ThermoLife: Vasolate

Balanced is standing still. Neither coming nor going. The absence of growth. Boredom. The orthodox. Unbalanced is moving forward. Momentum. Growth. Excitement. Unbalanced is VASOLATE™. ThermoLife's first vasodianabolic protein powder.* Excessively decadent natural flavors. Abnormally fast absorption.* Greater than 50% micellar casein.

From ThermoLife, the industry source of high-end body-building supplements, comes VASOLATE™. A boldy unorhtodox protein formula with intensely delicious taste and a decidedly unbalanced ingredient profile designed to condition your muscles with unstoppable vasodilatory and anabolic ambition.* Fortified with the nitric oxide releasing, mTOR-stimulating amino acid, Leucine Nitrate.* The first protein powder with casein encapsulated EFAs. And a highly leveraged 3:1 ratio of potassium to sodium.
VASOLATE™: Spraying round after round of amino acid bullets into your muscles.* Every blood vessel dialting.* Every muscle fiber inhaling.* Grabbing catabolism by the throat and forcing it to the ground.8 Tying its arms behind its back. Anabolism climbing on top and rapidly ascending to the peak. Encouraging workouts ending in reward*: Hypertrophy.* Mass.* Strength.* Definition.* Performance.*

*All ingredients present in
significant amounts for desired effects.*
A Trademark distinction of
ThermoLife formulas.

ThermoLife's New VASOLATE™:
Vaso-Anabolic Protein Powder
by William M. Brown, B.Sc.

"Protein is protein"
It's not very often that a protein powder comes along that puts other products in the shade. "Protein is protein", sports nutrition consumers say. And for the most part, they're right. The protein category of supplements is a characteristically unexciting one, lacking the body-building glamour and glitz often associated with other categories. Taking a protein supplement is more of a necessity than an event, rather like drinking a glass of water with a meal: Each supplies a nutrient that you require in the diet in order to survive (amino acids or H2O, respectively) but that you usually don't expect to receive any remarkable benefits from upon consuming it. Taking a protein supplement, in other words, is not an "Ah hah! It's working!" type of experience -- or, at least, it typically hasn't been to this point in time. The unorthodox new protein powder discussed in this editorial is quickly establishing itself as the exception to this rule.

ThermoLife
Founded in 1998, ThermoLife has earned word-of-mouth reputation as the "go-to" company for high-end body-building supplements. It is the company that other companies in the industry go to for such ingredients, many of which are the first of their kind, protected by United States patents and found in some of the world's best-selling physique and performance supplement formulas. ThermoLife ingredients are always boldly unorthodox, though never without purpose. A trademark distinction of ThermoLife's own portfolio of supplement formulas (C-BOL™, T-BOL™, E-BOL™, DICANA™, etc.) is the presence of nutritional ingredients in significant amounts, i.e., quantities capable of producing results that cannot be obtained from the diet; results that you can see and feel from each serving.* To be sure, this is not a supplement company that engages in the fraudulent practice of "pixie dusting."

New VASOLATE™: Decidedly Unbalanced
New VASOLATE™ is no exception when compared to the rest of ThermoLife's supplement formulas. It is grounded in science yet aggressively novel. It is powerful enough to satisfy even the most intensely competitive body-building athlete.* One of the main reasons for this is that VASOLATE is a decidedly unbalanced protein powder designed to give your metabolism and physiology the thermodynamic momentum needed to build muscle at a pace that most body-building athletes dream of but rarely if ever seem to achieve.*

"Balanced" is No Man's Land
Many supplement companies try to emphasize the utility of their protein powders with advertisements that talk about the "balanced" amino acid profiles that these products contain. Yet the nutritional truth of the matter is that balanced is not a state of affairs that serves your muscle-building needs well, if at all. Building bigger muscles is by its very nature an unbalanced condition. For growth of muscle tissue to occur, the rate of anabolism (i.e. the building up of cells or tissues) must exceed that of catabolism (i.e. the breaking down of cells or tissues). To stimulate muscle anabolism you need to lift weights in a progressive fashion. That's the training side of the equation. On the nutritional side, among other things you require an excess of those amino acids that normally serve to limit the rate of muscle protein synthesis, most notably the branched-chain amino acid (BCAA) leucine.

The Leucine Challenge
The need for leucine poses some interesting challenges. The outstanding rates of muscle protein synthesis reported in studies in which humans were fed leucine can only be achieved with leucine supplements.* Regular foods just won't cut it. The other problem is that leucine is relatively difficult to dissolve in water. In "chemistry speak" we say that leucine has low water-solubility. This is why it has often been left out of protein supplements entirely or added only in small, insignificant amounts.

Leucine Nitrate: Vasodianabolic Amino Acid*
Another challenge that last-generation protein supplements failed to address was the need for vasodilation. To get amino acids to your muscles, they need to be carried by the blood. Blood flow is dependent on open (dilated) blood vessels. When ThermoLife introduced United States-patent-protected Leucine Nitrate to the protein supplement category, they solved the vasodilation, water-solubility and other problems once and for all, and several others alongside.* Firstly, Leucine Nitrate is highly soluble in water.* Secondly, as a nitrate, it serves to indirectly release nitric oxide (NO), a vasodilator, into your tissues.* Thirdly, because nitrate is a permeation enhancer, Leucine Nitrate actually promotes its own absorption and the absorption of nutrients in its vicinity.* Nitric oxide synthase (NOS) is the family of enzymes responsible for converting "last-generation" NO precursors like arginine and citrulline into NO. Nitrate, in contrast, is not dependent on NOS. This offers a number of advantages when it comes to increasing your whole-body reservoir, or pool, of NO. Besides being a potent vasodilator (i.e. a substance that relaxes blood vessels, thereby causing them to open up wider), NO exerts regulatory effects on protein synthesis and the excretion of excess water and sodium. Unbeknownst to many bodybuilders, the retention of excess water and sodium, particularly outside of your muscle cells (i.e. extracellularly), actually impedes muscle growth (it is catabolic) and makes your muscles appear "smoother" or less defined. Of course, amino acids (in addition to oxygen, glucose, testosterone and other growth factors) are carried to your muscles by the bloodstream. If blood vessels are dilated, such as by an increase in NO levels, blood flows more easily, resulting in faster transport of nutrients to your muscles.* All of this bodes well for body-building athletes in search of maximum muscle mass and hardness. Scientists have established that leucine is the most effectively anabolic amino acid of them all.* This is thought to be due to its ability to stimulate the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) cellular signaling pathway.* mTOR is involved in regulating protein synthesis in general and exercise-induced muscle hypertrophy (increase in muscle size or mass) in particular. Combined with nitrate's surmised ability to indirectly release NO and stimulate vasodilation, this explains why Leucine Nitrate has been termed a vasodianabolic amino acid.*

Unbalanced Casein: Whey Protein Blend
Besides containing an excess of Leucine Nitrate (certainly in comparison to other protein formulas which contain none of this patented ingredient), VASOLATE™ is decidedly unbalanced is in its proprietary ratio of casein to whey proteins including Micellar Casein and Whey Protein Isolate and Concentrate. Strictly speaking, every protein supplement can be said to have a "proprietary blend", that is, a blend that is unique to that particular company. But uniqueness without muscle-building purpose is just window dressing. As a function of ThermoLife's rigid Scientific Product Formulation process (SPF; pronounced "Spif"), which every ThermoLife product must pass through, their highly-trained group of scientists arrived at a protein blend containing greater than 50% Micellar Casein. The intention was to produce what ThermoLife's scientists refer to as a "kinetically ideal" combination of immediate, medium- and long-acting amino acid absorption profiles -ideal, that is, for making the balance of protein synthesis and catabolism so decidedly unbalanced in favor of the former that your training sessions can't help but produce bigger, stronger muscles so long as you are making daily use of VASOLATE™.* That's how powerful VASOLATE™ is.*

Casein-encapsulated Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs)
In another industry first, VASOLATE™ has been fortified with casein-encapsulated EFAs. Few of us think to make sure that we are getting enough EFAs each day to satisfy our muscle-building endeavors. ThermoLife's scientists have simplified your life by adding EFAs securely wrapped in casein to VASOLATE™. Now you can ensure that your muscles can keep expanding in mass and performance without running out of EFAs, dietarily essential nutrients which constituent an important part of the muscle cell membrane.* It's as simple as mixing up a delicious VASOLATE™ protein shake.

"Excessively-Decadent" Natural flavors
This brings us to taste. Since you need to consume protein every day, and frequently several times a day, your protein powder should taste amazing. One of the reasons it took so long for ThermoLife to release VASOLATE™ was that their scientists refused to go to market with a protein powder that didn't exceed all taste expectations - yet another example of their obsession with the product being "unbalanced" in a highly positive way. Endless rounds of testing later, a formula emerged with "excessively-decadent" natural flavors that treat users to what is perhaps the most incredible sensory experience you will ever enjoy with a nutritional supplement of this kind.

Build it and they will hum: VASOLATE™
With its decidedly unbalanced formula, ThermoLife's new VASOLATE™ Vasodianabolic Protein Powder is in a class of its own. It aligns with your metabolism and physiology, accelerating your muscle-proteinsynthesizing machinery far beyond the tipping point where the mere possibility of muscle hypertrophy becomes the reality of it.* Whether it is morning or night, pre-, during or post-training, upon consuming VASOLATE™ every one of its ingredients fits into place as if the formula were precisely designed for your body.*