Neuvation Cycling Blog

Supplements have been around for a long time.  Witch doctors, medicine men, and snake oil salesmen have been selling them for thousands of years. Back in the old days when they were laced with legal cocaine I am sure there was little question at least about how they made you feel.  Now it’s a little more subtle.

I must admit that I am somewhat of a sucker.  I bit on coral calcium.  I even was somewhat convinced that it made a big difference.  It’s caused the placebo affect.

No matter what you put into your body, it’s pretty much the body that makes the real change. Sure the chemicals help it along but the body has most of the job of healing itself.  The number is actually quite high.  I believe somewhere about 10-15% of the time the body will actually have a very positive benefit from a placebo (sugar pill).  I am sure that if you got only that amount to get very positive results you could use their testimonials to promote whatever snake oil supplement you wanted.  I am sure that’s the way most of them work.

Never the less, I was looking for something that would give me more energy.  I saw all of the Lance commercials on Velonews.com and CNN.com saying it gave him more energy so why not?  For some reason, I didn’t want to try what he was selling so I went off in a search of my own.

My problem was that I am not getting any younger (about 60) and have been doing more and more activity.  When I pushed myself at all I would be tired for most of the day.  When I upped my activity too much I would break down.

I’ve been on this new snake oil for about 6 weeks and it seems to have really made a difference.

Training:  For a change, I have been doing three different sports.  Hiking (1-1/2 hours climbing a 1500 foot peak). Kayaking (1-2 hours of solid paddling), weights (one hour sessions).

Before supplements I could do 6 hikes and two weight sessions but was at my limit.  I have, over the last 6 weeks added 3-4 kayaking sessions, and an extra weight session (with about a 10% increase in weights) and feel great.  The very selfish goal is 6 hikes, 3 bike rides, 3 kayak, and 3 weight sessions a week.  That’s about 20-25 hours.  I think I can easily do it by spring.

The magic supplement is Stemulite.  Google it.  It’s not cheap but for the results I am getting it’s a bargain.  It may not work for you.  I am of the firm belief that all of these either happened to fix what’s wrong with you or they don’t.  You probably don’t have the same issues I have.

One other quick tip I got from Scott Adams (Dilbert blog) was to use Magnesium supplements.  It did two things for me.  Less knee pain and also cleared up a very small allergy I had for the last two years

This entry was posted on Monday, September 22nd, 2008 at 4:45 pm and is filed under Nothing In Particular. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.