SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

It's impossible you haven't read or heard about this study! I guess by now, all of you will have heard that an internationally covered pilot study by Austrian researchers (Schwabl et al. 2018) that was presented earlier this week at the  UEG Week in Vienna  claims to have initial prove that "Microplastics Find Their Way Into [Our] Gut" ( NYTimes ). The results of the studies are all over the place and the (fearmongering) press coverage seems to convey only one message: "Uh oh, now we're doomed!" But, are we? I mean, we're talking about a study with N=8 subjects?! Moreover, no one questions our exposure to the sub-millimeter sized particles and the fact that we actually seem to poop them out would, after all, suggest that they do not accumulate in our bodies - that's good news, isn't it!? If MPs have ill health effects they are probably mediated via their effects on our gut-health Bugs Dictate What You Crave Sweeteners & You...

Even the difference between having 'below ' vs. 'above average' fitness levels amounts to the same 1.4-fold increase in mortality risk the scientists calculated for smoking cigarettes. When I first read about the latest study from the  Cleveland Clinic and that it would demonstrate that "not working out" was "worse than smoking", I expected that a press-release writer had compared the reduction in mortality risk and physical fitness, which has been observed by a new medium-scale observational study from his employer, to the hazard ratio (HR) other scientists calculated for smoking in a completely different study (or meta-analysis) for publicity reasons. However, upon closer scrutiny, it turned out that both, the hazard ratio for smoking vs. non-smoking, which is 1.41 (p < 0.001), and the hazard ratio for elite vs. low fitness, which is 5.05 (p < 0.01) and hence 3.6 times higher, were based on analyses of the same dataset - cool! Bicar...

Your androgen receptor status may not just determine how much muscle you gain - the data from Morton et al. seems to suggest that it even determines if you make visible muscle gains, at all. Unless you've missed following the SuppVersity on Facebook , yet, you will remember my recent, highly popular post which previewed the results of a recent study from the  McMaster University  in Ontario. Meanwhile, the full-text of the study has been published and it highlights what I pointed out before: It supports previous research, which showed that neither the acute increase in intramuscular free testosterone, nor dihydrotestosterone, or 5α-reductase predicts the muscle gains of resistance-trained men. More importantly, however, it has the potential to shift the interest in post-exercise changes of testosterone, IGF1, GH & co. to the androgen receptors or rather how they (and maybe other receptors, like the IGF-1 receptor) respond to resistant exercise. Read more abou...