Is A New Dangerous Ingredient in Your Supplements?

A dangerous ingredient similar to one already banned made it into workout and weight loss supplements.

Boo!

It has been three weeks since I last wrote about unpleasant supplement side effects and we sure don’t want your stress hormones to go down, do we?

Seriously, remember DMAA, the stuff of nightmares I wrote about?

Turns out it has a little brother.

Meet 1,3-Dimethylbutylamine

The new kid on the block goes by the name “DMBA” (short for “1,3-dimethylbutylamine”), is just about as dangerous as DMAA, and on labels often referred to as “AMP citrate.” It made its first appearances on ingredient lists only recently, after the ban of DMAA.

The usual procedures in the supplement industry saw no problem in DMBA never having been tested as safe for human consumption.

Even the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a supplement industry lobbying group normally trying to facilitate sales of whatever to whomever, sent a letter to the FDA (PDF), urging them into action “concerned about the potential dangers to consumers.”

Where Is It In?

Harvard researchers scoured supplement stores looking for products listing AMP citrate and other synonym names of DMBA and came up with fourteen they then bought. They tested them twice for DMBA and in twelve the tests were positive (company names in parentheses):

• Contraband (Iron Forged Nutrition)
• Redline White Heat (Vital Pharmaceuticals Inc.)
• Evol (Genomyx LLC)
• MD2 Meltdown (Vital Pharmaceuticals Inc.)
• OxyphenXR AMP’D (Beta Labs, Ltd.)
• OxyTHERM Pro (deNOVOLABS)
• Oxyfit Xtreme (Oxyfit Xtreme)
• Synetherm (Synetherm)
• AMPitropin (Lecheek Nutrition)
• Decimate Amplified (Genomyx LLC)
• AMPilean (Lecheek Nutrition)
• Frenzy (Driven Sports)

The researchers stress they only had a small sample and DMBA could be in more than these.

Also notice who is back not being overly concerned over the health and safety of his customers: Driven Sports is the latest supplement company of convicted criminal Matt Cahill. You have to give him that: he stays true to his word.

And The FDA?

As always they are playing catch-up. News agency Reuters they told they’re “aware of the concerns regarding DMBA and AMP citrate” and will “consider taking regulatory action to protect consumers.”

But that will change little. Should the FDA ban DMBA, it will be trivial to come up with a replacement. Whoever put DMBA into a supplement tried to mimic DMAA, after all. It doesn’t take much more than a basement and a home chemistry set to come up with yet another variation within this family of compounds.

Picture courtesy of “Bruce.”