I’m often asked why I’m so passionate about my goal of creating the highest quality and most effective supplements on the market.
My passion comes from a lifetime of study, experience, and experimentation. I accomplished my goal by learning everything I could about how the body performs and how supplements can enhance that performance.
I’ve realized my dream. I love what I’ve built and I want you to be a part of it.
While attending college at the State University of New York College at Brockport I joined the swimming team. I was a skinny 140 pounds.
Over the Winter break of 1991 I set up a bench and a set of Weider Weights in a spare bedroom. All I did was lift and eat. I gained nearly 40 pounds. My strength improved and I was making progress. Still, I was watching my friends get bigger and I wanted the same results.
I finally saved up enough money to join Samsons Powerhouse Gym in Rochester, New York. It was there where I learned to love bodybuilding and training. I was lifting alongside Bob Chicherillo, Danny Pailla, and lots of other top-level amateur bodybuilders who worked out there every day.
Soon I was ready for the big stage. I competed in the 1993 and 1995 New York State Bodybuilding Championships, winning the Novice Heavyweight title in 1995. Then I went on to take 5th in the heavyweight division at the 1997 Border States completion in California.
After graduating from SUNY Brockport in 1995 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Health Science with a concentration in chemistry, I set my sights on being a master chemist. Wanting to leave New York for the West Coast, I bought a San Diego newspaper and began my job search.
When I came across a job listed as “Chemists Needed at Nutritional Company” I called and asked them to hold the job open until I could get there for an interview. To my surprise they agreed. So I sold everything I owned and used the $400 I raised to drive across the country for the interview. My early display of dedication earned me the job.
Over the next two years I learned the basics of supplement manufacturing. I had also formulated hundreds of products. Soon, I was looking for more. In 1997 I formed a consulting company and started making prototype formulas in my kitchen with a high-speed blender. That was the beginning. Today, my manufacturing and distribution company makes many of the most cutting-edge liquid supplements on the market.
After turning 40 and having not competed in bodybuilding since 1997, I was borderline obese. I was determined to take control of my body and my life. Over the next two years I transformed myself and took my body fat down from 25% to 4%. With my new body and renewed confidence I won the Light Heavyweight class at the 2012 NPC Mile High Natural Body Show competition in Colorado.
Shortly after my win in Colorado I suffered a severe rupture in my L4-L5, and L5-S1 disks. During my recovery I read as much as I could about my condition. That’s when I read a book that would change my life. It was Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance by Dr. Stuart McGill. I was doing it all wrong. I had the wrong motor patterns.
After four months of decompression and rehab I started training again but I had no balance or strength. Without a proper functioning nervous system the rest just does not work properly. So I started reading about the nervous system and muscle recruitment. I learned that I needed explosive exercises to improve my full-body neuromuscular response.
Knowledge is power. After discovering CrossFit Fortius I was transformed from someone who just believed in bodybuilding into someone who believes in training and using everything I can to get fit. I earned my USAW Olympic Weight Lifting certification and a CrossFit Level 1 Trainer Certification, and by early 2014 I’ll be a National Strength and Conditioning Association Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist.
So here is the training philosophy I’ve developed based on what I’ve learned throughout my career.
Without the nervous system nothing else happens.. no growth.. no Nitric oxide.. no increase in hormones.. no pump.. no workout.. no movement. Everything else is secondary to the firing of the nervous system. Without it you simply don’t grow, because you don’t move. NT Sciences™ is Pharmagenx’s feverish pursuit of developing supplements that can facilitate neuromuscular activity during
exercise, and support nervous system health and recovery.
My brain was awakened to the utmost importance of the nervous system in August 2012. You see, I just completed and won the Light Heavy Class at the 2012 N.P.C MILE HIGH NATURAL BODYBUILDING CHAMPIONSHIPS, and I was feeling great! But then, after a heavy leg day, I woke up with a shooting pain down my side; I did not know what it was. A couple days later I could not move my toes. Then when I was walking my foot would just drop to the ground. I tried exercising it, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not move my foot… It was paralyzed. This was a crushing blow to me.
This picture was taken the night before the show.
I went to the Doctor and he diagnosed me with 2 ruptured discs, L4-L5, L5-S1. The disc material had squished out and was sitting on the nerves that “operated” my right foot. You see, no matter how hard I worked out or wanted to get it to move, my foot just wouldn’t move. There were no nerve signals going to those muscles, my neuromuscular system was disconnected.. no signals no movement. The nerve started to “die off”, and even with all the material moved away from the disc, it could be a year before the nerve grew back. This sent me on a feverish pace to find supplements that could.
The pain I went through with my injury was the impetus for NT Sciences™, (NT=Neurotransmitter). My pain your gain!
NT Sciences™ is Pharmagenx’s feverish pursuit of developing supplements that can facilitate neuromuscular activity during exercise, and support nervous system health and recovery. Because without the nervous system nothing else matters!
I am proud to say that as of today I am fully recovered, no surgery, but I have learned a great deal along the way.
Even if you do a couple of hundred reps for each set of your triceps extensions, it won't help the fat on your upper arms to disappear. And you won't get rid of the fat on your hips by doing sets of hundreds of reps on the leg press either. Spot reducing fat through training is impossible, as any good trainer will tell you. But until recently there was no scientific proof for what most people knew from experience. Now Chilean scientists have published the results of a small but convincing study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.
Admittedly, the idea behind spot reduction of fat sounded quite plausible. A number of studies from the 1960s showed that women who did abdominal exercises managed to whittle down their waist measurement and men who trained their biceps had less fat on their upper arm.
But the studies weren't terribly convincing. Genuine spot reduction means that you have to measure fat in specific parts of the body and then observe that subjects only lose fat in these spots.
The Chileans decided to adopt a different approach. They got 11 students to train one of their legs on a leg press machine three times a week for 12 weeks. The load was low, between 10 and30 percent of the weight at which the students could just manage 1 rep.
Each workout consisted of just one set, but it was a set of 960-1200 reps. This took the subjects about 80 minutes to complete. Time to burn off quite a few calories.
Before and after the training period the researchers did scans of the students to measure their bone mass, lean body mass and muscle mass. The table below shows that this training programme had little effect on the bone mass and little effect on the lean body mass of the subjects. Their total fat mass decreased by 700 g however – and that was a statistically significant effect.
The amount of fat reduction on the trained leg was 20 g; the amount lost on the untrained leg was 70 g. The difference between these two was not statistically significant. The students lost most fat from their trunk.
The Chileans conclude that spot reduction of fat is not possible. Strength training with extremely high amounts of reps is a way of losing body fat all over your body. But this form of training doesn't help build muscle mass.
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Three sets of jump squats is an excellent way to round off your leg-muscle training. According to sports scientists at AUT University in New Zealand, doing jump squats at the end of a leg-training session raises testosterone synthesis, which speeds up your muscle mass and strength building.
There’s a small stack of studies which suggest that adding plyometrics to your strength training helps increase your strength and above all your power. It seems that exercises like jump squats stimulate your leg muscles in a different way than regular strength training exercises.
The researchers thought that the effect of plyometric training might be due to anabolic hormones. According to scientists, the ratio between the muscle destroyer cortisol and the muscle builder testosterone during and right after a training session predicts the extent to which the training strengthens and enlarges your muscles.
The researchers got 13 rugby players to do four training sessions. The athletes started each session with 4 sets of squats. Then they did 3 sets of jump squats [power] or 3 sets of box squats [strength]. After that they took a short pause and then did another 3 sets of jump squats or 3 sets of box squats.
This way the researchers were able to study the hormonal effects of 4 combinations: strength-strength, strength-power, power-power and power-strength.
Each of the 3 box squat sets consisted of 3 reps with a weight that the athletes could just manage to do 3 reps with. The jump squat sets consisted of 3 sets at 50 percent of the weight with which the athletes could just manage 1 box squat rep.
The testosterone concentration in the subjects’ saliva rose most during the strength-power combination – by 13 percent.
The researchers detected no clear effects on the cortisol levels.
"A complex exercise sequence provided an enhanced anabolic milieu for adaptation compared to other the training methods examined", the researchers conclude. "It is suggested that the superior functional gains associated with complex training are related to the improvements in the hormonal environment."
Source:
J Strength Cond Res. 2010 Aug 10. [Epub ahead of print].
If you want to build up a good mid section, with strong lower back muscles and abdominals that can take a punch or two, you're better off doing an exercise like the plank rather than crunches. Better trainers have been saying this for a few years already, and a study from Pennsylvania State University, which will soon be published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, now proves them right.
There are two disadvantages to old-fashioned sit-ups and crunches. In the long term they are likely to lead to back problems because of the pressure they create on the discs between the vertebrae, and, more to the point, they are not very effective. The muscles in your midsection area are not so much meant for moving your torso, but above all to keep your torso stable when your spine is subject to tension.
So the better exercises for your lower back and abdomen, as you can read in nearly every Men's Health magazine, are ones where the muscles in your mid-section have to work so that your vertebrae don't move. That's why the plank is a better exercise than sit-ups or crunches, and the side-plank is better than the oblique-crunch.
The better exercises don't require you to isolate muscle groups. They involve all muscle groups in your midsection [what magazines and trainers like to call your core], including muscles in your hips, upper back and shoulders. To use sports scientists' jargon, these are integration core exercises.
The researchers attached electrodes to the muscles of 20 test subjects, and then got them to carry out 16 core exercises. The electrodes enabled the researchers to measure how intensively the exercises activated the subjects' muscles. The more electrical activity in a muscle, the harder it's working.
The figure and photos below show that the core muscles have to work harder during a plank [below right; foreground in graph] than during a crunch [below left; background in the graph].
AD = anterior deltoid, RA = rectus abdominus, EO = external abdominal oblique, TE = thoracic erector spinae [the muscle that runs along your spine from your skull to your hip bone], LE = lumbar erector spinae [lower back muscle], GM = gluteus maximus.
The figure and photos below show a comparison between the superman [below left; background in graph] and the pointer [below right; foreground in graph].
The superman is an isolation exercise, as is the crunch. You lie on the ground and lift your legs and chest by contracting your gluts and lower back muscles. The pointer is more similar to the plank. You bring your body into a position in which your core muscles have to work hard to keep your vertebrae stable. The figure below shows which of the two is the better exercise.
Source:
J Strength Cond Res. 2012 May 10. [Epub ahead of print].
Losing weight is easier on the paleo diet than the widely praised Mediterranean diet. Swedish researchers at the University of Lund discovered that men who were allowed to eat as much as they wanted consumed 1823 kcal per day on a Mediterranean diet – but on the paleo diet they could only manage 1388 kcal.
Paleo diet advocates reason that our genetic makeup has probably not changed much since the Stone Age, and that our body therefore is likely to react optimally to a diet that would have been normal at that time. So that means: large quantities of lean meat, fish, fruit and vegetables – but no dairy, grains, rice, beans, sugar, soft drinks, cookies, sweets or beer. Nuts, olive oil, potatoes and eggs are allowed but in moderation.
The Mediterranean diet on the other hand consists of whole grains, low-fat dairy products, fruit and vegetables.
The Swedes did an experiment with 29 men who had survived a heart attack. The men were overweight and diabetic, or on the way to becoming so. The researchers got 14 of the men to follow the paleo diet for 12 weeks, and put 15 of the men on a Mediterranean diet. As you can see below, the energy intake of the paleo group was much lower.
The biggest difference between the Mediterranean and the paleo diet is in the carbohydrates. The paleo diet contains far fewer carbs and the glycaemic load was much less too. The absolute protein intake was the same in both groups, but forms a higher percentage of the paleo diet.
"A Paleolithic diet is more satiating per calorie than a Mediterranean-like diet", the Swedes conclude. "This aspect of a Paleolithic diet is vital to any diet intended to facilitate weight-loss in obese patients and thereby mitigate effects of associated diseases, such as ischemic heart disease and diabetes type 2."
The amount of leptin went down in the paleo group. The researchers suspect that the reduced carbohydrate intake made the paleo dieters' bodies more sensitive to this hormone.
Another big difference between the diets was the calcium intake. The Mediterranean group consumed a daily 772 mg, the paleo group only 374 mg. But the researchers think that the paleo diet results in less acid blood, however. The body takes calcium out of the bones to neutralise this acid. This happens less in the paleo group, so the need for calcium is also less. The researchers believe.
Source:
Nutr Metab (Lond) 2010, 7:85.
Drinking water during a meal does not help to reduce caloric intake, but if you prepare rice dishes using more water, then the caloric intake does decrease, studies have shown.
The Japanese examined the relationship between bodyweight and the amount of water you consume daily through drinks and through solid foods. They collected data on bodyweight and body composition of 1200 women between 18 and 22, and asked them what they ate.
The researchers calculated the amount of water the women consumed daily through solid food and drinks, and then made quintiles: they divided the women according to their water intake into five equal-sized groups. Then they calculated the average BMI and waist-measurement for each quintile. The results for the first and fifth quintiles – the groups with the lowest and the highest water intake – are shown below.
The amount of water the women consumed through drinks had no influence – but the amount of water consumed through food did. The more water in the solid food, the thinner the women.
The researchers do not know how exactly why this is so. The wetter the food, the more proteins and the less carbohydrates it contains, according to the information in the table below. We have also simplified this table to show only the first and fifth quintiles.
The Japanese don’t know what it is in water-rich products that makes them slimming. Is it that they contain more protein? Or because they contain fewer carbohydrates? Fewer joules? Or the water itself? They really have no idea. "Any firm conclusions regarding the influence of intake of water from foods and from beverages on obesity require additional studies", they conclude.
Sources:
Nutrition. 2008 Oct;24(10):925-32.
Fish oil supplementation boosts energy expenditure after a meal, so it makes weight loss or maintenance of a healthy weight a tiny bit easier. Canadian nutritionists at the University of Guelph discovered this from an experiment they did on six men whose glucose and insulin balance was out of whack.
The polyunsaturated n-3 fatty acids in fish improve body composition. Studies show that they increase muscle mass and also help muscle mass to react better to strength training. They also induce the body to burn more energy. Studies also show that people who consume large amounts of fish fatty acids are less fat than people who consume low amounts of the substance.
The Canadians were most interested in finding out about the fat-decomposition effects of fish oil. They were curious to know whether functional foods, to which manufacturers had added extra fish fatty acids, would help people with metabolic syndrome – the combination of overweight and diabetes – to achieve a healthy weight.
The researchers got their subjects to eat food containing high concentrations of n-3 fatty acids for a period of 14 days. A list of the products is shown below. As a result of the diet, the intake of EPA and DHA rose from 0.4 to 2.9 g per day.
The 14 days were too short to reduce bodyweight or fat mass, and the amount of fat that the men burned while resting didn’t increase either. What did change was the postprandial thermic effect of food [postprandial TEF]: the increase in energy expenditure occurred every time after a meal. At the end of the 14 days it had increased by 51.3 percent.
The researchers measured the TEF after a hot meal containing 920 calories. The meal contained 1.4 g DHA+EPA.
The thermic effect starts to decline a few hours after a meal. From this you can conclude that fish oil supplementation for dieters works better if they spread their capsule intake over the different meals.
]]>Taking fish oil supplements or eating a diet that is rich in fish fatty acids have a body recompositioning effect: your fat mass decreases and muscle mass increases. Scroll down to find links to articles on the anabolic and fat-cell killing effect of fish fatty acids.
Researchers in Aberdeen, Scotland, were curious about how fish fatty acids can have an anabolic effect, so they designed experiments with full grown C2C12 muscle cells from mice to try and work out the mechanism involved. They exposed the cells in test tubes to 50 micromols of the fish fatty acids DHA and EPA, and stimulated anabolism with leucine.
When the researchers measured the build-up and breakdown of muscle cell protein, they noticed that these were 25 percent higher and 22 percent lower respectively in the muscle cells that had been exposed to EPA.
The researchers then looked at the activity of anabolic signal molecules in the muscle cells. The figure below shows that EPA and DHA both activated p70s6k, but only EPA activated FOXO3a. The fish fatty acids had no effect on the other signal molecules that the researchers examined: Akt, mTOR, 4EBP1 and rps6.
"Fish oil supplementation containing a higher proportion of EPA than DHA could be the most efficacious in improving protein accretion in response to anabolic stimuli such as L-leucine/resistance exercise and could attenuate protein breakdown in ageing skeletal muscle", the researchers conclude. "Further work in humans is clearly required to test this hypothesis."
Source:
Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2013 Mar 22;432(4):593-8.
When covering long distances men dehydrate faster than women. Dutch physiologists at the Radboud University Nijmegen discovered that men drink less and probably lose more fluids through transpiration than women. Men are four times as likely to suffer from dehydration than women.
The physiologists studied a total of 99 male and female participants aged between 21 and 82. They all took part in the annual International Four Days Marches, the largest multi-day walking event in the world. Three-quarters of the subjects exercised every day. The participants walked 30, 40 or 50 km.
As the first figure below on the left shows, the male participants lost twice as much weight as the female participants during the walking. Click on the figure for a larger version.
The amount of plasma in the men's blood decreased, in the women it increased.
Part of the explanation is that the men drank less during the walking than the women. Both men and women drank on average just over 2 litres, but the table shows that if you compare the amount of fluid drunk with bodyweight, then men drank significantly less than women.
At the end of the four-day march 34 percent of the men had dehydration symptoms: their bodyweight had decreased by more than 2 percent. Among the women only 12 percent lost so much weight.
In addition, 27 percent of the men had hypernatremia by the time they reached the finish line. Hypernatremia is an indication of dehydration.
So men are four times more likely to suffer from dehydration as women. This is partly because men drink less, but also partly because men lose more fluids through sweating. The researchers estimate that women lose about 2.9 ml water per kg bodyweight per hour, and men 3.7 ml.
"Our findings suggest that sex must be considered when providing fluid replacement advices and/or guidelines", the researchers conclude.
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After an intensive workout the body expends extra energy. Researchers suspect that because of this, strength training can help in maintaining a healthy weight, and they are studying ways of increasing the 'after burn'. One such method is to consume caffeine before pumping iron, as sports scientists at California State University discovered.
After a demanding workout muscle cells need to recover. They need to replenish their creatine phosphate and glycogen reserves and restore their buffers. We're not even talking about the recovery of damaged muscle proteins, but this process costs energy too. Researchers measure this increased energy expenditure by measuring oxygen consumption; when the latter is higher, it is called elevated post-exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC for short.
As far back as 1989 researchers showed that caffeine [structural formula shown below] raised the EPOC of untrained women after a cardio training session.
But does this also happen after a strength training session? And in men who are experienced strength trainers? To answer this question the researchers devised an experiment in which 14 experienced strength athletes aged between 18 and 34 took part.
The test subjects completed the training schedule shown below twice. On one occasion they took a placebo before training and on the other occasion they took 6 mg caffeine per kg bodyweight. For two days before the experiment started the subjects abstained from all foods and beverages containing caffeine.
The caffeine supplement increased the intensity of the training, as you can see in the table below. The mild stimulant raised the post-training energy expenditure by 15 percent, and also reduced the RER. That means that the body was deriving less energy from carbohydrates and more from fat.
When they took the supplement the test subjects burned 24 calories more. That's not a huge amount, in the researchers' opinion. But of course everyone is entitled to his (or her) own opinion.
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Nutritionists have encountered a few times what we call the 'almond mystery': people who start to eat more almonds don't get fatter. [Br J Nutr. 2007 Sep;98(3):651-6.] Sounds strange, doesn't it? Especially if you consider that a handful of almonds is worth at least 150 kilocalories. Researchers at the US Department of Agriculture have solved the puzzle.
Nutritionists have encountered a few times what we call the 'almond mystery': people who start to eat more almonds don't get fatter. [Br J Nutr. 2007 Sep;98(3):651-6.] Sounds strange, doesn't it? Especially if you consider that a handful of almonds is worth at least 150 kilocalories. Researchers at the US Department of Agriculture have solved the puzzle.
We wrote a few days ago about research done by journalists and scientists, which shows that food labels tend to underestimate the number of calories in manufactures food products. A few months ago researchers at the US Department of Agriculture published the results of a study which indicate that the opposite is the case for almonds. You don't absorb anything like all the calories that almonds contain.
The researchers started by giving 18 test subjects a standard diet for 18 days, followed by a diet that was supplemented by 42 g almonds each day for 18 days, and finally a diet supplemented by 84 g almonds for another 18 days.
So, you don't absorb anything like all the energy that almonds contain. The second table shows this. It's also a simplified version. Click on it for the complete version.
The researchers gave their subjects whole almonds. Their study says nothing about ground almonds, but the energy uptake from ground almonds is probably considerably higher. The study was funded by the Almond Board of California. [almondboard.com]
"When an 84-g serving of almonds was incorporated into the diet daily, the energy digestibility of the diet as a whole decreased by 5 percent", the researchers write. "Therefore, for individuals with energy intakes between 2000 and 3000 kcal/day, incorporation of 84 g almonds into the diet daily in exchange for highly digestible foods would result in a reduction of available energy of 100–150 kcal/day."
The researchers performed a similar study with pistachio nuts. [Br J Nutr. 2012 Jan; 107(1): 120-5.] The results of this study are not as attractive to slimmers who like their nuts. The subjects absorbed 95 percent of the energy contained in the pistachio nuts.
]]>Lipothermic is a registered trade mark of Pharmagenx, so you won’t see this definition anywhere else. We came up with it to describe a unique effect that we believe is the cornerstone to fat loss supplements. We describe Lipothermics as a property of a substance to repartition the energy usage during activity, resulting in a larger percentage of the total calories burnt during exercise from fat. They also have a prolonged effect after exercise; in which they increase E.P.O.C. (excess post exercise oxygen consumption.).
Below is a chart comparing the effects of some of the Lipothermic compounds to common Thermogenics.
There are many compounds that have this unique effect; there is also a synergistic effect amongst them. The entire Ventilean line is dedicated towards exploiting the Lipothermic Effect by providing you, easy to digest, fast acting solutions meant to be taken right before activity.
To get a more detailed explanation on why Lipothermics are better than Thermogenics click here to read our Lipothermics vs Thermogenics article.
Regular exercise and a healthy diet have long been the doctor's orders when trying to achieve a fit body. It sounds simple enough, but there are other factors at play that make fat loss a challenging and complicated goal. For instance, there is the dreaded "weight loss plateau." As explained by Dulloo (1993) in his paper on obesity management, your body reacts to reduced food intake and weight loss by slowing down its metabolism. This energy- sparing mechanism (adaptive thermogenesis) explains why you suddenly stop losing weight after a few weeks of following a diet and workout regimen.
This table published in the British Journal of Nutrition (van Baak 2004) illustrates how adaptive thermogenesis works.
Adaptive thermogenesis serves to help our bodies store energy. When we reduce food intake and lose lean body mass, the body defends itself by decreasing energy expenditure (Dulloo 1993). This is why we start to burn fewer calories after a few weeks of working out— even though we exercise at the same intensity level. This decreased thermogenesis can make it difficult to get rid of stubborn fat and it may even lead to regaining lost weight.
For many years now, thermogenic supplements have been used by millions of athletes, bodybuilders and health-conscious individuals around the world. Thermogenics claims to increase the body's core temperature, thereby speeding up the metabolic rate which results in the body burning more fat (Clapham 2007).
Thermogenic supplements usually contain fat-burning ingredients such as chili pepper, synephrine, and green tea extracts. One of the most popular thermogenic ingredients is ephedra (from the plant Ephedra sinica). Ephedra is a stimulant that could expand bronchial tubes (to make breathing easier) and increase body heat, thereby increasing metabolism (Gurley, Wang and Gardner 1998).
Ephedra became a popular ingredient since it was proven to be effective in aiding weight loss, especially when combined with caffeine. In a recent study (Boozer et al 2002), it was found that subjects who were given a herbal treatment of ephedra and caffeine during a period of 6 months significantly lost more weight than subjects who were only given placebos.
However, in 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the sale of ephedra- containing supplements. The FDA came to this decision after a comprehensive study of cases reporting adverse side effects and even deaths caused by the stimulant. The number of these complaints had been rising steadily since the late 1990s.
After FDA imposed the ban, manufacturers scrambled to produce "ephedra-free" fat burners. Ingredients in these ephedra-free supplements included the usual stimulants such as caffeine, green tea, and yohimbine. Many of these manufacturers claimed that this new class of ephedra-free fat burners was even more powerful than the ephedra-based ones, but research would indicate that this was all indeed a lie.
Caffeine, for instance, is a popular ingredient in these ephedra-free thermogenic supplements. In a 1992 study by Spriet and colleagues, it was found that indeed, caffeine increases fat oxidation and decreases the breakdown of glycogen, but not all of the fat oxidized is burned (Astorin et al 2011). In other words, caffeine is not a very effective thermogenic, but it does decrease glycogenolysis, helping the body use more energy from fat instead of carbohydrates during exercise.
Yohimbine, another popular ingredient in thermogenic supplements, is also known for its fat-oxidizing properties. Unfortunately, its lipid-mobilizing effects are negated when administered during or after a meal (Galitzky et al 1988).
In other words, most of these ephedra-free thermogenics are mild stimulants at best, but they are not powerful enough to help your body burn more fat.
In their mission to provide cutting-edge supplements, PharmaGenx is constantly involved in the research and formulation of new products. Working with doctors and athletes, PharmaGenx discovered the science of lipothermics.
Lipothermics is a new class of fat-burning compounds that trigger a shift in energy usage, causing the body to burn more calories from fat instead of carbohydrates during exercise. This decreases muscle breakdown and it helps your body save glucose to give you more endurance and stamina.
As explained by Brooks (2000) in his book Exercise Physiology: Human Bioenergetics and Its Applications, the body expends energy by breaking down adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a chemical stored in our muscle cells.
The human body uses three types of energy systems to rebuild ATP: the phosphogen system, the anaerobic system and the aerobic system. This table shows the characteristics of each energy system.
Lipothermics works by repartitioning your body's energy usage during exercise, taking it quickly to the aerobic level where there is more lipid oxidation and your body uses more fuel from fat instead of muscle.
This table summarizes the difference between old-school thermogenics and the new class of energy-repartitioning Lipothermics.
PharmaGenx has a registered trademark on Lipothermic and uses this new class of compounds to create VentileanRx—a highly concentrated liquid solution that carries the VYCE stack.
The VYCE stack is a well-balanced combination of four potent ingredients—vinpocetine, yohimbine, caffeine and EGCG. Although most of these ingredients can be found in other thermogenic supplements, what makes these ingredients especially powerful in VentileanRX is PharmaGenx's proprietary technology that solubilizes the nutrients of the ingredients into a super concentrated solution that can be quickly delivered in a micro dose (2.5 ml).
The powerful Lipothermic compounds in the VYCE stack will enable the body to experience the following benefits:
VINPOCETINE is a chemical compound with neuroprotective properties. Derived from vincamine (an alkaloid extracted from the periwinkle plant), vinpocetine enhances blood circulation within the brain and decreases cerebral vascular resistance (Karpati and Szporny 1976).
In a study on the effects of vinpocetine in chronic ischemic stroke patients (Szilyagi et al 2005) using Positron Emission Tomography (PET), it was found that vinpocetine improved cerebral blood flow up to 37% in the contralateral side of the brain and up to 33% in the affected side.
Vinpocetine is an important ingredient in VentileanRX because it counteracts caffeine's negative side effects. Caffeine reduces cerebral blood flow, which could lead to an energy crash. Vinpocetine tempers caffeine's limiting effects and ensures that all four ingredients in the VYCE stack work harmoniously together.
YOHIMBINE is a substance extracted from the bark of Yohimbe trees. It acts as a blocking agent to alpha-2 adrenoceptors (Verwaerde et al 1997). By blocking alpha-2 receptors, Yohimbine increases lipolysis (fat mobilization), thereby reducing fat absorption.
In this table taken from a research paper on Yohimbine as an alpha-2 antagonist (Lafontan et al 1992), it clearly shows that Yohimbine promoted an increase in NEFAs (nonesterified fatty acids) and noradrenaline levels in ten fasting obese women(compared to those who only took placebos).
Based on the findings of this study, yohimbine improves fat mobilization, helping the body access its fat reserves for fuel, instead of using energy from carbohydrates.
CAFFEINE increases the body's metabolic rate. Previous research by Astrup (1990) revealed that caffeine promotes thermogenesis (fat burning) and lipolysis (fat mobilization). This table from a research paper on the metabolic effects of caffeine (Acheson et al 2004) illustrates the increased lipid turnover and oxidation in research subjects who took caffeine instead of a placebo.
By increasing free-flowing fatty acids in your system, caffeine helps your body use more fat instead of lean muscle for energy. This delays muscle fatigue and improves your endurance during training.
Another study on caffeine (Spriet et al 1992) also shows that caffeine decreases glycogenolysis (the breakdown of glycogen) during exercise, thereby increasing its endurance during workouts. This table from Spriet and his colleagues' research shows caffeine's glycogen-sparing effects.
In this experiment, eight subjects were asked to cycle until they were exhausted. It was discovered that muscle glycogen content was higher among subjects during exercise after they had ingested caffeine (compared to the effects of a placebo). Seven out of eight subjects also increased their cycling time before reaching exhaustion after ingesting caffeine.
EPIGALLOCATECHIN GALLATE (EGCG) According to a study by Dulloo, Duret and Rohrer (1999), green tea (which has high EGCG levels) has thermogenic properties and promotes fat oxidation. In this study, Dulloo and his colleagues measured the effects of EGCG on the 24-hour energy expenditure (EE) and fat oxidation levels in 10 healthy men. The table below clearly indicates that fat oxidation was significantly higher in subjects who were treated with green tea extract compared to those who took caffeine or a placebo.
As explained in previous paragraphs, Caffeine, Yohimbine and EGCG are three powerful fat oxidizers. They also act as stimulants that give you the burst of energy you need to endure intensive workouts. Vinpocetine tempers caffeine's limiting effects (reduced myocardial and cerebral blood flow) and ensures that all four ingredients work harmoniously together.
The VYCE stack combined with the energy-repartitioning properties of LIPOTHERMICS gives you 107% more calorie- burning power compared to thermogenic supplements.
The VentileanRx Lipothermic Stimulant comes in a highly concentrated liquid form. Its main ingredients (the VYCE stack) are already solubilized, making them easily absorbed by the body. The Physicians' Desk Reference shows a table which illustrates how the delivery system of a drug or supplement affects its ability to be easily absorbed by the human body.
The Physicians' Desk Reference reports that 85 percent to 90 percent of nutrients in liquid supplements are absorbed by the body in 27 to 30 seconds. Since VentileanRx is a super concentrated liquid, the onset of effects will certainly be much quicker compared to taking capsules or tablets (which takes the body 20-30 minutes to break down before assimilation occurs).
More than just the VYCE stack, VentileanRx also contains other health-enhancing nutrients (as shown on the product label):
Because VentileanRx is highly concentrated, only small doses of 2 to 5 ml are needed to create a rapid onset of action in the body.
HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) vs. Traditional Cardio Training:
How to Use VentileanRx to Get the Best Results
In recent years, there has been growing interest in HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) and with good reason. HIIT reportedly gives great results with a mere 15 minutes of training three times a week. It definitely sounds like the perfect exercise program for people with busy schedules—but first, let's take a look at how HIIT compares to traditional cardio training.
While HIIT takes less time, it certainly requires more energy. ACE-certified fitness expert Dean Anderson[24] explains that those short bursts of intense exercise briefly pushes you beyond the upper end of your aerobic exercise zone. This gives you several advantages that traditional cardio training can't offer:
Anderson's explanations are supported by the results of a study (Trapp et al 2008) published in the International Journal of Obesity. In this experiment, 45 young women were randomly assigned to one of three groups: HIEE (High Intensity Intermittent Exercise), Steady-State Exercise (SSE) and a control group who maintained their usual physical activity levels and dietary habits throughout the experimental period.
The table below clearly shows that the women who underwent 15 weeks of HIEE experienced greater reduction in total body mass compared to the SSE and control groups.
Because HIIT is physically demanding, it's not recommended as a daily workout. Three times a week is ideal. A smart training schedule should give your body adequate time to recover.
HIIT and the VentileanRx Lipothermic Stimulant: A Powerful Combination
As explained in previous paragraphs, HIIT pushes your body's aerobic system to maximum levels. This helps you burn more calories from fat.
However, while your body is warming up at the beginning of your workout (and also during recovery periods), you are using energy from your anaerobic system. At the anaerobic level, you are burning calories from a larger percentage of carbohydrates (glucose) instead of fat. As much as possible, you need to spare your glucose levels to help you perform optimally.
Taking VentileanRx before your workout helps you spare glucose. VentileanRx's groundbreaking lipothermic system repartitions your energy usage during exercise. The lipothermic compounds trigger a metabolic shift, helping your body reach the aerobic level earlier during your workout (and even during recovery periods). At the aerobic level, your body burns more calories from fat, not muscle. Your glucose levels are spared, giving you long-lasting energy during your training sessions.
The calorie-burning power of HIIT combined with the metabolism-boosting effects of the lipothermic compounds in VentileanRx results in effective fat loss while maintaining healthy muscle mass.
As an added bonus, VentileanRx's lipothermic system also increases the body's EPOC, resulting in more calories burned after your workout session.
VentileanRx uses PharmaGenx's proprietary lipothermic system to deliver powerful ingredients that aid in effective fat-burning. If you would like to know more about the power of lipothermics, get in touch with the PharmaGenx team today.
Pharmagenx has created a new class of dietary supplements with formulas and delivery systems that are scientifically developed to give you the lasting results you demand. Whether you take supplements to build lean muscle mass, recover quickly, or increase your overall level of fitness, you deserve supplements that optimize your workout or fitness routine.
If you notice that you aren’t getting the results you expect, it’s not your fault. Blame your old supplements.
The problem with most dietary supplements on the market is that your body can’t easily absorb their formulas. When you take them, even though you’re following the instructions on the label, the supplements are passing through your system without being properly absorbed, so you don’t get the advertised benefits of the supplement.
Dietary supplements can only help you transform your body when they are available for your body to absorb them properly. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your money.
This paper answers a few important questions to help you understand why your old supplements are not working for you. You’ll see that only by stepping up to a new class of supplements formulated with SEO™ Natural Oils can you take your training to a higher level.
When you ingest oil-based supplements, such as fish oil, your body attempts to prepare the oil for absorption by emulsifying it. Only by emulsifying the oil can your body digest the oil. The bioavailability of the oil depends on the oil being emulsified either before you ingest it or as it travels through your digestive system (Singh, Ye, & Horne, 2009).
Digestion of the oil begins in your mouth where the addition of saliva begins the emulsification process. Very little emulsification takes place there. If you are taking a supplement in pill form then the oil skips emulsification in your mouth because the swallowed pill spends a very short time in your the mouth (Garaiova, et al., 2007).
The next stage of oil digestion takes place in the stomach. Emulsification in your stomach is a fundamental step in the digestion and absorption of oils. It is in your stomach where natural gastric emulsifiers mix with the oil and begins to create emulsified oil droplets that your body can absorb. The emulsification process continues further in the colon (Garaiova, et al., 2007).
An emulsion is created by mixing two or more liquids that are normally non-mixable. Essentially, emulsifying an oil means breaking the oil down into very small droplets that can disperse throughout the water.
Let’s take a look at how oil and water interact normally verses how they interact when the oil is emulsified.
In Image A, you can see the orange oil floating on top of the blue water. This is what happens when you pour a bit of oil into water. Instead of mixing with the water, the oil will settle on top of the water.
If you try to mix oil and water by stirring them together, you get something like what you see in Image B. It looks like the oil has mixed with the water, but it hasn’t. Shortly after you’ve stirred the oil into the water you get an unstable emulsion like what you see in Image C. Over time, the oil separates itself from the water and floats back to the top.
A true and stable emulsion of oil and water can only take place when an emulsifier is used. The job of the emulsifier is to create a bond between the oil and water and stop the mixture from separating. The result is what you seen in Image D where the oil droplets are permanently dispersed throughout the water.
Everyday examples of stable oil and water emulsions include mayonnaise, milk, and butter. In these products, the oil in the form of fat is perfectly mixed into water. In the case of mayonnaise, it is the yolk of the egg that acts as the emulsifier that maintains the stability of the emulsion.
The average male human body is made up of approximately 60% water. The average female body is made up of approximately 50% water. Every time you consume oil, in any form, you are trying to mix oil and water. We’ve shown above how difficult that is.
When your body tries to digest oil that is not properly emulsified, it can only absorb a small amount because your body’s natural emulsifiers are limited in how much work they can do during the digestion process.
In the chart below, you can clearly see that the DHA in emulsified oil, represented by the darker line, is absorbed in greater quantities and at a greater speed than non-emulsified (capsular) oil (Raatz, Redmon, Bibus, Wimmergren, & Donadio, 2009).
By emulsifying oil with our SEO™ techniques before it is ingested, we’ve improved both the digestion and absorption qualities of the oil (Garaiova, et al., 2007). Our pre-emulsified oils quickly bypasses you’re body’s limited ability to emulsify oil and enhances the bioavailability of the oil (Raatz, Redmon, Bibus, Wimmergren, & Donadio, 2009). Research scientists have known this since the 1980s (Harris & Williams, 1989).
Some supplement manufacturers may understand this process but they try to cheat science with shortcuts. One shortcut is to mix the oil with other ingredients that have an emulsifying effect once the supplement makes it to your stomach. However, studies show that your body absorbs emulsified oil much better than oil that is simply mixed with other ingredients (Jain, Jain, Pohekar, & Thanki, 2013).
The bottom line is that your body absorbs pre-emulsified oils better because we’ve done all of the heavy lifting. Your body can skip the emulsifying step and move on to absorbing your supplement.
There are many helpful dietary supplements that provide a wide range of benefits when ingested. Unfortunately, a large number of those supplements have low bio-availability. That means they cannot easily be dissolved in water, the body can’t properly absorb them, and they are rapidly passed through the body.
Studies have shown that emulsifying supplements significantly increases the bioavailability of the supplement (Balakumar, Raghavan, Tamil selvan, Hari prasad, & Abdu, 2013).
SEO™ stands for self-emulsifying oils. It is the technique we use to create products that your body can easily absorb. By ingesting self-emulsifying oil, you’ve given your body a head start in absorbing your supplement.
Pharmagenx formulates both SEO™ natural oils and Quick™ Emulsions. They are both simple and efficient ways of helping your body absorb our supplements.
SEO™ natural oils are oils with other natural ingredients blended in to help the oil emulsify as soon as it comes in contact with water. Because it is pure oil, with no water added, we can create very concentrated doses that are quickly absorbed.
Our Quick™ emulsions are fully emulsified oil. In addition to adding natural ingredients to the oil to prepare it for emulsification, we also add water soluble vitamins and flavors. After we blend everything together the result is a creamy and delicious emulsion that is ready to drink.
Whether you are an extreme body builder, a high-performance athlete, or simply enjoy maintaining a healthy lifestyle, you can rely on the scientifically proven effectiveness of Pharmagenx SEO™ Natural Oils and our Quick™ Emulsions. Our products do what we say they do.
I’m often asked why I’m so passionate about my goal of creating the highest quality and most effective supplements on the market.
My passion comes from a lifetime of study, experience, and experimentation. I accomplished my goal by learning everything I could about how the body performs and how supplements can enhance that performance.
I’ve realized my dream. I love what I’ve built and I want you to be a part of it.
While attending college at the State University of New York College at Brockport I joined the swimming team. I was a skinny 140 pounds.
Over the Winter break of 1991 I set up a bench and a set of Weider Weights in a spare bedroom. All I did was lift and eat. I gained nearly 40 pounds. My strength improved and I was making progress. Still, I was watching my friends get bigger and I wanted the same results.
I finally saved up enough money to join Samsons Powerhouse Gym in Rochester, New York. It was there where I learned to love bodybuilding and training. I was lifting alongside Bob Chicherillo, Danny Pailla, and lots of other top-level amateur bodybuilders who worked out there every day.
Soon I was ready for the big stage. I competed in the 1993 and 1995 New York State Bodybuilding Championships, winning the Novice Heavyweight title in 1995. Then I went on to take 5th in the heavyweight division at the 1997 Border States competition in California.
After graduating from SUNY Brockport in 1995 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Health Science with a concentration in chemistry, I set my sights on being a master chemist. Wanting to leave New York for the West Coast, I bought a San Diego newspaper and began my job search.
When I came across a job listed as “Chemists Needed at Nutritional Company” I called and asked them to hold the job open until I could get there for an interview. To my surprise they agreed. So I sold everything I owned and used the $400 I raised to drive across the country for the interview. My early display of dedication earned me the job.
Over the next two years I learned the basics of supplement manufacturing. I had also formulated hundreds of products. Soon, I was looking for more. In 1997 I formed a consulting company and started making prototype formulas in my kitchen with a high-speed blender. That was the beginning. Today, my manufacturing and distribution company makes many of the most cutting-edge liquid supplements on the market.
After turning 40 and having not competed in bodybuilding since 1997, I was borderline obese. I was determined to take control of my body and my life. Over the next two years I transformed myself and took my body fat down from 25% to 4%. With my new body and renewed confidence I won the Light Heavyweight class at the 2012 NPC Mile High Natural Body Show competition in Colorado.
Shortly after my win in Colorado I suffered a severe rupture in my L4-L5, and L5-S1 disks. During my recovery I read as much as I could about my condition. That’s when I read a book that would change my life. It was Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance by Dr. Stuart McGill. I was doing it all wrong. I had the wrong motor patterns.
After four months of decompression and rehab I started training again but I had no balance or strength. Without a proper functioning nervous system the rest just does not work properly. So I started reading about the nervous system and muscle recruitment. I learned that I needed explosive exercises to improve my full-body neuromuscular response.
Knowledge is power. After discovering CrossFit Fortius I was transformed from someone who just believed in bodybuilding into someone who believes in training and using everything I can to get fit. I earned my USAW Olympic Weight Lifting certification and a CrossFit Level 1 Trainer Certification, and by early 2014 I’ll be a National Strength and Conditioning Association Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist.
So here is the training philosophy I’ve developed based on what I’ve learned throughout my career.
Bodybuilding movements that isolate specific muscles do cause significant hypertrophy, but they don’t lead to long-term overall mobility and health. I’m sure you’ve seen the bodybuilder who can lift enormous weight but struggles to bend down and tie their shoes.
The body is not engineered for us to “train a muscle.” The body is engineered for us to train “movement.” That’s why I believe that a training session should begin with full-body movements. The session can then progress to stationary strength training that incorporates multiple joints before moving on to isolation, or “bodybuilding” movements.
You are holding yourself back if you aren’t open to assimilate a variety of training methods. Try spinning, Bikram Yoga, Jujitsu, swimming, a track workout, Olympic lifting, or CrossFit. Keep doing the things that work for you and put aside what doesn’t. At least give them a try. Challenge yourself.
And finally: Learn, Learn, Learn. Broaden your horizons. Seek out new skills and certifications in areas that interest you. Because I believe in continuous learning, I’m sharing lots of helpful information and resources right here on the Pharmagenx website.