Ephedrine and Me, a Love Story <3
Ephedrine is one of the most widely used black market substances in the fitness world as we know it. Used most commonly for it's undeniable fat loss effects and as a pre-workout stimulant. Myself and ephedrine have a long winded history. I first used ephedrine when I was the young and tender age of 17, didn't reallllllyyy know a great deal about sports supplements back then. I thought I did though and that's the important thing right?
The first day an ECA stack (Ephedrine/Caffine/Aspirin) entered my body I felt like Superman, tons of energy and a heart rate like I'd just come off a sprint around the world. I certainly felt like I could have sprinted around the world anyway. I was on any given day having 150mg ephedrine, 1 gram caffeine and however much aspirin came in those lil white tablets.
Unfortunately this was also about the same time I found out I could develop a tolerance to just about any stimulant on the planet. After one week I became totally immune to Ephedrines wonder stimulus, I kept on chewing away tablets until I finished the bottle more or less for the sake of it.
Still though, don't be discouraged by my tolerance. ECA's are so freakin' popular for a reason, let's get to it.
Ephedrine
It's important first to understand what Ephedrine does before we even get into how to use it. Ephedrine is what the man in the lab likes to call a sympathomimetic amine. For us this means that eph acts like our sympathetic nervous system, this doesn't mean that we start feeling pity for anyone, the sympathetic nervous system is what controls our 'fight or flight' hormone. Ephedrine stimulates the production of Norepinephrine which in turn releases this hormone. Oh, Ephedrine is also a stimulant.
Needless to say because of this some people will take Ephedrine and feel quite aggressive, certainly 'gym aggression' is raised when using Ephedrine as a pre-workout product. It can also however make people feel anxious or nervous. This isn't something guaranteed to happen every time you take it but just be aware if it does happen, it's pretty normal.
Now with regards to Ephedrine for fat loss, what separates it away from other fat burners is it works on both the Alpha and Beta receptors. This isn't particularly easy to explain and certainly if you go to most websites talking about ephedrine - they kinda just leave it at that. I'll do my best to explain exactly why this is a good thing;
Firstly, it is an Alpha receptor antagonist, this means it inhibits certain functions of the alpha receptors. There's a lot of properties with the alpha 1 & 2 receptors, but only few are really relevant to athletes so I'll make this quick.
Alpha Receptor
- Smooth Muscle Contraction - Alpha receptors are responsible for us having smooth muscle contractions. Ephedrine being an antagonist can therefore cause cramps, it's highly unlikely but it can happen. One of my friends suffers awfully with Ephe-cramps, but he consumes give or take 200mg per day.
- Vasodilation - The alpha receptor is responsible for 'vasoconstriction' which is the narrowing of blood vessels. Ephedrine therefore makes it do the opposite and dilates the blood vessels, allowing for more blood flow and increased vascularity. This is another property that makes ephedrine such a good pre-workout product and in the world of bro-science will also assist in the uptake and transporting of nutrients around the body.
- Insulin Release - The alpha receptor is responsible for the inhibition of insulin release. Since ephedrine is an alpha antagonist this leads me to believe ephedrine when used in a bulk will aid in giving higher or more pro-longed insulin releases in post workout nutrition. Using a cutting product to bulk more effectively in essence. This may also be one of the properties that makes people repeatedly bring up ephedrines 'anti-catabolic' properties. We'll talk about this again a bit later however.
Beta Receptors
- Increase Cardiac Output - Ephedrine being a stimulant raises the heart rate, it increases heart contractions and the amount of blood pumped with each beat.
- Lipolysis in Adipose tissue - A.K.A increases the efficiency of the breakdown of fats in the body.
- Release of Insulin - Another reason why I believe Ephedrine is 'anti catabolic', it prevents the inhibition of insulin release by blocking alpha receptors and encourages insulin release by being a beta agonist. Bulking on ephedrine is definitely something on my 'to do' list one day.
- Relaxation of the Bronchioles - If you enjoy feeling like you can breath much more, or if you have asthma then this one will always come in handy. It's relatively useless in terms of bodybuilding, but if you're a crossfit or triathalon athlete or happen to perform cardio on a frequent basis then supplementing with ephedrine may be just what you need. Steroid.com even mentions that at one point 80% of NFL players used it in this ephedrine article.
- Increase of Blood Flow to Skeletal Tissue - The muscles surrounding your damn bones. This makes ephedrine popular amongst powerlifters and olympic lifters (as mentioned on steroid.com).
- Noradrenaline Release - Ephedrine releases noradrenaline, and is in turn why Ephedrine is a Central Nervous System stimulant. It increases how your CNS performs overall.
So from the sounds of things, Ephedrine is good really for bulking or cutting. I've never heard of anyone bulking on it but I certainly know I will at some point. We can safely summarize that ephedrine is good for pumps, insulin release, increasing cardio and transporting fats more efficiently. To me in that order that spells out a great workout followed by a nice meal that'll be put to 100% good use and some hard ass cardio to follow.
Dosages? I wouldn't go over 100mg, and certainly if I'd never used Ephedrine before I'd start on 30mg per day, upping it by 10mg every 5 days or so for 4 weeks at a time. When taking a break I'd suggest laying off all stimulants entirely for at least 2 weeks.
ECA Stacks
ECA is an acronym for Ephedrine, Caffeine and Aspirin as you'll know if you read the start :]
As well as ephedrine being the main stimulant, we have the added benefits of caffeine to make you feel wired. I feel as though when caffeine kicks in that the rush, which is essential the high from caffeine is much more gentle than that of ephedrine. Ephedrine in my opinion is the base of appetite suppression in this stack, it is somewhat difficult for the body to digest and as such prevents you from feeling the need for food for a long long time.
The caffeine is ECA stacks is always thought to be best placed at a 10-1 ratio, however it is standard in ECA stacks to have 30mg Ephedrine + 200mg Caffeine. This seems to be the most common, and is probably the most popular for a reason. I guess it's because no-one wants to be too wired, 200mg caffeine is already plenty for the majority.
The aspirin side is just, illuding. I mean there's an awful lot of Bro-science out there with this one, I cannot deny that I know absolutely nothing of why it's there. However the most common and I guess most plausible reason is to prolong the half life of the ephedrine.
However I do not really know why, I'm not going to pretend I do. One thing I do know is ECA stacks are absolutely awesome. They tend to kick in after about half an hour of being ingested, and although you can make your own ECA stacks using well...Ephedrine HCL, packets of ProPlus and Aspirin if you're feeling ghetto, there are plenty of UG labs who make these stacks pre-made. I don't condone buying black market supplements, but if you're going to you may as well make it as little hassle as possible. Diamond Labs ECA 30+ was a very popular one for a long time, who knows what's popping up and about these days though.
I suggest with ECA stacks if you've never taken them before to start on the standing 30mg Eph, 200mg Caffeine, 20mg Aspirin. If you can buy ECA stacks pre-made some of them come with things like Dicalcium Phosphate to improve absorption of the base ingredients. Can't complain with getting a little more bang for your buck. 1 Week of that, after 2 weeks bump it up to double dosage, 3rd week do triple dosage of week 1 but only if you feel the need to. I wouldn't run it longer than 4 weeks at a time, I'm a strong believer in giving the body time off stimulants and allowing it to function how it should. I also believe supplements should be used AS supplements and not as a dietary necessity, so if you can't cut weight without ECA's in the first place, you shouldn't be cutting weight with them.
Side Effects
This is where things get a little grim. Ya' see, ECA's were banned for a reason. Maybe it has something to do with the amount of people (AMERRRRIIIICAAAANSSS) taking shit loads of it to try and lose weight, and KABAMMMM heart attack coming at you in brute force. Perhaps. However the side effects to worry about oddly enough aren't heart attacks, I mean you can if you want to live your life in fear that a cup of coffee will kill you but...to the point.
I don't half rabble on sometimes.
Ephedrine can cause side effects like - Heart palpitations, headaches, breathlessness, anxiety, paranoia, aggression, irregular blood pressure, dizziness, <3 heart attacks <3, insomnia, depression, cramps, diabetes, however it's also worth noting that vomiting, gastric ulcers, heart attacks and strokes are side effects caused by Ibuprofen, then it puts things a bit more into perspective.
What I'm saying is if you don't abuse it, then you won't get such abusive side effects. I'd say heart palpitations and anxiety are the two you're most likely to get, some people very sensitive to stimulants will get those from doses of 30mg on first administrations. However I've seen sources of Ephedrine with 8mg capsules, so there are places where you can start low and build up.
It kinda reminds me of this time one of the customers in our store asked me about Ephedrine, he'd never taken it before. I told him 30mg is alls people should start on, he proceeded to take 120mg and later that day was administered to hospital. He was totally fine and just had a terrible time with heart palpitations, but you see what I mean? Most people who end up in hospital from these kinda things put themselves there out of their own stupidity. Ephedrine is that dangerous that I've happily wrote this article whilst having 90mg pre-article-writing.
