Altitude Training in a Bottle?

Cdiangelo

Saw an ad for this on Triathlete this morning, claiming altitude training in a bottle.:

http://www.mmaltitudetraining.com/

Never heard of it. It's not something I'm looking to use, but wondered if anyone has seen this before. Perhaps just another recipe for expensive pee... 

 

tgarson

Have discussed it quite a bit on ST, stirred up a bunch of skepticism and then the creators chimed in and offered free bottles to some people to try, the offer has since closed.

It's basically just a bunch of B vitamins, sodium phosphate, hawthorne berry extract and n-acetylcysteine (NAC). The B vitamins are kind of a gimme, there have been more than a few studies in the past about the effectiveness of sodium phosphate as a sports supplement so it tends to find its way into other supplements already (like Optygen), the hawthorne berry powder is almost guaranteed to be snake oil, and the NAC is the biggest component of the overall product, it's the principal 'active ingredient'. Again, lots of studies out on NAC, including several positive ones.

Here's the short version though. I don't discount the possibility that this product has some benefit to performance, but the manner in which those gains would be made would be almost entirely mutually exclusive from the physiological adaptations of altitude acclimatization (increased hematocrit, increased RBC) and I put zero stock in any claim that this product would pre-acclimate you for any race at altitude.

Paul Hough

Yep, all the pros can now leave Boulder and go elsewhere with their bottle of Mountain Mike. I don't believe a single word they are saying in that ad.