3 BEST Supplements to Build Muscle (FAST)

Dr. Berg’s Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast

Dr. Eric Berg

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2025

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today, we’re going to talk about the best supplements to build muscle fast! Don’t bother taking single amino acids for muscle growth! Double-blinded studies have shown this isn't an effective way to build muscle or increase muscle growth. Amino acids can also turn into sugar, which can increase your blood sugar.

Avoid tribulus and fenugreek if you are building muscle. These compounds can increase testosterone, but not enough to build muscle.

As we age, testosterone decreases and cortisol increases. This combination can hinder muscle building. Overtraining can also significantly increase cortisol and shut down testosterone. Cholesterol is vital for essential hormones like testosterone, so avoid low-cholesterol and low-fat diets if you want to build muscle.

Insulin resistance can hinder muscle growth. Insulin resistance is often caused by frequent eating and high-carbohydrate diets. Sleep is vital for muscle building because most muscle growth occurs while sleeping! Magnesium glycinate can help you sleep and also helps make energy to feed your muscles.

Try these top 3 muscle-building supplements to boost muscle growth and increase muscle size.

1. Creatine monohydrateCreatine is found naturally in red meat. It increases ATP, performance, energy during workouts, and hydration, and directly increases muscle stimulus.

2. Whey proteinWhey protein powder provides leucine, which stimulates muscle growth. It also contains the other amino acids vital for muscle building.

3. ZincZinc helps increase testosterone, and even a mild zinc deficiency can decrease testosterone production. Testosterone is vital for building muscle size and strength.

If you want to build muscle, consume grass-fed red meat. It contains creatine, amino acids, zinc, vitamin B12, and carnosine. It also contains healthy fat and cholesterol to help boost testosterone. Eggs and fish also support muscle-building.

Transcript

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0:00.0	the three best supplements to build muscle as fast as possible. Of course, everyone knows that
0:06.9	exercise is the most potent stimulus of building muscle. The more mechanical stress on the muscles,
0:12.5	the faster the muscle responds by getting bigger. What I want to get into is what supplements
0:17.3	can you take at the same time to enhance that effect? And some other things that are
0:21.7	really important to talk about too because they can slow you down, if not prevent you from
0:26.9	growing your muscles. One of them does stimulate muscle grow, but when you're just taking three
0:32.0	amino acids, it's just a very incomplete product because you need more than just three amino acids
0:37.2	to actually build muscle.
0:38.7	And in fact, on some of the double-blended studies that were done on amino acids, the results
0:42.9	are not good. It really doesn't do anything for your muscles. So that's going to be a wasted time.
0:48.1	Not to mention, it'll turn into sugar. It'll actually increase your blood sugar many times as well.
0:53.1	The other thing I'm going to recommend to avoid if you're trying to build muscle is something called tribulus and fenugree. Both of
0:59.9	those do tend to increase testosterone a little bit, but not enough to really see any change in your
1:05.7	muscles. And as we age, testosterone goes down. Testosterone is essential to building muscle. And also, our cortisol
1:12.9	goes up as we age. And so the combination of low testosterone and increased cortisol is not good for
1:18.9	your muscles. One of the biggest things that will do that is overtraining. When you overtrain,
1:23.2	you greatly spike cortisol and you shut down your testosterone, that's directly going to affect your muscles.
1:28.7	And testosterone actually comes from cholesterol. I don't recommend you go on a low fat diet or a low
1:34.8	cholesterol diet, let alone take this medication called statins because statins block cholesterol,
1:40.1	which will tank your testosterone and prevent you from developing your muscles.
1:45.6	Another big barrier in developing muscles is having insulin resistance.
1:50.3	And that comes from usually consuming way too much carbohydrates, as well as eating frequently
	...

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