Strong Medicine

An Interview With Dr. Eric Serrano

by Tim Patterson | 08/07/98

In the old days, whenever a doctor said something anything it was

pretty much taken as gospel. After all, they're all incredibly bright, they
all pull down some serious cash, and, well, they're doctors.

Of course, those of us in our little field of kamikaze, theoretical, self-

experimental bodybuilding have a different take on most physicians.
How so? Well, most of us run away screaming when someone flashes
his or her MD credentials. You can't blame us, though. Traditional
medical education has taught doctors that steroids are a poison on par
with strychnine; that any amount of protein greater than the RDA will
practically cause your kidneys to fall out; and that creatine needs
further research (even though there are hundreds, if not thousands, of
studies supporting its use).

Happily, there are always exceptions. Nowadays, there are doctors

who are elbow-deep in the area of bodybuilding and physique
augmentation. And man, when you find someone like that, you've
really got something.

Dr. Eric Serrano is one of these enlightened physicians. In fact,

Serrano is so hip on supplements that more often than not, he
prescribes over-the-counter supplements to his patients in lieu of
drugs. He also conducts private studies on just about any new
supplement that comes down the pike. Of course, he also has a deep-
rooted personal interest in new supplements because he's a
competitive power lifter who most recently set a record in a Midwest tri-
state meet for total weight.

Serrano currently runs a private clinic in Columbus, Ohio, along with

teaching classes at Ohio State's medical school. Although we did this
interview over the phone, we just know he's sitting there in an extra-
large, white lab coat with the sleeves torn off, in an office that has as
many bench presses as it has EKG monitors.

T: Doctor Serrano, how did you get involved in sports nutrition?

DS: When I was doing my Master's in Manhattan, Kansas [in exercise
physiology], I was working with a lot of people who wanted to lose
weight, and at the U they had a weight loss program, and I started
playing with different diets. Like a good researcher, I said no, the high
carbohydrate diet is the one that works, and got all the papers,
research that confirmed it, and put everybody on that diet. It was kind
of funny because none of the people who were following the diet
exactly lost any weight. I started playing with the numbers of the
carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and I noticed that most females are more
sensitive to carbs than males, and number two, more females are
dependent on carbohydrates during their periods. After a while, about
3 months, I realized I loved doing this. I like making changes, I like
seeing people change, and I applied to medical school at the
University of Kansas.
T: How is it that you became such an expert on supplements? It's not
like medical school teaches you about them?
DS: When I was doing my bachelor's degree I worked at the Vet
school, and they were using creatine for horses way back then. That
was a long time ago, and they knew creatine would improve the speed
of the horse and these were horses that were worth millions of dollars.
That piqued my curiosity and interest. I started buying supplements for
myself so I could learn all about them.
T: Can you give me some examples of how you might prescribe
supplements instead of drugs?
DS: Well, I'm talking health-wise here, but I have a lot of patients with
diabetes, or congestive heart failure. I found that Co-enzyme Q10,
combined with high dosages of vitamin B will increase their heart's
pumping ability by 30 to 40%. I had a patient who had a virus she was
only 38 and her heart started failing. Her ejection fraction was only 5%,
and normal is between 60 and 70%. She was put on the list for a heart
transplant. All I did was two things: we started with Q10; 50 mg. per
day, and progressed to 100 mg. daily, coupled with 4 grams of taurine
it's routinely used in Europe as a drug for congestive heart failure and
also a combination of Vitamin Bs. This patient went from a 5% ejection
fraction to 38% in two months. Now, she's at 48% and that's an
incredible change.
T: Doc, given that you're a strength athlete yourself, and that you no
doubt work with a lot of athletes who take steroids, have you ever
considered using them yourself?
DS: To tell you the truth, I've been tempted. I see so many athletes,
and I have a lot of 500-plus bench pressers in my office six of them. I
think to myself, "Man, I work my butt off, and they work six months and
bam, 500 pounds." I've met two people who can bench that much who
say they are natural, but one of them is 6'8" and weighs 380 pounds.
T: What kinds of things do you generally take for yourself?
DS: I'm always investigating things, and I try to rotate everything; I
want to see if this is going to work, I want to see if that's going to work.
Aside from the things I experiment with, I always take a good multi-
vitamin, and I'm going to recommend, believe it or not, a Weider
vitamin called "Whole Food Base", made by Schiff. It's an excellent
vitamin. There's also another company called Beverly International and
they have a product called "Ultra 4" and I've analyzed it three times
and every single time it's 100% of what it says. And, a company called
Standard Process has a vitamin called "Catalyn", and it's a natural
vitamin. What it is, is a whole bunch of food concentrates together in a
capsule. You need three or four capsules, but I've seen people get
better using them.
T: I understand you're a big proponent of glutamine?
DS: Glutamine has made a big difference in my patients, especially
their immune systems, and glutamine gets rid of colds; it helps your
joints; and it can increase your strength in one day. People will ask me
where I'm getting this information from, but I've been playing with 11
patients with different dosages. Here's what I've come up with: you
need .35 grams per kilogram of body weight. And you take it in one
dose an hour before a workout. Tell me what happens during your
workout. I don't care what type of workout it is.
T: What's the mechanism?
DS: Ahhhh. Very interesting question. I know that we chemistry people
say it does this or it does that, but something else is going on. I think
there are two mechanisms. For one thing, I think it's an excellent
source of energy because the body can break it down to glutamic acid,
which is kind of a sugar [although he wouldn't come right out and say
it, Dr. Serrano intimated that the glutamic acid may serve as a powerful
energy substrate, thereby increasing work capacity]. Number two, I
have found out, and this is very important, glutamine is a marker of
overtraining. If I take people, and I have them write down their
workouts, and if their glutamic acid/glutamine ratio is over 10 to one,
that person was invariably getting sick or developing soreness, or their
performance was going down. I will tell you, papers are going to come
out on it, because it's very interesting how this works. If the ratio is less
than 10 to 1, you're overtraining. If I give you oral glutamine, you'll
prevent overtraining. I have some theories about how it works, but I
don't want to talk about them yet?if it works that way, great, but I don't
want to give people the wrong idea.
T: Is glutamine something you would take every day?
DS: Because the cost is so high, I wouldn't take it every day. I might
take a baseline dosage of 2 to 5 grams a day to keep my levels high,
but if I'm going through an intensity phase or accumulation phase, like
Charles Poliquin calls them, I will take a larger dosage .35 grams
(times body weight in kilograms) and divide it into two dosages; in the
morning, an hour before the workout, and the other half before bedtime
to preserve muscle while I'm sleeping.
T: Charles Poliquin told me that you've run some experiments on
Tribex-500?
DS: Yes! It's kind of funny because Charles called me and said you
need to be using this, and I thought, "Oh no, some more crap." I
started taking it, but I want to say that I feel your label is wrong. It says
take it this way [three capsules, three times a day]. I tried it that way.
I'm a scientist, okay? So I write down how I feel. I stopped taking
everything else. I measured my baseline testosterone level. I was
overtraining on purpose and my T level was 228. So I went ahead and
started taking three, three times a day like it says on the bottle, and I
noted everything, including my sex drive. Charles told me that every
woman would start looking good to me, but I didn't notice any effects
up to seven days after I started it.

I thought I'd change the dosage a little and cycle it. I took 4 capsules,
two times a day. I took four an hour before a workout, and only during
workout times, and an hour after a workout. Well, all of a sudden, my
strength went up. My bench press went up by 2 reps, and I wasn't
taking creatine or anything, and I was doing the same workouts. I could
tell I was getting stronger, and my sex drive was going up; I was
getting a hard-on every morning. And I went ahead and measured my
testosterone levels. It went to 349. I should have measured my free
testosterone too, though. That was a mistake. It's possible that one of
the ingredients in Tribex, one of the herbs, can increase your free
testosterone. That would be very interesting to find out. I took it for four
days, followed by two days off. So, you need less than what the bottle
says.

T: That's interesting, because that's one of the protocols we've been

experimenting with. Speaking of hormone facilitators, are you
experimenting with any other ones?
DS: Yes. We're going to do a study on something called the GH Stack,
and I want to find out if this really works. We're going to take nine
subjects and give them the GH stack and check them out [at different
time intervals] to see what happens. I also started experimenting with
5-androstenediol. I wanna' say this: people say you're going to get
bigger and this and that, but I got news for you. I think it converts more
into estrogen than anything else. I'll tell you why. I tried it for four
weeks, and my sex drive went down and I didn't get any stronger. I
varied my dosage from 100 to 400 mg. a day an hour before workouts
and I didn't see any changes, and 400 mg. is kind of a high dosage
[and if you look at a standard endocrinology textbook, you'll see that
that's generally the case. Additionally, the conversion rate allegedly
rises as one gets older].

Right now, I'm trying 19-norandrostene, and I've been taking it for four
days, and I will let you know in the next ten days if this stuff is working
or not.

T: Tell me about some of the other supplements you've experimented

on. For instance, what's your opinion of HMB?
DS: Oh my Lord, I was very disappointed with HMB, and I have
nothing against it, but I tried 4 grams, 3 grams?man I bought so much
and I sent so much money in, but nothing happened. I had 12 people
on it, and one woman came to me and said it worked great, but this
woman was over 38, she was taking two grams a day, and her
strength went up, but she was the only one. Then I tried a higher
dosage. We went to five grams, and nothing happened for a week. We
went to ten grams and nothing happened, and then when we went to
12 grams or more, people were getting stronger and less sore. The
problem is, if you calculate the cost of 12 grams per day, Bill Phillips
will be very rich. I wouldn't recommend it right now for anybody unless
your rich and you want to up the dosages. I found out that females
need less than males, but still you need over 10 grams and that's too
much.
T: The last time I spoke to you, you were very high on fish oil?
DS: That's another one you see results in just a week. Fish oils are
very interesting. I use them a great deal for things like dry skin and
psoriasis, headaches, etc. Fish oils are a very valuable strength
builder, and the way to take them is 6 grams a day. They are very
cheap, so I would buy a good quality fish oil like Dale Alexander, but I
like Spectrum the best. If I want to increase my strength and lose fat, I
will take 6 grams a day, 3 grams a day in divided dosages.
T: Are capsules okay, as opposed to straight oil?
DS: Yes, capsules. One thing I want to tell you, if you take the
capsules, take them with food, because if you burp, my God, you can't
kiss your girlfriend.
T: A lot of bodybuilders use flax seed oil and borage. How would you
compare these to the fish oils?
DS: I think flax oil is excellent for health. I think everybody should use a
little bit of it. For health, I recommend 1 teaspoon per hundred pounds;
if I have someone over 35 years old, you take one tablespoon per
hundred pounds, plus 6 grams of fish oil.
T: Why would the fish oil make me stronger?
DS: I wish I could tell you. We don't know exactly why it makes you
burn fat, either. These mechanisms are uncertain at this time. You can
call Porter Cotrell, who I work with, and you can ask him how much fat
he has lost for the last three of four contests just by taking both flax
seed oil and fish oil.
T: A few weeks ago, we theorized in one of our columns that it might
be a good idea to take supplements with grapefruit juice. We suspect
that a chemical in the grapefruit juice might block an enzyme in the
body that breaks supplements down. What do you think of that?
DS: I think it's a great idea. Most things are absorbed through the liver.
But, if you can stop the liver from breaking down certain pro-hormones
and supplements, my God, think about it. You might actually be able to
use affordable amounts of HMB. The problem is that many
professional athletes use steroids, and if we're going to use something
that prevents steroid breakdown, you might run into some problems.
But, I can see using grapefruit juice with your Tribex. If you can
increase testosterone levels, and you can prevent the breakdown of
one of the chemicals or herbs, you can get more impact per pill and
increase testosterone levels even more. I can see that as a great
benefit.
T: Are there any supplements you stay away from?
DS: I'll tell you this?I stay away from the hype. I don't like certain
companies out there who make claims about having the best products
while what they are basically doing is making the same products as
everybody else and maybe changing one ingredient. When they start
talking about gaining 8 pounds in five days, or whatever? I have people
using steroids, and I believe them when they gain 10 pounds of muscle
in five weeks, but not 10 pounds with one super-duper creatine crap. I
hate that.
T: Since we're talking about creatine, do you have any specific
recommendations concerning its use?
DS: Sure. I want to tell people not to take creatine before a workout.
It's completely wrong. It'll lead to cramps. Number two, always, always
take it after a workout. That's when your body is ready for it. Number
three, you should always cycle it. Number four, never take anti-
inflammatories with it because it can increase your creatinine levels
and it can also effect your kidneys that's the only time creatine can
adversely affect your kidneys. Also, maintain a certain amount of
hydration. With my athletes, I recommend .7 ounces of water per
kilogram of body weight. As far as the precise method for cycling, I'll
tell Testosterone readers later. I haven't got it specifically worked out
yet, but I guarantee a 20% increase in your strength, and a 15%
increase in your body weight by cycling it the way I'll recommend.
T: You're a teaser, Doc. All right, we'll wait to hear your specific
recommendations about creatine cycling. You must run into a good
deal of interesting people. Are you in touch with anybody else right
now who's doing interesting work?
DS: One thing that's interesting right now, and I can't get too specific,
because the guy is putting a patent on it, but there's a certain
combination of amino acids that can increase your muscle weight,
prevent soreness, and help you lose fat. Some people say whole
proteins are better than amino acids, but not in all cases. For instance,
most people don't believe in branched-chain amino acids. They take
three or four little tablets and they don't work. Well, of course they don't
work. But if you take between .25 and .35 grams per kilogram, my
God, you will see a humungous difference in strength and stamina. For
example, if you're doing sets of ten to 15, you can get your reps up to
20 by using that much branched-chain amino acids.

Testosterone readers will know first what this combination is. This guy
is awesome.

T: That sounds interesting. Call us when you hear anything definitive.

By the way, do you do telephone consulting?
DS: Yes, but all I tell my athletes is, don't tell the newspapers I work
with you. Just tell the next athlete. That's the way I get new athletes. I
have so many different e-mails every day, that sometimes I have to
erase them. Right now, I'm doing telephone consultations with at least
4 Olympic athletes, a lot of professional fighters, a few baseball
players, a lot of hockey players thanks to Charles and I also have a
few athletes who I keep secret. I don't prescribe steroids, but I want to
make sure athletes stay healthy if they're taking them. These athletes
trust me, and I won't put anything on the chart, and anything we talk
about is between him and me.
T: Doc, I'm trying to give you a plug here?
DS: To be honest, money doesn't buy happiness. If my family's
healthy, it doesn't matter. And I'm doing well.
T: Doc, give us a telephone number?
DS: People can call me at 614-837-8384. I don't mind that.
T: Thanks for your time, Doc.
DS: Thank you.