The Best Natural Pre-Workout

- Today we're gonna talk about the best thing to put in your body before a workout. There's so many different pre-workout products in the market these days that it can be very confusing, and I wanna take things back to some basics and see what's gonna actually have the most beneficial effect. Not just in energizing you, but giving you the most bang for your buck in terms of the benefits that you get in your body. Okay, so I may be a little bit biased here as the owner of a chocolate company, but I think that really high quality dark chocolate is the best thing you can have before a workout.

The main reason, and I'm I'm gonna get into a few different reason here, they're all very interesting. But the main reason is a kind of flavonol compound called epicatechin.

There's a number of different flavanols in chocolate. The main one is epicatechins. And studies have shown, now this is still an early stage research, right. So this hasn't been studied for many, many, many years, but I know you guys love to be on the cutting edge so that's why I like to share these things with you. So you don't have to wait 20 years until it's been published a hundred times to actually start getting the benefits. So these epicatechins, it's been shown that the amount of epicatechins found in just 30 grams of chocolate. So that's like, for example, one of our bars is 48 grams. So that's a little bit more than half of our chocolate bars. This amount of epicatechins has been shown to enhance exercise capacity and promote skeletal muscle growth. So that right there, you only have a certain amount of time to work out each week, right? A lot of us are limited, we've got a lot going on. You wanna get the most benefit in return for that time you invested. So epicatechins can actually be really helpful here, it seems.

Not only do they that, but epicatechins also enhance something called mitochondrial biogenesis. Mitochondria are the power plants of your cells. They are where your body takes fuel and turns into ATP, which is like pure cellular energy. Your whole body runs on ATP. When you have more mitochondria, you can make more ATP and your whole body can run more efficiently. You can fight off disease, you have more energy to do physical activities, more energy for your brain. So much works better when you have healthy mitochondria and healthy ATP levels. And epicatechins are actually shown to help your body make more mitochondria. So this is just amazing.

The mitochondria is one of the most fascinating subjects of research in the past ten years and it's so cool to know that chocolate can really be a big help here. Also, in supplements these days in terms of pre-workout, you often see they have a lot of caffeine added to them. Now that's not even like a coffee but it's actually just synthetic caffeine. Now is that really such a good idea to be taking that in insolation as a stimulant? Maybe not the best, right. And you also hear like almost every week it seems like we're hearing about another pre-workout supplement was lab tested and found to contain like really sketchy illegal drug supplements. So there's a lot of risk out there taking some of these products.

Now cacao and chocolate contain a compound, naturally occurring, called theobromine. This is a cousin of caffeine, but it's like two cousins that don't really have that much in common. They never really hung out as kids, right. Theobromine works in quite a different way. It doesn't stimulate the central nervous system the same way that caffeine does, although it does increase energy. It also kills, as a side benefit, it kills streptococci mutans, the main bacteria responsible for causing cavities. So this is much more of a gentle and sustainable stimulant, and you don't have to be worried about what kind of a secret ingredients are being put into your pre-workout supplement that they haven't put on the label. It's scary stuff our there in the market, right.

So now, that would just be true of most regular chocolate. Good, high quality dark chocolate. But as you know, we always have to take it the extra mile here at Addictive Wellness. And so we have, for example, our energy chocolate which so many people love using as their pre-workout. And we put the best Chinese and Ayurvedic herbs in here to enhance your energy production. They're not stimulants, they're just helping your own body to produce more energy naturally. So of example, you have astragalus which famous for increasing strength in the extremities and also being great for supporting the cardiovascular system. Then cordyceps which improves your oxygen utilization. So more oxygen is actually making it to the blood, and the brain, and to the muscles so you can have the power that you need. And then ashwagandha which enhances your focus, your drive, and your endurance. And last but not least, mucuna which is the highest natural source actually of L-dopa, precursor to dopamine. So when you have more dopamine levels you are just feeling happier and more driven and focused. Really great for when you're working out. And mucuna also is a very rare herb in the sense that it helps support natural levels of human growth hormone. So put all this together from epicatechins, the theobromine, to these amazing herbs, and chocolate is an incredible thing to have before working out.

Last but not least, there's nothing worse than working out and being totally starving, right? It's a miserable experience. Well maybe the only thing worse is working out on a full stomach. Then you just feel like nauseous, right? I've found that cacao is the perfect middle ground because it will satiate you, you'll feel nice, you'll feel satisfied, you're not gonna be miserably hungry, it's gonna keep your blood sugar balance. And you're gonna have a nice energy to push you through your whole workout. It doesn't feel heavy in your stomach. It almost feels like it's not even there. You're just not hungry any more. And of course, with the sugar free chocolate like this you're not gonna have the blood sugar ups and downs that you would get from a more mainstream chocolate with some form or another of sugar in it.

So if you guys use chocolate as a pre-workout, I wanna hear about it. Leave us a comment below. If you're thinking about it, let me know what your thoughts are and I really wanna say thank you guys for joining me today. It's been a pleasure and I look forward to seeing you again soon. Have a beautiful day.