Natural Athlete is a supplement brand founded by a Sports Chiropractic Specialist. All of their product labels boast the claim of ‘Prevention, Performance and Recovery’. We were quite interested to see what this meant and how a product made specifically for athletes would be formulated. This product is antibiotic-free, sugar-free, vegan-friendly, hormone-free, gluten-free, lactose free, non-GMO and GMP certified. It is also readily available on Amazon.
So how does this product aim to target prevention of muscle damage, as well as muscle performance and recovery? Via a personalized method of dosage. For example, someone focused on prevention should take 5 capsules per day, someone who wants performance takes 7 capsules per day and someone looking for recovery would take 10 capsules per day. Interesting, but it left us with a few questions. For instance, are these doses based on science? And, will a bottle of 150 last an athlete for an entire month? To understand more, we took a look at the ingredients.
One positive aspect is that the BCAAs – L-leucine, L-isoleucine and L-valine are formulated in a 2:1:1 ratio which is clinically proven for optimal results. However, the doses are extremely low. L-leucine, which has the largest dose as it is the ingredient largely responsible for developing muscles, has only 850mg. This is much lower than we would have hoped. At the bare minimum, we would have liked to see 1000mg. By comparison, other products we reviewed contained 1200mg.
Furthermore, we found the addition of L-glutamine. L-glutamine is an amino acid that can aid muscle recovery. While it can benefit many people, it is not a Branched Chain Amino Acid. In this case, instead of having a low dose, L-glutamine has the highest dose of any of the BCAAs contained in this BCAA product! This would be great in an L-glutamine product, but here it seems to take away from an effective dose of the BCAAs by weakening the formula.
Additionally, the ingredient which we always look for in any supplement, BioPerine®, was sadly left out of this supplement. It always astounds us when this is neglected. This is proven to improve the efficacy of any ingredient in your body by increasing bioavailability. Why wouldn’t all supplement manufacturers include it then? That’s what we can’t figure out!
Finally, what’s puzzling to us are the claims that this product is vegan friendly but contains gelatin in its capsules. This means that Natural Athlete Active BCAAs are not vegan-friendly after all. The concern with BCAAs is the reports that they are derived from duck feathers, pigskin and even human hair. Because of this, we underscore the importance of finding BCAA pills that are truly vegan. If this is something that doesn’t bother you, then keep reading to find out more.
Is Natural Athlete Active BCAAs Effective?
The biggest claim on this website is that this product has helped an ironman triathlete called ‘The Iron Cowboy’. However, there is no testimonial from this athlete on the website. Nor are there testimonials from any other elite athlete. We looked for other reviews as they are a good indicator of how well any product will work. Unfortunately, this is where we hit a roadblock. There is only one review on the Natural Athlete Active BCAAs website. Amazon wasn’t much better with only a total of 5 reviews.
This was not exactly what we expected to find, but it wasn’t altogether shocking, perhaps because there isn’t such a large dose of BCAAs. We are not entirely sure but are definitely disappointed by it
Is Natural Athlete Active BCAAs Safe?
In general, this product is marketed as natural and safe. Indeed, there are many icons found on the label to inform the consumer that it is non-GMO, lactose-free, gluten-free, all-natural, etc. However, as we noted above, we are unsure how they can claim to be vegan friendly when it contains a gelatin capsule. It may be easy to slap an icon on a label without having anything to back up its claims.
Summary
Natural Athlete is a brand that is trying hard to appeal to athletes. It was developed by a Chiropractor and all its products are geared towards the special needs of athletes. With a wide range of products, we found it interesting that they chose to combine their Active BCAAs with L-glutamine. While there are manufacturers who do this to help muscle recovery, it seems silly to do so here. With such a hefty dose of L-glutamine, the actual amount of BCAAs found in this product is very low. We do like that the BCAAs are found in a 2:1:1 ratio which is backed by clinical research as being effective. However, with such a low dose, we are doubtful about the real results you will experience with this product.
Additionally, we found this product to be missing a rather important ingredient to aid absorption of the BCAAs to the muscle tissues, namely, BioPerine®. This increases bioavailability which means it takes ingredients and boosts their efficacy so that they work as best as possible in your body. We expect that supplements across the board, no matter which ailment they treat, will have BioPerine®.
Another aspect that gives us pause is the dearth of customer reviews. Finding a total of 6 customer reviews for one product is not very promising. It is especially puzzling as there are claims that this product has helped elite athletes, however, there is not one review from any of them.
We liked that the price tag isn’t so cheap it screams low quality, yet still affordable for those looking for long-term muscle development and recovery. Our main concern is that one bottle of 150 pills will probably not last an entire month. Depending on why you are taking these pills, you may have to take up to 10 per day. That would leave you with half a month without any pills. Or would require buying 2 bottles per month, which would significantly change your monthly expense.
The final point we noticed is while we were impressed with the level of detailing on the label to ensure the customer that this product is free of everything from lactose to glucose, we are entirely unsure if we can believe the veracity of these claims. Although this product claims to be vegan friendly, it comes in gelatin capsules. If this product isn’t, in fact, vegan, does that mean it has been derived from non-vegan sources such as pigskin and duck feathers? We would need that question to be answered before we ventured further with this product.
