Taurine Pumps Up Strength & Recovery in Response to Eccentric Curls. NAC Decreases Peformance & Boosts Fat Oxidation!? Exercise Reduces, Caloric Restriction Increases Inflammation. Carnitine Rescues Fast Twitch Muscle
Blood glucose alone would not last for 90s of running up the stairs. |
The latter hold the energetic equivalent of ~1,500kcal and are thus an almost 40x larger reservoir of energy than the tiny amounts of glucose that's floating around in your bloodstream (data based on Gleeson. 2008).
If you had to rely on that alone, you would pass out after 2 mins of the previously mentioned exercise at 70% VO2max.
Obviously no workout is going to be fueled 100% exclusively by glucose/glycogen, so that you can still use the amount of energy your body stores in the fat cells (~93,000kcal) and in form of tissue proteins (~49,000kcal) and keep running for another 7,400 minutes or 5.13 days... theoretically
Enough of the figures let's get to some recent research results
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You want the boost without the buzz? Hit the right taurine / caffeine ratio to avoid the stim crash & sleeplessness (learn how)
Since the activity of the antioxidant enzymes (superoxide dismutase, catalase, and gluthatione peroxidase) and inflammatory markers (tumor necrosis factor, interleukin (IL) -1 beta, and IL10) in the blood of the twenty-one participants (mean age of 21 ± 6 years, weight of 78.2 ± 5 kg) were not altered, decreases in muscle growth as they have been reported for NAC, only recently are not likely to occur.
CLA in pomegranate? Not really, but the CLnA in the seeds of the fruit may be even more potent (learn more)
Now, whether that's a good or bad thing actually depends on your goals. If you are glucose tolerant and train to burn fat, it's a good thing. If you want to empty your glycogen stores to promote GLUT-4 or are a competing athlete whose main interest is maximal performance, though the changes would be detrimental.
- Exercise training vs. dieting - anti- vs. pro-inflammation (Auerbach. 2013) In a soon-to-be-published paper in the American journal of physiology. Regulatory, integrative and comparative physiology scientists from the University of Copenhagen report that contrary to their own expectations, the adherence to an endurance exercise program that would burn ~600kcal /day (LISS training of 65% of the heart rate reserve) that was interspersed by 3-4 days of high intensity workouts at 85% of the heart rate reserve ...
"[...] increased the number of anti-inflammatory CD163+ macrophages (from 12.7 [2.1] (mean [SE]) to 16.1 [3.1] CD163+ cells/100 adipocytes, P=0.013), whereas diet-induced weight loss tended to decrease CD68+ macrophages in subcutaneous abdominal adipose tissue" (Auerbach. 2013)
In that it is interesting to note that the most beneficial changes were observed in the group that compensated for the 600kcal extra energy expenditure per week.Figure 1: Effects of the 12 week diet + exercise / diet only / exercise only interventions on the body composition of caucasian overweight men aged 20-40 yrs w/ body fat >25% (Auerbach. 2013)
- Carnitine rescues fast-twitch glycolytic macrofibers in a rodent study (Couturier. 2013) According to a recently published paper in Nutrition & Metabolism, the
provision of carnitine as part of the diet did prevent the
type-II-diabetes-induced transition of glycolytic to oxidative muscle
fibers in obese Zucker rats.
Now while you can never be sure if things that happen in a rodent model will also happen in man, it is not totally unlikely that these effects could be observed in human beings as well.Carnitine to prevent sugary fat gain
That's it for the short news!
With the relation of fish oil to prostate cancer (see facebook news) being based on high serum levels, I suggest you (re-)read this post about why fish oil supplements may fail to increase tissue levels, of way which previous studies have shown that they may protect against prostate cancer (read more). - Fish oil is bad for your prostate! - That's at least what the latest spin-off of the SELECT study (the one with selenium and vitamin E, you know?) says | read more...
- Green tea, butter and bread - Neither the most nutritious, nor the most yummy breakfast one can thing of, but way better for your triglyceride levels than water, butter and bread | learn why....
- Fat gains with saturated fats? Not if you pick the right ones - Study identifies interestification of saturated fat as a main determinant of its obesogenic effect. Regular palm oil, for example leads to lower fat gains than soy oil | read more...
References:
- Acordi da Silva et al. Effects of taurine supplementation following eccentric exercise in young adults. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism. 2013
- Auerbach P, Nordby P, Bendtsen LQ, Mehlsen JL, Basnet SK, Vestergaard H, Ploug T, Stallknecht BM. Differential effects of endurance training and weight loss on plasma adiponectin multimers and adipose tissue macrophages in younger, moderately overweight men. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol. 2013 Jul 10. [Epub ahead of print]
- Couturier A, Ringseis R, Mooren FC, Krüger K, Most E, Eder K. Carnitine supplementation to obese Zucker rats prevents obesity-induced type II to type I muscle fiber transition and favors an oxidative phenotype of skeletal muscle. Nutr Metab (Lond). 2013 Jul 10;10(1):48.
- Trewin et al. N-acetylcysteine alters substrate metabolism during high-intensity cycle exercise in well-trained humans. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism. 2013
- Gleeson, M. Biochemestry of Exercise in Maughan, Ronald J., ed. The Encyclopaedia of Sports Medicine An IOC Medical Commission Publication, Nutrition in Sport. Vol. 7. Wiley.com. 2008.