On Short Notice: Worst Transfat Offenders Cookies & Co + Cinnamophilin For Joints + Tomato Powder Battles Cancer Like Aspirin + Creatine Protects Cell Walls + Carboholism Starts in the Womb, Intermittent Fasting Helps... + More!
On Short Notice" news. We've got some ground to cover, today, so let's get started right away: We will start out by taking a look at the joint-healing / -protective effects of cinnamophilin, a compound from the roots of the cinnamomum trees. We will reconsider the importance of adiponectin for the non-obese physical culturist, switch from aspirin to tomato powder as our cancer prevention "drug" of choice and re-appreciate the newly discovered cell-protective value of a supplement 90% of you are probably already taking: creatine! Once we are done with that we revisit the potential connection between chronically low blood glucose, chronic catecholamine over-expression and the chronic fatigue syndrome. We will then take a look at how high carb diets and intermittent fasting of pregnant rats program the orexin A expression in the brains of their offspring and how that can predispose them to become obese.
During a brief water-break we will discard the idea of hyperhydration as idiotic and decide against carrying another kg of water weight around for the rest of this installment of "On Short Notice". Eventually we will reject pulses as a new staple diet food due to their potential to damage our gut mucosa and their strange gender-specific effects on insulin release and shake our heads over the average and not so average American's daily trans-fatty acid intake, which borders - in some cases - the 100g (!) ceiling of unhealthy absurdity.
References
During a brief water-break we will discard the idea of hyperhydration as idiotic and decide against carrying another kg of water weight around for the rest of this installment of "On Short Notice". Eventually we will reject pulses as a new staple diet food due to their potential to damage our gut mucosa and their strange gender-specific effects on insulin release and shake our heads over the average and not so average American's daily trans-fatty acid intake, which borders - in some cases - the 100g (!) ceiling of unhealthy absurdity.
- And while Ju et al. can only speculate about the exact mechanism it appears to involve the modulation of NF-κB or ERK/p38 MAPK downregulation and/or suppresion of p-c-Jun pathways. Since both are involved in the etiology of other inflammatory, degenerative diseases, as well, it appears almost certain that there will soon be more exciting applications for yet another medicinal component from your kitchen cupboard.
- Adipokines are not necessarily your friend - not even adpinonectin: Despite being the latest and (supposedly) greatest of the powerful cytokines that are released from your body fat, may keep you healthy when you are fat, it's negative correlation Pisto et al. observed in an epidemiological cross-sectional study involving 54 normotensive, non-smoking men with normal OGTT, clearly suggests that increasing adiponectin expression probably ain't the best way to get big and buffed (Pisto. 2012). Rather than that, you better diet and work out till you are big and buffed and wait for adiponectin (and leptin, which was by the way not significantly correlated with muscle size after adjustment for total adiposity) to fall in place.
Image 3: Tomato(powder)'s aspirin-like anti-cancer effects could be another reason for the health benefits of the so-called Mediterranean Diet And if you can't do tons of either, don't forget: Just like all the bad junk that may not be a problem if you ingested just junk A and maybe junk B, from time to time, becomes really nasty once C, D, E, etc. join the assault, it may be the pound of tomatoes you ate over the course of the last 2 weeks that helped you to avoid that the literal last straw that would otherwise not have broken the camel's but your back.Figure 1 : Lipid vesicle permabilization after exposure to melittin + (1) NaCl , (2) 100 mM DMBG), (3) Creatine, or (4) PCr (Tokarska-Schlattne. 2012). - Constant subphysiological glycemia (= hypoglycemia without symptoms) could be the reason that you centrally fatigue, after all the constant elevation of epinephrine and glucagon, Ana María Arbeláez and her colleagues observed in a cleverly conducted study, where they limited the glucose levels in 8 healthy human volunteers to 65 mg/dL (3.6 mmol/L) for two hours showed a constant elevation of epinephrine and glucagon (Arbeláez. 2012). That the latter will only work for so long hardly suffice to keep you functioning normal (by no means optimal) should be clear... So how do you prevent that? Don't overtrain, don't undereat, don't eat only protein and don't be f***ing scared of eating as much carbs and fats, as you need to fuel an active lifestyle (Arbeláez. 2012).
Figure 2: Orexin A expression in the PvNP in the offstring of rat dams on different pregnancy diets Another 10 weeks later, the rodents born to rats in the high carb group were already the heaviest of the four experimental groups and still as hungry as before.
Now that alone would not necessarily make a SuppVersity news, if the scientists had not, without even noticing made a (imho) very relevant discovery. In addition to the group with free access to normal chow, they had another group which mimicked the time-restricted feeding pattern in the high fat and high carb groups, who received their chow only within a fixed 6h window, which would essentially equate to intermittent fasting; and while I doubt that the results reach statistical significance, it is still quite telling that the pubs born to the intermittently fastest (IF) rats on the regular diets, were normal weight at birth, had the lowest orexin A (hunger signal expressed in the brain) expression in the PvNP and were subsequently the lightest at the 19 week weight in...I still wouldn't suggest you start to fast intermittently, just because you notice you are pregnant, after all we don't know whether or how this translates to humans and if the pubs of the IF-dams were not simply undermuscled and therefore exhibited a lower body weight.Image 4: As long as you got a couple of tables with water, sugary electrolyte bevarages, or even better salted coconut water along the roadside, you don't need to carry another 2lbs of water weight with you on your 1/2 marathon races. For the well-trained triathletes in the study, it did not make a difference whatsoever, as long as they could guzzle away their 500ml of gatorade during the 80-90min of running they were fine.- Are pulses superfoods, for women only or simply not suitable for daily consumption? It appears that similar to their nasty brethren, the soybeans, yellow peas, chickpeas, navy beans and lentils have the potential to become e hip diet food that could do more harm than good, especially to its male consumers. In a recently conducted study, a group of researchers from the University of Toronto found that pulses can help both men and women lose weight without prescribed caloric restriction (Mollar. 2012).
Figure 3 (radiancenutrition.com): Daily consumption of pulses appears appears to entail the risk of developing leaky gut. Figure 5: Fat, TFA intake across age groups and sources (Kris-Etherton. 2012) The overall range of TFA intakes in the highest quintile was almost crazily broad and ranged from already health compromising 8.8 up to 92.4 g/day. In view of the fact that the lions-share of this shit (sorry, but I just can't find a better name for it) came from cakes, cookies, pies, and pastries, the easiest solution to the problem and a major relief to the future public health insurance system in the US would be to ban this junk from the supermarkets or at least require the use of TFA-free and heat-stable fats in their production... but I think we all know that this is not going to happen, anytime soon.
References
- Arbeláez AM, Rutlin JR, Hershey T, Powers WJ, Videen TO, Cryer PE. Thalamic Activation During Slightly Subphysiological Glycemia in Humans. Diabetes Care. 2012 Aug 13.
- Abeysekara S, Chilibeck PD, Vatanparast H, Zello GA. A pulse-based diet is effective for reducing total and LDL-cholesterol in older adults. British Journal of Nutrition. 2012; 108:S103-S110.
- Beck B, Richy S, Archer ZA, Mercer JB. Early and persistent up-regulation of hypothalamic orexigenic peptides in rat offspring born to dams fed a high-carbohydrate supplement during gestation. Brain Research. 17 August 2012.
- Gigou PY, Dion T, Asselin A, Berrigan F, Goulet EDB. Pre-Exercise Hyperhydration-Induced Bodyweight Gain Does Not Alter Prolonged Treadmill Running Time-Trial Performance in Warm Ambient Conditions. Nutrients. 2012; 4(8):949-966.
- Kris-Etherton PM, Lefevre M, Mensink RP, Petersen B, Fleming J, Flickinger BD. Trans Fatty Acid Intakes and Food Sources in the U.S. Population: NHANES 1999-2002. Lipids. 2012 Aug 18.
- Lu YC, Hsiao G, Lin KH, Hsieh MS, Jayakumar T, Wu TS, Sheu JR. Cinnamophilin Isolated from Cinnamomum philippinense Protects against Collagen Degradation in Human Chondrocytes. Phytother Res. 2012 Aug 18.
- Lee EJ, Chen HY, Lee MY, et al. Cinnamophilin reduces oxidative damage and protects against transient focal cerebral ischemia in mice. Free Radic Biol Med. 2005; 39: 495–510.
- Lee EJ, Chen HY, Hung YC, et al. Therapeutic window for cinnamophilin following oxygen-glucose deprivation and transient focal cerebral ischemia. Exp Neurol. 2009; 217: 74–83.
- Mollard RC, Luhovyy BL, Panahi S, Nunez M, Hanley A, Anderson GH. Regular consumption of pulses for 8 weeks reduces metabolic syndrome risk factors in overweight and obese adults. British Journal of Nutrition. 2012;108:S111-S122.
- Pisto P, Santaniemi M, Turpeinen JP, Ukkola O, Kesäniemi YA. Adiponectin concentration in plasma is associated with muscle fiber size in healthy middle-aged men. Scand J Clin Lab Invest. 2012 Sep;72(5):395-402.
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- Tokarska-Schlattner M, Epand RF, Meiler F, Zandomeneghi G, Neumann D, Widmer HR, Meier BH, Epand RM, Saks V, Wallimann T, Schlattner U. Phosphocreatine interacts with phospholipids, affects membrane properties and exerts membrane-protective effects. PLoS One. 2012;7(8):e43178.
- Tuzcu M, Aslan A, Tuzcu Z, Yabas M, Bahcecioglu IH, Ozercan IH, Kucuk O, Sahin K. Tomato powder impedes the development of azoxymethane-induced colorectal cancer in rats through suppression of COX-2 expression via NF-κB and regulating Nrf2/HO-1 pathway. Mol Nutr Food Res. 2012 Aug 1.
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