Nutritional Supplements: Men Vs. Women

The local health food store, nutrition shops in the mall, fitness magazines, TV commercials, infomercials – wherever you look, you won't have missed the fact that nutritional supplements are absolutely everywhere. The supplement industry is worth a lot of money. It’s reported that the global supplement industry is worth not far short of 70 billion dollars, so supplements are pretty big business.

Their secret lies in convincing you that you absolutely need these supplements. While it's true that supplements can be helpful, do men and women really need to take different ones? Or is it all marketing?

The Marketing Behind Male and Female Supplements

Supplements are actively marketed as miracle cures. No matter what your ailment, be it health-related such as poor skin, sleep and stress issues or feeling tired and lethargic, or simply wanting to improve your performance in the gym and on the sports field, there’s a supplement for it.

Sports supplements tend to be the most heavily marketed and promoted, purely for the reason that people want to look awesome. Forget going to the gym and eating healthily, if a supplement company can convince people that their product will get them the desired results without any of the hard work, they’ll do their utmost to get their ad team on the case, put the product on the shelves, and into your pocket.

Unfortunately, more often than not, we’re suckers for fancy marketing

The trend in recent years has definitely swung towards the way of the gender specific marketing of nutritional supplements. You’ll tend to find two categories of supplements.

The first generally come in huge black tubs with a picture on the front of a ripped bodybuilder or a muscled hunk in shorts with a beach babe on his arm. The product name contains words like “anabolic”, “mega”, "bulk", “xxx formula”, “wrath” or “rage” and is often accompanied by a huge number that doesn’t mean anything. As you’d expect, these supplements are marketed at men who are desperate to get big and lean — fast.

On the other hand, you’ve got the supplements aimed at the female market. These will be sold in smaller tubs, or sleek, shiny bags often with a pastel color tint. The picture will be a pretty and very slim woman – not too muscley, just with good muscle tone and definition, elegantly sipping a shake from a tall glass. Words such as “diet” “lean” “vixen” or claims like “specifically designed for women” will adorn the label.

Next time you get the chance, pick up a container of basic whey protein powder. Look at the male version with the bodybuilder on the front. It will probably have claims on the bottle to do with increasing the rate of protein synthesis or how much muscle you can gain by adding it to your diet and include details of the ingredients like BCAAs, a percentage of protein and if it’s got any extra creatine, glutamine or leucine added.

Then get a women-specific protein powder. The packaging and pictures will be different for a start and the claims will probably involve a metabolism boosting property as well as fat loss and definition. The advertised ingredients will boast about the minimal carbohydrate and fat content, perhaps some added CLA or another fat burning ingredient.

But once you get down to it and examine the exact ingredients you’ll see something surprising – they will be 99% the same. Protein, carb and fat content, added ingredients and everything else will be so similar it won’t make a jot of difference.

The only variable between the two is the way they’re marketed. This certainly isn’t illegal, or even particularly underhand, but it’s very clever and an excellent way of getting you to part with more of your hard earned money.

With this being the case, it’s safe to assume that there are really very few differences between male or female specific supplements.

However, there are a few considerations regarding gender you do need to address when choosing nutritional supplements.

Choosing Nutritional Supplements Based on Gender

Protein Powder

We’ll kick things off sticking with protein powder. As mentioned, there’s hardly any difference between "male" and "female" protein powders, so your best bet is to stick with a basic whey, casein, egg or vegetarian protein powder designed for literally everyone. Look for one that is at least 80 percent protein with minimal fat and carbohydrate added.

The gender specific difference will be dosage. Typically those looking to build muscle and burn fat need around two grams of protein per kilogram of body-weight each day. As women tend to be lighter than men that means they’ll need less.

Pro-Hormones

Pro-hormones can be a slightly tricky subject. While they’re not full-blown steroids, they are as close as you can get legally. They alter the levels of your hormones – particularly the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen.

These gender specific hormones both play an important role in body composition as testosterone increases muscle mass and burns fat while excess estrogen is associated with increased fat storage. Men tend to have higher testosterone and lower estrogen levels and women vice versa.

Pro-hormones tend to be marketed at men as a little more testosterone and a little less estrogen is highly unlikely to have negative effects. However women, who are designed to have higher estrogen and lower testosterone levels may suffer negative effects from messing around with hormonal profiles. Either way if you’re thinking about pro-hormones it’s best to consult your healthcare provider beforehand, just to discover whether these supplements are actually safe for you.

Calcium

Calcium is rarely considered to be a dietary supplement as the mineral doesn’t directly boost performance, but it plays a massively important role in preventing osteoporosis and arthritis and helps when you’re on a high protein diet. This is because increased protein consumption can lead to calcium loss over time, and thus pose a danger to your bone health. Calcium is far more important for women, who are more prone to osteoporosis, but for men it can be harmful in large amounts as it has been associated with a higher risk of prostate cancer.

Iron

Iron is the opposite of calcium. Most of the iron in your body is contained in your blood. Women need to consume more iron than men due to their menstrual cycle, meaning they lose excess blood each month. Most males will be fine consuming a diet high in iron with foods such as red meat, organ meat like liver and kidneys as well as plenty of dark green leafy vegetables and a multivitamin to be on the safe side. Women however should supplement with extra iron.

As for any other supplement – creatine, zinc, magnesium, vitamin C, vitamin D, carbohydrate drinks, glutamine, amino acids, caffeine, you name it, the difference in dosage should be based on goals and body-weight, not on gender.

For 95 percent of the time, men and women should eat the same healthy and balanced and stick to the same safe nutritional supplements.