Glucose Disposal Agent (GDA)

Has anyone heard of this supplement or is familiar with it? Would love for coach Chad to follow up to see if he knows anything about this supplement.
You take it with carb meals and it is suppose to help your muscles store glycogen as opposed to turning excess glycogen get stored as fat.
Increase glucose optimization
Decrease fat storage
Improve muscle recovery
These are the 3 basic things it is suppose to accomplish.

So the Nutritionist I have been working with for a long time believes this is a great supplement for cyclist and endurance athletes that take in high carbs on a daily basis for performance.

And he’s of course provided you with evidence of it increasingly cycling performance? :slight_smile:

Looks expensive. I recognize a couple of the ingredients, but I can’t say whether you’d find them useful or not.

  • Berberine behaves a little bit like metformin, a drug commonly prescribed for diabetics because it reduces production of glucose in the liver (gluconeogensis; from either protein, or the glycerol’s on triglycerides [fat…]). Doesn’t seem to me you’d want to reduced gluconeogenesis during a workout. It also activates AMPK, but so does exercise… unsure if there’s a compounding effect, but I’ve seen berberine/metformin discussed a little tongue-in-cheek as “exercise in a bottle”.

  • Vanadyl sulfate: kind of mimic’s insulin, may improve insulin sensitivity, but may also suppress your endogenous insulin production. Seems like a wash, but I suppose if you take enough of it you might knock down your blood glucose lower/faster, but unless you’re diabetic, not sure why you’d want to do this.

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I’m with gcarver on this one and have identified berberine as the most pharmacologically active component here. I suspect if you just took berberine, you would get the same general results as GDA.

This wouldn’t be how berberine works but it’s possible to achieve fat loss objectives with it though. Theoretically it would work best when your diet is already sub optimal. By decreasing the overall glucose load, hijacking your body’s ability to make glucose, decreasing insulin stimulation, there’s potential here to improve your blood glucose levels. It’s an interesting compound and I feel like it’s best for people who have a poor diet.

The better thing is to eat well and to intake the right amount/type of carbs for your efforts, however most do not achieve this.

There are also other interesting interactions that hasn’t been studied much. Decreasing gluconeogenisis may increase your chances of bonking from glycogen depletion. On the other hand, training with a hampered gluconeogenisis system may have the same stimulus as LCHF diets. Forces your body to use non glucose substrates for energy. Therefore it may have the same results. Desirable lean body mass results but poor maximal performance. You’ll look good but lack the oomph needed in bicycle racing.

The major side effects of berberine would be GI distress. To me, GDA, is primarily overpriced berberine.

Resurrecting an old thread as it was the only one that came up when I searched. My fiance who is into bodybuilding got a free bottle of Magnum Nutraceuticals MIMIC “Natural GDA”. In theory it sounds like it shuttles blood sugar from consuming carbohydrates into muscular glycogen stores rather than letting it be stored as adipose tissue.
This sounds like it would help with recovery, when you are getting carbs in post effort and looking to restore your muscle glycogen with a post race/workout meal but I also wonder how it would help with carbohydrate utilization while racing and in efforts.

It seems like @Minty_One is suggesting it wouldn’t work as I’m thinking it would but still a bit unclear.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be good to take before or during an effort (not clear on why) but maybe would be good post effort when taking in recovery carbs?

Sounds more like marketing. The body is going to convert carbs to muscle glycogen until it is replenished preferentially, regardless of supplementation. Any surplus is going to be converted to fat, because well, it’s a surplus and that’s what the body does. I do not know of any drug that can plump someone up full of muscle glycogen more than whatever they are adapted for. That drug would’ve been exploited by professional athletes by now.