SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Is there a devilish thyroid hormone eating dragon hiding out in your beloved green tea? There is hardly a day without great, yet mostly only promising, and rarely really relevant news about green tea. With it's anti-cancer, anti-diabetes, anti-everything-that-ails our society effects it bids fair to be the elixir of life. This life, and this is the result of a recently published study, SuppVersity reader Paolo had brought to my attention a couple of days ago, could however end up being one with slightly or even profoundly compromised thyroid function. Now, before you freak out because you have been drinking green tea for the past couple of years, do me a favor, mind the conditional in the previous sentence and read the rest of today's Easterly SuppVersity article, which is not an early April fool hoax. "You must be kiddin' green tea helps weight loss, so how can it reduce thyroid function?" It may sound hilarious that something that is touted as a fat bu...

Sarah Reinertsen ( click here to visit her webpage) was the first female leg amputee to participate and complete the Ironman (in 15h) and I bet she does not need the recent study by Galy et al. to be reminded of the benefits... no, the necessity of cycling your exercise intensity. In 2005 Sarah Reinertsen (image on the right) was the first female leg amputee to participate and complete the Ironman and honestly this would probably suffice as a figure of the week, but since this is a historic event, it does not necessarily qualify as the SuppVersity Figure of the Week . A figure that does qualify is the -15.7% decrease in post- exercise alveolar-capillary membrane diffusing capacity the highly trained triathletes in a soon-to-be-published paper by Galy et al. experienced after a 6-week "deload" (low training volume, intensity and frequency) period. What's interesting, though, is that the control group who remained on the same high training volume, intensity and fr...

Believe it or not. High dose hydrocortisone can decrease body fat levels (Babikian. 1962; see further down) and the acute administration of prednisolone has repeatedly been shown to have pronounced endurance performance (e.g. +61%; Arlettaz. 2007). It's not like the Science Round Up was a request show, but I still want to start the Seconds to yesterday's installment of the show ( download the podcast ) with an honest an sincere apology to one of our listeners. Yeah, there is no debating, Carl and I had promised to talk about the "cortisol blockers can cause necrosis of the liver" study (Zou. 2013) and then simply forgot about it. I guess this was due to the unplanned "copper + HFCS = arrhythmia" excursion at the beginning of the show, but I don't want to give the impression I was looking for excuses here. Instead, I decided to make up for our negligence by taking the opportunity to go beyond simply answering the question whether the recently pub...

Does beta alanine hamper instead of improve your sprinting performance? Did you notice something? Yeah, there have been more news on testosterone boosters as of late than on sodium bicarbonate, here at the SuppVersity . You don't have worry though, I have not been bribed by the supplement industry. The reason that you have not heard about baking soda as of late was merely a pragmatic one: the absence of recent studies. With the soon-to-be-published paper by Kagan Ducker, Brian Dawson and Karen E. Wallman from the University of Western Australia the barren spell has ended - luckily. Addendum: Only a couple weeks after this study had been published Bellinger et al. conducted a trial, where the expected synergy between beta alanine and sodium bicarbonate was to be seen. It will thus have to be elucidated in future trials, whether the different outcomes are exercise- or athlete-dependent | learn more . Before we delve deeper into the carbonated results of the study at hand, ...

What if one of those would be displayed prominently on every Snickers bar and other candy - would that be unethical? I must admit that I probably have a positive bias towards the latest study, Satoshi Odo, Koji Tanabe an Masamitsu Yamauchi who work for Lonza a company that describes itself as "a global leader in life sciences" and the Aichi Gakusen University in Japan have just published in the online Journal Food and Nutrition Sciences . Why? Well, it demonstrates the value of education, motivation and making people take responsibility for their own well-being. Something that's still largely unappreciated and maybe even feared by the medical orthodoxy and it's victims... ah, pardon me, "patients", of course. Words and wisdom trump pills and meal plans Actually the researchers did nothing we would not have seen in countless of studies before. They recruited 24 male subjects with an, in US terms, pretty low BMI of 25 - 28 kg/m² and a waist circumfe...

Will the additional butter on top of the potatoes reduce the insulin response? You can find the answer to this and the other questions in today's episode of "True or False?" If you are a regular here at the SuppVersity you should by now recognize the "True or False" part of the headline of today's SuppVersity article. Therefore it's probably unnecessary to say this explicitly, but this is a new series, where I could use a little help from your side. Well, ... I should say, I believe it would become even more fun, if you lend me a hand and send me short pieces of wisdom or idiocy like "Adding fat to a carby meal reduces the insulin response"  you deem worthy of being addressed in the True or False series. I cannot, or rather will not promise that I will address each and every of your suggestions, but if it interests me and can be tackled in a 2-3 paragraph text, your chances ain't bad to get your suggestions dealt with - if you got ...

"Men are different women, too..." We all know that, but can we still train together or will women have to do cardio first, while men would be better off starting out lifting weights? This is not the first and certainly not the last article on what should come first, if you actually have to or want to do endurance and resistance training in single workout session. Today's SuppVersity article is however the one on the study with the most detailed evaluation of the differential effects of "endurance vs. resistance training first" on the endocrine response, neuromuscular fatigue and power in men and women, I have seen in a while. The pertinent paper is titled "Acute Hormonal and Force Responses to Combined Strength and Endurance Loadings in Men and Women: The 'Order Effect'" and has been written by Ritva S. Taipale and Keijo Häkkinen from the Department of Biology of Physical Activity at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland (Taipale. 2013...