SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Check your nutrition labels, I bet you get 2.25g+ leucine and 30mg of B6 from one of your supps already I am sorry to say that and actually this is usually something that goes into the bottom line, but I do have serious doubts whether the results reported in this study can be replicated in any of you. Yes, it is a human study, but (a) the subjects, 12 men and 12 women, were obese (34.76 ± 2.57) and (b) if the mere addition of 2.25 g leucine and 30 mg vitamin B6 would have such profound effects, everyone who has ever taken a commercial BCAA product would have noticed a doubling in fat loss, already, as almost all of them contain 2.25g+ of leucine and tons of pyridoxine (B6). So what are you saying here? Is this study a fraud? I have no evidence that the study was a fraud and I am certainly not implying this, but you must wonder about the magnitude of the weight loss and fat loss difference between the regular and the NuShape supplemented dieters (-500kcal from baseline energ...

Want to promote muscular and overall health? Do this after an 8h+ fast. Exercise is a stressor. It modifies the intra and extracellular millieu, impairs the energetic status and stretches, sometimes even over-stretches the membranes. That certainly sounds as if you want to avoid it at all costs, but as nature had it, it is this eustress (good stress) that is absolutely essential for the remodeling of the muscle we are all working out for to happen - no stress no reason to adapt. It's that simple and does still have one major caveat: Too much stress and the adaptation turns into a constant and often insufficient repair process. But who wants to "deconstruct" muscle, anyway? Now, from the gymbro perspective the most important aspect of the training induced adaptation processes would probably be protein synthesis. And while you can actually argue that this was the case if things were just about "growing", a different picture emerges, when you look at healt...

Pick your metaphor: Clutching to a straw, or hobbling around on a crutch If type II diabetics were into quasi tube-feeding (=living of meal replacements) or adhering to any diet of some sort, the study Cruz Erika Garcia-Rodriguez and colleagues have recently published in the European Journal of Nutrition could actually be help us solve the to diabesity problem. For me it is  however more of a good reason to take another look at what became of RS-4 (resistant start type 4 = synthetic resistant starches made from waxy maize or tapioca; learn more ). I mean, do we have good reason to mourn, now that Myotropics ThermiCarb(TM) is gone and no legitimate and reasonably prized follow-up product is available? The stuff still works, but does it also help? Aside from the fact that I personally consider the idea to feed diabetics liquid foods ludicrous and counter-productive (you do not heal a cripple if you hand him a crouch), the latest results Garcia-Rodriguez et al. present in ...

When you build a circuit training routine, don't forget: There are lot's of metabolically demanding kettle- bell exercises to spice things up. There are probably a dozen of reasons why people train. Many of them are really good: Wanting to stay healthy, to live longer, or to excel in your sports. Of others, however, I am not so sure whether they are actually worth pursuing, or do you think training to look like a walking stick to make it to the catwalk was a "good" motivation to go to the gym? Personally I don't think so and that's partly why I am hesitant to judge a workout by the amount of energy it may burn. So, before I get to the results of a recently conducted study from the University of Pernambuco/Federal University of Paraíba , the , University of Pernambuco, Recife and the University of Southern Maine (Aniceto. 2013), I short word of caution: NEVER let burning energy (let alone "calories") become the main goal of your workouts... well...

If you like chili oil, go for it, otherwise perform the reality check before ruining your taste-buds. While the word "thermogenic" still carries much weight in the world of the average fitness maniac, SuppVersity readers like yourself should know better than to go crazy over rodent study #1021412 showing "potent thermogenic effects" when an extract from an exotic herb in Dr. Oz garden was administered once in an equivalent dosage that would require you to ingest the whole package of the corresponding "brand new, revolutionary" fat burner that's marketed by the said study. Human study + no exotic herbs - so does it work? Well with the study at hand, things are somewhat different. Firstly, the experiment Miriam E. Clegg, Mana Golsorkhi and C. Jeya Henry conducted was done with human, not rodent "subjects". Secondly, the "supplements" they used were no exotic herbs from Dr. Oz Garden or whatever remote region in the Himalaya t...

 Yes, this study is about omega-3s, but it is not about the beneficial effects of fish oil. Ok, I see you are totally excited, so I am not going to beat around the bush for long: According to a soon-to-be-published study from the Hunan Provincial Engineering Research Center of Healthy Livestock, Institute of Subtropical Agriculture at the Chinese Academy of Sciences  a 5:1 ratio of n-6:n3 (as in omega-6 to omega-3) is good enough to keep pigs healthy. Kicking out another couple of grams of omega-6 fatty acids, on the other hand, had pretty intriguing effects on the body composition of the ninety-six male cross-bred (Large White£ Landrace) pigs who happened to weigh about as much as an average human being (another advangate, of swine - HED calculations are not necessary; learn more ). Did you know that pigs are opportunistic omnivores just like us and provide a better model of human metabolism than our little, furry remote cousins with the big round eyes and the lo...

If you feel like a shadow of yourself, betaine may help - specifically with  metabolically demanding workouts. "Six-weeks of betaine supplementation improved body composition, arm size, bench press work capacity, attenuated the rise in urinary HCTL, and tended to improve power (p = .07) but not strength." (Cholewa. 2013) That's not just the conclusion to the latest paper Jason Cholewa et al. have just published in every supplement junkie's favorite scientific journal (do I have to mention it's the one of the International Society of Sports Supplementation, ISSN ?), it's also exciting news on trimethylglycine and further evidence that it has the potential to queue up in the short line of effective dietary supplements you may spend money on without having a guilty conscience. 6 Weeks + 2.5g/day = Increased mass, volume and strength gains The routine the researchers had their 23 experienced recreationally strength trained males (weight: ...

"70 Years Between Meals? Indian Mystic Promotes Atmosphere Diet" that's the title of a Times newsfeed , but is it also the secret to longevity? Or is 70 years too much of an intermittent fast ;-)? It is undeniable that many of the centenarians are known for their rather modest energy intake and is has been long established that there is a direct mechanistic connection between "living on the high energy fast track" and increased aging. The border between calorie restriction on the one hand and malnutrition on the other is however fluid and where one may effectively add a couple of years to your life-span the other is not only going to make it shorter, it will also make it miserable. Within the past years fasting and intermittent fasting have emerged as potential alternatives. The purpose of today's article is now to take a closer look on whether they are equally or better suited to lead a long, healthy life that is not going to wast you away. Longevi...