Ketosis is elicited through a ketogenic diet. It’s common for those suffering from certain medical conditions to be prescribed it. It’s also a very good weight loss and weight management tool by which many people swear.

The Ketogenic Diet

A ketogenic diet is structured entirely to elicit ketosis. Ketosis relies on you severely restricting your dietary carbohydrate intake. This means that a ketogenic diet plan will include very few carbs (generally 50g or below per day, which is the equivalent of a couple of bananas). You’ll also eat moderate amounts of protein, whilst taking the majority of your calories from healthy fats.

Common foods eaten on a ketogenic diet include meat, fish, butter, eggs, cheese, cream, oils (olive, sunflower, coconut, rapeseed, and so on), fatty greens like avocados, low carb vegetables like spinach, seeds, and nuts.

You’ll be leaving out heavy carbohydrate sources like grains, rice, sugar, beans, potatoes, milk, fruit, breakfast cereals, and most high-carb vegetables.

With this in place, your body will quickly use up your glycogen reserves, before entering the metabolic state of ketosis. At this point, your body will begin to turn fat into ketones, which will act as your main energy source.

Your body will become very efficient at creating and using ketones within a few days or weeks of entering ketosis. This will represent a great way of losing body fat. It also helps to lower insulin levels, which can improve insulin sensitivity and blood sugar balance.

The Science Behind Ketosis

Our bodies typically rely on glucose for fuel when we follow high-carb diets. Glucose comes from carbohydrates, including common sugars and starchy foods like bread and certain vegetables.

In restricting these food sources, you restrict your body’s glucose supply. This forces it to seek out alternative energy sources. It turns to fat, which can be broken down into ketones. When your body is using ketones rather than glucose for energy, it is in a state of ketosis.

We often experience ketosis outside of ketogenic diets. Periods of fasting or hunger, or bouts of strenuous physical effort, will often trigger it as our glucose supplies run out. However, a ketogenic diet will force your body to use ketones as the dominant energy supply.

Your body will produce two main ketone bodies during ketosis. These are acetoacetate and beta-hydroxybutyrate, though it will also produce smaller amounts of acetone. These provide the brain, heart, and muscles with energy in the absence of glucose.

Ketosis vs. Ketoacidosis

Ketosis can be dangerous in certain situations. Ketones can build up, lead to dehydration, and can change your blood’s chemical balance; it can become acidic, which can in turn cause coma or death. This is ketoacidosis.

Those suffering with diabetes can experience ketoacidosis (called diabetic ketoacidosis, or DKA) when they don’t take appropriate insulin doses, when they are sick or injured, or when they are dehydrated.

Ketoacidosis can happen to those without diabetes, too. It can occur because of alcoholism, starvation, or overactive thyroid function.

It generally won’t occur on a healthy low-carb diet where there are no additional health concerns.

This being said, there are some ketoacidosis symptoms to watch out for. These include dry mouth or excessive thirst, excessive urination, fatigue and lethargy, dry or flushed skin, stomach concerns, including vomiting and belly pains, breathing difficulties, bad breath, and confusion.

If you experience any of these symptoms when following a ketogenic diet, you should consult your medical provider immediately.

Ketosis For Weight Loss

A ketogenic diet can be perfect for losing weight or maintaining bodyfat levels. It can help you to burn through your body fat reserves, preserve lean muscle mass, whilst decreasing your chances of suffering from many diseases.

Studies have suggested that ketosis may be more effective for weight loss than low fat diets, though calorie intake will generally need to be restricted. They may also be good for reducing your appetite. In leveling out your blood sugar levels, it will stop energy crashes and hunger pangs, making it easier to maintain a calorie deficit.

It’s easier to naturally maintain a calorie deficit through ketosis, too, meaning that you won’t have to track calories to ensure that you are eating for weight loss (though, of course, you will have to track macronutrients, particularly carbohydrates, to ensure ongoing ketosis).

How Does Ketosis Work For Weight Loss?

There are a few mechanisms by which ketosis can help with weight loss.

Firstly, they inspire you to take in a lot of protein. Though fat will be your dominant macronutrient, you will still be eating far more protein than a standard Western diet will promote. High protein intake alone has been shown to aid in weight loss – it is a slow burning form of energy, diminishes hunger pangs, increases satiation, and promotes lean muscle mass growth.

Fat is also a slow burning energy source, further aiding satiation. Ketogenic diets also elicit positive changes in the hormones that regulate our appetites, including leptin and ghrelin, further suppressing hunger.

As we have seen, ketogenic diets can improve insulin sensitivity. They can do so to such an extent that they are often recommended for those suffering with diabetes as a way in which to manage their symptoms. This improved sensitivity can also improve energy utilization and boost your metabolism.

Some research suggests that a ketogenic diet may even decrease your ability to store fat. It may reduce lipogenesis, the process by which sugar is converted into fat. Without excess carbs, however, this can’t be done, and fat is then used as energy.

This leads us into increased fat burning potential. Ketogenic diets may slightly increase the amount of fat you burn, though the data is tentative here.

Finally, ketosis causes gluconeogenesis – it converts fat and protein into usable carbs for energy. This is a calorically intense process, which may mean that more calories are burned daily.

All of these combine to make a ketogenic diet potentially very effective for maintaining healthy body composition.

Health Benefits of Ketosis

Weight loss and management are far from the only uses of a ketogenic diet. There are plenty of health benefits to be gained from spending the majority of your time in a state of ketosis.

One of its main medical uses is in the prevention of seizures, which it has been proven to do ably. For this reason, doctors may prescribe a ketogenic diet for epileptic children. Epileptic adults may often also benefit from a low carb, high fat diet.

Research also suggests that ketosis can lead to a decreased risk of heart disease. Low carb diets have also been proven helpful in cases of metabolic syndrome, type II diabetes, insulin resistance, and potentially various forms of cancer, polycystic ovary syndrome, and nervous system and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Lou Gehrig’s (ALS), and Alzheimer’s disease.

Fans of ketosis often also cite the improved cognitive function and energy levels that comes from it.

Side Effects of Ketosis

As you might imagine of such a radical eating plan, there are some common side effects associated with ketosis.

Most of the side effects will come into play over the first week or so. This is often referred to as ‘keto flu’. This isn’t any kind of single condition, but rather refers to a group of symptoms that are likely due to sugar and carbohydrate withdrawal or changes to your gut bacteria and immune function as your body adjusts to using ketones for energy.

Signs of keto flu include headache, fatigue and brain fog, irritability and mood swings, nausea, stomach ache, and constipation, trouble sleeping (insomnia), sugar cravings, cramps, muscular fatigue and soreness, and bad breath.

Breastfeeding women should consider forgoing a ketogenic diet as it may affect lactation and milk supply.

Staying hydrated, especially using added electrolytes, can help with most of these symptoms. Many of these symptoms can also be mitigated by common ketosis supplements.

Ketogenic supplementation

There are plenty of supplements that can help you achieve ketosis faster, skipping that first week or two of bodily adjustment, whilst mitigating the symptoms of keto flu – KetoCharge is one such supplement.

Common ketogenic supplements include:

MCT Oil

MCTs (or medium-chain triglycerides) are very high quality fatty oils derived from coconuts. You can take it by spoon, stirred into coffee, or mixed into shakes or smoothies. It is easily digestible, leading to little to no cramps or bloating.

Aside from being a good quality fat, MCT oil can aid with satiation whilst also boosting cognitive output. They can boost energy levels whilst helping to keep you in ketosis.

Omega 3

High-quality fat sources are always a good idea on a ketogenic diet. Much as MCT oil can be effective for ketosis, so too can omega 3 fatty acids. Cod or krill oil are both good options. Both are rich in DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid).

Both have been shown to aid in lowering inflammation and diminishing the risk of heart disease. They can also help in decreasing insulin and inflammatory markers.

Electrolytes

We all need electrolytes. In fact, if you take part in regular exercise and/or find yourself sweating a lot, they are probably a good addition to your supplement routing. However, keto diets can be particularly susceptible to dehydration and electrolyte deficiency as your body works through its glycogen stores and loses water.

Your kidneys will flush the water out, along with the electrolytes sodium, potassium, and magnesium. This can lead to many of the main keto flu symptoms – nausea, cramps, fatigue, and so on.

Exogenous ketones

You can take exogenous ketones – that is, ketones from an outside source to top up your body’s natural output. This can give you a good energy boost, can keep on top of cravings, and keep you in ketosis far more easily than going without.

In rapidly boosting your ketone levels, you can switch into ketosis far quicker. This can help you to circumnavigate keto flu, getting rid of symptoms after just a day or two of beginning your ketogenic diet.

Vitamin D

Finally, vitamin D is a great supplement for those looking to follow a ketogenic diet.

Both vitamins D2 and D3 are key to maintaining health.

Vitamin D3 is naturally produced in the skin. It is triggered by sunlight or UV, meaning that those living in darker, colder countries would do well to supplement it. On the other hand, vitamin D2 can be found in many plants, especially mushrooms, making a vegetable-rich diet a very good idea.

You won’t often miss out on vitamin D as part of a ketogenic diet, especially if you take your few carbs from mushrooms and get plenty of sunlight. However, there is still a good reason to supplement with it.

Many ketogenic eating plans will be low in calcium. Vitamin D comes into play across many bodily functions. This includes calcium absorption. As calcium can help in maintaining immune health, cellular growth, and decreasing inflammation.

Make the most of the calcium you do have in your diet by taking plenty of vitamin D.

Written by Kate Harrison

Kate is one of our nutrition experts at PathMed and is also one of our in-house writers. There is little that gets past Kate when it comes to nutrition and she has a wealth of experience when it comes to fat loss and supplementation around losing weight. She is thorough in her research and is a real advocate for living a healthy lifestyle.

Thermogenesis is a natural process in the body. It involves using energy to create heat. Thermogenic supplements boost this, meaning that you use slightly more energy in the form of calories than you otherwise would be without taking the supplement. A thermogenic pre workout combines this with your usual pre workout.

There are plenty of good quality pre workout fat burners available on today’s market. Some are fantastic. They will help you hit your goals more easily and more efficiently than you would going it without them. Others are less effective, poorly backed up by scientific data, a waste of money or outright ruinous.

We’ve got our favorites, though – a handful of the best pre workout fat burners guaranteed to help you out. Any one of them will see you right.

Our 5 Best Pre Workout Fat Burners

Let’s take a look at the best pre-workout fat burners we could find…

BrutalForce Ripped Cutting Stack 

BrutalForce are a much-needed addition to the market. When most of us think of natural, legal steroid alternatives, we go straight to Crazy Bulk. However, their monopoly is over. BrutalForce have swept in to compete, to innovate, to give us more choice.

Their Ripped Cutting Stack is wonderful. It is designed to replicate the positive effects of several well-known, unhealthy, dangerous steroids, to a lesser degree, but completely safely. There are no harmful side effects, yet the stack delivers a great many benefits.

In the main, it does exactly what you would expect of a fat burner. It enables for more efficient fat loss, allowing you to make the most of a calorie deficit. It also helps to protect lean muscle mass, meaning minimal loss in hard fought for gains. 

BrutalForce’s Ripped Cutting Stack also does what you would want and expect of a pre workout. It gives a bit of an energy boost, though nothing too profound. Rather, it is great for improving endurance. As endurance can lag during a calorie deficit, this is incredibly useful. There is also an anti-inflammatory component to the formula, keeping you safe and allowing you to recover faster.

All the ingredients are entirely safe and natural. The whole stack is made up of four of BrutalForce’s best-known SARMs alternatives. SARMs are similar to steroids in the anabolic effects they elicit, and these natural alternatives do a good job of mimicking them.

It includes their CUTSR9, which is designed to boost fat loss whilst improving stamina and recovery. It also includes Andalean, which also aids fat loss. Andalean also helps to protect and even build lean muscle, and gives you plenty of energy to get you through tough training sessions. Ibutalean is the main anti-inflammatory component, leading to improved recovery and healing. It also works to promote hypertrophy, working in concert with Andalean. Finally, you get Cardalean, a fat burner and endurance enhancer which also improves vascularity and circulation.

The ingredients for each component are readily available through their website. Each formula contains the kinds of products you would expect to see: guarana, garcinia cambogia, bitter orange, and so on.

Blackwolf 

BlackWolf promise scientifically backed ingredients at clinically effective dosages with their pre workout fat burners. From what I can tell, they deliver on this promise very ably.

This means that you know can rest assured their supplements will contain everything you need them to, with good quality research and data backing them up, at doses that will actually make a difference to your goals.

The pre workout component is decent. I particularly like it as it gives no peak and crash. There is no post training bombing out. There are no jitters; there is no nervousness or central nervous system overload.

You get this lasting energy, both during and after each session, through a combination of ingredients aimed at boosting energy levels and eliciting heightened rates of thermogenesis. Mostly, we are looking at good amounts of l-citrulline, dynamine, creatine and caffeine, all of which contribute something special.

They will all help you to power through your workouts. Alongside a good taurine and l-tyrosine hit, they will also help you to maintain mental clarity with heightened focus. This is key to making the most out of your training and warding off post training brain fog, which we have all suffered through at some point.

Finally, you will see an improvement to your endurance. Beta alanine, betaine, L-citrulline and AAKG all work together to keep you going no matter how gruelling or how frequent your training sessions are.

They also offer a stimulant free version for those of us who like to put evening shifts in at the gym then go home to sleep straight afterwards. Their Fruit Punch flavour pre workout has no caffeine, but still gives you the gentle, buzz-free energy you need to work out properly. This comes from DMAE and huperzine, which gives you extra clarity and focus.

Blackwolf give you three delicious flavors from which to choose.

PrimeShred

PrimeShred’s pre workout fat burners offer ‘fast, whole body fat burning’.

This is an odd way to phrase it. The only kind of fat burning is whole body. There is no such thing as spot reduction – the idea has been thoroughly debunked.

The main determinants in where your fat loss will occur are gender and genetics, not supplementation or anything like that. If you are predisposed to burn fat around your middle (as women usually are), this is where you will burn it from. If you are predisposed to burn fat around your legs and bum (as men usually are), this is where you will burn it from.

This gripe aside, PrimeShred have made a fantastic product, here. Though it’s an odd way to put it, their pre workout fat burners really will bring about whole body fat burning when used in the presence of a good calorie deficit and active lifestyle.

It accelerates your natural fat-burning process through thermogenesis, making your calorie deficit as effective and efficient as possible. It also switches on specific fat burning-hormones. These should enable you to break down stubborn, stored fat.

So much for fat burning. How about the pre workout side of things?

It should give you a boost to both your energy levels and mental clarity. As with all the products on this list, this is very welcome. We all experience increased fatigue and brain fog on a calorie deficit. Anything that can undo this and get us back in the game is perfect.

You get good doses of green tea extract, l-tyrosine, l-theanine, rhodiola rosea root, caffeine anhydrous, cayenne pepper, DMAE, green coffee, bioperine and vitamin B with each serving. These are all common ingredients in this kind of product. Each brings something good to bear, improving energy levels, giving greater mental clarity, and eliciting greater rates of thermogenesis.

Everything is vegan and vegetarian friendly and it’s a product that we whole heartedly endorse as a high quality pre-workout fat burner.

Juiced Upp Thermotone 

I want to round out this list with a couple of offerings from Juiced Upp, a fantastic new supplements company. We’ll begin with Thermotone – which, as you might have guessed from the name, warms you up (elicits thermogenesis) to get you toned (lose body fat whilst retaining or even building a little extra muscle.)

It can also improve cholesterol and blood sugar levels and boost your immune system, keeping you healthy as you reach for your goals. Blood sugar is vital on a weight loss program – keeping it stable will stop you from getting hunger pangs and cravings. Immune health often suffers during a calorie deficit on an active lifestyle.

All the ingredients are completely natural, and the formula as a whole should be largely free from any major side effects. The ingredients are of the kind and quality you would expect of a top shelf pre workout fat burner, too.

For example, it contains evodiamine, a compound isolated from Bob’s Red Mill. It is a very effective thermogenic ingredient that also shows tentative promise as a mild appetite suppressant. This is backed up by the inclusion of both green tea, a normal ingredient for this kind of supplement, and cocoa powder, a less commonly seen yet incredibly clever addition.

Green tea speeds up the metabolism and gives you more energy. It is also a rich source of polyphenols, powerful antioxidants that can boost immune health. Cocoa, meanwhile, can help to balance your blood sugar levels, keeping cravings at bay, and lower cholesterol. It’s a fantastically witty, useful ingredient to use in this context.

Juiced Upp also use gugglesterones, another ingredient you don’t often see on the supplement market. However, it should be used more – it is a fantastic plant steroid that has been proven capable of raising your body’s key thyroid hormones. Your thyroid function is vital to your metabolic health. Keeping it optimized will give you far more energy, a far greater potential to burn fat, and the ability to properly break down protein, fat, and carbohydrates.

Finally, we get a good dose of chromium and potassium with Thermotone. Chromium further helps to balance blood sugar levels. It is also key for lipid metabolism – it helps you to burn through fat. Meanwhile, potassium helps to regulate your body’s metabolism. It is also key to triggering muscle contraction, giving you health and athletic benefits.

It is a solid, clever formula, well put together and is another supplement very worthy of your consideration.

Juiced Upp Burn Boost

To round off our list of the best pre-workout fat burning supplements there is Burn Boost, our second offering from Juiced Upp. It helps keep your body’s fat-metabolization at optimal levels through a clever mixture of vitamins, minerals, botanicals, and herbal extracts.

In fact, Juiced Upp claim that a single scoop of Burn Boost powder every day will have you burning an extra 200 calories, giving you a monthly deficit of around 6,000 calories. This should lead to a good 21-22 pounds of fat loss per month.

Take this with a pinch of salt. I always hate claims like this. They undermine the golden rule of weight loss – you need a clean diet with a built-in calorie deficit.

They also undermine good practice in weight loss speed. You shouldn’t try to lose more than 1-3 pounds per week. For most people, and definitely those who aren’t above a BMI of 30-35, this should be more like 1-2 pounds. Anything else is either fluid or, worse, muscle mass.

You cannot lose 21-22 pounds of fat per month by taking Burn Boost.

However, if you take it whilst maintaining a calorie deficit and maintaining an active lifestyle, you should hit a few pounds per week easily enough, supercharged by Burn Boost’s fantastic formula. You will also have an easier time finding the energy to hit a good workout.

The energy comes mostly from the stimulants guarana and caffeine, both of which also contribute to health and weight loss.

Burn Boost also contains a rogue’s gallery of ‘Ls’. It delivers l-glutamine, l-isoleucine and l-leucine, all of which have been linked with weight loss and decreased waist circumference, and l-valine, which promotes tissue repair, including muscle. You also get l-theanine, a well-known cognitive enhancer and appetite suppressant, and l-taurine, which will go together with the guarana and caffeine to give you a huge energy boost.

You will also find your appetite diminished by ginkgo biloba, a natural suppressant.

Coenzyme Q10 kicks in here, too, helping you to maintain optimized natural metabolic processes.

These are just a few of the ingredients, but you get the picture. You will burn fat more easily, more efficiently, with more energy and a smaller appetite by taking Burn Boost.

Do Pre Workout Fat Burners Work?

We have two criteria here by which to judge a good pre workout fat burner.

Firstly, it will need to have a good pre-workout formula. This means it should contain hopefully several ingredients that will give your training a boost. It should give you improved energy, stamina and/or strength, perhaps improved vascularity, and hopefully improved recovery.

Then it needs to be a good fat burner. This means that it needs to contain some kind of thermogenic compounds. These won’t work outside of a calorie deficit. No fat burner can outdo too much intake. However, in the presence of a calorie deficit, a thermogenic ingredient can keep your metabolic rate functioning optimally, allowing you to make the most out of your cut.

In this regard, pre workout fat burners can work very well. They won’t turn you into Superman in the gym. They won’t allow you to shed weight whilst eating whatever you like. However, they will enhance an already decent training and nutrition plan.

How To Choose A Good Pre Workout Fat Burner

Everything boils down to the ingredients lists. A good pre workout fat burner will contain a mixture of thermogenic compounds and ingredients designed to improve your gym performance. We’ve seen most of them in the products featured on our list today.

Stimulants like caffeine and guarana are always good. These tick both boxes, eliciting thermogenesis whilst also improving performance. Amino acids are always a good shout. Vitamins and minerals will always be useful, though they aren’t a must have. Then there are myriad other performance, metabolism, recovery and health enhancing ingredients. Most manufacturers will list their active ingredients alongside descriptions of what they do.

As long as there are a good few for each purpose – fat burning and performance enhancing – you are likely onto something good.

Always make sure that ingredients are natural and clearly labelled, with the doses clearly shown.

What To Avoid When Buying Pre Workout Fat Burners

There are good supplements and bad ones, healthy and unhealthy ones. Obviously, we’ve only contained safe, high quality products in our list. We’ve weeded out anything you don’t want.

This includes snake oil – products whose ingredients are useless. These will be a waste of money, doing nothing for you. You can tell a product like this by their ingredients list. If something doesn’t list its ingredients, don’t buy it – you have no way of knowing what effective ingredients are included, or the doses involved. Also skip anything that doesn’t contain the usual suspects – ingredients like those included in our list above. 

However, there are worse things out there than simple uselessness. Some supplements will be actively dangerous. With this in mind, stay away from anything that contains the following ingredients:

• Dinitrophenol (DNP) is a heavy hitting metabolism booster that can be fatal. It is also highly illegal, so if you come across a product claiming to contain it, report it to the relevant authorities. Do not be tempted to buy.
• Ephedra increases your blood pressure and heart rate as well as helping you to lose weight. Increases to both will put you at risk of chronic conditions such as heart disease and stroke.
• M-synephrine also increases blood pressure and heart rate, though less noticeably than ephedra. It can be safe enough by itself but can be very dangerous when combined with stimulants such as caffeine. It can also cross the blood-brain barrier, so you really don’t want to be putting it in your body. It’s also often sold as p-synephrine or o-synephrine, so be careful of these, too.

Check for health warnings on all supplement containers. Also consult your doctor if you’re unsure about a supplement and/or if you have any underlying health conditions.

FAQs

Are fat burners the same as pre-workouts?

No, they are generally separate products. Fat burners will help to improve fat burning, as the name suggests. Pre workouts are designed to give you an energy and performance boost during training. However, they can be combined. Combining them individually may be a bad idea as each will contain stimulants. However, pre workout fat burners will give you the effects of each with all ingredients dosed appropriately.

Are pre workouts with thermogenics safe?

Yes, pre workout fat burners with thermogenic compounds are completely safe. They are designed to give you many of the benefits of harder drugs with none of the side effects. All the products in this list are safe and entirely natural.

This being said, many pre workouts will contain stimulants like caffeine and guarana. You should therefore adjust your regular caffeine intake appropriately, drinking less tea and coffee throughout the day. If you get any jitters, consider a stimulant-free variety.

If you have any concerns, always talk to your medical provider before taking any supplements.

Can we take fat burners and pre-workouts together?

In theory, you should be able to take separate pre workouts and thermogenic fat burners. However, it’s not advisable. Both will likely contain stimulants like caffeine. Taking each will probably give you far too much. A combined pre workout fat burner will be your best bet. It will be entirely safe and appropriately dosed. 

When should I take fat burners?

Fat burners are generally best first thing in the morning, around half an hour before your first meal or workout. However, pre workout fat burners are obviously designed to be taken before training. Again, thirty minutes is a good rule of thumb – take your pre workout supplements half an hour before you want to train.

This being said, all products will differ. Each will have their own guidelines which you should follow.

Overall Top Pick

There is no bad pick on this list. There are hundreds of pre workouts and fat burners out there, if not thousands. It’s easy to combine them or to find products aimed at doing both, as those in our list all do.

We have chosen just a small handful of supplements. They are the best of the best. Each will serve you well.

However, for my money, if it’s my choice, I would go for PrimeShred. Their ingredients list is incredibly strong. Their reputation is fantastic. Everything is entirely natural and vegan (I’m a lifelong vegetarian, so this means a lot to me – I’m sure it will for many other people). I also like a lot of stimulants in my products – the caffeine, green tea and green coffee add a little extra appeal.

It’s a great product, topping a list of winners by a whisker.

Written by John Dixon

John is a personal trainer and part time (although he might say full time) writer here at PathMed. He uses his knowledge of fitness and physiotherapy to deliver real insight in to our reviews and health guides.

John’s military background also brings a real-life perspective to his work.

But does testosterone make you taller?

It’s a question plenty of people wonder at. There are fair reasons for thinking it might be the case, as we’ll get into below. In addition, there is a popular assumption lying beneath it: we all associate masculinity with height, we all think taller men are more masculine, so it makes sense that people’s imaginations may inspire the link between testosterone and height. However, the short, over-simplified answer is no, of course it doesn’t.

This belies the question’s complexity, however. To truly answer the question, with nuance and precision, we need to know exactly what testosterone does.

Testosterone 101

We all need testosterone. It is crucial to healthy functioning. Everybody produces it to a greater or lesser degree, though men will typically have much higher levels than women. In men, the testes primarily produce it; in women, it is made primarily in the ovaries.

High testosterone levels can improve your muscular strength and bone health, help you to build lean muscle mass, lose body fat, and boost your overall athletic ability. It plays a key role in mental wellbeing, giving you more energy, a more positive outlook, diminishing the effects of stress, and allowing for better sleep and recovery. It will also boost your sex drive and sexual function, your sperm production, and your immune health.

A lack of testosterone will diminish all of these aspects, especially in men. It will make it hard for you to keep body fat levels low and muscle mass high, no matter how much you train or how cleanly you eat. It will leave you weaker, with less energy, more open to illness and infection, with diminished libido and sexual function.

Many people invest in natural testosterone boosting supplements as a precaution against this.

In addition to the above, testosterone is also crucial during puberty. This is where our question of the day gets a little murkier: high testosterone levels during puberty have been linked, if weakly, to increased height. 

It is also responsible for muscular and bone health, facial and body hair development, and deepening of the voice.

Because of all of this, it is important to keep testosterone levels optimized during puberty when the body is developing. 

It is also important to keep testosterone levels high thereafter, especially after the age of around thirty. At this point, we begin to lose testosterone. Men will typically lose about 1% of their total testosterone output per year as they age after thirty.

However, it is highly unlikely, to say the least, that testosterone levels after puberty will affect your height. You are not going to grow an extra couple of inches in your thirties by optimizing output or taking exogenous testosterone.

Will testosterone make you taller?

As we have seen, testosterone can contribute to you growing taller during puberty. High levels can lead to increased height. Low levels can lead to impaired height.

However, the evidence is a little sketchy, here. There is a very limited amount of evidence firmly linking testosterone levels to height at any stage.

This being said, high testosterone levels are associated with high human growth hormone (HGH) output. As you might have guessed from its name, HGH is involved with growth. Therefore, there is a logical inference – high testosterone levels mean high HGH levels, and high HGH levels mean more growth.

This is the basis of most people’s claims that testosterone can make you taller.

However, this kind of intuition often leads us to bark up the wrong tree, as becomes apparent when we look at the actual scientific data. The link between testosterone and height is a case in point. Most medical studies have found an inverse link between them: that is, higher testosterone output has been linked with decreased height.

High testosterone levels have been found to inhibit height development, whilst low levels have a growth-prompting effect.

In fact, supplemental testosterone therapy has been used as a treatment for excessive height in pubescent boys in medical research. It was found to be a very effective measure at limiting final height.

This suggests that both naturally produced testosterone and exogenous testosterone can inhibit height.

But HGH still increases height…

The mechanism underlying the assumption that high testosterone levels lead to increased height still stands. Human growth hormone does indeed lead to increased height.

Many people mix HGH and testosterone up with one another. Those in the know all too often see the correlation between the two and make assumptions – as above, high testosterone levels mean high HGH levels, and high HGH levels mean more growth.

However, they both play incredibly different roles, only overlapping slightly. They serve similar roles in muscle growth, but completely different roles with regards vertical growth. In addition, men and women both produce plenty of HGH, whilst only men produce high amounts of testosterone – in both, HGH leads to vertical growth, with testosterone not aiding (and, as above, even inhibiting) height at all.

So, what does affect your height?

I want to be clear about one thing: you cannot grow taller, not in any real sense. Outside of a good pair of lifters, insoles, or heels, you are the height you are, with only a tiny amount of wriggle room (which I’ll go into below). Your bones are the length they are, and nothing can change them.

There are a few things that affect your height, none of which are within your control.

Firstly, hormones will play a role in determining how tall you grow. They affect the bone formation by the growth plates. Testosterone will play a role here, as we have seen, as will estrogen. HGH comes into play in a very major way, too.

Growth hormones are produced in the pituitary glands. Certain medical conditions can impair their production, which will affect a person’s height. Congenital deficiencies can lead to slower growth rate in children and adolescents, as well as overall height achieved.

Sex is also a major factor in determining height, as you are no doubt aware. Men will generally grow taller in the end, though it will take a little longer. In fact, the average man will grow to around 5-6 inches taller than the average woman.

Then there is DNA, by far the most important factor in determining height. You have no control over this.

There are thought to be around 700 separate genes that play a role in height determination. Some will affect growth hormone output. Others will affect the growth plates. Certain genetic disorders, such as Down Syndrome, can affect overall height, too. 

How do you get taller?

You cannot really control your height. As above, if you’re worried about your height, a good set of footwear is your best bet. Your DNA is immutable. It is set, and in turn it dictates your height.

However, I mentioned above that there was a little bit of wriggle room. It really is a small thing, but you can do a few things to make yourself slightly taller.

I’m on the short side – I’m only five foot eight inches, or 172 cm. My brother is slightly naturally taller than me, at more like 173 cm (trust me, at our height, every cm counts!) However, people generally think I’m the taller one (very relatively speaking!)

Why is this?

I stand up straight and my brother doesn’t. I lift weights, hold multiple black belts, and practice yoga. My brother does very little exercise. Therefore, I have better posture. My core and lower back strength, my physical mindfulness, my improved joint mobility all give me an advantage. The inverse is true for my brother – he stoops, losing precious centimeters.

So, if you want to improve your height, work on your posture. Train regularly and stay mindful of how you hold yourself.

Physical presence can also give the illusion of height. I am physically confident and relatively well built, so people assume I am taller than I actually am.

This takes good training. It also takes adequate sleep and nutrition. Try to get 7-9 hours of sleep per night, as this is where growth happens. You will also need plenty of healthy fat and protein, as well as lots of fruit and veg, to build the muscle mass and connective tissue needed to increase your height.

An active, healthy lifestyle, therefore, is your best bet for improving your height, albeit very marginally.

To Summarize

Unfortunately, there is little you can do to influence your height. If there was, we would all be six foot two paragons of masculinity. The fact that we aren’t isn’t due to height factors being some kind of well-kept secret. It is because the kinds of natural variations that actually affect our height are out of our control.

Testosterone will not make you taller. In fact, as we have seen, high testosterone and height may share an inverse correlation. Growth hormone, sex, and DNA are all that count in growing your bones. Their length will determine your height.

You can maximize your height. Not stooping, keeping your chin up, shoulders back, and lower back and core tight and strong will make every inch you’ve got count. You can’t increase your maximum height, but you can achieve it.

So, if you want to get taller, limit your expectations, sort your diet out, hit the gym, practice yoga, and get plenty of sleep.

Written by John Dixon

John is a personal trainer and part time (although he might say full time) writer here at PathMed. He uses his knowledge of fitness and physiotherapy to deliver real insight in to our reviews and health guides.

John’s military background also brings a real-life perspective to his work.

A staple of traditional Indian medicine, ashwagandha (aka ‘Indian ginseng’ or ‘Indian winter cherry’) is known as a great healing compound for a great many ailments. In Ayurveda, it is considered a Rasayana. This means that it is known for aiding longevity and long-lasting health.

Modern research has borne this out to a great extent. It has shown ashwagandha to be a potent adaptogen, able to diminish the effects of stress and anxiety, able to improve immune function and sexual health, and to improve and optimize testosterone levels.

You will therefore often find it in testosterone boosters. These will be largely aimed at men, who typically produce far more testosterone, and benefit from it more profoundly, than women. 

However, ashwagandha can grant a great many health benefits to women, too. Many of these are separate from testosterone, but not all are. So, the question arises, can ashwagandha boost testosterone levels in women, and, if so, is this a good thing?

Can ashwagandha increase testosterone levels in women?

Plenty of women might hesitate to supplement with ashwagandha. Though it has plenty of beneficial qualities outside of its ability to help in optimizing testosterone output, it may still seem unattractive. The fear is that it will bring about masculinizing effects – images of body and facial hair growth, deep voices, and other such overtly masculine traits are potentially off-putting.

However, realistically these fears are largely baseless.

Ashwagandha is not a ‘testosterone booster’; rather, as above, it’s an adaptogen. This means that it will have different effects on different people.

As sex is one of the biggest differences between people, this means quite profound differences in ashwagandha’s role for men and women.

It will largely affect your endocrine system – the system that regulates hormone creation. Realistically, it will balance your hormones. In men, this often means increasing levels of testosterone, especially where they are depleted. In women, this will mean better regulation of oestrogen levels.

Ashwagandha is also an abundant source of phytochemicals. These are plant-based compounds, and they are responsible for a lot of ashwagandha’s benefits. They underpin its healing properties, in short. In simple terms, they will improve your overall wellbeing.

They won’t spike a woman’s testosterone levels, but they will do an awful lot of good.

What Ashwagandha Can Do For You

Ashwagandha is generally beneficial for everyone, for a wide variety of reasons. Some of these are universal. Others are specific to women. They are all worth paying attention to.

Firstly, ashwagandha can relieve the symptoms of menopause, making them perfect for any woman in the 40-60 age range, allowing for outliers.

In fact, menopause symptoms can occur outside the onset of menopause itself. These can include hot flashes and night sweats, irregular weight and weight gains, irregular menstrual cycles, and vaginal dryness.

In balancing hormonal output by improving endocrinal health, ashwagandha can help here. It can keep oestrogen levels normalized. It can also reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which will aid in balancing mood and overall health, and can improve blood circulation.

In reducing cortisol levels, ashwagandha represents a great stress reliever.

Most of us could do with this in our daily lives. Women are about twice as prone to anxiety as men, according to the scientific literature, making the need to reduce cortisol that much more pressing for them.

Ashwagandha mimics the effects of GABA, a neurotransmitter. GABA’s role is to block nerve cells impulses within the brain. Low levels are associated with anxiety and stress; high levels are associated with calm. By mimicking GABA, ashwagandha has been shown to be able to reduce cortisol levels by as much as 30%. In doing so, anxiety and stress will lower, and mood will improve, as will overall perceptions of wellbeing.

This endocrinal effect will also help thyroid health. Hypothyroidism (under-active thyroid) is pretty common, especially as we age. Even thyroid output that is low without being medically problematic can still be a challenge. Either can lead to weight gains, lethargy and fatigue, muscular weakness, hair loss, constipation, and irregular menstrual cycles.

In helping to balance function within the thyroid gland, ashwagandha can help you to secrete more of the thyroid hormone, reversing these issues.

It can also improve sexual function in both men and women. Inhibited libidos, difficulty in achieving orgasm, reduced arousal levels, and vaginal dryness are all common symptoms. Ashwagandha can lead to improved lubrication, satisfaction and arousal, with better, more intense orgasms.

There are also some very worthwhile external, physical benefits to be gained from including ashwagandha in your supplement regime.

Firstly, it can promote healthy skin. As an antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and antibacterial compound, it can improve skin health a great deal.

Its antioxidant properties can ward against oxidative stress from free radicals, which is responsible for much of the aging process. As an anti-inflammatory, it can lead to a smoother, healthier looking complexion. Its antimicrobial and antibacterial properties will help see off acne and other skin infections.

You can take it as a supplement or even use ashwagandha topically to experience these benefits.

These same properties also make it great for your hair. In helping your skin, it will keep your scalp healthy. Ashwagandha also contains the amino acid tyrosine, which is known for stimulating melanin production. Melanin is what gives your hair its color, so it is theorized that ashwagandha can help in preventing premature greying.

It also stimulates the androgen hormone DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone), which promotes healthy hair growth. For women, this can be particularly effective in combatting postnatal hair loss.

Finally, ashwagandha can lead to improved sleep quality. Modern life is ruinous to our sleep patterns. An over reliance on caffeine, busy work, home and social schedules, bombardment by social media and advertising, and a hundred other things raise our stress levels and diminish our ability to get proper sleep.

Ashwagandha has been used for millennia as an aid to healthy sleep. It has been shown in modern studies to aid insomnia patients in improving sleep quality and efficiency, whilst decreasing anxiety.

What To Watch Out For With Ashwagandha

Ashwagandha is safe for most people, with few, if any, noted side effects. As we have seen, women will not develop masculine characteristics by taking it.

This being said, there are a few things to be careful about. Though it is natural, safe, and pretty innocuous for most of us, you should seek medical supervision when taking it if any of the following apply:

• You are suffering with some form of autoimmune condition, as ashwagandha’s immune boosting properties come from increasing white blood cell count. This can be of concern if you are already taking medicine to improve your white blood cell count, or if you suffer with an overactive immune system.
• You are pregnant or breastfeeding, as studies on ashwagandha’s safety and effects are inconclusive on both groups. Unless your doctor is sure you are OK to take it, you might want to skip ashwagandha until your child is weened.
• You have low blood pressure (hypotension) or low blood sugar (hypoglycaemia). One of the main benefits of ashwagandha is that it can lower both. This is healthy and good for most people but can be of concern if you are already on the low side for either.

The Bottom Line

As we have seen, ashwagandha really is as good as its hype, if not a bit better. It can bring numerous health benefits to anyone, including a few of specific use to women.

You should take it if you think it can help.

It will not raise your testosterone levels. It will not cause you to develop masculine characteristics, will not erode your womanhood or femininity, and will only benefit your overall health and wellbeing.

Written by Kate Harrison

Kate is one of our nutrition experts at PathMed and is also one of our in-house writers. There is little that gets past Kate when it comes to nutrition and she has a wealth of experience when it comes to fat loss and supplementation around losing weight. She is thorough in her research and is a real advocate for living a healthy lifestyle.

It plays a key role in sexual drive and libido, energy, physical strength and muscular development, and immune health, among other things. For men, it brings about sexual development and is central to long term health and physical and mental wellbeing. It helps to maintain healthy bone and muscle mass, regulate fat storage and use, produce red blood cells, and maintain sexual function.

We can raise our testosterone naturally using certain vitamins, minerals, herbs and supplements. Plenty of people tout the amino acid l-arginine as a great natural testosterone booster, though the evidence for its efficacy is inconclusive. Today, we are going to look to answer the question to the best we can – ‘does l-arginine increase testosterone?

Low Testosterone

Most women will have adequate testosterone levels. These will be quite low, which is all that is needed. However, plenty of men suffer with low testosterone. Men’s levels peak in early adulthood, so around the early to mid twenties. Then they begin to diminish – men end up losing about 1% of their natural testosterone levels year on year after about the age of thirty.

More drastic drops in testosterone can lead to clinically low testosterone levels, which will have a lot of negative effects on your health and wellbeing. Around 2% of men have low testosterone. However, plenty more have suboptimal levels – they could improve their naturally occurring levels, benefitting greatly as they do so.

Low testosterone can lead to conditions like decreased libido and erectile dysfunction (ED), increased levels of body fat and a loss in muscle mass, or inability to build new muscle mass, reduced bone density, fatigue, gynecomastia, or swelling of the breast tissue, and often a loss of body hair. You might find yourself becoming anaemic, with low red blood cell counts, and you may experience fertility issues. 

Low testosterone levels can also greatly harm your mental wellbeing, bringing about low mood, anxiety, irritability and depression, as well as difficulty with focus, concentration, drive, and memory.

Low testosterone can be caused by a few things. Most often, it will be as a result of some form of health condition or drug use. Certain medications can diminish testosterone levels, as can excessive alcohol consumption and illicit drug use.

However, there are plenty of vitamins, herbs, and supplements that can help to raise your testosterone. These are good for anybody looking to optimize their health, energy levels and athletic capabilities. 

L-Arginine and Supplementation

If you have low testosterone, you may need some form of testosterone replacement therapy. This will be something like an injection, gel or implant. They will add exogenous testosterone to your body.

Herbs and supplements, however, work to stimulate your body into naturally producing more of its own, endogenous testosterone. They are perfect for anybody looking to spike their levels a little, with no side effects, to make use of the many health benefits of maintaining optimal testosterone levels.

Few supplements have been studied rigorously, at least not in human subjects. There is a lot of conflicting data as to their efficacy. This is where we find l-arginine – many people tout it as a great testosterone booster, whilst the scientific community remains unsure.

What is L-Arginine?

L-arginine is a naturally occurring amino acid produced in the human body. The body uses it to increase blood flow, which is where most of its purported efficacy lies. It is also found in animal food products like red meat, dairy, poultry, and fish.

In the body, l-arginine is converted into nitric oxide. This nitric oxide opens blood vessels wider, thus causing improved blood flow and nutrient transportation.

Some animal models have suggested that l-arginine supplementation may help to increase testosterone levels. However, no human trial data validates this claim. It is also thought that l-arginine doesn’t directly raise testosterone levels. Rather, the increased blood flow it brings about can lead to greater energy levels, especially cognitive energy levels, whilst treating ED.

L-arginine can also raise levels of growth hormone, which should lead to improved muscle mass. As low testosterone levels can result in impaired muscle growth, this too can be very useful.

Thus, it doesn’t so much raise testosterone as help to mitigate some of the symptoms of low testosterone. This is still very useful, but it doesn’t represent a reliable testosterone boost as most people would want it to.

There is also no agreed-upon correct dose for l-arginine for ED. If you are looking at trying it out, it may take a little experimentation. Talk to your healthcare provider before you begin taking it and always follow their advice.

What Is L-Arginine Good For?

L-arginine can be a great ally in tackling certain medical conditions. People use it generally to improve blood flow. Therefore, it is a good supplementary treatment for things like chest pain and high blood pressure (especially during pregnancy).

It is generally agreed that l-arginine is potentially effective for:

• Sexual performance: A daily dose of between 2.5 and 5 grams of l-arginine can improve sexual performance and sensitivity. It can help to improve sexual function in those experiencing ED, supplementing prescription medication.
• Angina, or chest pain: L-arginine can mitigate symptoms of angina whilst improving quality of life and exercise tolerance. However, angina is accompanied by a narrowing of the blood vessels, which l-arginine has been shown unable to reverse.
• High blood pressure: Daily doses of l-arginine can lower blood pressure. It can do this across the board, both for those with healthy and high blood pressure, and for diabetics and non-diabetics alike.
• Peripheral arterial disease: Oral or IV doses of l-arginine can improve blood flow to the limbs. This is actually great for anyone, improving circulation and athletic performance. However, it is particularly useful for those suffering with peripheral arterial disease, or a narrowing of the blood vessels that restricts blood flow to the extremities.

As you can see, l-arginine has some very definite benefits. It has some medical uses, is generally quite safe to use, and can work wonders for some. It can help to lower blood pressure, which is always good. It can also be used to mitigate the effects of low testosterone levels, potentially easing symptoms of ED whilst enabling for higher growth hormone creation.

However, it doesn’t actually increase testosterone levels.

Moreover, there are some side effects to be wary of.

These include nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhoea, bloating, gout, airway inflammation, worsening asthma symptoms, headaches, and triggering allergy responses.

It probably isn’t safe for those who have ongoing heart issues, such as recent heart attack or stroke, as it has been linked with an increased risk of death.

Should You Take L-Arginine As A Supplement?

If you suffer with any of the above symptoms which l-arginine is known to be good for – angina, high blood pressure, ED – then by all means take l-arginine. Consult your doctor first, especially if you are on an existing course of treatment. However, it should be of help.

L-arginine shouldn’t be taken on its own purely for raising testosterone levels. As above, it can help to offset some of the effects of low testosterone. It likely won’t raise your testosterone levels – there is a great dearth in scientific evidence regards its efficacy in this regard.

Many testosterone supplements make use of it. This makes sense. As other ingredients in their formulas work to boost testosterone levels, the l-arginine they include will ease ED and potentially help you to grow a little more muscle.

However, plenty of testosterone supplements forego its use entirely. Why attack the side effects when you can treat the root cause, after all? Lots of all-natural testosterone boosters rely on a stable of far more effective, far more scientifically valid ingredients to achieve their ends.

For example, TestoPrime a favorite supplement of mine, has a great formula for naturally optimizing testosterone levels and is completely free from l-arginine – without losing any potency at all.

TestoPrime is good for any adult, especially those suffering the effects of low testosterone. It will, of course, be far more effective for men, but will be equally good for women. It should help to raise your natural levels of testosterone. In this way, TestoPrime should give you a good range of benefits, from improved energy levels, improved sleep quality, greater athletic capability and body composition (more muscle, less fat, in short) and improved overall health, including immune function and lower blood pressure. 

As with all such natural supplements, you don’t need any kind of prescription to take TestoPrime – it is readily available to purchase from their website. Nevertheless, if you are struggling with any of the symptoms of low blood pressure, you should consult with your doctor. They can screen for any underlying health conditions and may want to undertake medical treatment for low testosterone in conjunction with your supplementation.

Luckily, plenty of physicians have backed TestoPrime – it is a natural yet potent way to optimize your testosterone levels. It uses ashwagandha, D-aspartic acid, ginseng, fenugreek, green tea, b and d vitamins, zinc, and bioperine to achieve this – all far more potent, useful, proven, and relevant ingredients than l-arginine.

Written by Kate Harrison

Kate is one of our nutrition experts at PathMed and is also one of our in-house writers. There is little that gets past Kate when it comes to nutrition and she has a wealth of experience when it comes to fat loss and supplementation around losing weight. She is thorough in her research and is a real advocate for living a healthy lifestyle.

Why do this?

Well, quite simply, it’s hard to make athletic progress and elicit hypertrophy outside of a calorie surplus – you have to eat more than your body needs. We call this a ‘bulk’. Inevitably, though much of this extra intake will go to fueling adaptation, some will also be stored as body fat. 

For every bulk, there usually has to be a cut. This way you get to build muscle whilst keeping your bodyfat levels within healthy bounds.

Cutting

The only way to get a good cut going is to eat a calorie deficit – which means to eat less than your body needs in terms of energy. Preferably, you will do this whilst still keeping protein and fat levels quite high, so that you can maintain muscle mass and keep training hard. Broadly speaking, a daily deficit of 500 calories should lead to around a weekly weight loss of 1 lb, or 0.5 kg.

If you need 2400 calories per day to maintain your current weight, you should eat 1900 calories per day in order to lose a pound per week (or half a kilo). You can find your ideal number of calories using a simple online metabolic calculator.

This scales upwards. For instance, if you eat 1400 calories per day, you will lose two pounds, or a kilogram, per week.

This isn’t always a good idea. It especially isn’t if you need 2400 calories per day. Such a drastic cut will lead to muscle loss, as your body metabolizes your muscle for energy. However, if you need 3400 calories per day, for example, eating 2400 may be OK – this should be enough calories to allow you enough protein to maintain muscle, and so on.

You can build this deficit a couple of ways. Firstly, you can simply eat less. Secondly, you can do more, thus burning more calories.

A combination of the two is generally a good idea, especially if you’re already active – the calories you use through training will already be accounted for in your metabolic rate.

Keep this deficit in place and you’re onto a winner.

PhenQ – Our No.1 Cutting Supplement

All of the supplements on our top 5 list are great for cutting, but PhenQ is our clear winner. It is affordable, highly effective and made from 100% natural ingredients. We have enjoyed some fantastic results when using it for fat loss.

Check Latest Deals On PhenQ

Cutting supplements

However, there are a couple of issues with the cutting process. Firstly, although it is simple in principle, it is far from easy, to maintain a calorie deficit. Hunger pangs, energy dips, and an overall lack of satiation will make you want to eat more. Secondly, your body becomes more efficient at hoarding energy as fat – your metabolic rate will fall and you will struggle for energy as your body seeks to cling onto your fat reserves.

This is where the best cutting supplements can come into play. It should make that deficit easier to maintain, often keeping you feeling fuller for longer. Incidentally, many will help with digestive health, which often suffers under a calorie deficit as your fibre intake drops. A good cutting supplement should also optimize your metabolism, so that you burn body fat far more efficiently, allowing you to drop weight whilst keeping your energy levels high.

I always recommend that those going through cutting phases use some kind of cutting supplement. If you’re looking for a more comfortable, more achievable, and more efficient cut, you should go for one. More specifically, you should consider investing in something from the list below – the following are the best of the best, some of the top cutting supplements on today’s market.

Our Top Cutting Supplements

When it comes to fat loss we know a thing or two about supplementation. We have tested most of the products on the market. But when it comes to cutting, there is a more specific kind of product we need. Here we have compiled the best cutting supplements we could find and having tested each we are happy to endorse them.

PhenQ

If we’re looking at the best of the best, we really need to start with PhenQ. Though it is quite new to the game, it is one of the top cutting supplements going.

It hits you from multiple angles. In fact, PhenQ’s makers claim that it represents a full five separate types of weight loss supplement, all in one. This is pretty much spot on. The formula is very clever, with everything designed with interplay in mind. All taken together, these disparate strands can help multiple systems to work at their best, all geared towards weight loss.

This isn’t too unique. As we will see, there are plenty of all-in-one cutting supplements out there. There are plenty of weight loss stacks. However, PhenQ simply does it incredibly well.

PhenQ should simultaneously optimize your metabolic health whilst also suppressing your appetite, which is where the main explicit weight loss benefits come in. It may also help by inhibiting your body’s ability to create new fat.

It also does a couple of things which will be very helpful in getting you through a decent cutting period. Firstly, it boosts your energy. When you are down 500 calories daily (calories being a unit of energy) you can feel pretty sluggish and un-athletic.

This boost is therefore very welcome.

Cutting can also be miserable, giving you a low mood which will impair your willpower. PhenQ is designed to lift your mood, which again is very welcome.

The main reason I like PhenQ so much, however, is its reverence for science and data driven design. Everything is very rigorously tested. All ingredients included are there because there is plenty of academic work backing them up. You would hope that this was common in the supplements industry. It isn’t, though. Unfortunately, it really isn’t.

PhenQ is a breath of fresh air in this respect. The formula is fantastic, elegant, and well dosed.

The main ingredients include caffeine, capsicum powder, and the amino acid l-carnitine fumarate, all of which should raise your metabolic rate, improve your mood, and give you more energy. Then there is chromium picolinate, which will aid your body in breaking down fat for usable energy.

You also get nopal cactus, one of the best fibre forms going. This will aid satiation and keep your digestive health exactly how you want it.

It’s one of the best by a country mile and is product that a number of our team members use at various points throughout the year.

CrazyBulk Cutting Stack

If you want a multi-pronged approach, you could do far worse than a full cutting stack.

By ‘cutting stack’, we mean a group of different supplements all sold together to achieve the same end through a variety of mechanisms. Crazy Bulk’s cutting stack is one of the best natural cutting supplements of its kind on the market.

You get four bottles, four different supplements, all designed to mimic the effects of popular steroids and SARMs in a healthy, natural way.

The first supplement you get is Testo Max.

Do note, this is only included in the male version of the stack. The female one skips this, as testosterone management isn’t such a big deal. It contains everything else in this list, though. Incidentally, if you are looking for female specific cutting supplements then check out our fat burners for women article.

Testo Max is a natural, yet still pretty potent, alternative to Sustanon, a common anabolic steroid widely seen in the untested bodybuilding scene. Sustanon brings about a great may benefits, spiking testosterone significantly. However, its side effects make it a write off, and it is illegal in tested athletic competitions.

Testo Max forgoes a little of Sustanon’s potency, but gives you the benefits without the risks. It should optimize your testosterone levels. In turn, this will make it easier for you to burn fat, build muscle, and maintain high athletic potential. It uses ingredients like Bioperine and D-aspartic acid to achieve this.

Then there is the energy-boosting Clenbutrol, a safe alternative to Clenbuterol and one of my favourites in Crazy Bulk’s arsenal. It includes ingredients like guarana extract and garcinia cambogia extract to give you an energy spike, making it a perfect pre-workout supplement. These ingredients also boost your metabolic function, allowing you to burn calories more efficiently.

Winsol comes next, an alternative to Winstrol, an anabolic steroid widely banned and condemned by most authorities. Winsol uses several ingredients to provide similar anabolic effects, including safflower oil powder, wild yam root, and acetyl-l-carnitine. Together, they should help to raise natural testosterone levels, boost fat loss, and help you to lose water weight.

Finally, we come to Anvarol. It is a natural, safe alternative to Anvar, another banned steroid. It includes ingredients like whey protein, ATP (adenosine triphosphate), soy protein, and yam root. The protein is included in too small a quantity to be of much use. However, the other ingredients will aid athleticism, boosting strength and power, whilst enabling for more efficient hypertrophy (muscle growth).

All told, this stack is one of the best, most well-rounded cutting support supplements available on today’s market. It should lead to improved energy levels, athletic capability, weight loss and hypertrophy. It isn’t cheap, all together, but there are some multi-buy discounts available, and it’s worth every penny.

Instant Knockout Cut

I really like Instant Knockout Cut. It’s one of the most fun cutting supplements going. Trading on a violent aesthetic and an initial design aimed at martial artists, it comes as a fist-shaped bottle of 120 capsules.

It’s not the most important thing. You shouldn’t base your purchasing decisions on it. But it made me smile.

So, what should you base your purchasing decisions on? Put simply, Instant Knock Out’s fantastic formula.

It was designed for MMA fighters and boxers. The idea was that it could help them to get down to competition weight without having to sacrifice much by way of energy or performance. The design worked – it can do everything it claims and more.

They nailed it.

It’s not just for fighters, of course. I’m a multiple black belt and have used this during fight training. It worked very well, of course. However, I’m also a powerlifter and yogi. I’ve used Instant Knock Out during long periods of training in these disciplines, with no fighting at all. It is good for all athletes and dieters, anyone looking to cut without losing muscle mass or energy.

Instant Knockout Cut begins with a decent blend of essential vitamins and minerals, which you might otherwise miss on a restricted eating plan. There are also plenty of botanicals designed to give you energy and improved weight loss efficiency. These include usable doses of cayenne pepper, green tea extract, glucomannan, l-theanine, and caffeine.

Glucomannan is one of the best fibres going. It will aid satiation and keep your digestive health in good order. The rest will boost your energy levels, elicit a mild nootropic response (aiding brain health and cognition), and allow your body to burn through fat far more efficiently.

It is everything you need to lose weight with aplomb. 

Phen24

Every item on this list is designed intelligently. Everything hits a few different avenues, one way or another. However, few supplements on the market are quite so clever as Phen24, one of the best fat burners going.

Phen24 comes as two separate supplements, two different pills to take at different times.

The first pill is similar to the other supplements on this list. It is a decent fat burner that should give you an energy boost whilst aiding your weight loss potential.

It should keep your metabolic health working optimally, inhibit the creation new fat cells, spike your energy levels, and keep you from feeling too hungry as you maintain your calorie deficit.

It uses ingredients that we have already seen – it gives you decent doses of guarana and caffeine, whilst including micronutrients proven to aid in weight loss, like iodine, copper, and zinc.

You take this pill in the morning. It should last you all day.

However, daytime is only a part of your weight loss journey.

This brings us onto the second pill, designed for night time use. This isn’t a fat burner, that’s not the point. Fat burning relies on boosting energy input and use. You need a higher metabolic rate, which is anathema to good sleep.

Rather, the night time pill includes ingredients like glucomannan, inspiring good digestive health and keeping you feeling full. There should be no temptation for midnight snacking when using Phen24. It also uses ingredients like plyridoxine HDL, ascorbic acid, thiamine, and chromium, which combine to improve sleep quality and normalize metabolic health.

I love it. It’s such a simple yet profound supplement, such a good idea. It’s great for anyone looking to cut. It’s particularly good for anyone who struggles with cravings during the night. 

PrimeShred

PrimeShred, our final option, is an incredibly potent cutting supplement that falls foul of one of my biggest bugbears. It is marketed as being ‘for men’. This is silly. It works perfectly for women, too. It is great for anybody looking to lose body fat, maintain muscle mass, and keep their energy levels high.

It uses a 3-in-1 approach, attacking from multiple directions the same as everything else on this list.

Firstly, it is a great cutting supplement. It should increase the rate at which your body uses energy, optimizing your metabolic health and allowing you to chew through fat reserves. Secondly, it helps to manipulate your hormone balance into breaking down body fat.

Then there is the third prong, which I love. It would never occur to me to include something like this, yet it is wonderful.

PrimeShred has some solid nootropic credentials. It is designed to greatly enhance cognition and brain health. This makes it a great option for anybody who suffers from brain fog during a calorie deficit – which is plenty of us.

PrimeShred will allow you to stay focussed, switched on, creative, and alert, making the whole cutting process a lot more manageable and productive.

Many of the ingredients are pretty standard for this kind of product. You get a good kick of caffeine, green coffee, black pepper, and cayenne pepper. This will heighten your fat burning potential whilst giving you a decent amount of ready energy.

You also get 250 mg each of l-theanine and Rhodiola Rosea Root. These are known to optimize metabolic health. They are also often included in nootropic supplements, which is where the interesting part begins. They are both backed up by 150 mg of dimethylaminoethanol (DAME), which is there purely to improve your acetylcholine levels.

Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter. Raised levels lead to improved brain health and cognitive performance.

PrimeShred is on the pricey side. It’s worth it, though. It really can turn your life around if you’re struggling with your cutting phase. You also get a 100-day money back guarantee, with a no-questions refund, and they offer some multi-buy, bulk discounts, so it becomes a lot more economically viable quite quickly.

FAQs

What is a cutting phase and a bulking phase?

‘Cutting’ and ‘bulking’ don’t have specific definitions. There is a single approach to neither. However, we can define them quite broadly. In practical terms, a cut is a deliberate attempt to lose body fat whilst maintaining muscle mass. A bulk is a deliberate attempt to gain body weight, often but not always whilst trying to keep body fat gain to a minimum.

In turn, a cutting phase and bulking phase will be any period, usually several weeks or months, in which an athlete maintains a sustained effort to either cut or bulk.

What do bodybuilders use for cutting?

Bodybuilding cutting methods vary. Most of the variation will revolve around the kind of competitions in which they compete – tested or untested. Tested competitions will flag steroid use. They are typically only attended by natural athletes who don’t abuse steroids. Untested events will typically be attended by non-natural, or enhanced, athletes, who do abuse steroids.

Enhanced bodybuilders will use steroids during a cutting phase. Natural bodybuilders will rely on the kinds of products in our list above.

What gets you ripped?

‘Ripped’ generally means low body fat and moderate to high muscle mass, so that you can see the muscles under the skin. To get ripped, therefore, you need to build muscle and keep your body fat levels low. This means periods of lean bulking followed by periods of cutting.

When should I start my cutting phase?

You should cut whenever your body fat levels are at an unhealthily high level – more than around 15%, perhaps slightly higher for women. You shouldn’t cut when they are at an unhealthily low level – low single digits for men, high single digits for women.

If you are competing, have completed a bulking phase, and need to lean down, you should aim to begin your cut around 2-3 months before your competition. This should allow you to lose around ten pounds, or five kilograms, slowly, whilst keeping as much muscle mass as possible. Obviously, the more weight you have to lose, the earlier you should start – if you have more like 20 pounds to lose, give yourself more like 4-5 months.

Verdict

It’s hard to choose between the entries on this list. They are all very, very high-quality, well thought out cutting supplements. If you choose any of them, you will find your calorie deficit easier to maintain and more efficient, your athletic capability improving, and your ability to maintain lean muscle mass as you drop fat much improved.

If I were forced to choose, however, I would go with my first entry – PhenQ is one of the best cutting supplements going. It is arguably the best cutting supplement. You get a good all-rounder with it, excelling at nearly everything, with no downsides or pitfalls.

This being said, you might have specific needs. For example, PrimeShred is perfect for anybody who struggles with brain fog during a calorie deficit. Phen24 is perfect for anybody who struggles night time cravings.

However, if you’re looking for the best all-rounder, the best top-up during your cutting phase, PhenQ will serve you very, very well.

PhenQ – Our No.1 Cutting Supplement

All of the supplements on our top 5 list are great for cutting, but PhenQ is our clear winner. It is affordable, highly effective and made from 100% natural ingredients. We have enjoyed some fantastic results when using it for fat loss.

Check Latest Deals On PhenQ

Written by John Dixon

John is a personal trainer and part time (although he might say full time) writer here at PathMed. He uses his knowledge of fitness and physiotherapy to deliver real insight in to our reviews and health guides.

John’s military background also brings a real-life perspective to his work.

She was onto something, way ahead of her time.

In an era of ever more intelligent supplements and diet hacks, there is a simple truth we cannot ignore. Fruit and vegetables are about the best thing going. They are full of health giving micronutrients. They give you plenty of fiber. They are good sources of healthy, clean carbohydrates, proteins and fats.

In short, they are necessary for a healthy life. They are necessary for maintaining a healthy body and mind, and for making any kind of athletic progression in the gym.

However, many people under-consume fruit and vegetables. Fair enough. We are bombarded with processed foods that are sometimes too convenient to pass on. Life is hectic and fruit and veg can take a little bit more preparation than ready meals and other ingredients. Some people still maintain a childlike squeamishness towards them – after all, they can be a little uninspiring if not prepared correctly.

If you want to be truly fit and healthy, you can’t afford to do this. I would recommend filling every plate of food you eat with vegetables. I would recommend eating 2-3 pieces of fruit every day.

I would also recommend taking some kind of greens powder. The best greens powders will allow you to fill up on the health-giving nutrients and fibers inherent to some of the most superfood fruits and vegetables going, conveniently, on the go, for relatively little money.

What Is A Greens Powder?

Greens powders are simple products made from some of the best ingredients going. They are a mixture of blended vegetables, grasses, grains, and fruits, all readily available as a straight forward powder. Some will be plain – which I prefer – whilst others will have natural sweeteners and flavorings added (otherwise they can taste a bit grassy…)

This means that you can take in the health-giving properties of top fruit and veg in a smoothie or juice. I typically mix mine in with my first protein shake of the day – hence I like my powders unflavored.

Greens powders give a great many health benefits. They can aid in weight loss, give you more energy, improve your gut and digestive health, and help pretty much every other function in your body to improve.

There are few things you can do for your health that are as easy or profound as taking a good greens powder.

Luckily, we recently got the chance to look at some of the best greens powders going.

Our 6 Best Greens Powders

Now you know all there is to know about why getting your greens (and fruit) are important, let’s take a look at our favorite 6 green powders to help you get your recommended daily dose.

Supergreen Tonik 

Supergreen Tonik by Human Tonik LLC is one of my favorite supplements period, let alone being one of my favorite greens powders. It gives you everything you need from your daily fruit and veg needs, all blended down into an easy, pleasantly drinkable powder.

Human Tonik LLC’s CEO and founder, Adam Wright, is a former triathlete (a man after my own heart). He worked with a top tier nutritional manufacturer to come up with the Supergreen Tonik blend. Despite being such a fit go-getter, Wright had been suffering with chronic fatigue syndrome for several years. This came with a brain fog that simply wouldn’t shift: he couldn’t find any greens powders that could put him back on track, so decided to come up with his own product.

The formula that resulted is incredibly potent. It is a blend of over 30 ingredients, all naturally sourced. They include minerals like iron, calcium and zinc, all well-known for energy giving properties and athletic enhancement. It also includes over a dozen vitamins and plenty of natural plant sources, such as spirulina, chlorella, moringa leaf, ashwagandha, bacopa leaf and herb, spinach, barley grass, garlic bulb, olive leaf, dandelion leaf, rhodiola root extract, ginkgo biloba, l-theanine and kale.

This is ingredients list is kind of a who’s who of high end greenery – the A-List of fruit and veg if you like.

Taken together, these ingredients should provide you with a fair few benefits.

Firstly, there is a lot of fiber in there. This will help you to maintain good digestive and gut health, keeping you out of the danger zone of a lot of chronic conditions associated with poor health in both. This will also help you to lose weight by keeping you feeling fuller for longer and maintaining good gut bacteria. Finally, this fiber content will help you to maintain healthy cholesterol levels.

Super Green Tonik should also suppress oxidation, thus decreasing damaging free radical presence in your body. It should also lower your blood pressure and normalize blood sugar and red blood cell levels. You may find yourself sleeping more deeply, with a reduced risk of insomnia, stress, and anxiety, whilst having more energy and increased mental focus during the day.

Finally, the volume and quality of greens in Super Green Tonik will help to maintain good immune health, keeping you on your feet and free from common illnesses.

Amazing Grass

Amazing Grass’s organic greens blend is a far simpler, arguably more elegant beast than Super Green Tonik. I always admire a simple supplement that is well thought out, that does the job, without the need for anything extraneous.

The basic product combines seven nutritious greens with vitamins and minerals to give you the results you want. The formula is made from wheat grass, barley grass, alfalfa grass, spinach, spirulina, chlorella (cracked cell wall), and broccoli, all of which are high-quality and entirely organic and natural.

However, you do have the option with Amazing Grass to go for a more specialized blend. For example, they offer an immunity support package, a cleanse and detox, and a range of different flavors (though none of these taste too great.)

I’m most interested in the basic package, however. This is where I believe the most profound results will come into play, and it’s the formula that will be most useful to most people. 

Though a slightly shorter list of ingredients than we might see elsewhere from the supergreen supplements we have shortlisted, Amazing Grass does exactly what a good greens powder should do. It will give you immune support, regardless of which package you go with, and should help to boost natural energy and hormone function. It will lead to improved gut and digestive health, with plenty of fiber in the recipe, and can be a great weight loss tool. Most importantly, it will give you a generous helping of a wide range of vitamins and minerals that are key to long term health.

I like the ethos underpinning Amazing Grass’ business dealings, too. Everything they include is organic, as above. It is grown and harvested through a great network of quality farmers across the world who are all given a fair cut of the profits. Everything is grown and nurtured outdoors, allowing for a deeper root structure than many other, tray-grown ingredients would have. This means a greater absorption of key nutrients and minerals.

Balance of Nature Veggies 

I also really like Balance of Nature. On their website, they invite you to ‘Break up with Blah!’ I agree. This is a great thing to do and Balance of Nature Veggies is a great tool for doing so.

Their founder, Dr. Howard, is one of the world’s leading phytonutrition researchers (nutrition from plant sources). He is well-known in certain circles, making plenty of appearances on different media and lecturing around the globe. His research is industry leading.

As a result of his early work, Dr. Howard brought out Balance of Nature Fruit & Veggies way back in 1997.

It was a supplement designed to replace multivitamins, that recognized the importance of eating plenty of whole fruit and veg. This, he theorized, would allow people’s bodies to stay balanced, with sufficient phytochemicals taken at optimal ratios.

Balance of Nature makes use of only flash dried, whole fruits and vegetables. This reduces volume without losing any nourishment, making it far easier to take in plenty of fruits and vegetables in one sitting. In fact, it should amount to more like ten servings, well above federal recommendations and more in-keeping with Dr. Howard’s research. There are a full fifteen different whole vegetables in the formula: cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, cayenne pepper, celery stalk, garlic, onion, soybean, spinach, wheatgrass, yam, shitake mushroom, and zucchini.

You can even watch a lovely video on their website showing how everything is made. I fully recommend taking a look for a glimpse behind the curtain.

Furthermore, everything is entirely natural and vine ripened. There are no additives, preservatives, chemicals or sugar used, nor do the growers use any pesticides. Balance of Nature is free from gluten with no GMO.

Athletic Greens 

Now we come onto a greens powder specifically marketed for athletes and athletic endeavor. Though everything on this list could benefit anyone in any kind of training, Athletic Greens, by Athletic Greens Inc., perhaps takes the prize.

It is fiendishly complex. The recipe as a whole has permutated quite wildly over the years. Though it’s only been going for a decade, we have seen over fifty different iterations of Athletic Greens. All have been heavy on ingredient variety. The current formula includes more than 70 separate ingredients, each one designed to enhance your athleticism in one way or another.

Athletic Greens’ extensive ingredients list includes multivitamins, minerals, probiotics, plant extracts, enzymes, antioxidants, mushrooms, and even a superfood complex snuck in at the end. All of this comes together to look after pretty much every aspect of physical wellbeing I can think of, giving an incredibly impactful nutritional boost to those who ask a lot of their bodies (athletes, in short).

You will see benefits across all of the systems a good greens powder should help, plus a few more. Athletic Greens will likely improve your digestive health and immune health, give you more energy and greater clarity, and help you to utilize fat for energy, as anything on this list will do. It should also help with post-workout fatigue, diminishing symptoms of delayed onset of muscle soreness (DOMS), helping you to heal from injury and trauma, and accelerating your overall recovery process.

This is largely due to the astounding mineral content included with Athletic Greens’ formula. It includes calcium, chromium, sodium, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, copper, selenium, alpha lipoic acid, manganese, bromelain, and co-enzyme q10. You also get more than a dozen vitamins to support your body as you train.

All of this means that you will be able to train harder, more often, with energy to spare.

There are over 20 ingredients in Athletic Greens’ superfood complex. It is comprised of plenty of elements common to this kind of supplement, plus a few wild cards, with ingredients including spirulina, lecithin, inulin, wheat grass, alfalfa, broccoli, papaya, pineapple, beet root, rose hip, carrot root, grape seed, green tea, apple powder, chlorella, barley, slippery elm acerola, bilberry, licorice, lycium berry, spinach, cocoa bean, ginger rhizome, and kelp.

It really is a phenomenal list, though I can’t help but feel some of this may be a little overkill. 

Purely Inspired Organic Greens

Purely Inspired Organic Greens are made by Purely Organic, one of the world’s fastest growing supplement manufacturers. Each serving gives you 39 superfoods, 18 vitamins and minerals, and a dose of active probiotics, making it one of the more complex formulas on this list.

These ingredients are high quality, too. Everything is non-GMO, gluten free, and free from any artificial sweeteners, colors and flavors. It’s particularly easy to use, too – it blends down really smoothly, really simply, with just a regular shaker. It also dissolves nicely into soups, stews, and sauces, making it incredibly versatile.

Of course, you can do this with any product on this list. I just found the blend a lot smoother with Purely Inspired Organic Greens than with many others.

There isn’t anything too fancy or exotic in the recipe – it is all just good-quality, common or garden fare that gives you the health kick you’re looking for. Everyday ingredients like banana, apple, pineapple, sweet potato, beet, tomato, strawberry, spinach, broccoli, carrot, cherry, radish, alfalfa, pumpkin, sunflower, and lentil combine with some slightly more rarefied ingredients like chia garbanzo, flax, quinoa and wheatgrass, though nothing is too unusual.

There are also plenty of antioxidants in the formula, particularly the antioxidant vitamins C and E. This should keep you safe from free radical damage and inflammation, much like the other products on this list.

It’s simple and complex all at once – simple ingredients, en masse, included in a very clever recipe. I really like this kind of formula. It works well, is unpretentious, and gives you everything you need from it.

Vibrant Health 

Let’s end on a little bit of pedigree. Green Vibrance has been going strong for a couple of decades now. There is a very good reason for this kind of longevity: as with Balance of Nature Veggies, they have made a good product that people have been returning to consistently over the years.

It is a very nourishing compound of alkalizing green superfoods that brings all the benefits you would expect of a top-tier greens powder. It will boost immune and cardiovascular health, aid in digestive health and healthy gut bacteria, give you more energy, and lead to generally improved wellbeing across the board.

It is also an incredible source of probiotics.

All of this has meant that Green Vibrance has won awards consistently and plentifully throughout its lifetime.

The formula is dense. You get over 70 different ingredients with each Green Vibrance dose, all of which have been carefully selected and blended to support healthy bodily function. It uses cereal grass powders and juices for bioavailable, valuable nutrients and fibers, as well as plenty of green vegetables, including parsley leaf & stem, spinach leaf, broccoli sprouts and kale. It also includes spirulina, an abundant source of high quality phytonutrients, protein and vitamins.

It is the probiotics that really set Green Vibrance apart, however, alongside a very hefty dose of digestive enzymes, antioxidants and added botanicals. The probiotics, of which there are 25 billion in each serving, are separated across 12 strains to better inspire gut health, strong intestinal flora, and healthy digestion.

Do Greens Powders Work?

This is a hard question to answer. Greens Powders aren’t really designed to do any one single thing. It’s not like weight loss pills or pre-workouts, where clear metrics allow you to identify what works and what doesn’t.

Greens Powders are far more fundamental than this.

You need a good intake of fruit and vegetables in your daily diet. They will give you the vitamins and minerals you need to remain healthy and functioning as you want to. They also give you plenty of antioxidants and polyphenols for long-lasting health. You will get fiber in large quantities, keeping your cholesterol levels low, your gut and digestive health in good shape, and your trips to the bathroom regular.

Not everybody eats enough, however. In fact, many don’t, for a variety of reasons. This is where Greens Powders come into play. They give you the fruit and veg kick you need without having to worry about anything. They are also made from the most potent ingredients, the healthiest options, all blended by experts to be bioavailable and as useful as possible.

Each Greens Powder will give you something different. Whether or not they achieve their individual goals is an individual question. All the items on the list above do, so rest assured there. However, they will all give you a baseline level of good quality nutrition, supplementing your diet to keep you as healthy as possible.

In this way, they work incredibly well.

How To Take Greens Powder

The most usual, most convenient way to take a Greens Powder is to treat it as you would a protein shake. I generally blend mine into a protein shake, even. Simply find your favorite drink, chuck it into your blender or shaker, and make yourself a healthy smoothie.

I would generally advise taking this either early morning or during/straight after a workout for best results.

However, you can also use Greens Powder in cooking. This is a great way to keep the whole family healthy. You can mix it into soups, stews, sauces, and so on. You can sprinkle it over baked potatoes, salads, eggs, or anything else you can think of.

Also, try not to use Greens Powders as too much of a crutch. They are supplements, not a meal in themselves. Augment your diet with them, enhancing as good and varied a set of meal plans as possible.

How To Choose A Good Greens Powder

There are a few factors to take into account when choosing the right greens powder for you. However, they aren’t the most important thing in the world. Most greens powders will fulfill a couple of basic functions. They will give you a good dose of vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, antioxidants and so forth. They will also give you plenty of fiber.

Outside of this, there are a few frills to consider. For example, I particularly like Athletic Greens. It is designed to help you overcome post-training fatigue, including incidents of DOMS. As a health and fitness enthusiast, this is important to me. If a product has a secondary role like this that appeals to you and your needs, great. It’s probably the one for you.

Variety counts a bit, though as we have seen, even simple compounds can work wonders. Quality is far more important. As long as there are at least three or four high quality ingredients, superfood compounds that bring all the benefits we need, at a rate of 3-5 grams per dose, GMO free, preferably additive free, possibly vegan, dairy, and soy free, it will do what you need it to do. It will give you the benefits you should expect of your greens powder.

FAQs

Will greens powders work for me?

As above, this is a bit of a hard question. Greens Powders don’t ‘work’ – they don’t elicit any single acute response. What they do is give you the fruit and vegetables we all need to remain healthy, plus some added benefits. This will bring about a wide range of effects which can all be placed under the banner of ‘improved health and wellbeing’. It is in this way that they will work – they will make you healthier than you would be on a low fruit and veg diet. 

How long will it take to see results?

Most of the effects are non-acute. You will notice a change in your digestive health quickly – perhaps within a few days. However, the main results will be long lasting and indefinite. How pronounced they are will depend on your current diet. If you have a diet rich in fruit and veg at the moment, the results will be slim. If you don’t, they will be really quite profound.

Are there any side effects from taking greens powders?

Greens Powders are all-natural, meaning there should be few side effects. You may notice some digestive discomfort in the first couple of days. You will also find yourself going to the bathroom a lot more, especially if your regular diet is low in fiber. However, there will be no real side effects outside of this.

Overall Top Pick

It’s hard to choose a winner. They are all fantastic, all do the job well, and all bring something slightly different to the table. I really admire both the simplicity and straightforwardness inherent to Amazing Grass and the complexity of larger formulas like Balance of Nature.

For me, however, Athletic Greens takes the prize. This is highly personal, as any choice between supplements needs to be. The quality in all the entries into this list is fantastic. However, as an athlete, anything that can speed up my recovery time and reduce symptoms of DOMS is incredibly welcome.

This puts Athletic Greens in front of the rest by the faintest of whiskers.

Written by John Dixon

John is a personal trainer and part time (although he might say full time) writer here at PathMed. He uses his knowledge of fitness and physiotherapy to deliver real insight in to our reviews and health guides.

John’s military background also brings a real-life perspective to his work.

It is a water-soluble vitamin important to various bodily functions. It aids in the metabolic process, breaking down and digesting protein, carbohydrates, and fats, as well as creating new red blood cells and maintaining cognitive health.

If you’re trying to lose weight and are not taking it, you would do well to consider adding it to your supplement regime. And you do need to take it – the body cannot produce vitamin B6 itself, so it has to get it from exogenous sources (foods and supplements).

Many of us do get sufficient vitamin B6 from our diets according to official guidelines. However, some population groups might not, and those looking to lose significant amounts of body fat should consider upping their intake.

And for the rest of us… well, the official guidelines may be underselling vitamin B6. Daily intake far in excess of our RDA (recommended daily amount) can bring about a great many health benefits, as we will see.

The Benefits Of Taking Vitamin B6

There are lots of health benefits to be gained from supplementing with vitamin B6. Most of them are outside the scope of this article and would take a long time to get into as there are so many. We are concerned mainly with a select few – those that can aid in weight loss.

Do note that high levels of vitamin B6 alone will not help with weight loss. No supplement or product will. To lose weight, you need to maintain a calorie deficit. A daily deficit of 500 calories should lead to an average weekly weight loss of around 1 lb. You can achieve this deficit by both consuming fewer calories (eating less) and burning more (taking part in regular exercise).

With this deficit in place, however, we can begin to look at supplementation. This will make your weight loss journey easier and more efficient, as many of the side effects of your deficit are undone as your metabolism and fat-burning capabilities are improved.

Vitamin B6 On A Weight Loss Program

Vitamin B6 can help a weight loss program in a few different ways. It can contribute to an optimized metabolism that yields plenty of energy by burning fat as a fuel source. It can also reduce symptoms of tiredness and fatigue, which are both common in those following a calorically restricted eating plan, especially whilst maintaining an active lifestyle.

High vitamin B6 levels can also lead to a few very specific advantages which can help you to lose body fat more efficiently.

Body Composition And Fat Metabolism

To start with, vitamin B6 supplementation specifically has been shown to improve body composition – your ratio of lean muscle to fat. It has been linked with higher muscle mass and lower body fat levels. It has also been shown to have several positive effects on a few different common measures of body composition. In particular, vitamin B6 supplementation has been linked to lower-body weight loss, with a reduced amount of fat across the hips and waist.

This may be due to the fact that several fat metabolism stages – transportation, deposition, oxidation, and then synthesis for energy – rely on vitamin B6, or are at least highly influenced by it. Research has found that vitamin B6 contributes to the biosynthesis of fatty acids – the process enabling your body to use fats from food for energy.

This is incredibly important. When you eat, some of the fatty acids broken down from your food provide you with immediate energy. The rest are stored as triglycerides, little bundles of body fat within your fat cells. This is exactly what you are looking to avoid if you want to lose weight.

The more you eat, obviously, the more fat is stored as triglycerides. This means that you will put body fat on. However, vitamin B6 can make this fat more available – it will enable your body to break down the triglycerides for energy. This is fat metabolism.

Energy Use

The improved body composition may also be due to the above-mentioned metabolic improvements, which are elicited by vitamin B6 supplementation. Vitamin B6 contributes to normalized, energy-yielding metabolic function. It can break down the proteins and carbohydrates you take in from food, converting them into readily usable energy.

This is how we all get energy from food. 

In much the same way that fat is stored as triglycerides, carbohydrates are broken down into glucose (sugars) and stored as glycogen. Though some of the sugars are used immediately as an energy source, the rest will be kept for later. In fact, your body can store enough glycogen to last it for an entire day.

This makes it very hard to access fat reserves. Your body will always want to rely on its glycogen reserves over its fat reserves, and it will rarely run low on glycogen. Therefore, it will rarely burn through fat.

Vitamin B6 can make this process more efficient. It is a coenzyme in the process of taking glucose as energy from stored glycogen. It needs to be there for the reaction to occur. Having sufficient amounts means that you have more readily accessible energy from glucose. It also means that you may plough through your reserves more quickly, forcing your body to begin metabolizing triglycerides.

Red Blood Cell Production

Finally, we’ve already mentioned vitamin B6’s ability to improve energy levels and reduce fatigue and tiredness. In fact, a deficiency of vitamin B6 can lead to anaemia, a condition associated with feelings of weakness, fatigue, and lack of energy.

Anaemia is a reduced amount of haemoglobin (red blood cells) in the blood stream. Red blood cells transport vital nutrients around your body, including oxygen. Without adequate levels of red blood cells, your muscles go under-nourished. The oxygen needed for aerobic activities is simply lacking.

This will stop you from being able to live the active life you need to if you want to lose weight. It can add to the fatigue and brain fog that are common on the kind of calorie deficit you will need to burn through fat. Maintaining high red blood cell levels is therefore crucial for overall wellbeing and for the entire weight loss journey.

Sources Of Vitamin B6

Luckily, there are plenty of natural sources of vitamin B6 in regular, day-to-day foods and ingredients. According to official guidelines, an adult’s RDA is anything from 1.3 to 1.7 mg. We can get most of this from plant-based staples like chickpeas, potatoes, bananas, and cereals (particularly fortified cereals) and from meat sources such as turkey and oily fish (tuna and salmon in particular).

However, the official RDA may fall slightly short of what we can readily use for optimum health. Most studies that show how important it is for health and how effective it is for weight loss focus on supplements over regular dietary intake.

Intakes in the range of 30+ mg (some as high as 250 mg) of vitamin B6 have been typically used in medical intervention. This level has been shown to alleviate symptoms of menstrual pain, morning sickness, heart disease, and, of course, to aid weight loss and improve energy levels.

It’s unlikely that you will be able to get this much vitamin B6 from food alone.

If you eat enough potatoes and bananas to get this much, there is little chance you’ll be losing weight – you’ll be overeating in the range of thousands of calories per day!

Therefore, supplementation is a good idea. It is a particularly good idea for anybody suffering from the above conditions (like PMS, heart concerns, and so on) and for those looking to maintain a calorie deficit and lose weight.

There are plenty of options available. For lower doses, simple multivitamins might be sufficient. Some weight loss products will contain decent amounts of vitamin B6. If you really want to increase your intake, however, a dedicated supplement may be in order.

Look around. Do some research online. Find products that are well-rated by past and existing customers (four star reviews and above, in most cases) and that have third-party certification. Find products on review websites like ours that will give you honest, candid opinions. Nothing should stretch the purse strings too much, so don’t worry about spending a fortune.

If in doubt, and if you’re suffering from any pre-existing medical concerns that you think vitamin B6 may help, have a chat with your healthcare provider. They will be able to steer you in the right direction and make sure that nothing reacts badly with your current medical regime.

Written by Kate Harrison

Kate is one of our nutrition experts at PathMed and is also one of our in-house writers. There is little that gets past Kate when it comes to nutrition and she has a wealth of experience when it comes to fat loss and supplementation around losing weight. She is thorough in her research and is a real advocate for living a healthy lifestyle.

Rather, we are going a little further than this. Though the likes of Swiss chard are indeed packed full of nutritional goodness, and can work wonders for your energy levels, weight loss, and digestion, we are talking about a more select group. Proper super greens are a select group of greens from the algae and cereal grass families.

These include quite common kitchen staples alongside some more rarefied foodstuffs.

For instance, micro-algae like spirulina and chlorella are included in this select group. However, so too are green leafy veg that you’ll find in any grocery section: kale, parsley and moringa leaves. Then there are some pretty common grains, such as oat grass, sorghum, wild rice, spelt, rye, einkorn, millet, wheatgrass and barley.

What Makes These Super Greens So Good?

This is quite a diverse bunch of crops. However, they are all united by a few common strands.

They will all aid immune function and give you greater energy through the day. They have all been linked with improved body composition (less unwanted fat, more lean muscle).

How do they do this so well?

Firstly, they all contain high levels of enzymes and antioxidants, all of which are incredibly easy to absorb in the body. They are also incredibly nutritionally dense. The micronutrients in particular ensure that you really don’t need much per day to reap the rewards of including super greens. In fact, a single shot of any good super green supplement will see you right (more on this later.)

This is particularly helpful when you’re losing weight and maintaining a calorie deficit. If you are restricting the amount you’re eating, you need to ensure that everything counts. Very little counts for as much as super greens.

Super greens can also positively affect the body’s pH balance. The chlorophyll included in them brings your body to a more neutral position if yours is too acidic. High acidity is related to a few health complications that it’s wise to avoid if you can: cavities, allergies, yeast infections, osteoporosis and kidney infections to name just a few.

High acidity has also been linked with increased weight gain from body fat.

Neutralizing your body’s pH balance can therefore keep you healthy whilst allowing you to maintain an appropriate bodyweight.

Powdered super green supplements are readily available. Certain brands, like Supergreen Tonik, really are revolutionizing what it means to take in adequate levels of health-giving plant life. They are convenient, easy to mix with water, juice, or even your protein shakes, and will give you the boost your body needs to cope with everything life throws at you.

In fact, Supergreen Tonik was born from a desire to overcome chronic fatigue syndrome and allow their founder, Adam Wright, to live a full, active lifestyle. It is a daily super greens supplement that gives you everything we’ll be talking about in this article – it will help you to overcome fatigue and brain fog whilst aiding in long term health and weight management.

The 3 Main Health Benefits That Super Greens Provide

Aside from facilitating improved weight loss, which we’ll get onto shortly, there are a handful of incredibly profound health benefits you can gain from taking super greens every day.

Firstly, they can help bring balance to your endocrine health (your hormones). They do this by aiding gut and digestive health (a benefit in itself). They are incredibly high in fiber, which is often lacking in a calorie deficit. This will help you cleanse and detox your entire digestive system.

This, in turn, will allow your gut to function optimally. Keeping a clear gut, producing and enabling healthy bacteria, is one of the most profound things you can do to ensure long term health. It will maintain healthy production and regulation of over twenty different hormones. It will also help to fight symptoms of bad gut health, such as skin irritation and inflammation, autoimmune concerns, food sensitivities, digestive complaints, and weight fluctuations.

Secondly, super greens should naturally boost your energy levels. Conditions and symptoms such as chronic fatigue, insomnia, anxiety, low mood, mood changes, irritability, and brain fog can all be eased with super greens.

This is because super greens deliver vital nutrients to your body – essential vitamins and minerals it needs to be able to fire on all cylinders. In fact, many super green products are fortified with extra vitamins and minerals to ensure that your body has everything it needs to be its best version.

Some even come blended with natural energy-giving herbs and compounds like Maca Root powder and Eleuthero Root powder.

Finally, super greens can also help to maintain long term health by warding off cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Oxidative stress and free radical damage play large roles in cancer cell formation within the body. It really isn’t overstating the case to say that free radicals lead to cancer. They are unstable oxygen molecules caused in large part by oxidative stress.

You can combat free radical formation and activity through anti-oxidative therapy – by taking antioxidants. Antioxidants inhibit free radicals, interacting with them and stopping them from damaging the body.

Super greens are a rich source of antioxidants. They deliver a large injection into your daily diet, helping to keep you safe from cancer cell formation.

Super greens can also significantly decrease symptoms of high blood pressure, both systolic and diastolic. Combine them with regular cardiovascular activity and your heart and lungs should remain healthy and free from common diseases for a long time.

So, we can see that super green consumption is incredibly healthy. It will benefit your long term wellbeing and lead to short term leaps in digestive health and energy levels. However, what we really want to know is how super greens can help with weight loss (they absolutely can).

We’ve seen some hints so far in this article. We’ve seen that super greens can work well during a calorie deficit. But how exactly can they help more broadly with your weight loss?

How Super Greens Can Help With Your Weight Loss Journey

Super greens really can help you to lose weight. They can do this in a few different ways, plugging a few gaps, tuning up a few systems, to optimize your own weight loss journey.

As with any supplement, they will not lead to weight loss in and of themselves. Super greens can enhance an existing weight loss regime. For this, you will need a calorie deficit. Cutting out around five hundred calories per day should lead to a weekly weight loss of around one pound. You can achieve this through a combination of burning more calories (being more active) and consuming fewer (eating less).

With this in place, super greens can really come into play.

Firstly, not all healthy weight loss is about fat loss (though for most people, most of it is). Some of it comes from less savoury places… we’re talking about the waste we all have trapped in our digestive systems.

In the absence of healthy fiber intake, we can build up anything from 4 to 19 pounds of excess, toxic waste. We can also suffer from heightened levels of fluid retention. The high quality fibre contained in super greens should see to this. As a word of warning, this can be a little explosive in the first couple of weeks. However, at the end of it, you should be a good few pounds lighter for getting rid of that excess waste.

This fiber has more to give than improved digestive health, however. High fiber intake has been linked with a decreased risk of suffering from diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Both of these conditions can cause the body to store extra fat around the abdomen, as well as decreasing the body’s natural insulin sensitivity and response and increasing bad cholesterol levels.

Fiber is also great for satiation. It will keep you feeling fuller for longer, meaning fewer hunger pangs. This will make it a lot easier to maintain that calorie deficit, keeping you from feeling starved even as you eat less than your body naturally demands.

This satiation is aided by the digestive enzymes included in super greens. These are proteins that enable you to properly absorb nutrients from food by breaking them down into their most basic, most available components. This means that your body is actually utilizing the food you’re eating, not just storing it as excess fat. It will also stave off hunger as your body will be releasing less ghrelin, the hunger hormone, and will be processing carbs more effectively.

There are no shortcuts, here. Super greens won’t allow you to shed weight without doing the work. However, as above, as part of an active lifestyle, healthy diet, and calorie deficit, they will go a long way towards making your weight loss journey far more achievable and efficient.

Written by Kate Harrison

Kate is one of our nutrition experts at PathMed and is also one of our in-house writers. There is little that gets past Kate when it comes to nutrition and she has a wealth of experience when it comes to fat loss and supplementation around losing weight. She is thorough in her research and is a real advocate for living a healthy lifestyle.

Testosterone is a hormone. Though it is found in significantly higher amounts in men than women, everybody needs a healthy amount of it. Not having enough can lead to a great many health and wellbeing problems. A lack can lead to impaired sexual function, decreased energy levels, and atrophy (the wasting of muscles) with an inability to improve athletically, to name just a few concerns.

With this in mind, it’s only natural to worry when it’s widely reported that a certain foodstuff can lower your testosterone levels.

Over the years, soy has taken a lot of flack in this regard. Because of its chemical make up (it contains phytoestrogens, which we will get into below), it is often ascribed feminizing properties. Inhibited testosterone lies under this claim.

But Does Soy Really Lower Testosterone?

The short answer is that no, it doesn’t. Its endocrinal effects are actually quite limited, meaning that it won’t really affect your hormone levels very much at all.

However, the question still hangs over a lot of people’s heads. Many people won’t eat soy products or drink soy protein shakes (which is a shame, as they are fantastic for maintaining healthy muscle mass and a solid micronutrition intake.)

It’s time it was put to bed. Luckily, a recent meta-analysis in Reproductive Toxology (2021) gives us all the answers we could ever want.

Soy and Reproductive Toxology

Firstly, yes, soy contains phytoestrogens in the form of isoflavones. It is, in fact, one of the richest sources of isoflavones money can buy. This has caused a great deal of concern for men’s health in certain circles. It is thought that the consumption of phytoestrogens (basically a plant form of estrogen) raises a persons’ estrogen content and/or output and diminishes their testosterone output.

However, this is far from the case. Data from 38 clinical studies have been thoroughly analyzed to examine effects of soy/isoflavones on hormone levels. This resulted in the (2021) meta-analysis in Reproductive Toxology. 

The Results?

There were no noted effects of soy/isoflavones on testosterone or estrogen levels in men. Phytoestrogens simply don’t seem to alter hormone production.

So what does lower testosterone?

Though soy and phytoestrogen don’t affect testosterone levels, the fear was valid. There are plenty of things that can greatly inhibit testosterone production in men.

For starters, age can lower testosterone levels. It usually will, in fact – a natural decline begins at thirty and continues for the rest of your life, dropping about 1% per year.

Then there are the knocks we get along the way. Injury, trauma, or infection to the testes (orchitis) will generally lower testosterone levels, as will chemotherapy, radiation exposure, and inflammatory conditions such as sarcoidosis. Head trauma can often have a large impact. Obesity and/or extreme weight loss will also often lead to lower testosterone levels, as will type II diabetes.

Drug and alcohol abuse will also generally lead to lower testosterone levels. Alcohol abuse and anabolic steroid use in sports are particularly prominent in diminishing testosterone levels, often to the point at which medical intervention is required. Cirrhosis of the liver, often caused by excessive alcohol use, can impact testosterone levels, too.

Certain illnesses and medical conditions can also negatively impact testosterone levels. Both acute and chronic conditions can play a part. Pituitary gland dysfunction or tumors, metabolic disorders like hemochromatosis, renal (kidney) failure, HIV/AIDS, Kallman syndrome (in which the hypothalamus, a gland in the brain that controls hormone function, develops abnormally), XXY syndrome, or Klinefelter syndrome (a genetic condition where men are born with an extra copy of the X chromosome), hypothyroidism and sleep apnea all play larger or lesser parts. Chronic stress and depression will also diminish your ability to produce healthy amounts of testosterone.

Certain medications can impair testosterone output, too. These include opioids, certain hormonal treatments, such as those used to treat cancer, and, of course, steroids (like prednisone, commonly used to treat asthma.)

Musculature and physical activity also play a role. This is more complex, as it’s kind of circular. Those with lower testosterone won’t be able to build muscle mass or train as extensively as those with healthy amounts. In turn, people with low muscle mass and those who are sedentary won’t create enough testosterone to remain healthy. However, just as the cause is cyclical, so is the cure – break the cycle, get physically active, build a little muscle, and you’ll find yourself in a virtuous cycle.

How Do You Know If You Have Low Testosterone Levels?

You can speak to your healthcare provider about your concerns. They will be able to run a couple of simple tests to find out how healthy your hormonal output is.

However, there are some common symptoms you can look out for yourself to judge whether or not you’re producing healthy amounts of testosterone. These include low sex drive, poor sexual performance/erectile dysfunction, depression or flattened mood, moodiness and irritability, decreased sense of wellbeing, fatigue, problems with memory and concentration, and a loss of muscular strength and athletic ability. You may also notice heightened levels of body fat and even gynecomastia (breast development).

What Can You Do To Increase Testosterone?

How can you build up your testosterone levels if they are low?

If they are chronically low, medical intervention may be required. This will likely be the case in people who have previously abused anabolic steroids.

There are some simple lifestyle changes you can make, too.

Though there will be little you can do about some of the illnesses and medications listed above, staying on top of many of them and managing your overall health will be a good first step.

Make sure you live an active lifestyle. Specifically, take part in some form of resistance training. Swimming, boxing, yoga, and various forms of weight lifting have been shown to build lean muscle and thus improve testosterone output.

Couple this with plenty of good quality protein (some of which can, maybe even should, come from soy!) and healthy fats to recover fully from exercise and optimize your hormonal output.

Stress can kill your testosterone output faster than anything. Manage your stress levels for a healthier lifestyles. If your job is stressing you out, consider changing direction or slowing down the pace, if you can. Practice calming exercises like yoga, meditation, and deep breathing. Limit your consumption of stimulants – caffeine, guarana, and so on.

Don’t drink too much or too often, and definitely stay away from any harder drugs. Use natural supplementation such as natural testosterone boosters in your training diet – never, ever take anabolic steroids or exogenous testosterone. They will diminish or even destroy your ability to product testosterone. There are plenty of natural compounds, however, that can actively help to normalize production – these include commonly found ingredients like DHEA, vitamin D, magnesium, Tribulus Terrestri and D-aspartic acid.

Follow these techniques for raising your testosterone. Stop worrying about soy. It’s not the culprit, here, and can be actively useful in building a strong, lean, testosterone fueled physique.