DMAA now a schedule 9 drug

Hello friends, family, followers and trolls,

I’m not sure whether you know (or for that matter care) that just the other day the country’s medicines regulator (The Therapeutic Goods Administration) has banned a chemical known as DMAA, due to safety concerns regarding the abuse of the ingredient and its side effects.

The TGA has added DMAA to its schedule 9 list of prohibited substances and poisons. That puts it on par with heroin and cocaine! Now I know what you’re thinking…that’s crazy talk…but the ingredient has already been linked to some crazy side effects and several deaths. Two US soldiers died from heart attack following a training session. Toxicology reports found DMMA present in their blood. More recently, in April of last year a 41-year-old father, Mark Andrew Dahlenburg, died from a brain haemorrhage after mixing DMAA in his beer!

This directly affects the sports supplements and workout industry, as it is a stimulant commonly used in a lot of the industry’s more popular products like Jack3d and Mesomorph. So for all of you who like to down some pre-workout mixes before you go jack up at the gym, then read on as this could affect you directly.

Before we go any further I’ll just run by you the reported positive and negative effects of DMAA.

Positive:

• ·      Increase in functional energy.
• ·      Increased mental focus.
• ·      Enhance in muscular endurance/stamina.
• ·      Enhanced sense of well-being.
• ·      Muscle pumps.

Negative:

• ·      Sleeplessness/insomnia.
• ·      Reduced appetite.
• ·      Increased heart rate/palpitations.
• ·      Increased nervousness/anxiety.

Now lets run through the exact reasons why the TGA has prohibited the ingredient in the first place:

• ·      There are no current approved therapeutic uses for DMAA.
• ·      There are no benefits but there are significant risks.
• ·      There are risks due to DMAA’s toxicity.
• ·      DMAA presents a high risk of abuse, misuse and illicit use.
• ·      Reports of adverse events including high blood pressure, psychiatric disorders, cerebral haemorrhage and stroke.
• ·      An absence of studies demonstrating the long-term safety of DMAA.
• ·      The wide variability in the potency of the different doses of DMAA.

The NSW Health Department said the ban would automatically be implemented across the state, carrying with it a maximum penalty of a $1000 fine for each instance of supply.

So now that you have all this information at your disposal, let me know what you think? Is the TGA right in their decision or is it just a knee jerk reaction, like many in the sports supplement industry believe it to be. Do you take the products in question and have had a positive/negative reaction to its use? What are you going to substitute for it moving forward? Have you been stocking up on the product in the weeks leading up to the ban? If you are in the sports supplement industry then write in and let me know what you think of all this. If you are from the TGA and want to voice your opinion then feel free to do so. And if you don’t really care either way but just want to leave a message on the board anyway because you are lonely and got nothing better to do then feel free to do so, I’m not going to judge. You can remain anonymous if you wish.

Want to let me know, then comment below.