prevent cancer. It may not enable you to play the piano with your toes, like Vitamin Wonka can. But it might help you recover, and maybe even keep you going, and going, and going…
