SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Supplement producers have built their business on the (unwarranted) premise that you cannot get enough magnesium from your diet, alone. Unlike the effectiveness of oral magnesium supplementation for the treatment of magnesium deficiency, which has been studied in detail, the ever more popular transdermal magnesium preparations are a "scientifically not yet proven form of magnesium application" (Gröber 2017)... that was true earlier this year when Gröber and colleagues from the Akademie für Mikronährstoffmedizin and the  IPEV Institute for Prevention and Nutrition in Germany was written. With the recent publication of a study from the  University of Hertfordshire (Kass 2017), there's finally a single-blind, parallel designed pilot study that deserves the title "study". Mineral water contains Mg, a lot of other minerals and bicarbonate you don't want to miss: Hydrogen Rich Water = Quackery? Glass of Water Before Meals as Diet Tool Every Sip...

Simply rinsing produce with tap water will not remove any relevant amount of pesticides. SuppVersity  veterans will remember the 2013 installment of " True or False " discussing whether "Washing Your Fruit and Veggies is Useless" ( re-read it ). The bottom line back then was: it's well worth spending the inconvenient extra-minute it takes to prepare warm water (28-32 °C), put your foods in, scrub a little with your hand and then continue processing them. Now, after the publication of a recent study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry  (ahead of print | Yang 2017), I will probably have to update this article. The authors, scientists from the University of Massachusetts were, after all, able to prove that baking soda, sodium bicarbonate or NaHCO3 comes close to peeling with respect to its ability to reduce the pesticide load from conventional and organic produce. Looking for more cutting-edge exercise and supplementation science? Vitargo...

Is it funny, stupid or tragic that compression garments are advertised most heavily to endurance athletes who benefit the least, while resistance trainees are supplied with useless lifting shoes and tons of questionable supplements, yet not educated on the significant recovery benefits of wearing compression garments? Maybe it's simply because we don't fully understand how they work yet. No, I don't use them myself, but after reading the latest (and most comprehensive) meta-analysis of the use of compression garments and its effects on recovery in sports I start to believe that I may be - just like you - missing out... Let's  not move too fast, though, as the authors, Freddy Brown, Conor Gissane, Glyn Howatson, Ken van Someren, Charles Pedlar, and Jessica Hill point out, the "literature is clouded by conflicting results and uncertainty over the optimal conditions of use" (Brown 2017) - and I would add: it's full of potential bias due to sponsorships. ...

RCT investigates: Can CrossFit threaten the health of your tendons?  With studies about the effects of "cumulative" or "continuous" cardio on body composition and health, a (re-)evaluation of post-strength-training cardio and its effects on your gains, and an investigation into the tendon weakening effects of CrossFit workouts, this installment of the SuppVersity short news has (hopefully) science news from the latest issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sport that are of interest for you... and if it hasn't, check out the SuppVersity  Facebook News and subscribe to @SuppVersity on Twitter  and/or Instagram . If you don't periodize your training you're missing out on strength and size gains 30% More on the Big Three: Squat, DL, BP! Mix Things Up to Make Extra-Gains Linear vs. Undulating Periodizationt 12% Body Fat in 12 Weeks W/ Periodizatoin Detraining + Periodization - How to? Tapering 101 - Learn Ho...

Needless to say that the study at hand cannot prove that, but it is logical to assume that similar increases in training volume would be observed for full squats and other lower body exercises. Moreover, Jordan et al. (2004) have observed significant improvements in all-out (1RM) bench press performance many of you would certainly appreciate. There's little doubt that well-stocked ATP stores are essential for maximal exercise performance. Adenosine-5’-triphosphate (ATP) is, after all, the primary source of energy for muscle cells. Still, scientists have long assumed that the provision of exogenous ATP (orally) wouldn't trigger measurable performance increases because it (a) wouldn't even make it to the muscle but is metabolized before and/or (b) is rapidly resynthesized during exercise training, anyway. As de Freitas et al. (2017) point out in their latest paper, "the first study to evaluate the effects of oral ATP administration was performed by Jordan et al. in...