Conflicting Evidence in Substance Studies

One of things that struck me as I looked into the use of caffeine as a sports supplement was the lack of a study that you would consider as definitive as well the conflicting nature of many reports. In particular caffeine's efficacy in interval type sports was varied as well as the debate around how caffeine and creatine interact with each other.

Considering caffeine is almost certainly going to be one of the most studied and popular supplements I look at, I imagine it will be hard to draw accurate conclusions on the definitive nature of their effects.

This doesn't dissuade me from the quest to find a sports nootropic, it just reinforces that I will have to be vigilant in my reviews, particularly in some of the more out-there supplements and herbs.

Here's a few things I plan to keep in mind while reading the research:

• Publicly available. That way you can check it out too and hopefully I can get some insight from any interested readers.
• I want it to be designed well i.e. double-blind, placebo research. Research where the subjects or experimenters can sway the result isn't likely to impress me or provide the greatest results.
• I want decent sample sizes. Testing only 10 or so people wont exactly represent an substance's effect on the wider population.

Edit: I came across this a bit in my current research reviews so I'm adding it in now:

• Human trials. The value of testing a cell in a labratory or even just in rats is of little application until further, specific research is carried out.

Sources and further reading:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19088794

What's in a name?

The blog title Nootrients is a combination of nutrients and nootropics. Nutrients should be obvious to most people reading, but it never hurts to qualify for those pendants out there. Princeton defines a nutrient as "any substance that can be metabolized by an animal to give energy and build tissue".

A nootropic you may not be as familiar with. The most succinct and reputable source I could find for a description of nootropics was the scientific journal Nature: "agents that enhance memory or other cognitive functions."

Combining the two isn't exactly logical because nootropics seems to already encase the nutrient concept. Nevertheless its a good way to bring what the more of a theoretical and out-there concept of nootropics into the more readily understood field nutrition.

Why a mental supplement?

Think about the mental aspect of your sport.

If you participate in a team sport like football this should be easy - what move to play when and how the other team is playing. The number of times an individual has choked or had a brain-snap, giving away points or territory unnecessarily.

In solo sporting pursuits it may be less obvious, but is still prevalent: the martial artist who needs to overcome his opponent's strategy, the car driver who needs to hit the turn perfectly or the runner who needs to implement her race plan with absolute focus.

If sportsmen are using protein, creatine and any number of other supplements to boost muscle power then it stands that a mental supplement should be of equal importance in sports. I can think of a few where it might even be of greater importance.

Perhaps more importantly a mental supplement is not just about cognitive enhancement during the end competition, but the potential for a compounding advantage. The benefits of accelerated learning when applied to a training program are immense. The ability to retain more plays, to learn new techniques rapidly or to adjust to a new directive from a coach is increased. When you compound that across the many training sessions of a modern athlete the results could be phenomenal.

The coming posts will consider some of the more popular supplements and hopefully find a few new ones you haven't heard of. The ingredients of energy drinks that claim mental benefits will be examined as well as some of the more traditional herbal supplements like ginko biloba. Without the resources to create a trial to any decent standard we will rely on publicly published scientific studies as the basis for findings.

By the end we should have a good idea about how to improve our game through supplements or if it is even currently possible.