Strong warning, By: Gail Wood

8/23/06

Billy Guitard begins each morning with six to eight fried egg whites and a scoop of protein mix in milk or water.

By the end of the day, Guitard, a bodybuilder who graduated from North Thurston High School in Olympia, Wash., last spring, will have drunk two more "protein shakes," the sports drink with 55 grams of protein. One drink is the protein equivalent of seven peanut butter sandwiches.

"It's convenience," said Guitard, who last month placed second in a bodybuilding competition at the Emerald Cup in Bellevue, Wash. "You could make that food, but it takes a lot more time."

Guitard, and a growing number of teens like him, are turning to sports supplements, a mix of sports drinks that provide nutritional boosts. It's advertised as muscles in a glass. The manufacturers' sales pitch for protein drink products like Pro Rated or Lean Stack boils down to: "Drink this and get big muscles."

"Everyone in bodybuilding takes them,"

Guitard said. "If you want to compete, you've got to."

The drinks are protein-enriched and legal and not considered to be a health risk if taken in proper dosages. But there are no long-term studies on the side effects of protein supplements.

That's why Jeff Carpenter, health and fitness director for the Olympia School District, is pushing for a district-wide education on sports supplements.

"Kids will get something and they won't even know what's in it," Carpenter said. "Education is the key. We want them to know what they're putting into their body."

Sports supplements are a booming business. Sales have nearly doubled in four years, according to the Nutrition Business Journal. It's not like sports supplements are hard to get. Health stores, health clubs or Web sites are all selling them.

"It's easily accessible," Carpenter said. "You have to make an informed choice. They aren't illegal. We just want to show what the facts are. We want to bring up the awareness for the kids and coaches."

In this country, $1.9 billion was spent on sports-related supplements in 2004, a 6 percent increase from the previous year, according to the Nutrition Business Journal.

Twenty years ago, bodybuilders like Guitard would have taken vitamins and minerals, maybe sloshing it down with a glass of whole milk for an added boost in protein and calories. But in the past decade, the fitness market has been flooded with power drinks such as Adenergy, Lean Stack and Cell-Tech. Then there are supplements like Growth Promoter, Xenadrine-NRG and Vaso XP Xtreme Vasodilator.

Unlike steroids, all these drinks are legal. However, the federal government has recently taken a more active interest in sports supplements.

A new federal law prohibits nonprescription use of substances that act like steroids once in the body.

Passage of that law prompted the Food and Drug Administration to crack down on two ingredients that were widely used in sports supplements ephedra, a fat-burner stimulant linked to cardiac problems; and androstenedoine, a prohormone baseball slugger Mark McGwire once took.

While sports supplement producers applaud these rulings, critics feel there isn't enough regulation over the market. There are concerns about a product's purity and about its claims.

"Kids buy this stuff over the Internet and they don't know what they're getting," Carpenter said. "You ask them, What's in this stuff?' and they don't know."

However, sometimes what's on the label isn't always accurate. Testing done by the International Olympic Committee found that nearly 15 percent of supplements purchased from around the world produce a trace of a substance not listed on the products' labels.

Carpenter said that while the risks of steroids are well-known, often teens are uninformed about the risks of sports supplements. The goal of sports supplements is to get faster and stronger. However, sports supplements' link to achievement isn't clear.

"A good night's sleep, a healthy diet, that's all they need," said Diana Roberts, trainer for the North Thurston School District. "They don't need to take any supplements."

Still, a billion-dollar business continues to grow. But, according to Bob McGowan, professor at Central Washington University, it's not money well spent.

"The contribution is so small," McGowan said about the effects of sports supplements. "There are so many things that are more important. The best thing is to eat right, exercise right and get the right rest."

McGowan said any contribution of sports supplements is for the elite world-class athlete, not the high-school athlete.

"It doesn't really help them," McGowan said. "I've seen very few control studies that show that it helps. It's not going to make a kid who runs a 4.7 40 into someone who can run a 4.3."The spike in use of sports supplements is the result of marketing and not actual results, McGowan said.

However, at Oregon State University,

football players will eat bits of protein bars and supplement drinks at halftime of football games this fall. But Bill Beattie, football coach at Olympia, isn't convinced "protein shakes" or other supplemental drinks are the difference between being a starter and a bench warmer.

"I don't know how much it helps you," Beattie said. "Kids take supplements and they're working out three times as hard. So, is it the supplement or is it that they're working out harder? I don't know."

Beattie doesn't advocate sports supplements.

"As a coach, I'm not going to promote any kind of that stuff," Beattie said. "We're going to promote hydration, being nutritionally sound, eating well. We have 153 kids turning out for football. How do I know we don't have some kid who is allergic to something? I'm very cautious on that stuff."

Guitard is convinced the nutritional boost he gets in his daily regimen of supplement drinks makes the difference.

"You can only get so much protein in your diet," Guitard said. "What you're trying to do is get as much protein as possible."

There are side effects to taking too much protein. Guitard knows there's risks of damage to the kidneys and liver if too much protein is consumed.

"You need to flush out your body by drinking a lot of water," said Guitard, who took Running Start and will begin classes at Washington State University as a junior in the fall. "It can be toxic to your body."

But Guitard doesn't just take supplements. He also eats a balanced diet, consuming as many as 6,000 calories a day with his mix of protein drinks and meals. Guitard, who is 5-foot-8, went from 225 pounds in December to 175 pounds in April for his bodybuilding contest.

Youths like Guitard who participate in sports typically have better eating habits than their non-sport peers, according to a recent study taken by researchers at the University of Minnesota. The study showed that junior high and high schoolers involved in sports were more likely to eat breakfast and "had higher mean protein, calcium, iron and zinc intakes" than those not participating in sports, according to the study published in May's issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

It's not just adults and high schoolers taking supplements. In a recent survey of youths ages 9 to 14, more than 12 percent of the boys and 8 percent of the girls said they had taken a supplement to help build muscles at least once in the past year, according to Pediatrics, a medical journal. Figures for high schoolers are thought to be much higher.

The rationale for taking nutritional supplements is to enhance exercise capacity. But taking a supplement doesn't preclude exercise or eating well.

"They take something like creatine and then have a bag of chips and a coke," Roberts said.

Creatine is an amino acid that is a building block of protein. It's produced naturally in the body and can be obtained by eating meat or fish or by taking supplements. The side effect to taking creatine is dehydration.

"They come out of the game, cramping up and I'll ask them if they're taking creatine," Roberts said. "Creatine dehydrates you. Bottom line is that if they slept and ate right, they'd be ahead."

Creatine helps build muscles by increasing the water to them. It also helps recovery, allowing less rest between workouts.

"The thing about creatine is there hasn't been any long-term studies on it," Millenbach said.

A five-year study on creatine did not relate it to heart attacks or any other ailments.

The temptation high school athletes face is the thought that since someone else might be using creatine or protein supplements there's a need to use them too, just to stay even.

"It's not a temptation for me," Millenbach said. "I think I have enough natural ability if I work hard enough at it. I feel it cheats me out of something if I take anything. I want to know I did it myself."

With plans to increase sports supplement awareness throughout the Olympia district this fall, Carpenter said he's not being an alarmist, reacting only because of a congressional investigation into steroid use in major league baseball last summer.

"I don't think anyone is feeling the sky is falling," Carpenter said. "We don't want anyone to think the sky is falling. We're trying to be proactive. We're getting into it because we want the kids to be healthy."