Certified SAEF

One of the key differences with RIVALUS brand products is our Certified SAEF program. This post is a Q&A between a "discerning athlete" and Dr. Burke.

Question: "I was interest in your supplement products and the fact that you state that they are safe for sport and do not contain any substances on WADA's prohibited substance list. I was wondering how the SAEF certification process compares to the NSF certification of safe for sport; are the protocols as stringent?"

Dr. Burke: "NSF is a great program that tests dietary supplements to confirm if the amount of ingredients listed on the supplement facts panel matches the actual ingredients in the finished product. NSF does not conduct clinical trials in people with the finished supplement.

Certified SAEF (Safe and Effective First) involves testing the finished product to confirm that label amounts are accurate (same as NSF), plus involves conducting clinical trials in people (athletes) to confirm safety and to confirm substantiation for the claims made in the product advertising or on the label regarding efficacy. Certified SAEF also means that there are no WADA or IOC banned substances in the finished products and that an athlete will not test positive for any banned substance.

NSF is a great program that any company can pay to have the NSF certification; however, RIVALUS is the only company that actually tests the "finished product"in athletes prior to advertising them for sale. Often times companies test 'key' ingredients but typically never the completed product to confirm safetyand efficacy-I hope more companies start doing the same as us, but doubt it will happen soon due to the high cost.

MPOWER Athletes Energy, ENCHARGE Athletes Creatine, and PROMASIL Athletes Protein are all Certified SAEF making them Powerful, SAEF, and Clean alternatives for 'discerning athletes'. Please let me know if you have any other questions. Happy Holidays. Regards, Darren"

PROMASIL is a HUGE Hit!

We are pleased that so many "discerning athletes" are enjoying the great taste and quality of PROMASIL Athletes Protein. In fact, sales of PROMASIL have exceeded expectations and we are working fast to produce enough to meet the growing demand. We have also had great feedback from consumers reporting: "I love how well it mixes and how good it tastes"; "It has been great for my recovery between training sessions"; "PROMASIL has been the best protein I have ever used during my heavy phase of lifting"; "I have had the best gains in lean muscle mass in years on PROMASIL"; "This has been the best supplement I've used to get lean while dieting"; etc...

We have also had a number of inquires about how much PROMASIL should be taken each day and questions about the caffeine content of our CITRUSBURN Complex. In response to our "discerning athlete" consumers we have improved our label directions and also made two minor changes in our formulation.

Recommended Use: Our existing labels have recommendations that are more than necessary and we have corrected that on our new label. The correct way to take PROMASIL Athletes Protein is 2 scoops every day, with 1 scoop one hour prior to training and another scoop immediately after training. On non-training days take 1 scoop mid-morning and 1 scoop mid-afternoon.

Caffeine Question: Supplementation with protein is great for building mass but also for getting lean. For that reason, we included a Decaffeinated Thermogenic Complex; however, we did not spell this out on our label until now with our revised label. Even though we use decaffeinated ingredients there remains trace amounts of caffeine, which some caffeine naive consumers might notice. That said, we decided to remove all potential sources of caffeine except for a small amount of decaffeinated green tea, which everyone knows provides amazing thermogenic effects and loads of antioxidants. The only other change in formula was the addition of Beta-Alanine, which provides another way to enhance non-stimulant fat oxidation and dramatically boost energy levels, muscle strength and power outputs.

Thank you to all those that provided us feedback on PROMASIL Athletes Protein and please keep us posted on your training and supplement success.

Dr Burke & Colleagues Publish Paper

RIVALUS CEO Dr Darren Burke and other well-known academic researchers such as Drs Bill Campell, Richard Kreider, Tim Ziegenfuss, and Jose Antonio recently published a position paper on protein and exercise for the International Society of Sports Nutrition.

In this Position Paper, these experts discuss Protein Intake Recommendations, Safety of Protein Consumption, Protein Source and Quality, and also the impact of Timing of Protein Intake. You can see this important article by searching http://www.pubmed.com/ or access it through the International Society of Sports Nutrition at: www.jissn.com/content/4/1/8

ENCHARGE + PROMASIL = 8 pounds Fast!

We recently received this email from Taylor: "Dear Dr.Burke, Noah and I have been hitting the gym hard since I last talked to you. We've been combining ENCHARGE Athletes Creatine and PROMASIL Athletes Protein and love them both. I've gained about 8 pounds since I started taking it, and Noah is reporting similar gains. Just wanted to say thanks for making such wicked products. Taylor"

Noah adds: "ENCHARGE and PROMASIL is helping us acheive huge gains fast plus it helps make our workouts longer and more intense.... this is awesome as a preworkout strength and muscle builder. Just wanted to say thanks-it works great!"

RIVALUS Athletes-Martine Thebeau & Jamie "The Barbarian" Barbour

We are pleased to welcome two new additions to our Roster of RIVALUS Athletes. Champion Figure Competitor, Martine Thebeau and Varsity Hockey Player and Local Legend Jamie "The Barbarian" Barbour are two recent "discerning athletes" that have joined the Roster of RIVALUS Athletes. Martine and Jamie are elite athletes, fierce competitors, and great members of their respective communities. Like the many other RIVALUS Athletes, Martine and Jamie enjoy the "Powerful and SAEF" effects of MPOWER Athletes Energy, ENCHARGE Athletes Creatine, and PROMASIL Athletes Protein.

We will be posting profiles on Martine and Jamie plus all the other RIVALUS Athletes in the near future on our website.

Lost 20 pounds of Fat in 1 Month!

We recently received this email from Christina: "It seems as though I have been on a diet my entire life, without much success. I didn't have much energy and was feeling pretty down about being overweight. One rainy day in October I walked into my local GNC store and noticed MPOWER Athletes Energy. I loved the look and the name of the product but thought it would be only for athletes. The helpful store clerk told me "MPOWER is strong enough for athletes but made for everyone" I needed extra energy and wanted to lose weight so I tried it-That was the best decision of my life. I had energy immediately that lasted throughout the entire day, my appetite was gone, and the weight started disappearing from my body instantly. I loved how MPOWER made me feel and really enjoyed my jeans getting loose around my waist, butt, and legs. It has been just over one month and I have already lost 22 pounds. I still dont consider myself an athlete but I sure do feel like one. This change in my life has helped me to gain enough confidence to join my local fitness center. I now lift weights 3 days per week and do aerobic training 3 days per week-I guess I am an athlete afterall. Thanks so much for MPOWER. It certaintly has EMPOWERED me."

RIVALUS Athletes Online at USA Today

As of yesterday at noon, RIVALUS Athletes Una Lounder (National Team Kayak) and Will Colbert (San Jose Sharks and St.FX Hockey) are featured online with MPOWER Athletes Energy and ENCHARGE Athletes Creatine at USAToday, MSNBC, OxygenMag.com, MaxFitMag.com, and eMuscleMag.com

Stay tuned for more postings of Will and Una plus the new athletes recently added to the roster of RIVALUS Athletes

You can find more info on the Sharks and Will Colbert at: http://sharks.nhl.com/team/app?page=PlayerDetail&playerId=8470817&service=page&tab=crs

Gained 5 pounds of Muscle in 14 days!

We recently received this email from varisty football player Steve: "I have been training hard for a number of years, hitting weights hard, eating well and often, and taking supplements. I tried a lot of different products including NO-Xplode and Cell-Tech. A buddy of mine told me to try two new products created by St.FX researcher Dr Darren Burke called ENCHARGE and PROMASIL. I started stacking these last month and I gained 5 lbs of muscle in the first two weeks!. This stuff is awesome-the protein mixes up well and tastes great. I am looking forward to the weeks ahead. Thanks-Steve"

ENCHARGE Every Day!

Mark from Nova Scotia sent Dr Burke the following Question: "I recently purchased "ENCHARGE" and was wondering if it should be used daily? I typically train 4 days a week...should I take it on training days only or every day?"

Dr. Burke responds: "Hi Mark. Great choice of products and good question. ENCHARGE should be used every day for 3-4 weeks followed by an OFF cycle of 1 week, then repeat the same ON and OFF cycle. Take ENCHARGE twice per day (training and non-training days) 6 hours apart with one serving 1 hour before working out. If you train early in the morning, take your first serving 1 hour before hitting the gym, then your next serving 6 hours later. If you train late at night like me, take your first serving 1 hour before training, then your second serving immediately after.

Enjoy your ENCHARGE and be sure to train hard and keep me posted on your progress.

Regards
Darren"

Mark's reply: "Thanks for your prompt reply!! I am really looking forward to see what kind of performance gains I can achieve with ENCHARGE. I'm just starting into my off season training for downhill mountain bike racing...and want to make the most of it. I'm hoping this helps! Thanks again!!Mark"

RIVALUS Scientist-Sam Gilchrist

Sam Gilchrist-Scientist and Athlete

Innovation is the lifeblood of the dietary supplement industry. Discerning athletes continually seek ahead-of-trend products that work better than last year’s formulas. This is why RIVALUS maintains a busy product development pipeline. The RIVALUS Scientific Team is continually researching, developing and testing in an effort to create the next unexpected breakthrough in dietary supplementation for athletes.

Sam Gilchrist-Scientist (pictured here) is one member of the RIVALUS Scientific Team. He is currently at the University of British Columbia in the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, where he studies delivery options for oral, transdermal, and intravenous administration of pharmaceutical and nutraceutical agents. Sam's expertise was instrumental in the development of the chitosan-loaded polymer technology found in our Permeate(TM) delivery system. Sam will be posting a blog entry here soon describing this system and how it is the best method for the oral administration of any active ingredient. Permeate(TM) results in 8x greater absorption and effects and is another example of how RIVALUS is creating ahead-of-trend products.

Sam Gilchrist-Athlete played varsity football during his undergraduate years and was a fine example of a "discerning athlete". Sam studied and practiced football, studied and practiced physiology and biochemistry, and was an Academic All-Canadian that graduated with honors. Today, research is Sam's first priority; however, he exercises regularly, eats well, and is still a competitive athlete.

Stay tuned for Sam's incredible insight into the world of Pharmaceutical Science.

Question about creatine and ENCHARGE

Jon, a sales associate at GNC in Kitchener, Ontario recently asked Dr. Burke:
"I noticed that ENCHARGE had sources of caffeine in it. Won't the caffeine increase stomach acidity and cause the creatine to break down into its toxic byproduct? Or does the binding the creatine to protein prevent that? Thanks in advance for looking into this."

Dr. Burke responds:
"Hi Jon. Thanks for the great question. What happens to creatine in the harsh acidic environment of the stomach or when combined with an acidic beverage is a common concern among creatine users. Unfortunately, marketing literature is the reason for these concerns. I will provide you with an academic answer based on scientific literature, which can be easily found by searching http://www.pubmed.com/. Creatine is converted to creatinine and excreted from the body. This is a natural and normal process that occurs in muscle tissue via a non-enzymatic pathway. There has been much concern that creatine taken orally as a supplement could lead to elevated creatinine production and therefore potential for harm to liver and kidneys. To date there have only been a few published articles that have found small increases in blood creatinine with supplementation and most have found no change. The reason for no change is simple: excess circulating creatine is quickly excreted in the urine as unaltered creatine and removed from the body. The concern about the acidic environment of the stomach and conversion of creatine to creatinine is based on partial truth. The classic bench chemistry procedure for assessing the amount of creatine and creatinine in human tissue (blood or urine) involves a reaction called the Jaffe reaction. This procedure is used in all of the labs that I am aware of including several well-known physiologists such as Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky, Dr. Paul Greenhalf, Dr. Peter Lemon, Dr. Richard Kreider and others. I know this because I have provided all of them with the procedures as optimized in these tissues from our lab. Briefly, the Jaffe reaction involves putting the tissue in strong acid (picric acid, about the same pH as stomach acid) and then heating to 100 degrees Celsius for one hour. In the thousands of assays that we have run, if the temperature is even slightly less than 100 degrees Celsius we get less than 50% conversion from creatine to creatinine. If you do not keep these conditions for one hour then you get even less conversion. Now in the stomach we have a very strong acid pH (about 1 and similar to the picric acid in the Jaffe reaction) but the temperature of the stomach is that of normal body temperature and about 37 degrees Celsius. Furthermore, the contents of the stomach rarely remain in the stomach for more than 10 minutes because they move into the small intestine for greater absorption of nutrients.

In summary, creatine can be mixed with water, grape juice, coffee, or even battery acid* and you would get the same conversion of creatine to creatinine (minimal at best). *Of course, never consume battery acid -- my point in mentioning battery acid is to emphasize the chemical principles at play here. I tell athletes to consume creatine with whatever beverage they prefer (some don’t want the calories from carbs) and to take it with a meal if they like in order to combine with carbohydrates because combining creatine with a carbohydrate-rich beverage increases blood insulin levels which is well-known to increase creatine uptake into skeletal muscle. ENCHARGE Athletes Creatine contains unique creatine-amino peptides (glutamine, leucine, isoleucine, and valine) which enhances muscle cellular creatine and amino acid uptake. To increase GI absorption we have encapsulated these actives inside a chitosan loaded polymer (Permeate), which results in greater than 8x absorption as compared to control test conditions

Thanks for the great question. Please feel free to send additional questions or comments.

Regards Darren"

Una Lounder in Oxygen Magazine

Una Lounder, RIVALUS Athlete and MPOWER Athletes Energy are featured on pages 91 and 159 of the latest issue of Oxygen Magazine.

Una is currently attending a National Team training camp in Florida and is getting faster every day. She is a lean and fierce athlete and enjoys the effects of MPOWER Athletes Energy on her performance.

We get a lot of emails from other "discerning athletes" commenting on how "lean" or "ripped" Una is and asking us about Una's training and diet. We plan on featuring this information in one of our future entries and will be doing so with the addition of our other RIVALUS Athletes.

To look like Una and to be competitive internationally like her and the other RIVALUS Athletes you need to train extremely hard and eat well. "The Athletes Line" was created to meet the needs of athletes during the rigors of training, competition and recovery. "I love that Una and other serious athletes have a Powerful and SAEF way to supplement their diet and improve their competitve edge." -Dr Darren Burke, PhD

You can get a sneak peek at the latest Ignite your MPOWER Ad featuring Una at the following URL: http://www.rivalus.net/mpower_ad.html

Powerful and SAEF Alternatives

RIVALUS Brand products are the only sport supplements on the market today that are Certified SAEF (Safe and Effective First) for use by athletes.

This means they have been rigorously tested in clinical trials to confirm they maintain normal physiological responses (safe) while improving exercise performance (effective).

MPOWER, ENCHARGE and PROMASIL are Powerful and SAEF alternatives to drugs for improving athletic performance and body composition.

This is why so many athletes, coaches, trainers and parents recommend the use of RIVALUS Brand supplements in combination with a regular diet and training routine.

RIVALUS Athletes Grow!

Dr. Darren Burke, CEO of RIVALUS has informed me that they have added a number of new high-profile "discerning athletes" to the RIVALUS Athletes Roster. He tells me they have a photoshoot planned for the end of the month and then hopes to have new athlete images posted on the website soon and featured in their upcoming ad campaign in Oxygen, Maximum Fitness, and Inside Fitness.

Stay tuned for the "Ignite your MPOWER" and "Large and ENCHARGE" ads featuring our powerful and SAEF(R) products: MPOWER Athletes Energy and ENCHARGE Athletes Creatine.

They're calling it the "Athletes Line"

RIVALUS received a report the other day indicating that GNC Canada store managers are seeing brisk sales of PROMASIL, MPOWER and ENCHARGE.

Managers are calling RIVALUS the "Athletes Line" -- just as we intended.

More soft-serve vanilla PROMASIL is arriving at stores every day. If you've been waiting for it, then give your local GNC Canada store a call today and see if they've got it in!

Welcome to RIVALUS

RIVALUS (pronounced rival·us) was founded in Canada by Dr. Darren Burke (PhD), a nationally ranked athlete turned university professor and research scientist. In his laboratory Dr. Burke studies the effects of dietary supplements on body composition and athletic performance in humans. His papers are published in peer-reviewed scientific journals distributed around the world.

Dr. Burke is surrounded by discerning athletes, some of them Olympic-calibre. They are students in his classes and subjects in his studies. For years, they all told him that there was no dietary supplement either athletes or their coaches could feel comfortable using; no company whose products had been adequately tested on athletes and proven to be safe and effective.The solution was obvious: With his well-equipped laboratory and team of leading experts, Dr. Burke had everything he needed to research, develop and test the type of dietary supplements that these truly discerning athletes and their coaches demanded, but had been unable to find. So RIVALUS was created and with it a new code of industry standards and ethics was born.

RIVALUS is Different for many reasons. Here are a few:

Certified SAEF(R) (Safe and Effective First). Each RIVALUS product is tested in a university laboratory on athletes to confirm that it maintains normal physiological function (Safe) while improving performance (Effective). Each product contains no substance banned by national college sports associations.

Pioneers of Innovation. We are scientist. We do not copy. We create innovation for ourselves and for others to follow. The pharmaceutical purity of the polymer technology in Permeate is an example of one innovation included in each RIVALUS product and results in greater than 8x absorption and effects.

RIVALUS is an Original Formula Developer (OFD). Each RIVALUS product contains an original formula developed by our team of leading experts based on unique scientific discovery. We test our finished products in our clinical trials.

Thank you for choosing RIVALUS.
You are a discerning athlete and made a smart choice.

For more info: www.rivalus.net or call 1-800-620-4177