SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Image 1: Beta alanine and taurine; the former interferes with uptake and reactions that involve the latter. Having listened to the last installment of the Amino Acids for Super Humans series you are already familiar with the antagonism of the two beta-amino acids ("beta-" indicates that those are not part of the 22 proteinogenic amino acids) beta alanine and taurine . Being structurally very similar, both share a single transporter, so that high levels of beta alanine decrease/inhibit taurine uptake. Like a partial agonist, beta alanine also interferes with the actions of taurine by inhibiting reactions that involve the former, so that the cardiomyocytes Jong and his colleagues from the Universities of South Alabama, USA, and Kobe, Japan, incubated with 5mM beta alanine for 48h induced a 45% decrease in taurine content in the neonatal rat cardiomyocytes. The sudden lack of taurine " enhanced superoxide generati...

Image 1: Thyroid for energy para- thyroid for bone metabolism. I don't know about you, but sometimes I get the feeling I am not doing enough for the female readers of this blog. And, while even this blogpost is not exclusively addressed to the ladies, the majority of hypothyroid patients are women. Part of the explanation for this phenomenon can be found in the title of this blogpost, already. Both, soy, as well as hormonal contraceptives are "ladylike" , these days. Accordingly, overcolonization of Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus , or inflammation is all that remains for "real men" (who obviously do not take synthetic gestagens and probably refrain from consuming soy products) to catch up on their female fellow sufferers. But before I totally confuse you, let's take a look at the most recent scientific results. Still ahead of print is a paper by Claudia Lorenz and colleagues ( Lorenz. 2011 ) in wh...

Image 1: T2-based fat burners work! At least when interperitoneally injected in overfed rats ;-) Those of you, who followed my writings even in the pre-SuppVersity days may remember my Team-Andro review (original article in German, link is just a google translation) of the purported fat-loss effects of diiodo-L-tyronines. Almost two years ago, I concluded tha t scientific evidence for their use as "fat burners" in humans was non-existent , while the rodent data that was available at that point, only confirmed that high-dose supplemental 3,5 diiodo-thyronine (and to a lesser extent 3,3' diiodo-thyronine) was able to ameliorate the detrimental metabolic effects of hypothyrodism in rats. Now, the same group of Italian researchers who conducted the initial studies on the metabolic effects of these previously overlooked "by-products" (evidence suggest that they are in fact more than that) of thyroid hormone metabolis...

Image: Grapefruits, here one from the sunny state of California, contain bioflavonids that are more potent than common diabetes drugs. A recent study by estimated the number of diabetics world-wide to be >350.000.000 ( Danaei. 2011 ). As knowledgeable and informed student of the SuppVersity, you know that in almost 90% of the cases (this was the percentage of "type II" diabetics in 2010), life-style changes alone would solve the problem. Unfortunately, this process takes time and effort on part of a group of people who believe just too willingly in the propaganda of the pharmaceutical industry, which a) tells them that it was not their fault that they developed diabetes (type II), but that it lay in their genes and b) promises them that taking a pill or injecting insulin would eventually solve all their problems. You must be aware: What may be true for a low percentage of those 350Mio. diabetics (mostly "type I"), is a blatant, yet comforting, and highl...

Image 1: Salmon, one of the few foods, even the extremists allow themselves (photo by Dezidor ) "Do you [eat] Paleo?" Over the last years, the "Paleo lifestyle" , once some sort of esoteric "back to the roots" movement, has attracted more and more followers and has long become a multi-million dollar business. Somewhere in the course of this process, however, the original idea, which was to look at the nutritional history of humanity to identify those nutritional strategies that have been working for humanoids for ten-thousands of years, got lost. Mainstream paleo has turned into an obscure cult the members of which add food item after food item to their lists of "bad foods" , the consumption or rather non-consumption of which distinguishes the "real" from the 99% paleo-eaters. Yet, while eating gluten-containing (the paleos would probably say "contaminated") foods has, proba...

Image 1: Diogenes , a critical thinker of the ancient world and eponym of a European research project; a man right after my liking, who would not tire questioning common "wisdom". I must forewarn you: Being part of the pan-European Diogenes Project , the study I am going to tell you about in the following is not something you can read or understand in a few minutes. Aimed at elucidating the intricate relationship(s) between Di et Ob esity and Genes [the acronym DIOGENES was aptly chosen, for there is little doubt that Diogenes, if he lived today, would certainly feel inclined to debunk many of the nutritional idiocies of our age, cf. image 1], the project that is financially supported by the European Union, is literally epic. Its newest spin-off, an investigation into the "blood profiles of proteins and steroids during weight maintenance with manipulation of dietary protein level and glycaemic index" ( Wang. 2011 ), is no except...

Image 1: Whey proteins are cheap, many are tasty and as this study shows, effective not only for increases in lean, but also for reductions in fat mass. As a faithful visitor of the SuppVersity, it won't surprise you to read about the counter-intuitive effects the addition of 56g of whey protein to the diet of ninety overweight and obese patients (BMI ~30kg/m²; age 51y) had in a study the results of which have finally been published in the Journal of Nutrition on June 15 ( Baer. 2011 ). What could be news to you, however, is that the same amount of soy protein failed to induce similar changes. David J. Baer and his colleagues from the Human Nutrition Research Center in Beltsville (note: this institute is financed by the USDA) instructed the participants of the study to add 56g of a supplement containing either whey (WP), soy protein (SP) or carbohydrate (CHO) to their regular diets for 23 weeks - other than that part...

Image 1: Momordica charantia, also known as Bitter melon - just in case you haven't seen this remarkable fruit yet. (photo Flying Toaster ) "Bitter Melon? That's in X, Y and Z. All products that are meant to improve your health. Well, Bitter Melon must be some good stuff then, no?" Right off the bat: No, it ain't "good stuff", but rather rat(-testes) poison ! In a recently published study, Yama, et al. ( Yama. 2011 ) investigated the effect of 6-16 weeks of 50mg/kg (human equivalent: 8mg/kg) Momordica charantia (bitter melon) seed extract on testicular health of 90 male Sprague Dawley rats. Warning : The results of this study will probably make you throw up, if you just popped some bitter melon laden supplements: The extract administered for 6, 8 and 16 weeks produced significantly (p < 0.05) increased testicular MDA [malondialdehyde is an accepted plasma marker for oxidative stress] (1.74 ± 1.15, 1.84 ± 0...

Image 1: Simplified illustration of the purported function of ghrelin in the human body ( healthhabits.ca ) Eating whenever you feel "hungry" (I suppose most of us don't even know what hunger is, anyway) seems to be a bad idea in a society where the abundance of readily available (low quality) foods turns out to be at the heart of many of the health problems we are facing these days. Thus, it seems counter-intuitive that our standardized 3xday feeding schedules, which, if nothing else, do prevent us from eating nutritional bullsh** 24/7, could in fact be making us fat . This, i.e. the finding that eating at fixed times 3x a day induces weight, or more specifically, fat gain in rats on an other wise (calorically) unrestricted diet, is yet the surprising result of an investigation ( Verbaeys. 2011 ) the results of which have been published in the March issue of the American Journal of Physiology. For 14 days the sci...

Image 1: Let's hope no one uproats and steels this flowering plant from the family Simaroubaceae after reading about its testosterone boosting effects ;-) Kudos to Benson, who certainly is one of the Minds on the Mind And Muscle Forums (I don't know about his muscle, though ;-). Benson dug up a very recent article on the effects of "Ali's Stick" ( Tambi. 2011 ), which would be the literal translation of "Tongkat ali" , also known as the "Malaysian ginseng" , a herb that has been used by generations of men in South-East-Asia to improve their sexual performance, on testosterone levels in 76 male patients suffering from late-onset hypogonadism (LOH) and, consequently, Aging Males' Symptoms (AMS). The study that is going to be published in the next issue of Andrologia , the first international journal of andrology, was conducted by an international team of scientists from Malaysia and South Afri...