Are there any known side effects? I took them to my pharmacist who didn't know a thing about them and couldn't find them in his book.

I'm also a little worried about taking the supplements. I really don't like adding anything to my body that is going to mess it up, expecially chemically.

Here's a little piece I wrote that talks about this and sites some studies.


Every now and then research unlocks an amazing fitness key with ingredients that have always been available to us. Here we analyze two completely natural supplements that when taken together are very potent for regulating the metabolism, increasing energy, and promoting fat loss while maintain muscle mass. While they have always been around, only lately have we really learned most of their benefits. Combined with a proper diet and exercise, these supplements can accelerate your body's ability to burn fat by more than 20%. Here is a brief rundown:

Green Tea: According to tea expert Dr. John Weisburger, tea is probably the number one thing that you can add to your diet to ward off illness. While this is certain to ruffle some feathers in the health field, so many studies have come out showing tremendous benefits from tea that it's impossible to say his statement isn't at least arguable.

A growing body of evidence in both human and animal studies suggests that regular consumption of green tea can reduce the incidence of a variety of cancers, including colon, pancreatic, and stomach cancers. Green tea might also help prevent heart disease and liver disease. Both black and green tea are made from the same plant, but more of the original substances endure in the less-processed green form. Green tea contains high levels of substances called polyphenols, known to possess strong antioxidant, anticarcinogenic, antitumorigenic, and even antibiotic properties.
Here follows some research summaries from more recent publications:
Women age 65 to 75 who drank at least one cup of tea every day had significantly higher bone density in the spine and thighs -- common areas of fractures caused by osteoporosis -- than women of the same age who didn't drink any tea, according to a British study published in the April 2000 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
While researchers have yet to determine how tea works on bones, they suspect that antioxidants are key players. Tea antioxidants may be 100 times as effective as vitamin C and 25 times as effective as vitamin E. These antioxidants (polyphenols) neutralize free radicals -- destructive by-products of the body's natural chemical processes. (Unfortunately for herbal tea drinkers, herbal teas are made from altogether different plants and spices and often contain no polyphenols at all.) Polyphenols' ability to protect the body from free radical damage may be behind tea's two best-studied benefits -- protection against cancer and lower heart disease risk.
Whether tea really helps prevent cancer is still under debate, but research in its favor is piling up. University of Iowa researchers found that tea may be a powerful cancer fighter, according to a study published in the July 1996 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology. The study of more than 35,000 postmenopausal women showed that those who drank at least two cups of black tea a day were 40% less likely to develop urinary tract cancer and 68% less likely to develop cancer in the digestive tract than women who did not drink tea.
Other scientists have found that the powerful antioxidants in tea also may help reduce the risk of heart disease. In one study, researchers found that women age 55 or older, who drank as little as a cup or two of black tea a day, were 54% less likely to have severe atherosclerosis, which can lead to heart attack or stroke, than those who did not. The more tea they drank, the less their risk, according to a study published in the Oct. 11, 1999, issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. That could be because the antioxidants work by preventing "bad" (LDL, low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol from promoting the plaque buildup that clogs arteries. And by preventing atherosclerosis, tea antioxidants can help the arteries supply nourishing blood to the heart and the rest of the body.
Pyruvate: Pyruvate occurs naturally in the body and is an end product of the metabolism of sugar or starch. It is also found in the diet, with naturally ingested amounts ranging from 100 mg to 1-2 grams daily. Although pyruvate is found in a variety of foods, most of them contain less than 25 mg per serving. Foods high in pyruvate include certain fruits and vegetables - most notably, red apples contain 450 mg - certain cheeses , dark beer (80 mg per 12 ounces)and red wine (75 mg per 6 ounces).
A surprising discovery was made with pyruvate by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine They showed that dietary supplementation with pyruvate increased fat loss by up to 48% and minimized the associated loss of body protein! This is unusual because fat loss during dietary restriction virtually always occurs with a corresponding and substantial loss of muscle (body protein). It is believed that pyruvate accelerates fat loss by increasing "cellular" respiration, or the amount of energy the mitochondria (the "powerhouse" of the cell) uses.
Pyruvate was also been shown to increase endurance (by up to 20%) in some studies, making it even more attractive for athletes. Anyone who has gone on a diet knows that it's hard to maintain the stamina necessary to get super-intense workouts once you cut back on caloires.
Two human studies conducted by premier pyruvate researcher Ronald Stanko, MD, from the Gastroenterology and Clinical Nutrition Division at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, found that supplementation with pyruvate along with another three-carbon molecule, dihydroxyacetone (DHA), for seven days significantly increased muscular endurance in both the arms and legs by 20%. More specifically, the pyruvate mixture increased the time it took to exhaust arm muscles by 23 minutes and leg muscles by 13 minutes. (More recent studies have used only pyruvate, which is more effective than DHA.)
In the world of athletics, a 20% increase in endurance--whether in your workouts or in some type of aerobic competition--is highly significant. This result is supported by a third study that found when subjects ingested the pyruvate/DHA mixture, they noticed a more than 20% decrease in perceived level of exertion, meaning they felt that the task was easier to do.
Stanko's results on fat loss are even more phenomenal. Two well-controlled studies found that pyruvate had a significant impact not only on weight loss but, more important, on fat loss. The most recent study found that when obese female subjects were given pyruvate for three weeks, they lost 37% more weight (13 pounds vs. 9.5 pounds) and 48% more fat (8.8 pounds vs. 5.9 pounds). In practical terms, this 48% increase in fat loss translated into a loss of nearly an extra pound of body fat a week!
Additionally, Dr. Frank Greenway, an endocrinologist at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, focused on the effects of nutrition in obesity. Greenway says that pyruvate is "a normal constituent of human metabolism, so its safety should be high." He agrees with the research on improved exercise performance and weight/fat loss, but also adds that "pyruvate decreases cholesterol in a high-fat diet, has important antioxidant activity and seems to improve cardiac function."
Adverse side effects in the study groups included diarrhea and borborygmus (gurgling sounds in the digestive tract) in some subjects. No changes were seen in standard laboratory testing or in clinical evaluations that included measurements of heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, EKG and urine output. Stanko noted, however, that the intestinal side effects documented in the early studies are no longer seen, as the quality of raw pyruvate has increased tremendously. Summing up 25 years of research into pyruvate he stated, "I'm convinced that pyruvate is not only effective but also has no serious side effects."