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health: supplements
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| Performance Products Claim To Charge Up Your Horse |
| But there isn't always solid evidence that the ingredients are the ones you really need. |
No matter what you do with your horse, be sure it's legal within your discipline.
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Many
“performance” supplements have hit the market. What exactly is a “performance”
supplement? In the broadest sense, it should be something that will help your
horse perform better. Turns out, though, that manufacturers have some widely
differing ideas about what ingredients are necessary to accomplish that.
Common
sense alone will tell you that if something is beneficial for the performance of
a racehorse, it might not be what you’re looking for to support an endurance
horse.
Because
this category of products contains such a wide variety, we have to recommend
that you look at them product by product. The products we included are by no
means the only ones advertised as “performance supplements,” but they are
examples of common categories, including:
| Put It To Use |
| Optimize
your horse’s regular diet. Exercise appropriately. Boost carb
intake. Note intakes of selenium, vitamins E and C. Consider glycogen
loaders and BCAAs. Balance nutrients rather than megadose. |
Training and conditioning are your best bet for performance enhancement.
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General vitamin and mineral products labeled as “performance.” Dietary
deficiencies can certainly have a negative impact on how the horse handles the
physical stress of performance, but should be approached by correctly balancing
the diet appropriate to his level of work. There’s no evidence that megadosing
vitamins or minerals will make the horse perform better.
Antioxidants: Exercise does increase antioxidant requirements. You’ll want to
make sure the horse is getting at least 2000 IU/day of vitamin E, 2 to 4 mg of
selenium and could add a little vitamin C, 1 to 3 grams/day. Horses under
particularly heavy stresses may also benefit from some the plant-based
antioxidants.
Muscle builders/protectors: We covered muscle-building problems in depth in
January 2006. Some of the best products in that category, including
glycogen-loaders and branched-chain-amino-acid (BCAAs) products, are included
again here. Working muscle do require high levels of branched chain amino acids,
which are broken down as energy sources during work and must be replaced to
prevent muscle loss and build more muscle tissue. Decreasing levels of BCAAs in
the blood during prolonged/endurance exercise may also lead to higher
concentrations of tryptophan in the brain, causing
fatigue.
Energy boosters: Energy basically means calories. When it comes to hard working
muscles, this means fats, carbohydrates (the premier fuel) and branched chain
amino acids. Fat can only be efficiently utilized for slow work, since it is
metabolized too slowly to meet the energy demands of moderately high and high
speed. Hard-working horses having trouble maintaining their weight on adequate
grain and hay rations may benefit from the inclusion of small amounts of fat in
their diet, to spare other energy sources when they’re not working hard, but
feeding too much, or substituting too much fat for carbohydrate, may negatively impact performance.
Burning fat also requires intermediates that are derived from carbohydrate
metabolism. Fat has its place, but carbohydrate is the king of exercise
fuels.
| Avoid These! |
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Even
a quick look at human exercise/performance supplements will show you there is a
huge array. Some work, some don’t. Some also are of use in horses, some aren’t.
Worse yet, the castoffs on the human end, products well known not to be helpful,
may end up in equine supplements. Some things to avoid include:
Chromium:
Not likely to be deficient and won’t help if it isn’t. Chromium is important to
proper utilization of glucose by muscles, but unlikely to be deficient unless
horse is eating hays/grains grown in alkaline soils (Southwest). Horses on
high-grain intakes or using glycogen loaders may need more chromium. Heavy
exercise also increases chromium losses in other species, but it’s not proven in
horses.
Inosine:
This is a waste product of ATP breakdown, and high levels are harmful to energy
generation.
Lactate
and Pyruvate: The muscle and liver can utilize these byproducts of carbohydrate
metabolism, but there’s no shortage of them during exercise and there are much
more efficient ways to provide energy. Creatine:
Although creatine is well-documented as useful in human sports medicine to
improve intense muscular efforts in humans, the value to horses remains
questionable. Equine literature and our own field trials have found no or
equivocal results. Very high doses have caused cramping in some horses. It’s
also expensive. We’ll pass. DMG
(dimethylglycine): Although still widely touted as a way to lower lactic acid
production, this supplement does not work in people, and there’s nothing to
support its use in horses either. The precursor of DMG, TMG/betaine does appear
to be of benefit to untrained horses starting exercise, or those entering more
strenuous stages of exercise training. A 1999 study published in the Journal of
Animal Science found horses supplemented with 80 mg/kg of body weight of betaine
(40,000 mg for a 500 kg/1100 lb. horse) showed lower levels of lactate
production and lower release of fatty acids, indicating more efficient aerobic
ultilization of glucose. Betaine also improves muscle bulk while decreaseing fat
in other species. However, no performance benefit has been found in horses that
are already fit. |
Adaptogens: Ginsengs and some other herbs are adaptogens that have been proven
to moderate the cortisol response to exercise or stressful situations so that
it’s more like that of a trained animal and to avoid exaggerated responses. It
probably does this by being structurally similar to the mammalian hormones.
Horses that are sour, have poor energy levels and appetites often show a
favorable response to adaptogens, which includes Ginseng.
Bottom Line
Equine-exercise
research is finally starting to catch up with human. Studies have now shown that
either intravenous or oral glucose supplementation improves glycogen levels in
muscle compared to conventional feeding regimens. So, if you’re looking for a
true performance enhancer, we’d probably start with muscle builders, including
glycogen loaders like maltodextrin, and BCAAs. Because
it’s important to choose the product based on your horse’s particular needs,
it’s difficult for us to make a No. 1 pick here. That said, we think the
standouts in our chart include: APF, Power Pak, Blitz, BCAA Complex, Carbo Load,
CarboCharge, Glycogen Loader and Advanced Glycogen Loader.
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 Stumble It!
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Performance Products Claim To Charge Up Your Horse
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