How investigators find any hidden stimulants in health products

how investigators find any hidden stimulants in health products

Every so often, an ingredient pops up that sounds too good; for example, when ephedrine was banned from sports nutrition products and made available only by prescription, new ingredients providing that 'ephedrine-like' stimulant kick became all the rage.

After all, supplementing is common practice in elite sports these days and recreational athletes comprise a significant segment of the sports nutrition market. But dietary supplements sometimes contain banned substances and mislabelled ingredients—just ask the athletes suspended from their sports due to inadvertent doping. 

Over the years, some unapproved and potentially dangerous replacement stimulants have been used in sports nutrition and weight loss supplements, including DEPEA, DMAA, DMBA and oxilofrine. The problem is these are often deceptively labelled as botanical ingredients: thanks to some unscrupulous manufacturers, you can't always trust the ingredients listing. 

In 2016, a new ingredient hit the bodybuilding scene: 2-aminoisoheptane or Aconitum kusnezoffii. This was found to be related to DMAA and DMBA—both banned in Europe because of their links to stroke, heart failure and sudden death—and researchers began investigating its prevalence in dietary supplements. But when they tested a selection of products claiming to use 2-aminoisoheptane, they found the products actually contained the old suspects: DMAA and DMBA. 

The methods used at NSF International, a global public health organisation that screens for banned substances on the World Anti-Doping Agency list, usually involve targeting a substance and then hunting for it: in this case, they had to do things a little differently to find what was actually in the products. The researchers coupled ultra-high performance chromatography with high resolution/accurate mass spectrometry to gather as much information about each compound in the product as possible. They knew the exact mass measurements for the listed ingredients, so were able to eliminate the results that corresponded to these. Then it was a matter of isolating the compounds that didn't appear on the ingredients list. Ta da!—they've found the hidden ingredients. 

How did DMAA and DMBA end up in these products anyway? It could be poor manufacturing practices, supply chain errors or a simple accident. These would be preferable to the alternative: it may have been intentional. It would not be the first time a synthetic stimulant was hidden under the guise of a botanical: DMAA and DMBA can be hidden as geranium oil, dendrobium extract and Poochung tea extract, while oxilofrine is easily disguised as extract of Acacia rigidula. 

It's important to remember the vast majority of manufacturers are committed to quality and safety and only a tiny handful of manufacturers intentionally develop products with dodgy ingredients. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the European Specialist Sports Nutrition Alliance (ESSNA) and organisations like NSF International are out there to protect us: EFSA determines safety and efficacy of the ingredients that make it to the market, ESSNA campaigns and advocates for transparency and consumer education, and NSF independently test products to make sure the ingredients listed on the package are actually in the product.

Advice for choosing a dietary supplement:

Read the ingredients list very carefully. While you'll inevitably encounter ingredients you don't recognise (and this doesn't mean you shouldn't trust them), if you have any doubts, contact the supplement maker. 

Check for a certification mark. Certain programmes exist to check the ingredients listed are in the product which should reassure you as to their safety. However, these don't check for efficacy—in Europe, products can only include a health claim if EFSA has authorised its use. 

Check for health claims. EFSA is the only authority to authorise health claims in Europe; they release the exacting wording to be used and stipulate the conditions of use. You can find the complete list of authorised health claims here. Products with an authorised health claim have been clinically proven to offer a health benefit and this is the easiest way to check efficacy. 

Look for therapeutic dosages. The therapeutic dosage is the absolute minimum amount of an ingredient necessary to provide any health benefit and each label should have all the ingredients listed with the quantities included. However, proprietary blends usually do not list the amount of each ingredient separately; reputable manufacturers are trying to protect their formulas from their competitors, which is a legitimate argument, but some are hiding their fairy dusting. Many ingredients do work synergistically—turmeric needs black pepper to be properly bioavailable—but some fairy dusting involves adding a tiny amount of one ingredient just so they can list it. If a product seems too jam-packed with ingredients, it may well be; any doubts, contact the manufacturer. 

Have some faith. Buying supplements requires trust in the purchase. You need to be able to trust the product will do what it says it will and contains what it says it does. Check the company's reputation, check the amount of information the company offers, check the returns policy. If the manufacturer is happy to share as much as they can about the product and offers a proper returns policy, this shows they stand behind their product.