Q: Hi Mike, I am 25, M, 5'9' at 176 lbs. I am quite satisfied with my progress. I do almost all exercises for all body parts, including squats, deadlifts, and benchpresss, and all other exercises. I am using Optimum Whey. I have used Animal Pak before in 2005, SAN muscle mass, optimum whey, Prolab whey, prolab creatine, used APN creatine but stopped two weeks ago. The main problem is that my left side of the body is a bit weaker than the right side of the body especially arms and shoulder (Left arm biceps is 1 inch short than the right one ). I am not able to feel the right amount of pump in the left arm as I do in the right arm. Is there anything that I can do to make this equal. I thought of getting accupuncture sitting, so that it may stimulate my left side of the body to promote growth. What u say? I am fighting with this thing since last 3 or 4 years. Sometimes I think of saying bye-bye to bodybuilding, but cant do that also, as I am quite used to it now, cant think of life without going to gym.........Any supplements if u want me to try to promote growth on my left arm?????

A: Your problem is actually quite common -- many people have asymmetries between right and left sides of the body. Unfortunately as far as I know there's no treatment or supplement you can take to fix this problem. The only thing I could recommend is to primarily do dumbbell exercises for those muscle groups for which asymmetry is most pronounced (like arms and shoulders, as you mentioned) and doing equal number of reps on each side. Likely what will happen is your left side will reach failure 1-2 reps sooner, so the right side will actually not go to failure with the same number of reps. The end result will be that left side will be getting more intense workouts and will eventually catch up (or at least come closer) to the right side. It's obviously going to take time for the effect to show and it's far from perfect solution, but as far as I know that's the best you can shoot for in curing asymmetries like that. Good luck!