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Magic pills

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My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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New Jockology out today: it’s the first of a two-part series on popular supplements thought to be ergogenic (performance enhancing). Actually, it could have been a 27-part series — there’s a ton of pills and powders out there that people believe in — but I tried to focus on substances with some legitimate research behind them. This week: antioxidants, omega-3 fatty acids, and creatine (read the column here).

Last summer, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California made a splash by announcing an exercise pill that allowed mice to gain the benefits of vigorous exercise – all without setting a paw on their exercise wheels. That era hasn’t yet arrived for humans, but strolling down the aisle of any drugstore makes it clear that we’re very interested in pills whose claims include faster, higher and stronger.

So, which key ones did I miss? Which ones should I cover in part 2?

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The new, new miracle berry

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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At spring training last year, Jeff Blair blogged about Blue Jays first-baseman Lyle Overbay peddling a supplement called MonaVie to his teammates — apparently with great success.

“Had a glass this morning and felt like running to the ballpark,” John McDonald said, winking.

MonaVie relies on the purported antioxidant powers of the açaí berry (that’s acai with assorted diacritical marks, in case it doesn’t display in your browser), joining a long list of antioxidants from obscure plants grown in the farthest corners of the globe. No one doubts that they have antioxidants in them — much like, say, apples. But the other miraculous claims — removing wrinkles, extending life, making shortstops run to work — don’t necessarily follow. Abby Ellin of the New York Times does a nice job checking out the (lack of) research behind the latest supplement craze in today’s paper.

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The luxury of walking with poles

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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I love the conclusion, in slightly stilted English, of this paper on Nordic walking (a.k.a. walking with poles):

“The work of the upper extremities seems to be a luxury effort for Nordic walkers with a proper technique.”

The study is actually fairly subtle, tracking the pole force and oxygen consumption of walkers on grass, concrete, and rubberized track. Since the walkers had to work much harder on grass even though the pole forces stay the same, the researchers conclude that it’s the legs doing all the work — the arms are just “luxury!”

This is actually something I’ve been wondering about ever since I started seeing hikers zooming up and down mountains using those ski pole thingies. I’ve even been a convert, using them for a 12-day trek in the Rockies. Now they’re ubiquitous, and — German study notwithstanding — I’m curious about their benefits. Perhaps something to look into…

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Bone density, this time for cyclists

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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Another new study on bone density, in this month’s Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. Since cycling isn’t weight bearing (except when you stand up out of the saddle), it’s often thought to be worse for building bone strength than alternatives like walking. And sure enough, the study I wrote about here found that competitive cyclists had lower spine bone mineral density than controls.

But the new study, from researchers at Manchester Metropolical University in the U.K., concludes that “sprint cyclists and to a lesser extent distance cyclists had greater tibia and radius bone strength surrogates than the controls.”

So, completely contradictory results from two studies measuring slightly different aspects of the same thing. Sounds like we don’t really know what’s going on yet (and don’t even know exactly which questions to ask).

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Eating after exercise, and elite-only hydration

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

***

Check out this study on exercise and weight loss that appeared last month in the journal PLoS One. Sedentary, post-menopausal women exercised for either 72, 136 or 194 minutes per week. All groups lost weight, but the 194-minute group lost significantly less than expected — less than the 136-minute group, in fact. The researchers attribute this to “compensating” factors: in other words, the subjects ate more than their exercise merited.

I wrote about this problem, and some of research addressing it, in this Jockology column. It brings to mind an interesting conversation I had last summer with Lawrence Spriet, a top researcher at the University of Guelph, about the difficulties of providing advice that’s applicable both to hardcore athletes and to the general population. In that case, we were talking about companies like Gatorade, who have to formulate their products to meet the hydration needs of elite athletes working at unbelievable intensities for several hours a day — but who also know that overweight preteens are going to be chugging bottles after going for a brisk walk.

One way Gatorade addresses this is by marketing different levels of product for different needs — they have G2 with fewer calories for less rigorous exercise, for instance. But what I didn’t realize is that the real strong stuff isn’t even available to the public. For college and professional teams, they offer GatorLytes, which are sachets of electrolyte mix that look like the salt or sugar packs you get at a diner, specially formulated so that you can add them to regular Gatorade without messing up the flavour. Unfortunately, you can’t really take that approach with most exercise and nutrition advice: “What, you’re not a professional athlete? In that case, we can’t tell you about this fantastic new exercise.” So we have to be as careful as possible to ensure that the studies we read are really applicable to us, and not just to a tiny subset of the population.