#143: The World's Most Famous Performance-Enhancement Chemist

At the behest of my astute legal counsel, here is a legal disclaimer for this episode: First, I am not recommending, endorsing, or supporting any of the substances or compounds (especially illegal) discussed or described in the interview. I am interviewing Patrick Arnold as a journalist seeking additional information regarding matters of public interest and concern. Second, I have removed some of the names of athletes who are alleged to have used performance enhancing drugs. I recognize that this seems excessive, but even if athletes have been publicly banned for drug usage, unless the ban relates to the specific substance and time period referenced in the podcast, I can be sued for defamation for repeating or publicizing these stories. With all that said, here we go... If you liked my episode with Dom D'Agostino, you might love this one. Patrick Arnold, widely considered “the father of prohormones," is an organic chemist known for introducing androstenedione (remember Mark McGwire?), 1-Androstenediol (marketed as “1-AD”), and methylhexanamine into the dietary supplement market. He also created the designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone, best known as THG and "the clear." THG, along with two other anabolic steroids that Patrick manufactured (best known: norbolethone), were not banned at the time of their creation. They were hard-to-detect drugs at the heart of the BALCO professional sports doping scandal, which thrust Barry Bonds and others into the spotlight. BALCO distributed these worldwide to world-class athletes in a wide variety of sports, ranging from track and field to professional baseball and football. Recently, Patrick has been innovating in the legal world of ketone supplementation, including breakthroughs in performance and taste with products like KetoForce and KetoCaNa, which were highlighted during my podcast with Dominic D'Agostino, PhD. If you'd like to meet the (in)famous Patrick Arnold in person, you can find him at The Arnold Classic in Colombus, Ohio from March 3-6, 2016 at Booth 328. Otherwise, you can check out his current concoctions for athletes here and here. In this science-dense conversation, we cover a ton, mostly related to better performance through chemistry. We also discuss Patrick's biggest successes and mistakes, his path to science, ursolic acid and other clever creations, exogenous ketone supplementation for sports, as well as nonsense in the media about anabolics (e.g. current Delta-2 scandal). Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast.