Question
Do you remember a product called methoxyisovlavone? It was popular years ago but I can’t find it anywhere now.
Can you tell me more about it?
Answer
Sure, here’s the backstory on it, and its admittedly an intriguing one.
In 1977 a Hungarian company Chinoin filed a patent for a new flavone called 5-methyl-7-methoxy-isoflavone. It was said to work by increasing protein synthesis and nitrogen retention in much the same way steroids do, but without the androgenic side-effects. Patented by pharmaceutical experts (US Patent # 4,163,746), 5-methyl-7-methoxyisoflavone is designed to promote muscle growth while at the same time increasing fat loss.
Biotest was hot on the product, rolling out “Ipriflavone” many moons ago. It flopped pretty bad. But wait – they’ve got it right now, and then sold Methoxy-7, which they widely claimed worked 7 times better than Ipriflavone (sidebar, 7 x 0 is still ZERO).
Between Methoxy-7’s “chicken wire”, pure cholesterol delivery system and Syntrax’s Methoxylon nanoparticles, you’d think this stuff would at least do SOMETHING.
Nope, nothing. In the real world, this product tanked – nobody had anything good to say about it.
It was then claimed that university research, published in the prestigious journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, showed that combining Methoxy with a proper diet and regular training program will help you build muscle while SIMULTANEOUSLY shedding fat.
I looked that study up, because it was news to me. Here are some details.
Tom Incledon, M.S. and Jose Antonio, Ph.D. and colleagues from the University of Nebraska, Kearney, NE, evaluated the effects of methoxyisoflavone supplementation on training adaptations. 14 healthy resistance-trained men were administered a placebo or a supplement containing 800 milligrams per day of methoxyisoflavone for eight weeks. Subjects were instructed to maintain their normal dietary intake and training volume throughout the study.
Long story short, they found subjects gained around a kilo of LBM, and lost a kilo of fat. That’s not bad for a natural product, but here’s the inside scoop
The study, which was funded by Biotest and carried out at various points by Thomas Incledon, Darin Van Gammeren and Jose Antonio, was never published in full. All that appears is an abstract, published in the 2001 journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
More importantly, here’s what you never heard from Biotest/T-nation: For the next five years, Richard Kreider and his colleagues did more extensive research on the compound. [J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2006 Dec 13;3:19-27.]
This time, the results were rather disappointing. Nevertheless, Biotest continued to sell Methoxy to their unwitting audience – one of many reasons I don’t like the company, and recommend you get your products elsewhere.
Bottom Line
Neither Ipriflavone or Methoxyisoflavone did anything for the majority of people that used them. Biotest did try and re-package Methoxy one last time for women in super-duper ultra absorption capsules, but when that flopped they mercifully (and finally) threw in the towel.
And that’s the last I ever heard about Methoxyisoflavone.
