{"id":3365,"date":"2012-02-15T09:44:34","date_gmt":"2012-02-14T23:44:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/?p=3365"},"modified":"2017-10-26T23:24:02","modified_gmt":"2017-10-26T13:24:02","slug":"pagg-stack-an-anecdotal-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/2012\/02\/15\/pagg-stack-an-anecdotal-review\/","title":{"rendered":"PAGG Stack: An Anecdotal Review."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I&#8217;ve alluded to in the past I&#8217;m somewhat of a fitness buff, mostly to balance out my predominately\u00a0sedentary\u00a0lifestyle of IT work and computer games. Of course when these two worlds collide I end up applying the same kind of iterative process I would to any IT problem or challenge in a game to fitness and the past couple years have been no exception. I mentioned in the past that <a href=\"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/2009\/06\/19\/ideals-of-life-the-transition\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">I was doing CrossFit<\/a>\u00a0and since then I&#8217;ve tried several other workouts <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flexxlabs.com\/stanozolol\/\">to build muscle<\/a>; meal plans and supplement regimes in order to maximise the benefits I get from exercising. 2 months ago I decided to give the PAGG stack from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fourhourbody.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">4 Hour Body<\/a>\u00a0a go after hitting another plateau in my training and I thought I&#8217;d share my experiences with it.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a little background on me so you can put this in perspective (this is at the start of using PAGG):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Height: 187cm<\/li>\n<li>Weight: 89KG<\/li>\n<li>Body Fat: 18%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>The particular PAGG stack I used consisted of these supplements:<\/div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\" http:\/\/www.iherb.com\/Source-Naturals-Policosanol-20-mg-60-Tablets\/3351?at=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Policosanol<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.iherb.com\/Primaforce-Pure-ALA-300-mg-180-Capsules\/25383?at=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Alpha-Lipoic-Acid<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\" http:\/\/www.iherb.com\/Nature-s-Way-Garlicin-Odor-Free-Garlic-Cardiovascular-Health-90-Enteric-Coated-Tablets\/1990?at=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Garlic Extract<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\" http:\/\/www.iherb.com\/Source-Naturals-EGCG-350-mg-60-Tablets\/14823?at=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Green Tea Extract (EGCG)<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>I was also taking about 4 fish oil capsules a day as well as a daily multi-vitamin.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>I took the PAGG stack as recommended: AGG 3 times a day, PAGG before bed and didn&#8217;t take it every Sunday. I wasn&#8217;t 100% with sticking to this, I&#8217;d say I was about 90% on time with it (meaning about 1 in every 10 times I&#8217;d miss taking it at the right time) but I believe that I was still close enough for it to be considered effective. I didn&#8217;t make any radical changes to my diet or exercise regime during this time either, so most changes can be ascribed to PAGG stack.<\/p>\n<p>So as it stands right now I&#8217;ve gained approximately 2KGs whilst going down to 17%. Whilst it wasn&#8217;t the extreme fat burning I was expecting there was a definite downward trend when I was using PAGG. Since I&#8217;m trying to gain muscle at the moment its quiet possible that the supposed fat burning of PAGG is being muted somewhat as my caloric intake is somewhere around the 2800~3000 range every day. That being said since I didn&#8217;t change my diet during this time (and I&#8217;ve been on the same diet for a good 4 months prior) the additional 2KGs of muscle gain would appear to be attributable to taking PAGG.<\/p>\n<p>Doing some extra research into the matter though it looks like the potential fat burning\/muscle building effects that I experienced could be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/AdvancedFitness\/comments\/fuafx\/pagg_stack\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">solely due to the EGCG<\/a> in the stack. Indeed for the other components there is either <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Policosanol\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">no research showing efficacy<\/a> (Policosanol, as 4HB even states), experimental evidence in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/8690147\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">certain models<\/a> (ALA) or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/17325296\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">mixed experimental results<\/a> (Allicin). Anecdotally the combination does appear to work, at least for me, but it&#8217;s entirely possible that EGCG is responsible for those changes alone. I&#8217;d do another round of anecdotal testing on myself to see how it goes, but I&#8217;ve got my eye on a new stack that I&#8217;m hoping will get close to ECA for efficacy.<\/p>\n<p>Would I recommend PAGG for anyone? I would, at least for 2 months just to see if it works for you. If you buy the components individually it&#8217;s actually pretty cheap, on the order of about $30~$40\/month, and you should be able to see benefits within a short enough time frame to know if its worth you continuing or not. Personally for me, whilst it did appear to work, I&#8217;ve decided to switch to some other supplements that have a bit more scientific backing on them and see how they turn out. If there&#8217;s one thing that I learnt from this is that EGCG is potentially quite powerful and should you not want to be downing 16+ pills a day then your best place to start would be with just that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I&#8217;ve alluded to in the past I&#8217;m somewhat of a fitness buff, mostly to balance out my predominately\u00a0sedentary\u00a0lifestyle of IT work and computer games&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3196],"tags":[3216,3213,2939,3215,3214,3211,3212],"class_list":["post-3365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fitness","tag-allicin","tag-alpha-lipoic-acid","tag-evidence","tag-garlic-extract","tag-green-tea-extract","tag-pagg-stack","tag-policosanol"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppBqt-Sh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}