Everything You Need To Know About Greens Supplements by Mike Roussell, Ph.D. Last updated: Jul 14, 2014 Name: Mike Roussell, PhD Occupation: Nutritional consultant, speaker, nutrition advisor for Mens Health, head of nutrition at PEAK Performance in NYC Website: mikeroussell Greens supplements are one of the fastest-growing supplement categories on the market. Who wouldnt want a days worth of fruits and veggies in a convenient pill or powder? It is a fact that greens supplements allow you to consume a concentrated version of several fruits, vegetables, and herbs, but their purpose and effectiveness in a hard-training, clean-eating diet are often accompanied by fictional claims. If used correctly, greens supplements can aid your dietary health but, if used incorrectly, they can potentially sabotage insulin sensitivity and future muscle growth. Green doesnt always mean good. Before you surge through the green light, lets go behind the scenes and separate fact from fiction when it comes to everything green. 1) Greens Can Replace Your Multi: Fiction Why eat four daily servings of veggies when you can just pop a few pills to get the same nutritional benefits? Well, because you cant. Greens supplements might be full of concentrated fruits and vegetables, but most companies dont formulate their products to meet essential vitamin and mineral levels. This is especially true for hard-training lifters, who require an increased intake of minerals like zinc and magnesium. Unless your greens supplement lists out all the vitamins and minerals it contains in their total amounts—or at least in percentages relative to the recommended daily value—dont look for them to become your new daily multi. 2) Greens Might Restore Your pH Balance: Fact The human body likes to maintain homeostasis. Your acid-base balance, or pH balance, is no different. What you eat may influence the bodys pH. This is where green supplements can be beneficial. Grains, dairy, and protein are acidic, while green leafy vegetables are alkaline, or basic. Greens supplements are alkaline, and one of their main benefits is their ability to improve your bodys acid-base balance. Some people design entire diets solely around optimizing pH. This seems a little extreme—and is based on fluctuating research—but there is some logic behind it. An unbalanced pH may lead to decreased bone health, excessive cortisol, and slightly impaired thyroid function. So eating more alkaline foods, like fruits and vegetables, isnt a bad idea from a pH perspective. Since greens supplements are vegetable powerhouses, its been proposed that theyre a good way to optimize your bodys pH. They might actually work that way. A study published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition found that two weeks of daily supplementation with greens led to significant improvements in urinary pH, moving subjects from an acidic pH to one considered optimal. The results from this pilot-type study suggest that a daily greens supplement may improve an acid-base balance that is out of the optimal range.
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 13:57:00 +0000
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