These are the top muscle growth supplements [46 studies reviewed]

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

00:19 Tier 3

05:52 Tier 2

07:59 My Online PT Course

08:22 Tier 1

09:33 Conclusion

Transcript:

What are the best bodybuilding supplements? The absolute cream of the crop when it comes to muscle hypertrophy? A new scientific review has looked at 46 studies that actually assessed long term muscle hypertrophy and concluded which are the best supplements for muscle growth.

Tier 3, which the researchers called conditional agents and adjuncts, had multiple supplements in it. The first was a combination of 10 to 15g per day of collagen combined with vitamin C. This is unlikely to directly improve muscle growth, but it might indirectly help you by improving injury resistance because it’s supposed to be good for your connective tissues. However, collagen supplementation is just a form of protein supplementation, and collagen is actually a very low quality protein supplement. Now, it has certain amino acids that are also found in large extents in your connective tissues, your tendons, your cartilage, your joints. But if your protein intake is already sufficient and your vitamin C intake is already sufficient, then you likely won’t see much benefit from supplementing collagen on top of that. There really isn’t any plausible mechanistic pathway by which this would be the case. I’ve recently reviewed collagen supplementation in detail in this video, so check that out if you’re interested in more details why I’m personally not very optimistic about collagen.

I was also surprised to see HMB make it to the list of tier 3 supplements. The researchers concluded that HMB is very promising in conditions of high energy deficits and high training volumes. So when the body’s under more stress, the idea is that HMB is likely to be somewhat beneficial. However, two meta analysis concluded that HMB supplementation is basically useless for muscle growth if your protein intake is already optimized. And the research that prompted most of the popularity of HMB supplementation has officially been questioned by a letter to the editors, including yours truly, for being highly suspect, to say the least. Again, HMB is a leucine metabolite, so, while theoretically it could be the case that very high intakes of this could improve muscle growth, there really isn’t any good research to suspect that, and in healthy individuals already consuming enough protein HMB is unlikely to do much for you.

The third supplement in tier 3 was Omega 3 fatty acids. DHA and EPA from fish oil primarily are beneficial for a lot of things, including muscle growth. However, the effect sizes in research are very small. So we see that it can result in a little bit of fat loss, a little bit of muscle growth, a little bit of extra strength development. But the effect sizes are small to trivial in most meta analysis.

Now, the nice thing about omega 3 fatty acid supplementation is that it has a host of benefits for other things as well, and it could indirectly improve your gains by increasing work capacity or injury resistance because they are very good at lowering inflammation levels. They might have benefits for joint health and recovery, and therefore there are a host of other reasons to also consider omega 3 fatty acid supplementation if you’re not getting enough from your diet. Because if you regularly eat fish, then you likely don’t need to supplement it.

The researchers recommend that intakes of 1 to 2g per day. That’s 1 to 2g per day of actual omega 3. So EPA plus DHE. Not total fish oil. That means for most people, you’re looking at supplementing something like 5 to 10 pills of fish oil, which is very expensive. So for most people, the consideration is for the host of small benefits of omega 3 supplementation worth the cost? And the answer to that is – it really depends on your budget. If you have the money to spare and you don’t like eating fish, I would definitely recommend that you supplement omega 3 fatty acids because they benefit not just your body composition, but also your health and injury resistance in all likelihood. Even though again, the benefits are modest.

If you decide to supplement fish oil you should know that multiple studies have found that the vast majority of fish oil supplements are not what they claim to be on the label. Most of them do not have as much omega three actually in there as the label claims. Many of them are oxidized, which means they are actually inflammatory and basically toxic instead of anti-inflammatory and good for your health. And many of them are also adulterated with other toxic compounds like heavy metals. On the screen here you’ll see a list of supplements that have been validated by independent laboratories to contain what’s on the label and only what’s on the label. Note that I’m not affiliated with any of these brands.

The final tier 3 muscle building supplement was Citrulline. Citrulline is the best in class of the nitric oxide boosters. Basically, it improves blood flow. If you supplement 6 to 8g about an hour before a workout, it improves blood flow and it’s going to help you perform a few more repetitions in the gym, at least when it comes to a shorter rest interval, high repetition work. The idea is that this can, in the long run, improve your gains.

However, every study so far it has looked as a nitric oxide boosters has failed to find significant increases in muscle hypertrophy actually resulting from taking them. It’s possible that the increases in work capacity are simply too small to meaningfully improve your gains, and it’s also possible that improving your repetitions by delaying fatigue, which is essentially what these supplements do, you’re sort of implementing reverse blood flow restriction training, which means that you simply have to produce more work to get equivalent gains. Peripheral neuromuscular fatigue lowers the recruitment threshold of higher threshold motor units. So if you supplement something that delays fatigue, it can be the case that you have to produce more work to get equivalent levels of motor unit recruitment. Either way, citrulline might slightly improve your gains mechanistically at least. So for me, Citrulline falls in that maybe promising category.

Many people might be surprised that caffeine is not on this list, but caffeine actually doesn’t have any research showing that it improves your long term gains. Most of the benefits of caffeine supplementation are mental – Psychological. It improves your enjoyment of exercise, but it doesn’t actually improve your gains. So take it if it makes your workouts more enjoyable, but it’s really isn’t going to do anything for your gains, and you don’t have to take it if you don’t want to. I’ve reviewed caffeine in more detail in this video.

Supplement tier 2, which the researchers called “the amplifier”, was creatine. Good old creatine monohydrate is still the king of the supplements. It is the goat. Or rather, perhaps it is the one eyed king in the land of the blind, because creatine is sort of not really impressive. Most people stop taking it because they don’t really notice much of a result, but it is the most evidence based supplement there is, with robust research showing that most people, at least responders, which is the majority of people to some degree get 1 to 2 kilos or fat free mass in the form of water retention. But it’s in your muscles and it looks like muscle, and it functions like muscle so that’s a nice initial boost that you get. And then afterwards there’s also an increase in your work capacity because creatine goes into the muscle tissue and it helps you produce energy via the creatine phosphate system. So you can do more reps.

You can expose your muscles to more tension per set, and therefore you get better strength development and better long term muscle growth. The effect is very slight, but there is some. So as far as muscle building supplements go, creatine is still the goat. The researchers recommend 3 to 5g per day depending on your body weight. Generally for women 3 grams per day is enough, and for men I recommend 5 grams, even though that’s already plentiful and most likely excessively saturates creatine stores for the vast majority of individuals that are not professional bodybuilders of 140 kilos.

I would note that currently there is a trend on social media for higher creatine intake recommendations up to 20g per day, but this is based on extremely scant evidence. The benefits of creatine supplementation for cognitive health in healthy individuals is very, very slim. A 2022 meta analysis, in fact, found no significant benefits in individuals that are not sleep deprived and don’t have any existing mental problems. When you look at elderly individuals, people that are sleep deprived or people that have cognitive issues there, we see more consistent benefits of creatine supplementation because creatine is also taken up by the brain. But for healthy individuals, the benefits of taking creatine, and especially going up to higher intakes are very, very slim to non-existent.

Tier one, which the researchers called “the foundation”, was protein supplements. They found that the benefits of protein supplementation were conditional on not consuming enough protein in your diet. Once total daily protein intake exceeded somewhere in the range of 1.6 to 2g/kg, which is 0.7 to 0.9 grams per pound the benefits completely plateaued. This is in line with most research on protein intake, which I have discussed at length in this video. While protein supplements are great at making it easy to get your protein in, they are not as satiating, especially whey protein shakes, they don’t satiate as much, so ideally you get at least 1.6 to 2g/kg protein from your diet. If you don’t, you should supplement it.

I would recommend that virtually anyone that exercises consumes at least 1.6g/kg protein per day. That’s total daily protein intake based on total body weight. And there are speculative benefits of going up to 2 gram/kg, or maybe even higher based on some recent meta analysis. But there is no well-controlled study, like a randomized controlled trial that has found significant benefits over 1.6g/kg. So you’re really going into tentative small benefits at this point.

Overall, it’s clear that if you’re looking for a safe and effective over-the-counter supplement to magically improve your gains, you are going to be very disappointed. Supplements are at best the cherry on the cake, the cake being hard work in a gym, a strict diet, and an optimized lifestyle with sleep optimization and good stress management. That is, until myostatin inhibitors make it to the market in pill form. Multiple laboratories are currently working on making this a reality, and the results of the COURAGE trial are indeed promising.

The drug Trevogrumab seems to safely reduce muscle loss while cutting by 50%. This is still an injectable and phase 3 trials still have to be concluded, but it’s likely a matter of time at this point before we get working, effective myostatin inhibitors. We’ve already seen the effects of myostatin gene mutations in animals, and the results are ridiculous. No, these are not AI.

For now, however, the magic pill does not exist. You were really looking for that, weren’t you? When you clicked on this video… Sheee…