Bodybuilder Confessions: My experiment with Jack3D

The former Jack3d user said: 'I felt I could lift whatever I wanted'.

Ok, here is the great article, publish on guardian.com, which explains how to act Jack3d and the reasons why this product is so popular.

Round about 2008, news about Jack3d hit my gym in south London. Suddenly everyone was talking about it: how this stuff was better than anything else anyone had tried; that it gave you this incredible focus, determination and limitless energy.

It wasn't just that people were talking about it like it was this god-given miracle; you could see the effects. People who had come to the gym to stand around chatting were suddenly on fire. They became fiends. They'd be lifting weights 30% heavier than they ever had before, for rep after rep. They'd work out for hours then run around the gym looking for more things to lift. They wouldn't want to go home.

Obviously I was curious: I was 19; I was stupid. I bought a pot of the stuff from someone at the gym. I'd never taken a pre-workout supplement before but had only just got into intense cardio so was a sponge for anyone who wanted to give me advice. If the pros said this would transform my training, that was good enough for me.

I remember the first time I tried it. I took a single scoop on an empty stomach about 40 minutes before my workout, and about 30 minutes later felt totally pumped. My hands were tingling, then my head and then my whole body.

The focus was amazing. I literally had tunnel vision. The motivation was mad. I'd never pushed myself that hard in the gym. I could do anything and my muscles never felt like they would tear. I didn't feel any burning; just that I could lift whatever I wanted.

I was sold on it. I began using it almost every time I worked out – giving myself a day or two off every so often. Some people said the effects got less for them over time but that never happened with me.

Other people complained of itching – sometimes so badly that it felt like ants were crawling over their body – migraines and weird burnouts, where they'd suddenly crash in the middle of training and be almost unable to move, they'd be so lethargic.

I didn't have any of that. It was amazing. I felt so pure and positive. I'd stay in the gym for hours with this laser-like focus. The only downpoint was that when I got home after exercising, I couldn't eat. It was actually hard work to get a protein shake down me. Sleeping was also a problem: I learnt not to take Jack3d less than 10 hours before I wanted to sleep. There was no point: sleep would be impossible.

I gradually upped my dose. After a few months, I was taking three and sometimes four scoops. I was beginning to get worried about the way my heart started racing when I was exercising hard. Then one day, my muscles suddenly failed in the middle of an exercise and I crashed. I felt totally out of it, like I was drugged.

I thought I had pushed myself too hard and gave myself a day off. But the next day I nearly passed out just walking the stairs to the gym. Still, I just assumed I'd been driving myself too hard. I took a few days off but continued with the Jack3d when I went back to the gym again. Over the next few months, the comedowns got worse. One time I actually had lockjaw. The way the drug made my whole body tingle and my stomach burn began to worry me. I began feeling nervy when the drug wore off.

I'd been taking Jack3d for around five months by this time and the chat around the gym was becoming more critical. The most intelligent people were doing their own research into the ingredients and deciding it wasn't as safe as they'd all thought.

I stopped using the stuff after waking up a few nights in a row with my heart racing in a really scary way. It only lasted for less than a minute but it freaked me out.

It was the beginning of the end of my fascination with the gym. Once I stopped taking Jack3d, working out wasn't as exciting as it had been and I began feeling it wasn't such a cool place to be anyway: I realised I'd been idolising men who were prepared to take stupid risks with their health for the sake of a few muscles.

I wasn't at all surprised that Jack3d was banned last year. I'm no longer part of that world but I'd be surprised if there wasn't another supplement being taken now, that will be discovered to be just as dangerous a few months down the line.

As told to Amelia Hill, The Guardian, Friday 1 February 2013 17.47 GMT

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USPlabs has agreed to stop manufacturing dietary supplements containing DMAA

USPLabs Jack3d and Oxy Elite Pro

USPlabs has agreed to stop manufacturing dietary supplements containing DMAA

DMAA, also known as 1,3-dimethylamylamine, methylhexanamine or geranium extract, is an ingredient found illegally in some dietary supplements and often touted as a “natural” stimulant. DMAA, especially in combination with other ingredients such as caffeine, can be a health risk to consumers. Ingestion of DMAA can elevate blood pressure and lead to cardiovascular problems ranging from shortness of breath and tightening in the chest to heart attack. 

Dietary supplements containing DMAA are illegal and FDA is doing everything within its authority to remove these products from the market. In 2012, FDA issued warning letters to companies notifying them products with DMAA need to be taken off the market or reformulated to remove this substance. Most companies warned are no longer distributing products with DMAA. While FDA is working to get these products off the market, consumers should not buy or use any dietary supplement product containing DMAA.

On July 2, 2013, as a result of follow-up legal action by FDA, the dietary supplement firm USPlabs voluntarily destroyed its DMAA-containing products located at its facility in Dallas, Texas. The products - USPlab's OxyElite Pro and Jack3d - are estimated to have been worth more than $8 million at the retail level. USPlabs has agreed to stop manufacturing dietary supplements containing DMAA.

USPlabs agreed to destroy the products after FDA administratively detained them under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, recently amended by the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). Under its administrative detention authority, FDA can detain a food or dietary supplement product if the agency has reason to believe the product is adulterated or misbranded. The agency can keep detained products out of the marketplace for a maximum of 30 days while it determines whether to take further enforcement action, such as seizure. Under FDA regulations, detained articles can be voluntarily destroyed by their owner.

FDA continues to advise consumers not to buy or use dietary supplement products that contain DMAA due to the health risks they present.

Consumers who believe they have been harmed by using a dietary supplement should contact their health care practitioner. Consumers can also report such incidents directly to FDA, see Dietary Supplements - Adverse Event Reporting. In addition, consumers can also report these adverse events to the company whose name and contact information is on the product label.

article source: FDA

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F.D.A. Issues Warning on Workout Supplement with DMAA

USPLabs Jack3d

Certain workout-booster and fat-burning products, sold in recent years by retailers like GNC and Vitamin Shoppe, are illegal and may present serious health hazards to consumers, federal health regulators have determined. 

With names like Jack3d and OxyElite Pro, the popular products contain a stimulant known as dimethylamylamine, or DMAA for short. In a public warning late Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration said that the stimulant did not qualify as a legal dietary supplement ingredient and that it could raise blood pressure, potentially causing heart attacks and other health problems. 

Since early 2008, the agency has received reports of 86 health problems, including at least five deaths, in consumers who used DMAA products. Although such reports do not prove that the stimulant directly caused the health problems, agency officials warned people not to consume the ingredient.

“We are very concerned,” Daniel Fabricant, the director of F.D.A.’s division of dietary supplements programs, said in a phone interview Friday. “We think consumers should stay away from products containing DMAA.”

Steve Mister, president of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade group, said on Friday that the dietary supplement industry should honor the agency’s warning.

“The F.D.A. has spoken,” Mr. Mister said. “We are urging the industry not to manufacture products with DMAA. Retailers should heed the advisory as well.”

A lawyer for USPlabs, the Dallas company that markets Jack3d and OxyElite Pro, said his client disagreed with the F.D.A.’s position.

“USPlabs continues to believe that DMAA is legal, or otherwise they would not be selling it,” said the lawyer, Peter B. Hutt of Covington & Burling in Washington.

As of Friday afternoon, GNC was still selling Jack3d (pronounced “Jacked”) on its Web site as a “hot buy.” A company spokesman did not return requests for comment.

Vitamin Shoppe appears no longer to be stocking Jack3d, and now offers only Jack3d Micro, a newly formulated product that does not contain DMAA.

The F.D.A. warning comes as the agency faces mounting pressure from medical researchers, sports organizations and investigations in the news media to take action on the stimulant.

In late 2011, the Defense Department pulled products containing DMAA from stores on military bases, pending an investigation into the deaths of two soldiers who died after they used the stimulant. Last month, an article in The New York Times described the death of one of those soldiers, Michael Sparling, who collapsed during a training run with his unit in 2011 after taking Jack3d and died soon after. The Sparling family has filed a lawsuit against GNC, where he bought the product, and USPlabs.

On Friday night, the NBC News program “Rock Center With Brian Williams” was scheduled to broadcast a segment on Mr. Sparling and DMAA products.

Mr. Hutt, the USPlabs lawyer, said the F.D.A. made its announcement to get out in front of the NBC report and shield itself from being criticized for lax enforcement.

“This is the agency’s customary attempt to protect itself,” Mr. Hutt said. “These reports rely on a plaintiff’s unsubstantiated allegations. There is no evidence that the soldier’s death was caused by DMAA.”

Although health regulators in at least seven countries, including Canada, have effectively banned supplements containing DMAA, the products have remained widely available at supplement stores in the United States. Some medical researchers say federal health regulators should have warned American consumers much earlier.

We’ve had hundreds of millions of dollars spent on products that should have never been on the marketplace to begin with,” says Dr. Pieter Cohen, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School who studies dietary supplements. “There’s no reason the F.D.A. should have waited to warn the public of the dangers of consuming the ingredient.”

A year ago, the F.D.A. issued letters to 10 companies that marketed DMAA products, saying the stimulant did not fit the legal definition of a supplement as a vitamin, mineral, herbal or botanical ingredient used to supplement the diet. The stimulant was originally developed in the 1940s by Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical company, as a nasal decongestant called Forthane, but the drug maker officially withdrew the medicine from the market in the 1980s.

Among the companies that received the federal warning letters last year, all but USPlabs agreed to stop marketing DMAA products, according to the F.D.A. advisory. USPlabs submitted published studies on the ingredient in an effort to challenge the F.D.A.’s position, the advisory said, but the agency found the information “insufficient to defend the use of DMAA as an ingredient in dietary supplements.”

Mr. Fabricant said the F.D.A. intended to take further steps to remove the stimulant from the market. Although he declined to comment specifically on USPlabs, the agency’s options in such cases generally include asking a supplement maker for a voluntary recall of potentially hazardous products, seizing such products or instituting a mandatory recall.

“We are going to use all of the tools available to us to get this out of distribution,” Mr. Fabricant said.

article source: NY Times

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