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[Definitie:] "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance."
(Wilmore and Costill) 
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1 8 - 0 1 - 2 0 0 5 For Sale: 'Muscles' in a Bottle
By DAVID TULLER
Grant Deans is 5-foot-10 and weighs 190 pounds, but he wants to be bigger. Mr. Deans, 20, a martial arts practitioner and bodybuilder who can bench-press 215 pounds, has scoured the vast array of sports dietary supplements and settled on a few he hopes will advance his goal.
He takes whey, a protein derived from milk, to bolster his daily caloric intake; branched-chain amino acids, said to help muscles recover from workouts; and creatine, a compound promoted as boosting energy levels and increasing the intensity of workouts.
"The supplements are a really useful tool," said Mr. Deans, a college student in Norcross, Ga., who has been taking them on and off for five years. "It would just take too much time and energy to prepare six or seven meals a day to get the right amount of protein to build muscles."
Ten or 20 years ago, sports enthusiasts like Mr. Deans might have taken a few basic vitamins and minerals. But in recent years, the fitness marketplace has been flooded with products bearing short, catchy names like Adenergy, Lean Stack and Cell-Tech or intimidating, pseudoscientific ones like Sterobol Suspension Muscle Mass Enhancer, Vaso XP Xtreme Vasodilator & Growth Promoter and Xenadrine-NRG.
Sports-related supplements accounted for $1.9 billion of the $19 billion Americans spent on dietary supplements in 2003, according to Nutrition Business Journal, a trade publication, up 6 percent from the previous year. The supplements are different from the anabolic steroids that have been controversial in professional sports, most recently baseball.
In advertisements, often accompanied by molecular diagrams and before-and-after photos illustrating a metamorphosis from saggy sack to bulging Hercules, supplement makers claim benefits that are nothing short of miraculous.
A product called Aftermath, for example, boasts that it can help "swell your muscles to grotesque size" and eliminate the chance of "dooming yourself to girlyman status." Xpand Nitric Oxide Reactor, a drink mix that comes in tropical berry and piņa colada flavors, offers bodybuilders "the most unbelievable muscular and vascular pumps you have ever experienced."
But scientists say that for many supplements, there are few reliable studies to demonstrate their safety and effectiveness. And with hundreds of different ingredients available to manufacturers, it can be difficult for even those who specialize in the field to keep track of products and to assess the scientific basis for manufacturers' claims.
"It used to be that if a coach or athlete called and said, 'What do you think about product X,' you had a pretty good idea," said Dr. Ann Grandjean, executive director of the Center for Human Nutrition, a research and education organization in Omaha. "Now there are so many out there, so if an athlete calls and asks about elk antler velvet, you have to go out and do a lot of research."
Many supplements are touted as muscle builders. Others claim to increase the ability of muscle tissue to recover quickly from workouts. Still others boast that they have thermogenic - or heat-producing - properties that help speed up the metabolism and melt away fat, enhancing energy.
Among the most common products are protein supplements, often sold as powders, and supplements containing amino acids, the building blocks of protein, which many athletes believe can help muscles grow and repair themselves.
Experts recommend that athletes consume about twice as much protein as sedentary people. And many bodybuilders and others say that supplements are necessary because it takes too much time to prepare and eat enough high-protein meals. But Dr. Grandjean and other sports nutrition experts say that a well-balanced diet should provide sufficient quantities of proteins and amino acids for even the most active.
Creatine, a chemical found in meat, is also popular as a supplement, and some studies support claims that creatine can benefit athletes engaged in sports that demand short bursts of energy. Another ingredient, glucosamine sulfate, is promoted as helping to lubricate and repair joints. Nitric oxide is said to increase the blood flow to muscles and to reduce inflammation. But data to support many such claims are mixed, at best.
The federal government has recently taken a more active interest in sports supplements. A new federal law that criminalizes nonprescription use of prohormones - substances that act like steroids once they are in the body - takes effect this week.
The law, which has prompted a last-minute buying spree of supplements containing these ingredients, also includes money for programs that educate young athletes, who are major consumers of sports supplements, about the potential dangers of these products.
Passage of that law followed a decision by the Food and Drug Administration to crack down on two ingredients that were widely used in fitness supplements: ephedra, a plant-based stimulant that many athletes have used to burn off fat but that has been linked to cardiovascular and other health problems, and androstenedione, a prohormone that gained fame when it was revealed that the baseball slugger Mark McGwire was taking it. Many supplement makers and trade groups have supported these steps, saying that they prove that the government has enough authority to act when it deems a product unsafe.
But critics say that regulation of supplements remains so lax that many products are of unknown purity, and studies show that what is in the products does not always conform to what the label says. Accidental contamination is not the only possible explanation, said Dr. Linn Goldberg, a professor of medicine at Oregon Health & Science University.
"If I said I was selling Dr. Goldberg's Gogo Juice and you took it and didn't have any results, you'd go, 'This is a bunch of junk,' " he said. "But if I put something in it that actually enhanced your ability, you'd go, "This stuff works.' "
Supplement companies say they take strenuous efforts to maintain strict quality control. But some consumers have still noticed major differences in their responses when they switch brands.
James Hopkins, a business writer in San Francisco who regularly cycles and lifts weights, said he began taking creatine in 1998 and believed it helped him bulk up. But when he tried another brand, he began experiencing painful leg cramps, one of the potential side effects of creatine.
"I thought, My body's telling me something; taking this stuff is stupid, too much of an investment in vanity," said Mr. Hopkins, 47.
Some critics also fear that the industry will find ways around the new restrictions by promoting legal substitutes for the banned substances. The new prohormone law, for example, does not restrict the use of a substance called DHEA, which many experts say has similar effects.
"We've made such a big deal about getting things off the market that the public is now lulled into a false sense of security," said Dr. Mike Perko, chairman of health science at the University of Alabama.
The F.D.A. has some authority to regulate dietary supplements under a 1994 law. But manufacturers of these items, unlike pharmaceutical companies, are not required to prove that their products are safe or effective, and policing the industry can be an extremely hard task.
For their part, many people who use sports supplements view the government's actions as an encroachment on their autonomy. They point out, accurately, that far more deaths are attributed every year to overdoses of aspirin than to ephedra or other restricted substances.
"People can make other choices that are deleterious to their health, but nobody's standing up to pass laws banning triple cheeseburgers and Twinkies," said Rick Collins, a lawyer who represents supplement makers and the United Supplement Freedom Association.
"The irony is that most of these people are following healthy diets that are far superior to the average American's diet, and they are infinitely more concerned about their health from the nutritional standpoint," Mr. Collins said.
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