SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

High intensity thinking - intelligent weight loss workouts It's almost 2014! Actually it is already 2014; at least for my friends in the "Far East" (HAPPY NEW YEAR!) and thus almost too late for the annual "I want to lose weight" new year's resolution. Ok, you as a SuppVersity reader should actually know better, but just in case you are still planning to make the weight loss happen solely by increasing your workout volume, I would suggest that you replace some classic HIT training with the revolutionary HIT 2.0 - high intensity thinking regimen (warning: doing this too often may actually build more brain than muscle mass ;-).  Well,... now that I take a closer look at the results of this recent study from the University of Quebec here,  I have to realize that this will only work if you are a man. But don't worry, I am pretty sure there is something to be learned for the ladies in the last SuppVersity article of 2014, as well ;-) All jokes asi...

I don't doubt that you can do that, too! It does sound awkward: If you mix Twinlab: Amino Fuel (22 g protein - 6 g essential amino acids | L-phenylalanine: 633 mg; Lvaline: 781 mg; L-tryptophan: 133 mg; L-threonine: 679 mg; L-isoleucine: 565 mg; L-methionine: 292 mg, L-histidine: 282 mg; L-leucine: 1350 mg; L-lysine: 1449 mg) with a regular  sports recovery drink that contains 36g of simple sugar, down half of the resulting 800ml serving of whatever you want to call this mix immediately before your workout and consume the rest during the rest periods between sets, this will have measurable effects on your resting energy expenditure and fat oxidation. From long-term to short time effects At first, it does questionably sound counter-intuitive that the ingestion of an EAA + carbohydrate mixture before / during would increase the resting energy expenditure and rate of fatty acid oxidation after your workout. On the other hand, if you think about the long-term effects of co...

Big guns without weights? True - the question yet remains: "How big?" I am psyched and the reason is the advanced access publication of the results of the latest study from the Department of Sports and Life Science at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Kanoya, Japan (Maeo. 2013b). Why? Well, it claims to solve two of the most urgent issues that keep our sedentary fellow men (and women ;-) from working out: The lack of equipment and the lack of time , exactly those two factors the average American and European slacker pleads as an excuse for not making the necessary, since potentially life-saving physical investments into "metabolic currency" (this is a term my good friend Carl Lanore uses to refer functional muscle mass). "Big guns without weights? You're kiddin', bro!" Actually the idea of using simultaneous voluntary contractions of antagonistic muscle pairs (aka co-contraction ) to improve muscle strength in the absenc...

As we are about to see coffee is by far not the worst aflotoxin offender in the human diet. Still, that does not mean that the coffee related exposure to this form of mold that can befall all sorts of grains, nuts and seeds is harmless. You will probably remember that I casually touched on the possibility of being exposed to aflotoxins and more importantly ochratoxins as a result of the consumption of mold-infected coffee in previous coffee articles . When the issue of the « coffee ➲ aflotoxin / ochratoxin exposure ➲ serious health » triage resurfaced in a brief facebook conversation, recently, I realized that I was not 100% sure if these mycotoxins that are produced by Aspergillus flavus , Aspergillus ochraceus, Aspergillus niger , and Aspergillus carbonarius do or don't pose a serious health risk. Well, you know how much I hate unanswered questions, so I kept digging until I'd found what I consider to be a half-way satisfying answer to this life-or-death question...

It's the ear, not the belly that has to be (acu-)punctured to make the nasty pounds disappear. I am pretty sure that at least some of you will have seen the headlines about one week ago: "Acupuncture Facilitates Effortless Weight Loss!" It sounds like a scam. If you actually read the corresponding press release, however, you'll have realized that the headlines were based on the results of a the results of a study that was conducted at the East-West Medical Research Institute of the Kyung Hee University in Korea, where the stimulation of the tested five ear acupuncture points (Shen-men, Spleen, Stomach, Hunger, Endocrine) has been used traditionally to curb the appetite of overweight patients for centuries. 6.1% and 5.7% reduction in BMI without diet or exercise As it turned out, it was not even necessary to "nail" all 5 of the trigger points. As you will probably have learned from the press release, already, even the subjects in whom the researcher...

You as a SuppVersity reader should know that there is no "instant gratification" with  "doing cardio" and that doing it "in the zone" is totally 90s... 1990s, even ;-) For decades, the "Fat Burning Zone" has been one of the holy grails of exercise sciences. Then somebody realized that maximizing the ratio of fat : glucose that's are being used as fuel during a workout doesn't really have an effect on weight loss and all of a sudden papers with titles like "Changes in peak fat oxidation in response to different doses of endurance training" (Rosenkilde. 2013) have become a rarity... although, if you look closely, you will realize that this is actually not another investigation into the realms of the "Fat Burning Zone", but an afford to quantify the effect of regular "cardio training" on your bodies ability to oxidize fat, instead of glucose. Don't worry it's not really about the "fat burning...

"At Christmas you are supposed to get presents, not extra pounds." I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas Eve. Now that we all are in the mood, I felt that it was about time to look back - not at this year's Christmas Eve, of course. I rather decided to look back years and started browsing the annals of various scientific databases to come up with a couple of interesting facts about Christmas... ok, ok, I expected more interesting facts, as well, but aside from a 5% increased risk of dying, Christmas is apparently a pretty boring undertaking ;-) In other words: Don't complain that you'd rather have had a write-up of on the pro-anabolic effect of the Christmas goose and the caloric expenditure on your way to the church. Today's SuppVersity article is like a Christmas present. It may not be exactly what you had wished for. Men and women are different - even when it comes to Chrismas shopping -- According to a 2009 paper by Michel Laroche et al., fe...