SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

It's often cited as the source of all nutritional (and environmental) evil and still: The experimental evidence informs us that the epidemiologically instigated politically subsidized meat hating is unreasonable. I wanted to start this article with the words "I actually don't know why" and follow it up with the statement "pork has gotten such a be rep," but that would be incorrect: After giving it a brief thought, I do know why pork has gotten such a bed rep as the unhealthiest meat source there is. It's not a religious question as some of you may believe. It's rather a matter of the end-consumer products that are made of pork. sausages & co are not good for your health, but that's not because they are made of pork, but rather because they consist of highly processed waste no one of you would eat, if it was served in its original form - and that in spite of the fact that the unprocessed garbage would probably be healthier than the fi...

FSR ≠ more muscle = no news for ya! For the average SuppVersity reader the sentence "Acute Post-Exercise Myofibrillar Protein Synthesis Is Not Correlated with Resistance Training-Induced Muscle Hypertrophy in Young Men" is not just the title of a recent paper in the open access journal PLOS|ONE, it's also the experimental verification of a claim I've made in almost all my articles about the acute effects of certain training modalities and/or supplements on myofibrillar protein synthesis and the corresponding increases in muscle size some people appear to expect from a 2h-long 10% increase in fractional protein synthesis ( learn more ). UPDATE: There is new data  that extends the results of the study at hand and indicates that there is  a link between MPS and muscle gains, after the initial adapation response to exercise. And yes, practically speaking these findings imply that we have to question the real world significance of all the neat studies on the "...

YoYo flywheel device similar to the one used in the study from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. There is a lot to learn about exercise today! About the blood building effects of intermediate hypoxia, about the impressive effects on strength and power you can elicit, if you do your squats on a flywheel device such as the one to the right, and - let's not forget that - the indisputable evidence that you just have to cut back on your screen time to make room ... ah, I mean "time" to turn from a sedentary slob to an active individual. Apropos screen time! Let's  not prolong your screen time more than necessary with this lengthy introduction, but get straight to the point - I mean, the news, of course! The EPO-Effect of Oxygen Shortage : A study from the University of Western Australia shows athletes who train in a low-oxygen environment (simulated high altitude training) have significantly higher hepcidin (a protein that inhibits iron transport from the gut ...

I have to admit: Whether a conclusion as general at this is warranted based on the data from a recent study is questionable. Somehow I knew that people would freak out, about a press release I reposted on the SuppVersity Facebook page earlier today ( read it! ). Next to saying that you can eat fructose and not get obese saying that you can eat PUFAs without getting fat is probably as heretic as saying that saturated fat makes you fat... what? Oh yes! You're right, it can be even worse. I mean, imagine you'd say that unsaturated fatty acids are less obesogenic than saturated fats. Ah, come on! That's so mainstream it must be propaganda from the "pharmaceutical enteprise/ cholesterol lowering drug entreprise" [ sic! ], right? Well, I am just looking at the acknowledgements of the study the press release refers. Let's see: "None of the authors have any conflicts of interest to disclose" and "This study was funded by the Swedish Research C...

If you want to know how to get of pubertal acne, you got to ask professional pubescents ;-) The study at hand is not only the first experimental verification of the efficacy of omega-3 + gamma linoleic acid supplementation in acne treatment, it's also "paleo approved", because it cites a study by no one else but Loraine Cordaine himself ;-) Don't worry, I am just kiddin' around. In spite of the fact that Cordain's study "Acne vulgaris: a disease of Western civilization" (Cordain. 2002) is in fact the #1 on the reference list, the scientists from the Seoul National University College of Medicine refrain from (paleolithic) dairy bashing in their evaluation of "the clinical efficacy and safety of omega-3 fatty acids and of GLA for the treatment of mild to moderate facial acne." (Jung. 2014) If you google "natural acne treatment" it will usually not take long until you find a reference to fish oil and gamma linoleic acid (a...

This is part I of a multipart series, you will be able to navigate by clicking on the pictures in the box below. While it appears to be obvious that eating a low-to-no-carbohydrate diet would be the easiest way to manage your blood glucose levels, carbs are by far not the only nutrient that will have an effect on your blood glucose levels. In a recent overview article, Martina Heer and Sarah Egert from the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at the University of Bonn provide a decent overview of the multiple ways by which "other nutrients, such as dietary protein and amino acids, the supply of  fat, vitamin D, and vitamin K, and sodium intake seem to affect glucose homeostasis." (Heer. 2014). In the coming weeks I will use their review as a starting point for my own overview of the effects of non-carbohydrate and "almost cabohydrate" nutrients   on glucose metabolism. And for today, I decided, to conclude this week that was full of exciting protein news...

Melt the belly, keep the muscle - a decent amount of protein is key, but more ain't more and as a recent study shows: This has nothing to do with hormones. If you are no newbie to the SuppVersity you will be aware that there is no way to escape the "anti-anabolic" effects of suboptimal energy intakes. You will also know that protein catabolism cannot be countered by the ingestion of extra protein (see "Protein Intake & Muscle Catabolism: Fasting Gnaws on Your Muscle Tissue and Abundance Causes Wastefulness" | read more ). And, last but not least, you will be aware of the fact that the best you can do is to eat enough protein to keep the protein synthetic machinery running by consuming mTOR-promoting fast-absorbing high BCAA (leucine) protein sources such as whey protein ( learn more about whey protein). The data from the Pasiokos study shows: 1.6g/kg and not 2.4g/kg allows for the optimal balance of fat loss and lean mass retention (Pasiakos. 201...

No pain... ah no creatine, no gain ;-) There have been so many articles about creatine on the Internet that I usually hesitate to add another one to the (mostly accurate) praise of creatine monohydrate . The reason I still want to address the issue today, is a quantitative one: The data Kebrit and Rani present in their recent paper in the Turkish Journal of Sport and Exercise is simply too impressive not to (ab?)use it as a plug to remind you that you are missing out if you don't use 3-5g of creatine to speed up your strength gains - if you are a beginner by a whopping 100%! You can learn more about creatine at the SuppVersity Pharmacokinetics of Creatine PI & PII Supercharge Creatine W/ Baking Soda Creatine & the Brain Creatine + ALA = Better Uptake? Creatine Before or After Workouts? Creatine, DHT & Hairloss? The study design Daniel Kebrit and Sangeeta Rani, two scientists from the Debre Markos University and the Haramaya University in ...

They "take" spermine everyday! This may not look like it, but today's SuppVersity post contains a hell lot of information about an amino acid you do know and a polyamine you probably don't know yet . When you'll be done with the article, the latter will change and one or the other will probably start googling the words "spermine bulk powder" or "spermine buy" and thus disregard the advice I have to give in the bottom line of this fat loss-oriented compilation of short news right from the labs of international research teams... Well, I guess before I start sounding even more pathetic, I will just begin with study #1 - the study that covers the amino acid you all know - betaine! Double Your IGF-1 & Reduce Your Body Fat By 19% W/ Betaine!? I have to admit, the evidence I have to support this hilarious claim is not conclusive, but it's interesting. That's for sure. ➲ IMPORTANT REMINDER - This is "betaine" as i...