This PricePlow-inspired pre workout (Healthy Blend) is a go-to pre for those who want 5g creatine and no crazy business!
How often does a site get to say they inspired a company to arise from nothing?
HB Nutraceuticals is using the knowledge they gained from years of PricePlow fandom to put their own stamp on the industry. Their aptly named Healthy Blend pre workout is soon to hit the market, and it’s a go-to pre workout if you want some gains without the “questionable” ingredients.
The Backstory: PricePlow inspired!
Let’s let the boys at HB Nutraceuticals speak for themselves:
“Hey guys, we are a supplement company based out of Boston. We have been fans of yours for years and you are legitimately the reason we are in this industry.
We have a pre workout released called The Healthy Blend and we would like to send you guys a few bottles to try out and maybe review if you like it. (Or hate it haha). Thanks guys, love what you’re doing and keep keeping the industry on the straight and narrow!”
Well they asked, and we decided to oblige! Healthy Blend sets out to do one thing: provide clinically dosed pre-workout ingredients to enhance your workout with intense pumps and muscle-building ergogenics. Let’s find out if we really do love (or hate it)!
Our Healthy Blend Tasting and Discussion
Not a full review here, but once you see the label, you can pretty much tell how it’s going to work, because this product should have no surprises!
It’s essentially the “go-to” pre workout if you’re wanting to stay away from exotic or experimental ingredients, and it does taste quite good!
Healthy Blend Ingredients
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L-Citrulline Malate (6,000mg)
Why go with 3g creatine when you can go with 5g?!
Off to a good start here! Citrulline, as our longtime readers know, is an ingredient that helps provide your body with more nitric oxide. It does so via a metabolic pathway that converts citrulline to arginine, and that arginine then produces nitric oxide.
Nitric oxide works as a vasodilator, so your blood can flow more voluminous. More blood means more nutrient delivery, but more importantly, more pumps — which fulfills the product’s promise of “intense pumps”.
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Creatine Monohydrate (5,000mg)
A full dose of creatine in a pre-workout!? We love it! Seriously, how hard is it to provide the tried-and-true 5g creatine? The clinical dose is 3g/day, but 5g is where we’re most comfortable recommending it for the bigger guys out there.
Focusing on quality, clarity, and affordability, HB Nutraceuticals is now open for business!
It feels like most of the new products are either underdosing or using less-studied forms of creatine, but the only form that’s supported by legit decades of science is monohydrate, we’re happy with the choice here. Expect creatine to add reps to your sets while enhancing your leangains. Vegetarians can even get some cognitive benefits from creatine use, so that’s a bonus.[4-8]
And if you can’t handle the 300mg caffeine, don’t feel bad about under-scooping it… because you’ll still be well above the 3g creatine that most like to get. We say give us the 5g at this point.
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Beta Alanine (3,200mg)
Here we go – the full clinical dose all in one sitting! 3.2g of beta alanine is right around where the tingles take over many users’ bodies, and may polarize some of our readers. But as mentioned, it’s also the daily clinical dose.
Beta alanine is both an endurance-enhancer and an “experiential” ingredient — those tingles (otherwise known as paresthesia) often remind users that the product is now “working” and it’s time to hit the gym… while it’s a less-than-pleasant sensation for others. Everyone reacts differently, but ultimately,
Beta Alanine Boosts Exercise Performance when taken 3.2g per day (but that was split amongst four separate doses)
Beyond the lovely tingles, beta alanine is great for improving endurance in longer-duration exercise like aerobic bouts or tempo work on compound exercises. It really shines in the 1-4 minute “performances”, helping your body produce more carnosine to assist in flushing acids out.
The enhanced endurance means more volume[9-10] which may cause better lean body mass gains if you can truly achieve those longer workouts with it. HB didn’t half-ass the dose, so don’t half-ass the workout!
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Betaine Anhydrous (1,000mg)
This may be the only issue we have with the entire Healthy Blend label. Betaine is best at around 2.5g daily for its proven benefits.
1g is okay, especially given that it works like creatine and we already have 5g of that, but it still is lower than what we’d expect from a product making clinical claims.
Betaine is a recovery and power ingredient that will help you feel better the days following your sessions. It also may help you make more lean body mass gains — but again, that was at 2.5g/day dosing.[11-12]
On top of that, it’s an osmolyte, helping with water transfer amongst cells… which could equate to a pump if enough water is taken. Betaine is an ingredient we’ve learned to love over the years, but again, at a bit higher dose!
The Healthy Blend Pre Workout attacks the industry with simplicity
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L-Taurine (1000mg)
Taurine is making a huge comeback in 2018! We want to believe it’s due to our article promoting the amazing benefits attached to taurine for endurance athletes. For those that missed that article (HB Nutraceuticals didn’t), taurine is an “organic acid” that also serves as an osmolyte, assisting in water transfer amongst cells – and it shows benefits from the very first dose!
It will increase your ability to endure both long bouts of cardiovascular exercise or high intensity interval training. Better yet, it’s a non-dose dependant response, meaning the lower doses of taurine (say around 500mg) will provide as much benefits as those far higher! 1g is a perfect dose to us after looking at that literature.[13-14]
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Beet Juice Extract (500mg)
Taurine’s Benefits (endurance-wise) can be seen after a single use!
Beet Juice Extract is an only-occasional addition to pre-workouts, and this is a sad realization, as science sings the benefits for athletes. Beet juice itself is noted by science for having a high-nitrate account.
Nitrates turn into nitrites during digestion that readily convert to nitric oxide by the body. More nitric oxide means better pumps, lower blood pressure, and enhanced recovery. [15] While the science is on straight beet juice, there should be a benefit to using an extract…like a product that doesn’t taste like beets!
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Caffeine Anhydrous (300mg)
Caffeine increases energy expenditure by roughly an extra .15 calories per minute. Not huge, but we’ll take it!
Caffeine and pre-workouts are inseparable barring the stim-free products on the market. Customers expect to feel energized after taking a pre and HB Nutraceuticals has answered this call in the Healthy Blend. 300mg of caffeine will have you feeling like Goku in the gym, and not only that… The weights may feel much lighter and you will just be more awesome over all (clinically-speaking, this depends on your size and the study you reference).[16-18]
If this is too much, you can do an “underwhelming” scoop and still have plenty of creatine, although everything else of course goes down. And on the other end, if you want to get wild, you can take a scoop and a half of Healthy Blend to hit Super Saiyan two. 1.5 scoops would also address some of our concerns about the betaine content. Just try to avoid 2 scooping Healthy Blend unless you’re a caffeine freak.
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BioPerine (5mg)
BioPerine is a patented form of black pepper extract, standardized for the piperine content. It’s here to increase the absorption of the other products in the blend and help them hit you harder and faster. [19] It’s become so commonplace that we feel odd when it’s not listed on a label. 5mg is right around the perfect dose as well – any more and the spice starts kicking through, but at this dose, good formulators have no problem masking it.
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Huperzine A (50mcg)
Bioperine is the trusted, trademarked form of black pepper extract that promises 95% or greater piperine, the part of black pepper with all the activity!
Hey, let’s close it down right with some huperzine! This is a nice add-on ingredient as it helps keep your acetylcholine around, but we don’t typically see it unless we see choline as well, so HB Nutra is simply “playing defense” in Healthy Blend. More specifically, huperzine A works by preventing the breakdown of acetylcholine via inhibiting acetylcholinesterase.[20] Acetylcholine is linked to learning and muscle contractions, so more is better.
This is ingredient for the “intense focus” promised by the product, but truth be told, this dose is on the lower end and we’re not sure you’ll feel it over the caffeine – yet we never complain about any form of choline enhancement.
Perhaps more importantly for the less-vain users, citrulline will also enhance your ability to recover from workouts and even during sessions themselves.[1-3] 6g is where the clinical doses begin, so the stage is set for some pumps.
This also provides the natural coloring in Healthy Blend… letting it live up to its name.
Long story short – Healthy Blend is a “go to blend” if you’re looking for a strong and solid pre workout without ridiculous ingredients or stimulants, and a solid 5g creatine – not 3g, not 2g hydrochloride, and not anything else. Some of our users want the stuff that will have them climbing up walls… and others want exactly this.
Flavors Available
They somehow split the blend between candy and real apple perfectly!!
As of now, Healthy Blend is available in a delicious Candy Apple flavor, and it’s naturally colored thanks to that beet root extract. If they’re true fans of PricePlow, they’ll know we expect creative flavors from all brands — and candy apple does a good job of being right in between the “true” apple and the “candy” apple.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for a safe go-to with no exotic craziness inside, then HB Nutraceuticals has pleased its supplement overlords. The only complaint we have about this product is the lower-than-optimal dose of betaine, but does the full 5g creatine make up for that? Some would argue. We would remove the claims about focus, because that’s not what we’re expecting with this profile.
But as it is, we think you know if you’re ready to take this PricePlow-inspired shot at the gym. If every other post we write looks a bit off the wall to you, and you’re not into herbals or exotic sausage flower plant extract stimulants, we recommend that you give HB Nutraceuticals a fair shot. We’re excited to see their future in the industry, and are happy we were there to help inspire it!
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