SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

The "average Westerner" is fat. That's for sure, but is it actually possible that it is the often recommended increase in meal frequency which is to blame for that? A soon-to-be-published published study from the Academic Medical Centre Amsterdam sheds a whole new light on the role chocolate bars, potato ships, coke and even "healthy" *rofl* fruit juices may play in the etiology of the obesity epidemic (Thanks to reductions in life expectancy and fertility the US prevalence of overweight, obesity, and extreme obesity will plateau at about 28%, 32%, and 9% in 2030; cf. Thomas. 2013) In a one of a kind human study, the researchers assigned 36 lean, initially healthy men to a 40% hypercaloric diet that was meant to emulate the contemporary food intake of US kids who get ~ 27% of their daily energy intake from high fat and high fat + high sugar snacks. You can learn more about meal frequency at the SuppVersity Grazin' Bad For the Obese! Breakfa...

Foods over pills! Not forks over knives ;) Over the past weeks I have written so much about the anti-adaptational effects of ROS-scavengers that I probably don't have to mention the impressive (for some people shocking results) of the 2009 study by Ristow et al. with the telling title: "Antioxidants prevent health-promoting effects of physical exercise in humans" (Ristow. 2009) to underline that not everything is gold that comes in yellow packages and is labeled w/ vitamin C. Much contrary to the yellow, orange, red, green and blue natural vitamin C sources from the super- or farmers-market, by the way. Before I get lost in the hormesis debate, I do yet want to adopt to a more general, non-exercise related perspective to check, if the impairment of exercise-induced improvements in insulin sensitivity is the only interaction between vitamin C and glucose metabolism. You can learn more about this topic at the SuppVersity Proteins, Peptides & Blood Glucose...

Creatine, obviously monohydrate and no expensive and often impotent spinoff (Jäger. 2011) is useful for any athlete. The number of items on the list of health and performance benefits of creatine is about as high as the number of boring articles about "the benefits of creatine" you can find all over the Internet. And even here at the SuppVersity they have been piling up in a way that has me ignore the majority of "creatine supplementation increases strength gains in XY" studies that appear on a monthly, sometimes weekly basis. Against that background I will cut today's creatine post short and get straight to the facts, Giuseppe Potrick Stefani et al. report in their latest paper in (how else could it be) the peer-reviewed Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (Stefani. 2014). You can learn more about creatine at the SuppVersity Creatine Doubles 'Ur GainZ! Creatine, DHT & Broscience Creatine Better After Workout A...

Does a (very) high fish oil diet entail the risk of going rancid - in spite of all its short-term health benefits? Don't worry, I am not addressing the prostate cancer issue, again. In a way, I am still going to resume a discussion, you should be familiar with from my article "Sesame Powered High Omega-6 Diet Boosts Endurance Performance in Rodents - High Omega-3 Diet Sucks" | read more . It's the notion that the extensive incorporation of easily oxidizable (or already rancid) omega-3 fatty acids into metabolically highly active tissues, such as our musculature, will only be beneficial until a certain 'optimal' threshold level is reached. Beyond this point, any further increase of the long-chain PUFA content becomes as problematic as the overabundance of other fatty acids . This article is about balance! By now, you should have realized that this post is all about balance, the critical balance of 'stable' saturated and 'unstable' (poly-...

"Go slow, grow fast" - does it really work this way? I have to admit that I didn't have time to write "complete" article, so I will just work out an introduction and a bottom line to a never-finished draft that discusses an - in my humble opinion -  still unresolved question:   "Does the time under tension, which must not be confused with the simple number of reps let alone the set, matter when it comes to strength or muscle gains?"  As I said, based on my knowledge of the contemporary literature this is still an unresolved issue. Mostly, because slow (by necessity) means "light weight" and is hard / impossible to distinguish from the rep-number. The methodological issues are probably also part of the reason that it would be an exaggeration to say that there are only "few" studies that investigate the influence of the time under tension (TUT) on hypertrophy or strength gains - but alas, I have collected the science-crumps for ...

Performance ￪, Growth Hormone ￬ Alright, I know that no one actually knows how important the post-exercise increase in systemic growth hormone actually is when it comes to building muscle (there is little doubt that the local expression of splice variants is relevant). In spite of that I still feel it's still worth mentioning that a group of researchers from Australia and the United Kingdom have recently established that the provision of the antioxidant supplement Lactaway increases the muscle contractile performance "at the expense" of the post-workout growth hormone increase (Ackermann. 2014). Why? Well those people who are most likely to spend money on expensive anti-oxidant supplements are usually also the ones who believe in the "muscle building magic" of the post-workout GH increase. What is in this "antioxdidant" supplement? Lactaway "as in lactate away" is a, according to manufacturer claims, a "pre workout supplement (n...

Cardio & weight training are not mutually exclusive | learn more ! It's actually quite funny. A few days ago I wrote in a short blurb for the daily SuppVersity Classic Article that the "never-ending debate" about fasted cardio "has lost some of its momentum when the HIIT craze hit the fitness community" and today I get the following message from Päivi (thx!): "This study totally contradicts my experience of fasted cardio. I've noticed that the best way for me to shred fat is to do fasted interval cardio, not fed one" (SuppVersity reader Päivi . March 24, 2014 | via Facebook). "This study", in this case, refers to a soon-to-published paper from the University of Arkansas Päivi read about in a press release. You can learn more about cardio at the SuppVersity Optimal fat burning Self-Paced HIT Regimen Medium Intensity Interval Training Exercise = Hunger? 4x4 = Optimal HIIT Timing? Fasted Cardio & Be...