EAS EcdyMax Good or Bad?

[AzReal]

Has anyone used this product? I just tried it and it is one of the worst things I have ever tasted. And I've tasted a lot. It has the consistency of a cough medicine and tastes much worse. The worst part is they expect you to keep this in your mouth for 30 sec.

If anyone is using this product I would appreciate any suggestions, like should I chill it or combine it with something. Now I don't want to destroy it's effectiveness or anything. And speaking of which, has anyone used this and been happy with it? If I'm gonna torture myself it better be worth it. :D

[steveo]

Everyone has taken something that taste like schit. It's up to you wether you are going to stick to long enough to know if it really works.

That way you can let us know and we don't make the same mistake you did.:D

[AzReal]

I hate to say it but maybe it'll grow on me. I mean first comes the burning in your mouth, then everything goes numb. when it's time to swallow I get flashbacks of perscription cough medicine my mom used to shove down my throat. Who wouldn't like that?

As to the effectiveness, I'll keep you posted.

[pc-desktop.com]

I finished the bottle. Had very good effects. It makes your skin oily and produces acme, but then that's because it's working and increasing testosterone. It's the worst thing I ever tasted, but I started associating the bad tast with results. My nose became bloody, so I'm trying the combination of Biotest's Tribex500, Thermo-Life Ecdysten and Estro-x. The oily skin has decreased and getting some good results, but not the testosterone boost I feel was happening with EcdyMAX. I will probably go back to it when I finish the last of Tribex and Thermo-Life.

[TreeTrunks]

Found this article:

"Consumer Report — Bug Drug
The Truth about Ecdysteroids
by Cy Willson



It’s no news to you or anybody else that new supplements rear their sometimes-ugly heads every day. Only a few end up being effective or even mildly effective and some are even backed up by decent scientific studies.

However, this whole "backed by science" thing has also created somewhat of a double-edged sword. If you really look, and I mean really look, you could find a study that in some way could supply evidence for the efficacy of any supplement.

Trouble is, the interpretation of studies is rife with potential pitfalls. In many cases, the alleged evidence isn’t always relayed clearly from the researcher to the readers, or someone who has a vested interest in the product can misconstrue it. For instance, a classic involves giving some substance to 8 post-menopausal women. After a period of time, the women reported feeling better and their Testosterone levels increased slightly. Nothing else, such as diet, training, other supplements, etc., was taken into account.

Along comes some schmoe from the supplement industry. He reads the report, views it through his heavily jaundiced eyes and says, "Hey, I’ll just make a huge deductive leap and say that this will work in healthy, male body builders!"

It’s particularly sad as a reference used to be a fairly good indicator of its efficacy. Now, businessmen have exploited this action to the point where references mean nothing.

Another classic is to write that a product leads to "increased protein synthesis." The things is, when you review the study, protein synthesis was increased in something entirely different than skeletal muscle tissue.

I could come up with a thousand examples and I would too, if only I had enough vomit bags in the house.

That isn’t true of all studies, though. Those that are randomized, double-blind, and placebo controlled (crossover is optional in my opinion), using healthy lifters, are probably on the level. And, to make them really worthwhile, they should use men, and not just average men. Athletes. Real athletes. T-men.

Still, I gotta’ mention that there are other supplements that may truly be efficacious but just haven’t been confirmed by science yet. Instead, real world results provide the evidence. Fine by me. However, if the "real world" evidence isn’t overwhelming and the only scientific evidence that’s available is bunk or extremely conflicting, the product’s likely to be worthless.

With all that said, let’s look at a supplement that’s been receiving a lot of press lately.


Bug Juice (Ecdysteroids)

Ecdysteroids are technically a class of steroids, as they have the classic four-ring structure. Don’t jump to any conclusions just yet, though. They’re necessary for the growth and development of insects. And, they’re also found in some of the foods we eat. For instance, fresh spinach contains 100 ug/g of 20-hydroxyecdysone — more if you don’t wash it and you have an aphid infestation in your garden.(1)

The first thing I’d like to do while reviewing these substances is to list their benefits as they’ve been shown to be of some benefit to mammals and more specifically, humans. For instance, they can normalize phospholipid content, halt epileptic seizures, and can normalize metabolites that decrease when there’s a lack of Vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol).(2,3,4) In other words, they act similar to D3.

On this same note, the most important and interesting effect of ecdysteroids is their antioxidative properties, which seem to be fairly potent. This, I believe, is where research on the compounds has been distorted so that they appear to be anabolic agents.

Before I refute this notion, let me pull out the biggest piece of ammo I have: humans do not posses ecdysteroid receptors and thus there is no place for these compounds to bind and induce transcription. Insects on the other hand do. So how do these compounds produce these "anabolic" effects in animals? Let’s take a look.

The fact that ecdysteroids act as antioxidants has been well established. They, as well as Vitamin D3 can act as rather potent antioxidants with the ecdysteroids possibly exerting their effects via a hydroxyl group.(5,6,7)

Fine, but in many of the studies, scientists often compare the actions of ecdysteroids to those of anabolic steroids. In one study, they found that ecdysteroids increased the erythrocyte (Red Blood Cells) concentration in rats with anemia. Then they say that the actions of one of these ecdysteroids resembles the stimulation of red blood cell production you get with a well known anabolic steroid, nerobol.(8)

Bingo! This compound must be the same as an anabolic steroid right? Think about this for a moment. Oxidative stress can cause damage to tissue and organs. Also, exposure of human red blood cells to oxygen radicals causes damage and a reduction in content as well.(9,10) If you simply reduce oxidative damage in these rats with the administration of antioxidants to prevent any further oxidative stress, then of course the number will increase.

Also, remember when I said oxidative stress could cause damage to tissue and consequently organs? Well, this is likely the main reason why ecdysteroids benefit the liver so much.(11,12,13) In fact, when you look at the study that claims to support the anabolic effect of ecdysteroids, you’re in for a treat.

What they did was give the mice 5 mg of ecdysteroid per 1 kg of body weight and measured protein synthesis. Where did they measure protein synthesis? In muscle tissue? Nope. In the liver. They found ecdysteroids increased the rate of protein molecule formation.(14)

But wait a minute, oxidative stress can cause cellular protein degradation. So an antioxidant would prevent this protein degradation and either cause a normalized level, or perhaps indirectly a slight increase in macromolecule formation. This explains the so called anabolic effect of ecdysteroids on the liver.(15)

But hey, don’t just take my word for it. Researchers have concluded the same thing for years. One author said that ecdysteroids are completely innocuous, having no anabolic activity in mammals. Another group of researchers gave mice 2 grams of ecdysteroids per kilogram of body weight for a total of 35 days. They had no effect.(16,17)

In a side note, ecdysteroids may increase insulin sensitivity in adipose tissue.(18) That means that they could actually increase body fat. Not good.

Lastly, just for fun, I’ll give you the pharmacokinetics of ecdysteroids. Once ingested, ecdysteroids survive the stomach, are taken up rapidly, and then removed quickly from the bloodstream and subsequently disposed of through biliary excretion into the intestine. Ecdysteroid levels peak 30 min to 2 hours after oral ingestion.(19,20) That means that even if they did work, they wouldn’t hang around for very long.


Conclusion

It makes you wonder why these studies were presented with such a misleading spin. I suspect that the Russian scientists involved with many of the studies were under a tremendous amount of pressure to produce some type of anabolic compound comparable in efficacy to actual anabolic steroids. However, it appears as though they stretched the truth a bit.

I’d say a good analogy would be telling your girlfriend that you have a 12-inch penis. While you may have one underneath your bed or in the closet, just for entertaining the ladies, it’s not the one attached to your body. In other words, it’s simply stretching the truth.

Anyhow, after reviewing the evidence, I think it’s clear that ecdysteroids are worthless in terms of producing an anabolic effect. And while these compounds may offer some benefit in terms of antioxidant properties, it just doesn’t pan out in terms of increasing muscle mass in mammals. We don’t have ecdysteroid receptors and unless you’re part bug, they’re not going to help you.

Man, marketing insect hormones as anabolic agents in humans. What has our industry come to?

Hopefully I’ve saved you some money by preventing you from trying this supplement. However, if you insist on trying them for yourself, be my guest. And if you get really big bug eyes and find yourself strangely attracted to trash heaps, don’t say I didn’t warn you.


References Cited

1. Adler J, Grebenok R. Lipids 1995 30, 257-262

2. Syrov VN, et al. "Effect of phytoecdysteroids and nerobol on parameters of carbohydrate and lipid metabolism and phospholipid spectrum of liver mitochondrial membrane in experimental diabetes mellitus of rats." WMJ 1992 Jul-Aug;64(4):61-7

3. Hanaya R, et al. "Antiepileptic effects of 20-hydroxyecdysone on convulsive seizures in spontaneously epileptic rats." Jpn J Pharamcol 1997 Aug;74(4):331-5

4. Kholodova ID, et al. "Effect of vitamin D3 and 20-hydroxyecdysone on the content of ATP, creatine phosphate, carnosine and Ca2+ in skeletal muscle." WMJ 1997 May-Jun;69(3):3-9

5. Kuzmenko AI, et al. "Effects of vitamin D3 and ecdysone on free-radical lipid peroxidation." Biochemistry (Mosc) 1997 Jun;62(6):609-12

6. Kuz’menko AY, et al. "Effect of vitamin D3, arginine, and a biologically active complex from Serratula coronata on free radical oxidation of lipids in vitamin D deficiency." WMJ 1999 Mar-Apr;71(2):69-74

7. Kuz’menko AI, et al. "Antioxidant effect of 20-hydroxyecdysone in a model system." WMJ 1999 May-Jun;71(3):35-8

8. Syrov VN, et al. "The results of experimental study of phytoecdysteroids as erythropoiesis stimulatory in laboratory animals." Eksp Klin Farmakol 1997 May-Jun;60(3):41-4

9. Pintaudi AM, et al. "Oxidative stress after moderate to extensive burning in humans." Free Radical Res 2000 Aug;33(2):139-46

10. Srour, et al. "Exposure of human erythrocytes to oxygen radicals causes loss of deformability, increased osmotic fragility, lipid peroxidation and protein degradation." jid9709206 2000;23(1):13-21

11. Syrov VN, et al. "An experimental study of the hepatoprotective properties of phytoecdysteroids and nerobol in carbon tetrachloride-induced liver lesion." Eksp Klin Farmakol 1992 May-Jun;55(3):61-5

12. Syrov VN, et al. "Action of phytoecdysteroids on the bile-secretory function of the normal liver and experimental hepatitis." Farmakol Toksikol 1986 May-Jun;49(3):100-3

13. Levitskii EL, et al. "Biochemical characterization of fractionated rat liver chromatin in experimental D-hypovitaminosis and after administration of steroid drugs." WMJ 1993 Jan-Feb;65(1):28-36

14. Syrov VN. "Mechanism of the anabolic action of phytoecdisteroids in mammals." Nauchnye Doki Vysa Shkoly Biol Nauki 1984;(11):16-20

15. Uchiyoma M, Otaka T. Invertebrate Endocrinology and Hormonal Heterophylly, ed. Verby, Springer-Verlog, Berlin 1974 p. 341.

16. Saez E, et al. "Identification of ligands and colligands for the ecdysone-regulated gene switch." Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2000 Dec 19;97(26):14512-7

17. Ogawa S, et al. Invertebrate Endocrinology and Hormonal Heterophylly, ed. Burdette W. (Springer, New York) pp. 341-344 (1974).

18. Kosovskii MI, et al. "The effect of nerobol and ecdysterone on insulin-dependent processes linked normally and in insulin resistance." Probl Endokrinol (Mosk) 1989 Sep-Oct;35(5):77-81

19. Lafont R, et al. Biochem Pharmacol 1988 37, 1174-1177

20. Simon P, Koolman J. in Ecdysone: From Chemistry to mode of action, ed.

20. Koolman J (Thieme Medical Publishers, New York.) pp 254-259"

[Stray]

thats alot of werds

[TreeTrunks]

word














(as in "word dawg")

[AzReal]

thanks pc and treetrunks.

strange how everywhere I read no sideaffects whatsoever. So I'll have to watch out for that.

treetrunks, I thought ecdy was derived from plants? I didn't even know it came originally from "bug juice." this would be some bandwagon it seems everyone is throwing it into their protein and mixing it with other growth agents. looks like I'm gonna have to look into a few of those studies and take it from there. thanks once again.