SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

If you actually work out on the vibration plate (instead of just standing there) it may in fact be an effective adjunct to regular exercise for must of us. I have to admit that I am regularly laughing about the women on the vibration plates in my fitness studio. Now that I have read the latest paper from the Department of Medical Sciences at the University of Tsukuba , however, I will probably see them standing on the "wacker plates" with different eyes. In said study which was conducted by Sechang Oh et al. (2014) the scientists tried to elucidate the effects of what they call "acceleration training" (this is in fact what we know as vibration training) on the physical function, body composition, hepatic and metabolic function, fat contents in the liver and skeletal muscles of overweight subjects (BMI = 28 kg/m²) with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). For the lean NAFLD sufferers I'd suggest HIIT instead of a vibrator ;-) Never Train To Burn...

The power of GI calculations is limited and even with meals as simple as the one in the picture, the calculated glycemic index can be ~50% off! As a SuppVersity reader you've repeatedly read about macronutrient interactions, such as the insulin boosting effects of whey protein or dietary fat , studies that investigate the effects of the individual ingredients of a complete meal on the glycemic response healthy men and women, however, are scarce. Against that background the results of a recent study from the Clinical Nutrition Research Centre at the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences are of particular interest. After all, the Lijun Sun et al. (2014) determined the effect of co-ingesting a high-protein food (breast chicken), a fat (ground nut oil), a leafy vegetable or all three on the glycaemic and insulinaemic responses of white rice in healthy adults and did thus produce results that could be practically relevant for all of us - more relevant than inaccurately calc...

Want to lose that blubber in a minimal amount of time? Diet like a bodybuilder and don't forget to refeed, Ladies! Calorie shifting? What's that? Don't worry. I have been asking myself the same question, when I first read the title of a recent paper from the Shaheed Beheshti University of Medical Sciences and Health Services and as it turned out, I was well aware of the principle, but didn't know scientists would call the classic diet - refeed cycles bodybuilders have been using for ages "calorie shifting". The principle is as simple as effective. You're dieting for 11 days and "refeeding", i.e. eat ad-libitum for three days. The intention is to achieve a temporary deficit that's large enough to induce significant weight and fat loss in spite of the potential of temporary over-indulgence on the refeeding days. Don't forget to building muscle & strength . Fat loss alone is not enough to look good naked Tri- or Multi-Set T...

Green tea as a magical muscle preservative for injured athletes? "GTE increased satellite cell proliferation and differentiation, decreased oxidative stress and the abundance of Bax, a proapoptotic protein" (Alway. 2014) - that's the initially exciting result of a recent study from the West Virginia University School of Medicine and Abbott Laboratories . What is not exactly as exciting, though, is how the sentence continues, i.e. "yet this did not further improve muscle recovery in reloaded muscles" (Alway. 2014). Sounds contradictory, right? Well, before we get deeper into the discussion of the results, let's briefly recap how Alway et al. arrived at these insights, i.e. how exactly the experiment looked like and which experimental evidence it generated. The scientists from the West Virginia University School of Medicine tested the hypothesis that green tea extract (GTE) would improve muscle recovery after reloading following disuse. In men and wo...

Taking vitamin D pills on their own may be less effective than taking them with a meal containing 30% of the calories from fat - at least for older men & women and high doses of vitamin D3 This is science. Only 6 months ago, I wrote in an article about the effects of fat on the absorption and bioavailability of fat soluble vitamins that vitamin D would be the fat soluble vitamin with the lowest dependence on the co-administration of fat. Rather than the amount, it appeared as if the change in plasma 25OHD (nanograms per milliliter) during vitamin D supplementation was rather associated with the types of fat, i.e. MUFA = increased absorption vs. PUFA = decreased absorption (Niramitmahapanya. 2011). Now, half a year later, it appears as if another, previously overlooked variables would force me to reformulate previous recommendations: Age and dosage! There are many ways to get your vitamin D learn more the SuppVersity How Much To Take? Leucine, Insulin & Vitamin...