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| While Adelfo did not have the time to write a whole update, he still send me some current progress pics, I am allowed to publish. I guess you would agree that the his "carboholism" has not done signficicant damage to his physique, won't you? If you want to know more about his current workouts click here. For some info on his diet check out this post or simply go through all of his recent and not so recent guestgposts, here. |
Just in case you have not already figured it out based on the longish, 3-item title title and the absence of a "Plus: Sneak Preview on the
SuppVersity Science Round-Up" at the end: There is no
SuppVersity Science Round-Up, today: When I emailed him yesterday to say that I would not make it in time to the show today, it turned out that Carl was just about to let me know that he would not be in the studio and we would be doing the next installment of the
Science RoundUp next week - strange coincidence, right? Anyway, now you can blame whomever you want for not being able to listen to my catastrophic German accent today ;-)
That being said, I guess some of you may have thought that there would be an update from Adelfo Cerame Jr. today. Unfortunately, that's not the case either. What I have to offer today is nothing more, but also nothing less than two impressive progress pics of our common friend and a triplet of news that I had lying around here for you to educate yourself in Carl's and my radio and Adelfo's blog absence. Judged by the huge interest the "
Saturated Fatty Acids Cause Post-Prandial Endotoxemia" post generated the other day, I suppose many of you will like the first one best. Don't fret about the rest, though, but take it as a generous giveaway ;-)
Oleic acid supplementation prevents obesity by modulating gut flora
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| With 60-80% olive oil is one of the best sources of oleic acid. And the additional polyphenols make it an even better choice as a staple of your diet (read more about the polyphenol content of regular and extra virgine olive oil, here at the SuppVersity); also don't forget macadamia oil, which has >60% oleic acid |
(Mujico. 2013) Once again, we are back to Saturday's post on the influence of different fatty acids on the gut microbiome and and your health. Today, we are yet not talking about pigs and saturated fats, but about rats and oleic acid, a monounsaturated omega-9 fatty acid, which has - at least according to this recent study by scientists from Spain and Brazil the ability to prevent the formation of an obese phenotype in response to high fat feeding via its obviously beneficial effect on the composition of the gut bacteria.
"Consumption of a HFD induced changes in the faecal microbiota (an increase in all the tested groups of Firmicutes, as well as the order Enterobacteriales, and a decrease in Bifidobacterium spp. and the phylum Bacteroidetes), which were associated with the appearance of an obese phenotype.
Correlation analysis revealed that body weight correlated positively with the phylum Firmicutes and clostridial cluster XIVa, and negatively with the phylum Bacteroidetes. Supplementation of the HFD with S1 counteracted HFD-induced gut dysbiosis, together with an improvement in body weight." (Mujico. 2013).
In that supplement group 1 (S1) denotes the administration of an oleic acid-derived compound at 1500 mg/kg per day, which did - much contrary to supplement group 2 (S2), a fish oil based n-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA, 3000 mg/kg per day) do an awesome job as far as the decrease in weight gain is concerned (see
figure 2).
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| Figure 1: Bacterial composition of the feces at the end of the supplementation period (Mujico.2013). |
Interestingly, the most notable change in the gut microbiome in response to oleic acid supplementation was an increase in
bifidobacteria and
bacteroidetes (as mentioned in the quotation above the latter was significantly correlated with the reduced obesity), the otherwise often hailed amount of lactobacilli, on the other hand, did increase only in the fish oil group and it did, as the data in
figure 1 goes to show you not have any ameliorative effect on the weight. Moreover, the rodents who received the high fat diet in conjunction with the oleic acid had by far the highest count of total faecal bacteria.
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| Figure 2: Weight development of the pre-fattened rodents in week 0-7 of the supplementation phase (Mujico. 2013) |
Bottom line: Now despite the fact that all that sounds great and more than promising, you should keep two things in mind: (a) you are (hopefully) not
over-consuming a diet that's both high in fat and carbohydrates (which is the standard HFD in rodent experiments) and (b) it still remains to be seen if and to which degree results from a rodent model can be transferred into the human reality. Still, maybe the benefits of the Mediterranean which is per se high in oleic acid (way higher than it is in omega-3, by the way) are actually related to it's effects on the gut microbiome and not to it's direct effect on the fatty acid composition of either the blood lipids or the cell membranes as we have long been speculating.
Wondertoothpaste contains herbal overkill, is supposed to protect from oral cancer
(Chowdhury. 2013) If you are into "kitchen sink" approaches, you will probably love the toothpaste a group of scientist from the
West Bengal University of Technology in India have just formulated. It does contain not one, not two and not three herbals, but alongside baking soda (teeth whitener), egg shell powder (calcium source), clove oil (sensitivity), glycerin (preservative), and other basic ingredients, but rather 32 ranging from popular and well-known stuff such as
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| Choti elaichi (green cardamon) is - as exotic as it may sound actually still the most straight forward ingredient of the "kitchen sink" toothpaste. After all, it has a well established anti-microbial activity. |
- curcumin - as an anticarcinogen,
- green tea - as free radical scavenger, and
- echinacea - as an immune stimulant
to more exotic herbals such as
- nayantara -as an anti-mitotic and anti-microtubule agent,
- choti elaichi (green cardamon) - as a desinfectant for the oral cavity and
- ajwain - usually used to prevent kidney stones, it's also supposed to have anti-cancer effects
I am not sure, whether I would be inclined to buy this toothpaste, but having the sentence "the toothpaste is theoretically as well as experimentally serve the basic properties of general toothpaste with an advantage of having the medicinal properties of 32herbs which makes it unique in its category" from the conclusion of the paper as a marketing argument would probably call peoples' attention. I mean, the kitchen sink, even caught mine ;-)
Excess dietary cholesterol is bad for your testes
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| Just to make sure you don't get scared hat all the healthy eggs you're eating would all of a sudden damage your testes. An egg has 0.4% cholesterol, so that it is 100% impossible to get the equivalent amount of cholesterol from eggs, even if you ate them all day. Plus, eggs have all your body needs to make best use of the cholesterol (learn more) |
(Moustafa. 2012) --- While I would hope that most of you do know that all your hormones are eventually manufactured from cholesterol and you would end up without any sex hormones, if you ate a cholesterol free diet and your body did not have the raw material it needs to manufacture its own cholesterol, a recent study from the Al-Azhar University in Cario, Egypt, clearly shows that having too much of it in your diet - in this case 2% - will lead to alterations in spermatogenesis and morphoogical changes in the epdididymal sturcture.
Interestingly, the provision of the essential amino acid methionine (0.5% of the diet) ameliorated some of the negative side effects (remember: methionine is the precursor to cysteine; learn more about the sulfur amino acids,
here). Contrary to what common sense would dictate, this beneficial effect of methinonine was
not dose dependent and decreased, when the dose was escalated to 2%.
References:
- Chowdhury, BR, Garai A, Deb M, Batthacharya S. Herbal toothpaste-A possible remedy for oral cancer. Journal of Natural Products. 2013; 6:44-55.
- Mujico JR, Baccan GC, Gheorghe A, Díaz LE, Marcos A. Changes in gut microbiota due to supplemented fatty acids in diet-induced obese mice. Br J Nutr. 2013 Jan 10:1-10.
- Moustafa NA, Elnga A. Effect of Cholesterol and /or Methionine on the Testis of Rats. The Egyptian Journal of Hospital Medicine. 2012; 49: 857-878.
