Top 10 Supplements

I made a Top 10 list and a quick description on why you should conside these. The importance of the Top 10 list is based on Building Muscle and Size.

1. A Multi-Vitamin

When eating a diet meant for mass, you will no doubt be targeting the foods that can pack the most calories on from the needed macro-nutrients. In turn this can lead to a deficiency in Micro-nutrients, meaning vitamins and minerals. Such a deficiency can impair optimum functioning of the body and consquently hinder your growth. Minerals are building blocks, they are used for cellular actions, building bone, transporting nutrients and so, whilst vitamins provide enzymatic functions in digesting foods and and protect the system against damage from the outside and inside. Levels of these substances must be kept above a certain level to maintain proper health, but kept a great deal higher for optimal functioning of your system. That's why supplementing with a multi-vitamin above all else makes sense: you get at least your daily minimum of all these nutrients avoiding anything going wrong with your quest for growth, and together with the rest of the vitamins and minerals found in every food to some extent, you are bound to be on the road to getting everything you system needs.

2. HMB

HMB helps slow down a phenomenon known as proteolysis, which is the natural process of breaking down muscle that occurs especially after strenuous activity. It appears that HMB supplementation has a protective effect on muscle and may help the body get a head start on the recovery process by minimizing the amount of "muscle damage" and ensuing protein degradation after exercise. It is theorized that HMB is a building block for intra-muscular cholesterol, which your muscle needs after vigorous exercise for repair and growth.

3. Vitamin B-Complex

B-vitamins have many anabolic properties separately and have often been the subject of supplementation. Hereby I think of Niacin (B3), Pyridoxine (B6) and Cobalamin (B12). But people often forget that for a lot less money they can get better gains by getting a B-complex which combines all of them in optimal doses (50-100 mg, there is no way you need 500 mg of Niacin). This harnesses the synergistic effect of B-vitamins which means better digestion and absorption of carbs, protein and fat and the fact that they comport themselves as enzymes in many bodily functions. You can't overdose on them anyway since water-soluble vitamins are readily excreted if you have too much.

4. Glutamine

Blood and muscle levels of glutamine do tend to fall as a result of exhaustive exercise and other physical stress. So, working up a good, prolonged sweat theoretically could cause this chemical to slip below a critical point. As a result, muscle mass may decrease, exercise recovery may be prolonged, and risk of illness may rise. To provide insurance here --or to actually enhance muscle mass and exercise recovery and to ward off illness -- some people take glutamine supplements and swear that they work. I didn't use to take this, but now that I'm older and my muscles take longer to rebuild this is a must have supplement.

5. Vitamin C

Vitamin C still shines for its antioxidant properties, and in other reports suggesting benefits in the fight against cancer, heart disease and other conditions. Vitamin C has been linked to numerous healing properties over the years, and put forth as potential cure for anything ranging from the common cold to cancer.

6. EFA's

Recent sciencific research has shown just how much people need essential fatty acids (EFAs) to survive. Since many EFAs are not readily found in foods, you need to supplement your EFA intake. EFA oil supplements should uniquely combine Omega-3, 6 and 9 fatty acids and provides a balanced combination of Borage Oil, Organic Flax Oil and Fish Oil. This unique combination of nutritional oils helps promote healthy skin, healthy joints, and healthy memory function.

7. Creatine

Creatine is an all-natural and perfectly safe compound that has the amazing ability to regenerate ATP stores in the body. ATP (adenosine tri-phosphate) is the primary energy currency of the body and when short-term anaerobic energy is produced ATP splits into ADP (adenosine-diphosphate) and an extra phosphate ion. Creatine can recycle the ADP to ATP again, ensuring a short-term burst of energy that can increase your strength levels 10-20 percent easily. Creatine also has a strong water retention effects. Meaning that for every bit of creatine stored in a cell, a large amount of water is also stored. This gives you a temporary size increase but also draws more nutrients, like protein, in the cell, which can, long-term, lead to real muscle growth.

8. Amino Acid Formulas

Dietary proteins contain a multitude of different aminos and their metabolites, but not always in the ratios that we would like, or the ratios that we need. That's why extra amino acid supplementation has been a big thing in bodybuilding for a while now. Though new evidence suggests that absorption of these amino acids is best when in di- and tripeptide chains, it'll be a while before they can make a stable and cost-effective version that way, and I can't say I have been disappointed by the free-form versions. Since amino acids are the building blocks of all tissue, we need to get enough. And instead of investing in non-essentials like glutamine and arganine which will be wasted when bulking, I'd rather you get a complete formula that at least gets you a good helping of the essentials, which will in turn synergistically enhance the effect of non-essentials as well.

9. A Weight Gainer

What better for packing on mass than a WEIGHT gainer. The main thing when bulking, next to getting your needed share of macro and micro nutrients is of course packing on all the calories you can handle without turning into a balloon. Since you will be expending quite a bit of calories while bulking, trying to add all that muscle, sometimes it will be hard to make your calorie-count every single day from nutritious self-prepared meals. Your family will not always be as supportive of an 6-meal a day habit. Take it from me. That's where weight gainers come in. Ranging from 600 to 3000 calories these gainers allow you to add serious additional calories from quality sources without having to spend hours behind a stove. Just mix and you have an instant high-calorie meal... and cost-effective too.

10. ZMA

ZMA is a patented mineral formula that is turning a lot of heads. Minerals you say ? Well, if that just turned you off, think again. The statistics show that the majority of athletes is deficient in both of the minerals contained in ZMA: magnesium and zinc. This has many reasons, often that there are other factors in the foods we eat that inhibit the minerals from being absorbed. Calcium for one, is a mineral that will block the uptake of zinc. And most zinc supps use a calcium filler. So now the idea was to bond it (a process called chelation) with an amino acid, in this case methionine and aspartate. This would facilitate absorption and aid the minerals in their intended function, which is improving recovery and raising natural hormonal levels. Testosterone was shown to increase overnight by almost 100 percent.

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