MICHAEL JACKSON DEAD

Pop Legend Michael Jackson Dead at 50
Thursday, June 25, 2009 

 Music icon Michael Jackson died Thursday afternoon at a Los Angeles hospital, a source close to the family told FOX News.

Debra Opri, a former Jackson family attorney, confirmed that the legendary singer, 50, was rushed to the hospital Thursday afternoon, where he later died at 3:15 p.m. EDT after falling into a deep coma.

Multiple reports claimed that shortly after noon Thursday, Jackson went into cardiac arrest and had to receive CPR in the ambulance. As the news broke, Joe Jackson, his father, told multiple news sources that his son was "not doing well."

Paramedics responded to a 911 call at around 12:26 p.m. PDT, the Los Angeles Times reported. He was reportedly not breathing at the time of their arrival.

A Jackson spokesman was unavailable for comment.

His death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre, sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s, when he was popular music's premier all-around performer, a uniter of black and white music who shattered the race barrier on MTV, dominated the charts and dazzled even more on stage.

Jackson was born in Indiana in 1958. He rose to fame as part of the successful pop group The Jackson Five, formed with his brothers in 1967. The group went on to earn four number one hits in 1970 alone, and the 12-year-old Jackson became the undeniable breakout star of the group.

In 1972, Jackson enjoyed his first solo hit with the song “Ben.” Six years later, he made his film debut in “The Wiz,” where he renewed his friendship with producer Quincy Jones.

Collaborating with Jones, Jackson went on to become remarkably successful with his solo efforts “Off The Wall” in 1979 and “Thriller” in 1982.

From there, Jackson went on to become the undeniable “King of Pop,” winning seven Grammy awards for “Thriller” alone.

During the 1980s, he became an icon with a distinct style of fashion and performing as well, wearing one sparkling glove, bejeweled military clothing and short pants with socks.

It was around this time that Jackson began experimenting with excessive cosmetic surgery, including lightening of his skin.

In 1992, Michael founded the "Heal the World Foundation," a charity that brought underprivileged children to Neverland Ranch where Michael would spend time with them and allow them to spend the night.

This practice raised many eyebrows, especially when Jackson was accused of molesting a 13-year-old boy who had become a regular Neverland guest. Jackson responded to the allegations publicly, maintaining his innocence. In 1994, he settled the case out of court for an undisclosed amount.

Jackson was briefly married the daughter of Elvis Presley, Lisa Marie. The union was publicly scrutinized and speculations arose as to whether the marriage was simply an attempt to improve Jackson’s image, though he maintained that they lived genuinely as man and wife; however, the marriage broke up after less than two years.

From there, his career never recovered, but he remained in the news making headline after headline for strange and unusual behavior, including dangling his child over a balcony in Germany in .

While Jackson was on the set, the police raided Neverland Ranch issuing an arrest warrant for charges of child molestation by the same boy who appeared in Martin Bashir's documentary about Jackson.

A trial took place in 2005, and Jackson was acquitted of all charges. After his acquittal, he relocated to the Gulf Island of Bahrain, where he has reportedly been spending his time writing new music.

In 2004, a man filed a lawsuit against him, alleging he had been molested 20 years earlier but had repressed the memory until 2003. However, a judge eventually dismissed the lawsuit.

Jackson was set to go on European tour of 50 concert dates this year, but he had not booked any dates. There were multiple reports that he was too sick to perform, but Jackson never confirmed the rumors.

THIS HAS BEEN A TRAGIC WEEK FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT WORLD.  FIRST ED MCMAHON AND FARRAH FAWCETT.  NOW TO LEARN THAT MICHAEL JACKSON HAS DIED- I AM STUNNED.  HE WAS SUCH A TALENTED AND AMAZING INDIVIDUAL.  TRULY THE KING OF POP, HE REVOLUTIONIZED MUSIC AND MOVEMENT IN DANCE.  MICHAEL JACKSON WAS AN ICON.  I AM SORRY FOR THE LOSS OF A PARENT TO HIS YOUNG CHILDREN, AND SORRY TO THE WORLD FOR THE LOSS OF SUCH A TALENTED AND VISIONARY ENTERTAINER.

Posted date: June 26 2009 - 0:22:42 GMT

---

FARRAH FAWCETT DEAD FROM CANCER

Actress Farrah Fawcett Dead at 62
Thursday, June 25, 2009 

 Farrah Fawcett, the multiple Golden Globe and Emmy-nominated American actress best known for her role as the vivacious Jill Munroe in the 1970s television series “Charlie’s Angels,” died in a Santa Monica hospital. She was 62.

Her spokesman, Paul Bloch, confirmed that the iconic actress died Thursday morning at 9:28 a.m. PDT.

Her long-time partner Ryan O'Neal told People magazine Thursday, "She's gone. She now belongs to the ages ... She's now with her mother and sister and her God. I loved her with all my heart. I will miss her so very, very much. She was in and out of consciousness. I talked to her all through the night. I told her how very much I loved her. She's in a better place now."

Other "Charlie's Angels" stars paid tribute to her.

"Farrah had courage, she had strength, and she had faith. And now she has peace as she rests with the real angels," Jaclyn Smith said.

Said Cheryl Ladd: "She was incredibly brave, and God will be welcoming her with open arms."

Her former producer Craig Nevius told FOXNews.com, "She will be remembered as
the modern Mona Lisa and so much more. I will remember her as my friend."

Fawcett was diagnosed with anal cancer in September 2006 and, despite going into remission and enduring extensive chemotherapy and surgery both in the U.S. and Germany, it was revealed earlier this year that the cancer had spread to her liver. She stopped receiving treatment in May.

Fawcett documented the trials and tribulations of her battle with cancer in the NBC documentary "Farrah’s Story."

FAST FACTS: Farrah Fawcett Biography

Born in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1947 to a homemaker and an oil field contractor, Fawcett was encouraged to pursue a career in Hollywood while attending the University of Texas at Austin after her photo as one of the “Ten Most Beautiful Coeds” landed on the lap of a Los Angeles publicist. After scoring a string of commercials for consumer products and a few small television roles she finally hit the big-time with “Charlie’s Angels.” But Fawcett, eager to pursue greater acting challenges, left the show after just one season.

FAST FACTS: Highlights of Farrah Fawcett's Career

The blond beauty soon became the all-American face of her generation when she posed in a red one-piece bathing suit for a poster that became an item of pop culture history and has reportedly sold over 12 million copies. Blessed with a flawless figure and stunning smile, Farrah also had a full head of thick blond wavy hair that took on a star-status of its own; the “Farrah Do” became the most requested style by women across the world.

RELATED: Click here to read about Farrah's influence on a generation.

"In the beginning her hair certainly captured the world and just about every man. She took that position and reinforced it with talent and did some really chancy rolls and became a good actress, and I think a lot of people were surprised," actress Jacqueline Bissett told FOXNews.com.

"But just seeing her moving around at parties and seeing her sitting on a barstool with a kind of pizzazz and just her charm and her light was what I’ll always remember. She always just had this fresh quality and a very clean quality."

RELATED: Click here for all of FOXNews.com's coverage of Farrah Fawcett's life and work.

In 1973, Fawcett married "The Six Million Dollar Man" actor Lee Majors. During the years they were married, she changed her name to Farrah Fawcett-Majors. The couple separated in 1979, at which point she changed her name back to Fawcett. They divorced in 1983.

Post-"Angels," Fawcett went on to tackle an abundance of dramatic screen and stage roles and caused a major stir by appearing nude in Playboy’s December 1995 issue, which became the highest-selling issue of the 1990s.

RELATED: Behind the Iconic Farrah Fawcett Red Swimsuit Poster

"Farrah is just very special, inside and outside she was beautiful, smart, funny and a fighter,” her best friend and film producer, Alana Stewart, said. “She was quite an amazing woman. She's been my friend for 30 years and I've been very proud to have been involved with her.”

In September 2006, Fawcett, who at 59 still maintained a strict regimen of tennis and paddleball, began to feel strangely exhausted. She underwent two weeks of tests and was told the devastating news: She had anal cancer.

O'Neal, with whom she had a 17-year relationship, again became her constant companion, escorting her to the hospital for chemotherapy.

"She's so strong," the actor told a reporter. "I love her. I love her all over again."

She struggled to maintain her privacy, but a UCLA Medical Center employee pleaded guilty in late 2008 to violating federal medical privacy law for commercial purposes for selling records of Fawcett and other celebrities to the National Enquirer.

It's much easier to go through something and deal with it without being under a microscope," she told the Los Angeles Times in an interview in which she also revealed that she helped set up a sting that led to the hospital worker's arrest.

Her decision to tell her own story through the NBC documentary was meant as an inspiration to others, friends said. The segments showing her cancer treatment, including a trip to Germany for procedures there, were originally shot for a personal, family record, they said. And although weak, she continued to show flashes of grit and good humor in the documentary.

"I do not want to die of this disease. So I say to God, 'It is seriously time for a miracle,"' she said at one point.

Fawcett is survived by her partner O’Neal, and 24-year-old son Redmond O’Neal, who is currently serving a sentence for possession of illegal drugs in Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic, Calif.

Just last week, O'Neal told Barbara Walters that he intended to marry Fawcett "just as soon as she [could] say yes."

Of their son Redmond — who was unable to be by his mother's side when she passed — O'Neal said he asked Fawcett to "please forgive him, that he was so very, very sorry."

RELATED: Farrah Fawcett's Son Remained in Jail as She Died of Cancer

FOXNews.com's Hollie McKay, Allison McGevna and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

THE WILD HORSE EXTENDS OUR DEEPEST SYMPATHY TO THE FAMILY OF FARRAH FAWCETT.  CANCER IS A HORRID BEAST AND NO ONE DESERVES THE SUFFERING IT BRINGS, BOTH TO THE PERSON WITH THE ILLNESS AND THEIR FAMILY AND FRIENDS.  SHE WAS AN ACCOMPLISHED WOMAN WHO WAS PASSIONATE ABOUT LIFE.  I HOPE SHE FOUND COMFORT AND PEACE IN KNOWING THAT SHE TOUCHED MANY PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD.

Posted date: June 25 2009 - 23:43:17 GMT

---

ED MCMAHON DEAD AT 86

Legendary Television Host and Comedian Ed McMahon Dead at 86
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 

Ed McMahon, the loyal "Tonight Show" sidekick who bolstered boss Johnny Carson with guffaws and later carved out his own niche as the host of "Star Search," has died at a Los Angeles hospital. He was 86.

According to his publicist Howard Bragman, the former "Tonight Show" announcer passed away at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in California this morning.

Earlier this year, McMahon was in and out of the hospital for pneumonia and other medical issues, according to sources close to him.

While Bragman did not give a cause of death, he said McMahon had "a multitude of health problems the last few months."

McMahon had bone cancer, among other illnesses, according to a person close to the entertainer. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

FAST FACTS: Ed McMahon's Life and Career

Best known for his famous catchphrase "Heeeeeere's Johnny," said every night when Johnny Carson took the stage, McMahon spent three decades as the legendary comedian's sidekick.

McMahon and Carson had worked together for nearly five years on the game show "Who Do You Trust?" when Carson took over NBC's late-night show from Jack Paar in October 1962. McMahon played second banana on "Tonight" until Carson retired in 1992.

"You can't imagine hooking up with a guy like Carson," McMahon said an interview with The Associated Press in 1993. "There's the old phrase, hook your wagon to a star. I hitched my wagon to a great star."

PHOTOS: Click here for photos of Ed McMahon through the years.

McMahon, who never failed to laugh at his Carson's quips, kept his supporting role in perspective.

"It's like a pitcher who has a favorite catcher," he said. "The pitcher gets a little help from the catcher, but the pitcher's got to throw the ball. Well, Johnny Carson had to throw the ball, but I could give him a little help."

VIDEO: Death of a Television Icon.

The highlight for McMahon came just after the monologue, when he and Carson would chat before the guests took the stage.

"We would just have a free-for-all," he told the AP. "Now to sit there, with one of the brightest, most well-read men I've ever met, the funniest, and just to hold your own in that conversation. ... I loved that."

When Carson died in 2005, McMahon said he was "like a brother to me" and recalled bantering with him on the phone a few months earlier.

"We could have gone on (television) that night and done a 'Carnac' skit. We were that crisp and hot."

His medical and financial problems kept him in the headlines in his last years. It was reported in June 2008 that he was facing possible foreclosure on his Beverly Hills home.

By year's end, a deal was worked out allowing him to stay in his home, but legal action involving other alleged debts continued.

Among those who had stepped up with offers of help was Donald Trump.

"When I was at the Wharton School of Business I'd watch him every night," Trump told the Los Angeles Times in August. "How could this happen?"

McMahon even spoofed his own problems with a spot that aired during the 2009 Super Bowl promoting a cash-for-gold business. Pairing up with rap artist MC Hammer, he explained how easy it is to turn gold items into cash, jokingly saying "Goodbye, old friend" to a gold toilet and rolling out a convincing "H-e-e-e-e-e-ere's money!"

Born Edward Leo Peter McMahon Jr. on March 6, 1923, in Detroit, McMahon grew up in Lowell, Mass. He got his start on television playing a circus clown on the 1950-51 variety series "Big Top." But the World War II Marine veteran interrupted his career to serve as a fighter pilot in Korea.

He joined "Who Do You Trust? in 1958, its second year, the start of his long association with Carson. It was a partnership that outlasted their multiple marriages, which provided regular on-air fodder for jokes.

While Carson built his career around "Tonight" and withdrew from the limelight after his retirement, McMahon took a different path. He was host of several shows over the years, including "The Kraft Music Hall" (1968) and the amateur talent contest "Star Search."

He was a longtime co-host of the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon, a Labor Day weekend institution, and was co-host with Dick Clark of "TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes."

McMahon and Clark also teamed up as pitchmen for American Family Publishers' sweepstakes, with their faces a familiar sight on contest entry forms and in TV commercials. McMahon was known for his ongoing commercials for Budweiser as well.

He had supporting roles in several movies, including "Fun with Dick and Jane" (1977) and "Just Write" (1997). He took on his first regular TV series job in the 1997 WB sitcom "The Tom Show" with Tom Arnold.

McMahon married his third wife, advertising executive Pam Hurn in 1992, and adopted her son. McMahon and his second wife, Victoria Valentine, had an adopted daughter, and McMahon and first wife Alyce Ferrill had four children.

One son, Michael Edward McMahon, who worked as a counselor for abused children, died of cancer in 1995 at 44.

Ed McMahon released his autobiography, "For Laughing Out Loud: My Life and Good Times," in 1998. In it, he recounts the birth of "Tonight."

"Let's just go down there and entertain the hell out of them," Carson told him before the first show. Wrote McMahon: "That was the only advice I ever got from him."

In 1993, he recalled his first meeting with Carson after they left "Tonight."

"The first thing he said was, 'I really miss you. You know, it was fun, wasn't it?"' McMahon recalled. "I said, 'It was great.' And it was. It was just great."

Besides his wife, McMahon is survived by children Claudia, Katherine, Linda, Jeffrey and Lex.

Bragman said no funeral arrangements have been made.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
ED McMAHON WAS A TRULY GIFTED ENTERTAINER.  HE TOUCHED MILLIONS OF LIVES AND WAS ALWAYS GREAT FOR A LAUGH AND A SMILE.  A GREAT HOLLYWOOD LEGEND WHO WILL BE MISSED. 

Posted date: June 23 2009 - 18:17:55 GMT

---

BIGGER, BETTER ORGASMS

FOXSexpert: 10 Steps to Extended Massive Orgasm
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 
By Yvonne Fulbright
Extended Massive Orgasm – the term itself packs a powerful passion punch. This experience of one orgasmic wave after the next has become the grand dame of climaxes. Those who pursue the extended massive orgasm (EMO) report enjoying more of life’s joys in general. After experiencing one of these massive orgasms, lovers have been known to become nicer and more generous in their relationship.

These results aren’t surprising given that EMO makes for more amazing orgasms. It helps lovers realize heightened intimacy, increased sexual confidence, and better communication skills. So what exactly are the tricks of this tantalizing trade?

An extended massive orgasm can last minutes or hours, offering up blissful sensations at increasing intensities. Here are the key ingredients to making this earth-shattering event happen ...

1. Truly recognize your pleasure. You want to immediately approve of your present sensations. This needs to happen before you can expect increased feelings of pleasure.

This starts before you even get in the sack by overcoming anxieties you have about sex. This may require identifying limitations you’ve been taught about sex, like how you’re supposed to respond (or not respond). You need to then challenge any social conditioning that impedes upon your response.

Whether in therapy or on your own, doing so also allows you to tackle any sex guilt, which shuts down your response. Ridding yourself of the uninvited “others” in your bed will enable you to solely focus on the orgasmic sensations, including ones that come from simply anticipating action.

2. Learn to relax. Lovers have the tendency to tense up during sexual excitement. While a natural response, it’s not conducive to extended orgasm. You need to be able to surrender your nervous system during genital stimulation. It’s this letting go of tension that allows you to embrace your pleasure.

The process of learning to relax is two-fold. First, it involves actively countering tension responses. Little tricks like spreading your toes or pushing out your pelvic floor muscles (as though going to the bathroom) can help you to relax.

Second, you want to ensure that you’re mentally relaxed, letting your lover into your personal space and surrendering to her as well.

3. Get in the know. The more we know about our bodies, sex, and sexual response, the better we can recognize sensations, the more we can lose ourselves in them. If you’re not already, become knowledgeable about sexual response, sexual anatomy, and erotic techniques.

Part of this process involves making friends with your own and your partner’s genitals. Masturbating further allows you to explore your sexual potential and what should be employed when you’re with your partner.

4. Give yourselves time for pleasuring. EMO is no rush job. It can’t be experienced as a quickie. It involves flirting. Try flashing one another, and giving teasing touches.

Lovers may stimulate each other by fantasizing out loud, taking your time getting to the genitals and hot spots. Teasing allows for greater energy awareness and arousal, and these are what make the experience ultimately so mind-blowing.

5. Touch for pleasure. Stimulating a partner shouldn’t be blasé. You want to load on positive attention in inviting more of a pleasure fest. Delighting what you’re doing derives more enjoyment for both parties.

You can show your partner that you’re into the moment by informing them about what you’re going to do so he can surrender more easily. Highlighting a lover’s physical responses further enables them to tune into the sensations.

6. Learn to channel your energy. You want to get out of your head, directing your energy to your groin. This will make for more explosive results, plus help you to further tune into your sexual response. An effective way to channel your energy involves visualizing that you’re sending it down your body to your genitals.

7. Become an effective communicator. To amp things up, you may need to request changes that will intensify your pleasure if you’re the receiver. As the giver, you may need to ask for feedback or direction. In either case, asking for more will help you to feel more. The more attention you can bring to the pleasure at hand, the greater your ability to expand and amplify that pleasure.

Add to this happy noises and you’ve got the love fest of the ages. The moment is enhanced in verbally acknowledgement of your pleasure and showing appreciation. (Note: moans and groans work well). Giving approval can do wonders for a lover’s ego.

8. Develop your pelvic floor muscles. Exercising your pubbococcygeus (PC) muscle will put you more in tune with your sexual response. It’s also what makes for more powerful orgasms. Your PCs can be engaged as you’re being stimulated.

9. Have plenty of lubricant handy. You’ll be loving for the long-haul. So make sure you avoid the friction, pain, and discomfort that can result from working each other raw by using lube.

10. Do away with any drive-thru mentality. Having an EMO isn’t like going for fast food. You can’t go into it thinking instant gratification. Instead, approach it as though training for a sport.

You want to have a long-term plan to realize one of life’s greatest pleasures. Seek to have a comfortable space, one full of pillows, sensual lighting, and, basically, inviting for the extended orgasm experience. Make such lovemaking a regular romantic routine that’s not so routine.

With all of these components in place, you can coax extended massive orgasm by teasing your lover using a variety of manual stimulation techniques. Books like Steve and Vera Bodansky’s “The Illustrated Guide to Extended Massive Orgasm” offer lovers a number of strokes, pressures, and maneuvers that bring your lover to a peak and down again for the ride of their lives.

Ultimately, lovers want to build pelvic fullness and get as close to the edge of orgasm as possible and then back off to postpone release. In maintaining this dance between peaking and coming down only to peak again, they can satiate one orgasmic wave after the next.

Dr. Yvonne K. Fulbright is a sex educator, relationship expert, columnist and founder of Sexuality Source Inc. She is the author of several books including, "Touch Me There! A Hands-On Guide to Your Orgasmic Hot Spots."

 THESE ARE SOME GREAT TIPS FROM DR. FULBRIGHT.  ORGASMS ARE FUN.  PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE MORE OF THEM.  IS THAT A BUMPER STICKER SOMEWHERE?  IT SHOULD BE.  OF COURSE IF YOU ARE LOOKING TO HEIGHTEN YOUR ORGASMIC EXPERIENCE, YOU SHOULD REALLY VISIT TO THE WILD HORSE BROTHEL! 

Posted date: June 23 2009 - 18:13:33 GMT

---

SUPPLEMENT USE CAN BE DANGEROUS

May 18, 2009
What You Don't Know Might Kill You
SUPPLEMENTS Would-be experts and untested products feed a $20 billion obsession with better performance across all levels of sports
DAVID EPSTEIN, GEORGE DOHRMANN 

Last November, a month after his 32nd birthday, Rene Gonzalez moved with his wife and two young daughters from Miami to Cape Coral, a wetlands community whose canals have earned it the nickname the Little Venice of Florida. In Miami the competition in his chosen career—nutritional supplement sales—was fierce, and Cape Coral offered a less congested marketplace. He opened a small store, Just Add Muscle, in a strip mall near two gyms. "Opening the store is the first step," Gonzalez says in his native Massachusetts accent. "What I really hope to do is open my own manufacturing company. That's my dream: to franchise this store and manufacture my own supplements and then sell them in the stores."

Gonzalez has no background in chemistry or nutritional science. His previous job was restoring cars; before that he was in the Marines. What he knows about sports supplements—those pills, powders and drinks marketed to athletes and would-be athletes—he learned from using them (initially as a chubby adolescent hoping to add muscle) and from reading articles in magazines and online. Except for his own experiences, there is nothing to suggest that he is qualified to offer advice on supplementation, let alone to design and manufacture his own line of products.

Gonzalez's dream, however, is not as fanciful as it would appear.

The sports-supplement world has many power brokers whose origins are as improbable as Gonzalez's. They have risen along with an industry that in three decades has grown from a niche business serving iron-heaving behemoths to a broad-based juggernaut with nearly $20 billion in U.S. sales in 2007, according to the Nutrition Business Journal. As more and more players are revealed to have taken performance-enhancing drugs—Dodgers slugger Manny Ramirez being only the latest example—potent products line the shelves of Wal-Mart, Rite-Aid and 7-Eleven, more than 5,400 GNC stores and Vitamin Shoppes, and independent stores like Just Add Muscle.

Despite the move into the mainstream the industry remains fertile ground for kitchen chemists with little or no formal education in science or nutrition—and in some notorious cases former steroid users and dealers (page 57). They help decide what compounds go into the fat-burners, muscle builders and preworkout drinks consumed annually by an estimated 33.5 million Americans. Many of those consumers flock to supplements that revolutionized sports training, like powdered creatines, which provide the muscles used for explosive movements with concentrated fuel found in meats and fish.

But questions about the industry arose anew in December, when six NFL players were suspended for four games each by the league after testing positive for a banned diuretic in the weight-loss pills StarCaps. Then in January, Philadelphia Phillies reliever J.C. Romero, who won two World Series games last fall, received a 50-game suspension from baseball for testing positive for androstenedione—or andro, used most controversially by Mark McGwire—which Romero blamed on 6-OXO Extreme, an over-the-counter supplement marketed as a testosterone booster. Earlier this month the Ontario-based manufacturer MuscleTech issued a voluntary recall of Hydroxycut, a weight-loss aid and workout booster that comes in a variety of forms and whose sales topped nine million units last year. The recall came after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) linked Hydroxycut, which is still available in many stores, to 23 cases of liver damage including the death of a 19-year-old boy.

In a 2007 study of supplements sold in the U.S, the screening company Informed-Choice found that 25% of the 58 supplement samples it tested contained steroids or stimulants banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Six years earlier, a study funded by the International Olympic Committee found that 15% of the 634 supplements it examined would likely cause an athlete to test positive. Michigan-based NSF International now screens supplements for MLB, the PGA and the NFL, and marks those not containing banned substances with an NSF seal. But only a dozen companies have volunteered their products for certification, and NSF can only vouch for the specific batch it tests.

There is a simple reason that the industry has become, in the words of Darryn Willoughby, director of the Exercise and Biochemical Nutrition Laboratory at Baylor, a Pandora's Box of false claims, untested products and bogus science. To sell any type of food or drug, a company must submit to scrutiny from the FDA. That scrutiny once applied to supplements such as concentrated milk, egg and soy powders, which fed the demand for nonperishable food additives during World War II. But in 1994 Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which allowed supplements—broadly defined as vitamins, minerals, herbs, amino acids and other products that don't contain approved pharmaceutical drugs and don't claim to treat diseases—to be sold with no proof of effectiveness or safety, and without approval from the FDA (page 59). That legislation, heavy with lobbyists' fingerprints, razed virtually every barrier to entry into the marketplace.

All it takes to become a sports supplement dealer is a little money and a phone call, like the one Gonzalez placed last year to a supplement manufacturer in Texas. Gonzalez ordered bottles of a muscle-building product that he named Monsterdrol, which were then made, packaged and marked with Gonzalez's label, Supplements911. When showing a visitor around his store in February, Gonzalez pointed to a bottle of Monsterdrol and described it as "your typical prohormone product." A steroid prohormone is a substance that the body converts to an anabolic steroid; andro is an example. But Dr. Don Catlin—CEO of Anti-Doping Research, a Los Angeles--based nonprofit that hunts down new performance enhancers, and the former director of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory—says that Monsterdrol is in fact methasteron, an anabolic steroid that, while not on the controlled substance list of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), is "Number 1 on my danger list."

Yet Monsterdrol can be purchased off the shelf at Just Add Muscle, available to anyone under the Florida sun, and on Gonzalez's website, available to anyone anywhere.
Supplement companies follow the Wright Brothers rule: You're flying until you crash. In the 1990s ephedra was the golden herb of the supplement industry. It was sold in more than 200 products that purported to do everything from boost athletic performance to burn fat to intensify sex drive. In 1999 some 12 million Americans consumed products containing ephedra.

But the dangers of the herb became apparent in 2001. On July 31, Minnesota Vikings tackle Korey Stringer, who had been using an ephedra supplement, died of heatstroke in training camp. Three days later Northwestern University safety Rashidi Wheeler died of an asthma attack after a conditioning drill. He too had been taking an ephedra supplement. The American Association of Poison Control Centers later reported that 64% of the calls it received in 2001 about herbal products—or 1,1178 in all—concerned adverse reactions to supplements containing ephedra.

The herb's banishment from the U.S. market was sealed two years later when Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler, who was using an ephedra product to lose weight, collapsed and died during spring training. "[Bechler] was a fat guy exercising in the heat," argues Jack Owoc, CEO and founder of the supplement manufacturer and retailer Vital Pharmaceuticals (VPX) in Davie, Fla., echoing a common sentiment in the industry that ephedra was safe if used properly. (Stringer, too, was overweight.) VPX exploded to prominence with the help of energy and weight-loss products containing ephedra. Nonetheless, when Owoc saw a federal ban looming—it came in April 2004—he did what anyone who survives in the supplement industry does: He reinvented his business.

A former high school science teacher who began by selling supplements out of the front of his house in 1993, Owoc invested in a 14,000-square-foot plant and churned out Redline, a potent ephedra-free energy and weight-loss drink available not only at GNC and Vitamin Shoppe but also at Wal-Mart and 7-Eleven. Thanks largely to Redline, VPX is doing a nine-figure business and last year expanded, purchasing a 90,000-square-foot facility. Meanwhile, companies with less prescient leadership, like once-mighty Twinlab, which had its chips on ephedra-based Ripped Fuel—a supplement used by Stringer—have suffered a deep decline or even folded.

Owoc survived and is now to the sports-supplement industry what Willy Wonka was to the candy biz: eccentric, bursting with energy (as he sips a VPX BANG!) and in command of a factory full of less-musical Oompa-Loompas who make reality of his imaginative nutritional notions. A drug company, like Pfizer or Merck, typically needs eight years to get a product from the lab to the consumer. In a mere two months, a VPX energy drink can go from Owoc's brain to machines that each churn out 230 bottles a minute—and then to store shelves.

He spends much of his time sampling from a rainbow of liquids. On an afternoon earlier this year, Owoc drew a few cc's of a Day-Glo-red substance into an oral syringe and dropped them into his mouth. The connoisseur of energy drinks clicked his tongue a few times and delivered his verdict. "You gotta go higher on the cinnamon," he told a technician in a shin-length white lab coat, "and more sweetener. And no mint. You're killing me with the mint."

Nearly every energy and weight-loss drink contains some combination of the industry's go-to stimulants: yerba maté, green tea, yohimbine (a stimulant found in yohimbe tree bark) and good old-fashioned caffeine. The amount of each ingredient is part of a secret "proprietary blend," according to labels, though the caffeine content is occasionally listed—a shot glass of Redline, for example, has about as much caffeine as a can of Coke. For Owoc, all the mixing and taste-testing is part of his constant quest to stay ahead of the competition: Get something to market, get it there fast and make sure it tingles. As he puts it, you have to "feel it working."

What you "feel" working with a drink like Redline is thermogenesis, or the production of body heat. Consuming stimulants is like shoveling coal into a locomotive furnace, speeding up the body's metabolism so more energy is burned. One form of thermogenesis is familiar to anyone who has been to a game at Lambeau Field: shivering. The tiny muscle contractions use energy to generate heat and warm the body. "It is a physiological fact that when you shiver, your body releases a large amount of stored body fat in an attempt to bring body temperature back to normal," reads Redline's marketing materials, which play up the product's ability to induce shivering.

For a person drinking a Redline in a gym, however, shivering does generate heat, but it has nothing to do with bringing body temperature back to normal. "Some people get jittery from stimulants," says Judith Alsop, director of the Sacramento division of the California Poison Control System. Alsop says that between 2004 and '06, her office received 10 calls from Redline users reporting symptoms from jitters to vomiting. (Four checked into emergency rooms, but none suffered lasting harm.) VPX says that if people use the drink as indicated, they should experience no adverse reactions.

"They're marketing the side effects as the intended effect, so if someone gets tremors, they think, I'm just shivering and losing weight," says Alsop. Shivering may aid weight loss slightly, but even a tiny increase in body temperature—both from the shaking and increased metabolic rate—can be disastrous during a summer workout. "Football players get on the field at 98 degrees, and it's normal for them to get up to 103 or 104," says Sandra Fowkes-Godek, director of the HEAT Institute at West Chester (Pa.) University. "If they start at 100 or 101 and get to 105, they can have a potentially catastrophic event."

Each eight-ounce Redline bottle notes that one serving is four ounces and has a warning that reads, NOT FOR USE BY INDIVIDUALS UNDER THE AGE OF 18 YEARS. But such warnings are lost on the prime consumers. As Alsop says, "We've found that young men don't read labels."

How does an idea for a supplement go from the brain of Rene Gonzalez or Jack Owoc to a mall near you?

Companies that outsource manufacturing, as Gonzalez's does, are in the vast majority, and they usually rely on the manufacturer to obtain ingredients. Those that make their own products, such as VPX, order most of their raw materials from abroad, often from Asia.

Materials from overseas arrive with a certificate of validation from the exporter. "[But] you have to treat that like just a piece of paper some guy in China wrote something on," says Patrick Arnold, who before he rose to fame as the BALCO chemist, popularized the andro supplement that was in McGwire's locker in 1998. Says Arnold, "If you are serious about quality control, you have to test everything."

Some manufacturers, like VPX, rigorously screen the raw materials they receive; others trust the suppliers, at the consumer's risk. Balanced Health Products, the manufacturer of StarCaps, said its supplement was probably contaminated by raw materials imported from Peru. "Like any business, there are companies you can trust to do the testing and those that you cannot," says Arnold.

Once the materials are in hand, a large manufacturer, like VPX, can decide what to mix together and call a supplement. Gonzalez's options, on the other hand, are more limited. Because the size of his order won't be large enough to warrant its own production run from the manufacturer, he can only commission a so-called "me-too" product, essentially a copy of an existing supplement in the marketplace that he then brands with his label.

To make a brand rise above the crowd, though, a company can't just churn out another basic creatine or whey protein. It takes a different formula, or the real jackpot: the inclusion of a novel ingredient. It is during the race to create something new, when supplement makers spend hours poring over science and nutrition journals—sometimes using themselves and their coworkers as guinea pigs for experimental formulas—that they're likely to jump the gun and embrace ingredients that have proved neither safe nor effective.

A few years ago supplement makers turned ecdysterone, an insect development hormone, into all the rage. The leap that companies made was spelled out in the ecdysterone information page at Bodybuilding.com, the leading online-only supplement purveyor: "Could there be some correlation between insects' superior strength ratio and this compound? What would the effects be on vertebrates such as mammals? If we had the proportionate strength of an ant, for example, we could easily pick up a car." A Bodybuilding.com article by a former chief of research for a major nutrition company called ecdysteroids the "Steroidal Holy Grail."

Except ecdysterone doesn't have any effect on humans. "Studies in my lab have shown that ecdysteroids are completely innocuous in mammals," says Ronald M. Evans, a professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego. "Spinach, for example, is loaded with [ecdysteroids], but these molecules provide no muscle-building properties in humans."

Instances in which supplement makers have moved faster than science, or dodged it entirely, abound. For example:

• A 2003 study claimed that an extract of brown seaweed binds to and blocks myostatin, a protein that tells muscles when to stop growing. Companies such as Biotest and Champion Nutrition rushed brown-seaweed-extract supplements to market. After two later studies debunked the seaweed-as-muscle-builder theory, Tim Ziegenfuss, one of the authors of the pro-seaweed study and now a Biotest scientist, conceded in an online interview with the website Testosterone Muscle that "the science was just so promising that we just didn't follow the process like we usually do in terms of stringent testing.... [The supplement companies] were in too big a hurry to get it to market."

• Some oral spray or liquid products claim to contain human growth hormone. Whether they do or do not is unimportant, since HGH is a very large molecule that is not effective unless taken by injection and can be legally obtained only with a prescription.

• Ginseng has been used in China for thousands of years, as many supplement makers will inform a consumer looking for a boost in the gym or on the field. But a few well-designed scientific studies, according to UC Berkeley's Wellness Guide to Dietary Supplements website, have found no proof that ginseng enhances energy levels or athletic performance.

• Almost every sports-supplement store sells products that contain the steroid prohormone DHEA, which is legal but banned by the NCAA, the NFL, the NBA and WADA. DHEA is marketed for everything from muscle growth and fat loss to antiaging. Levels of DHEA in the body do decline with age, but in scientific studies on thousands of senior citizens, supplemental DHEA failed to improve muscle mass or brain function. Studies have, however, documented side effects, including facial hair growth in women and breast enlargement and elevated blood pressure in men, in addition to a number of dangerous interactions for those also taking prescription drugs.

Even some of the biggest names in supplements can find themselves embroiled in debates about the scientific basis of their product claims. At issue in an ongoing class action lawsuit in California is whether Bioengineered Supplements and Nutrition (BSN), the official supplement provider of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, falsely marketed products as containing its breakthrough ingredient: creatine ethyl ester malate, or CEM3. CEM3 was touted as one of the components of BSN's muscle-building N.O.-XPLODE, a product that was so successful when it was launched in 2004 that BSN doubled its staff to about 60 employees within a year. (In 2007 the company was named the 27th-fastest-growing private company in America by Inc. magazine, with $80.8 million in revenue and a three-year growth rate of 3,027%.) "You probably can't go into any store in the world where [N.O.-XPLODE] is not a top seller," says James Tracy, BSN's marketing director.

But whether CEM3 even exists is at the crux of the lawsuit. In expert depositions Jonathan Vennerstrom, professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, testified that the claimed structure of CEM3 is chemically impossible to make, and Richard Chamberlin, a chemistry professor at UC Irvine, testified that BSN's patented process for synthesizing CEM3 "almost certainly would produce none." BSN told SI that the lawsuit "does not challenge the effectiveness or quality of the products," and that "BSN no longer sells those formulations."

Some supplement makers, prohibited by cost and their lack of expertise from creating novel ingredients, fall back on what they know works and sells: anabolic steroids and prohormones that have not yet been added to the DEA's list of controlled substances.

The policing of these designer compounds has become a cat-and-mouse game between retailers and the feds. Andro and its prohormone cousins were added to the federal controlled substances list in 2004. Supplement makers responded by engineering new prohormones; whether one is technically legal depends in part on how chemically and pharmacologically similar it is to a controlled substance. "Designer drugs are hard to keep up with," says Rusty Payne, a DEA spokesman. "We're adapting and evolving, and the bad guys are doing the same thing to evade us."

The government is already working to ban more prohormones, and though the FDA does not have premarket approval power, it does test products when concerns arise. (A month after the six NFL players were suspended because of the banned diuretic in StarCaps, the FDA announced that 69 weight-loss supplements had been found to contain unlisted drugs. The FDA warned consumers but doesn't have the authority to issue a recall without the manufacturers' cooperation.) The approach to take with prohormones, says a person who works directly with retailers at a large supplement-manufacturing company, is to "make your money in the next few months and get out of it."

The market for over-the-counter or over-the-Internet products containing steroids and prohormones, in the words of the manufacturing-company employee, is "the 15-year-old boy to the 25-year-old [man] who just is, like, I don't want to take steroids, and I heard this is going to make me have great [muscle] gains."

When asked about Monsterdrol, Gonzalez explained that his product is a legal prohormone and that it was sold to him as such by the Texas manufacturer. However, a certificate of analysis that Gonzalez obtained from Research Triangle Park Laboratories in Raleigh and posted on his store's website shows his product to have this chemical formulation: 2a-17a-dimethyl-5a-androstane-3-one-17b-ol, which Catlin identified as the designer anabolic steroid methasteron. (That formulation also appears on the bottle itself.) While methasteron is not on the DEA's list of controlled substances, the FDA sent letters in 2006 to a manufacturer and a distributor of methasteron, warning both that if they continued to market the drug as a dietary supplement, they risked a visit from the feds.

Gonzalez says that he won't sell Monsterdrol in his store to a customer under 21, and maintains that many retailers sell supplements with the same formulation. Indeed, SI identified several other over-the-Internet products with the chemical formulation for methasteron on their labels. One of the other methasteron products that SI obtained had been sold by Rockhard Formulations, founded in 2003 by strength coach Zack Barnard. (The company has changed ownership since SI obtained the supplement and now sells a different product line.) In March, weeks after he sold the company, Barnard said that he "got out of the business because of the liability. Unfortunately, athletes get a hold of [steroid and prohormone supplements], and it's coming up as a positive test. I don't want that on my shoulders.... I'm not affiliated with it anymore, and I'd never condone it."

Testing positive for an anabolic steroid shouldn't be the foremost concern for a methasteron user. A paper published last year in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology chronicled five cases of liver damage among previously healthy young men who used dietary supplements that contained methasteron; none took them for more than four months. Catlin himself was involved in a separate case in which a healthy 28-year-old man used methasteron for two months and was transformed into what Catlin describes as a jaundiced "yellow boy with IVs running out of him."

After receiving his order of Monsterdrol, Gonzalez participated in a conference call in January with prospective customers arranged through the message boards at EliteFitness.com. "If it's the first time you're going to be using an anabolic [agent], this stuff is not the way to go. It's kind of like trying to light a cigarette with a blowtorch," Gonzalez told his audience, adding that Monsterdrol is "stronger than the illegal stuff."

During Gonzalez's conference call, one of the moderators instructed prospective buyers to take milk thistle with Monsterdrol. It was good advice. Milk thistle is believed to protect the liver from some of the harmful side effects of anabolic steroids. But in the supplement industry, not all milk thistle is created equal. In 2007 Bill Obermeyer, a former FDA scientist, analyzed a dozen milk thistle products as vice president for research at ConsumerLab.com, an independent company that tests nutritional products. Half of the products contained significantly less of the liver-protecting complex silymarin than the labels claimed, and one was contaminated with lead—bad news if you're counting on the stuff to protect your liver from, say, Monsterdrol.

"To me," Obermeyer says, "we're doing what the FDA should be doing, but they just don't have the manpower to do it."

Dr. Scott Connelly is sitting in a leather chair near a bank of 30-foot, floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the harbor from his Newport Beach, Calif., home. The house is a spacious example of modernism, with sharp lines and minimalist decor. Told that his house should be on the cover of a glossy shelter magazine, Connelly says matter-of-factly, "I believe it was."

Connelly invented the first mainstream sports supplement, MET-Rx, in 1993. Yet he is dismayed by the turns the business has taken. "It is lamentable to me some of the stuff that has made it into the industry," he says. "I get e-mails from people every day, asking, 'Does this [product] do what they say it does? Is it harmful?' Consumers are completely confused."

It took Connelly 20 years to perfect the formula for the meal-replacement supplement that would become MET-Rx. He first thought of it while working on his thesis as an undergraduate studying neurophysiology at Boston University. While completing a fellowship at Stanford Medical Center in intensive-care medicine, he began manufacturing the product, which he engineered for its potential in the treatment of critically ill patients. One study, which appeared in the Journal of Burn Care and Rehabilitation, found MET-Rx effective in helping burn victims gain weight.

His invention became a sensation only "because of happenstance," he says. While at Stanford, he wondered how MET-Rx—whose ingredients include protein, vitamins and amino acids—would work on healthy individuals hoping to gain muscle. He gave it to a few San Francisco 49ers and other professional athletes. One of them mentioned the product to Bill Phillips, a bodybuilder who published a newsletter on nutrition, The Anabolic Reference Update, out of his home in Golden, Colo. Phillips asked Connelly to do a field study involving some of his subscribers. "Halfway through the study, which involved 600 individuals, people were recommending [MET-Rx] to their friends," Connelly says. "But there was no commercial distribution. So I let Bill become the de facto distributor."

Phillips founded Muscle Media 2000, a magazine popular among the gym crowd, and he began pushing MET-Rx to its readers. For many of the kitchen chemists who would come to control their own supplement companies, the arrival of MET-Rx was a watershed moment. The powder tasted horrible and was a chalky mess, but it worked. Many of today's supplement makers talk nostalgically of the first time they took it. For some, Connelly's creation changed their lives.

The alliance between the scientist Connelly and the promoter Phillips was a short one. Phillips left MET-Rx in the mid-1990s and took control of Monterey, Calif.--based Experimental and Applied Sciences (EAS), building it into one of the industry's giants. Connelly sold MET-Rx in January 2000.

"I think at the start, a lot of [supplement] companies had the model of pharmaceutical companies," says Matt Vukovich, the clinical research director for EAS from 1997 to '99, and now an associate professor in the Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation at South Dakota State. But because supplement makers can't patent their ingredients, a competitor could simply appropriate their research and development, making the pharmaceutical approach less cost-effective. So, says Vukovich, "Today some of the biggest [supplement] companies are just big marketing departments."

At the Boca Raton, Fla., offices of BSN—which outsources its manufacturing—certified athletic trainers and nutritionists take calls from customers and recommend products while bright plasma screens track their performance stats. (Linda is leading in inbound calls, but Shawn averages more than $100 per sale.) Some supplement makers may be chemistry dilettantes, but almost all of them have marketing down to a science. They use "steroid-bloated bodybuilders," as Connelly calls them, in magazine ads and include steroid shorthand (terms like deca and drol) in the names of their pills. VPX includes a syringe-like device with some products to lend a hard-core feel.

Getting a product on the shelves of GNC remains the surest way to hit it big, and the quickest way to move it once it's there is by paying a "spiff," or commission, to GNC salespeople—from 25 cents to $8 for every tub or bottle they sell. As a result, several former and current GNC salespeople told SI, unsuspecting customers are sometimes steered to a supplement that is inappropriate for their needs. "I once saw a guy recommend creatine for arthritis," says a former general manager of a GNC store. No study has ever proved that creatine benefits arthritis sufferers, and supplement makers are not allowed to pitch their products as medical remedies.

Kevin Mullins, a 20-year-old kinesiology student at Maryland and a GNC sales associate, says that "if a guy comes in with a realistic goal, I say, O.K., let me put away the spiff product that helps me and get this guy the best products we have. [But] if there's a 20-year-old college student who just wants to look good and get laid, and he says, 'Yeah, man, I've got $120 to spend,' then he's not going to stick with it anyway, so I might just help myself."

In a statement to SI, GNC said that "like many other retailers, GNC occasionally participates in manufacturer incentive programs on a specific product.... We believe that GNC's customers are informed and intelligent consumers who are not so easily swayed."

MuscleTech is a well-known spiffer—offering up to $8 per sale, according to GNC employees—and one of the industry's most prolific marketers. (A recent 486-page issue of Muscular Development included 62 pages of ads for MuscleTech products.) During a slew of lawsuits several years ago related to the company's no-longer-made ephedra products, some of MuscleTech's tactics were exposed. According to one suit, one magazine advertisement included before and after pictures but failed to mention that the woman, Marla Duncan, was actually a fitness model. Nor did some of the ads indicate that the before picture was taken shortly after she gave birth.

That was a minor misstep compared to MuscleTech's manipulation of the findings from clinical studies. In one instance the company allegedly tried to have subjects who dropped out of a study because of heart palpitations and high blood pressure not counted in the data. MuscleTech's actions were so egregious that upon the January 2003 settlement of one suit in Oklahoma, previously sealed documents were released so the company's actions would be, in the words of the judge, "publicly known and incapable of repetition in future cases."

Today it remains difficult to differentiate scientific findings from a marketer's handiwork. Darryn Willoughby of Baylor says he is often approached by companies wanting to create only the illusion of a real study. "They might want to take 15 or 20 guys, give them whey protein, have them train or whatever, and then do before and after measurements," Willoughby says. "Sure, they're going to improve, but there's no control group to compare them against." Even when he does determine that a supplement increases energy or causes weight loss, Willoughby says it is impossible to tell which of the dozens of ingredients are causing the effect. "It could just be the caffeine," he says. "You don't know."

Even supplement makers that submit their products for independent testing have trouble escaping the appearance of impropriety. In 2008 VPX funded a study by Willoughby on one of its products, a fat burner called Meltdown, but only after it was already on the market. That study appeared in the journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) in December. The CEO of ISSN is Jose Antonio, who had been an employee of VPX for almost a year before the study's publication. "People often come back to me and ask how it got so convoluted," Connelly says. "The truth is that nonsense sells really well."

Last July, Connelly introduced his first supplement since MET-Rx. Progenex, his new company, based in Westminster, Calif., released three protein products, but not before commissioning a study on the efficacy of the primary ingredient in each one, which included three phases of testing—in human muscle cell cultures, with animals and in human clinical trials. "One of my friends is Clint Eastwood," Connelly says. "He always told me, 'You should try and make people rise to the level of your work.'?"

Not that he expects that to happen. For now the industry remains the domain of the self-styled nutritionists and the pitchmen, where sales of Progenex's products remain relatively slow while Rene Gonzalez's prospects—thanks to the message-board buzz around Monsterdrol—are on the rise.

I THOUGHT ALL YOU READERS WOULD FIND THIS ARTICLE INTERESTING.  IT GOES TO SHOW THAT EVEN HEALTH SUPPLEMENTS AREN'T GUARANTEED TO BE HEALTHY OR EVEN SAFE.  BEFORE STARTING A VITAMIN, MINERAL, OR SUPPLEMENT, RESEARCH EACH INGREDIENT!  AND IF THE PRODUCT PROMISES AMAZING RESULTS, IT IS PROBABLY UNTRUE AND COMES WITH NASTY SIDE EFFECTS.

Posted date: June 7 2009 - 18:33:45 GMT

---