Carao - this stuff is freaky!

[SofaGeorge]

Has anyone here ever heard of an extract called Carao?

http://www.costa-rica-natural.com/

I got a couple bottles of the syrup a few months ago from a company in Costa Rica. There it is sort of a local health tonic used for "anemia."

I'd read a couple anecdotal accounts of it being an energizing and strength enhancing tonic used in a few areas of Central America... the primary scientific studies being on its use to enhance the size of cattle.

The results of using this stuff have been a little freaky. My muscles definitely look fuller, but I've been able to maintain a really low b/f while creeping my weight up a few pounds. I've also noticed that my lifts have gone up to all time highs in the last couple months... even though I stopped a fina/test cycle two months ago and am now just using low dose deca/EQ.

I wondered at first if the r-ALA and ALA experiments I had been doing had contributed to the unusual strength gains. (I not only broke my PR on dead-lift... the next week I repped that weight for 6 reps.) Now I am wondering if the Carao... or a combo of the Carao and the r-ALA led to the strength gain.

Has anyone else used Carao... specifically for power-lifting/strength gains or in combo with r-ALA?

 

[Hustler_dt]

hmm......i know nothing about this supplement (which is rare).

bump for more info

 

[Greek Freak]

I didnt see the stuff on that website, nor have I ever heard of it...but I am interested to see if anyone else has tried it. Those gains are very impressive.

 

[SofaGeorge]

I didnt see the stuff on that website, nor have I ever heard of it...but I am interested to see if anyone else has tried it. Those gains are very impressive.

They list it on the website as Mineral Magic. I had to hit the more info link to even get it named as carao extract. They describe it as an anemia tonic. I found their version of it by running web searches till I found a site that had carao. So far it is the only one I've found. (There may be others, but I suspect the sites will all be in Spanish... so I may not get them on searches.)

My weight gain hasn't been spectacular... inched up from 205lbs to 208lbs... but that was with no increase in b/f. The strength gains are what are really catching my attention. I'm 43... and at my age I do not expect to be breaking personal records.

I'm still trying to run searches to see if I can find out any indicators for why it might cause strength/size gains... unfortunately... my Spanish sucks. It seems like ALL of the research is in Spanish.

 

[SofaGeorge]

Bump... a ton of hits come up when I do searches on CARAO and ANEMIA. They seem like medical articles, but they are all in Spanish.

Could someone who is a Spanish speaker take a look at them and post a summary?

 

[MoreBeefPlease]

bump

 

[IronMonkey69]

SG try the elitefitness en espanol section or try google for your search they often give a site translation option not perfect but works enough.

 

[Greek Freak]

www.altavista.com has a translator on there that you could copy and paste into, it works pretty well.

 

[SofaGeorge]

www.altavista.com has a translator on there that you could copy and paste into, it works pretty well.

I've tried these before with scientific papers... not very good results. I've got an email in to a researcher friend who is fluent in Spanish. I'll post what she comes back with on the topic.

I'm just back from working legs... heat wave weather and I did 5 sets of 5 on deadlifts at my PR best... and flew through the rest of my workout with lots of energy.

I'd taken 25mg ephedrine, 1 NYC, 100mg r-ALA and one tablespoon carao extract pre-workout.

I think it was Macro or Fonz who had speculated that r-ALA may contribute to strength gains by shuttling nutrients to the muscle cells. I'm trying to find out now if carao has any synergistic action with r-ALA.

 

[drveejay11]

It's long and kind od boring but maybe it will help

http://www4.ncsu.edu:8030/~twallace/Lynch.PDF

(you need to have adobe acrobat reader installed on your PC.........if you don't let me know, I'll email the article to you----13 pages)