SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

I just hope that today's SuppVersity article is not going to cause scenes like this, because when it all said and done it may be less likely, but not impossible that it is (for whatever vexed reason) still aspartame that caused the negative effects observed in the study at hand. It is one of the recurring motifs here at the SuppVersisty and at the same time one of the most popular issues of dispute in the health and fitness community: The Obesogenic Effects of Artificial Sweeteners . Or, in plain English, the question   "Can I use Sucralose, Aspartame and Acesulfam-K without taking the risk of getting fatter - not leaner, as I actually intended?" For all three of the explicitly mentioned agents human studies clearly suggest that the answer is "Yes, you can!" And I will now dare saying that the of the most recent study from the Oita University in Japan are not going to change that - as long as you use them instead of carbs in your diet the said zero ...

If you are as cool as the subject on the right (no black dots in the neck and trap area = no BAT activity) you don't have to keep thinking about BAT thermogenesis (img from Sugita.2013) "Grains are the root of all our problems." It would be nice if it really were that simple... what would be even better is if they turned out to be the solution, as well. Wouldn't that be paradise? It would. And what's more, it could! At least if the Grains of Paradise , i.e. the seeds of Aframomum melegueta(Rosco) K. Schum.) (GP) , Guinea pepper or Alligator pepper would increase thermogenesis a significant amount more than those ~6kcal/h that have been observed in healthy non-obese subjects in a recent study by Jun Sugita and his (or her?) colleagues from the Department of Nutrition at the School of Nursing and Nutrition of the Tenshi Collage in Japan (Sugita. 2013). . ~6 kcal/h in BAT positive subjects that's definitely not enough The mechanism by which the ingestio...

Can the guy on the right run away from the bloated macrophage coated fat cells on the left? Today's first post in the SuppVersity Exercise Science Week does hold the answer to this existential question. Those of you who don't just read, but also think about the headlines of these posts will probably already have theorized about the remote possibility that I could have changed my mind and discarded the original plan to do an "exercise quickie" early this week (see SuppVersity post from Saturday ). Now, before you are getting mad at me, let me give you the (as I would say good) reason for doing that: Some, if not almost all of the exercise related studies, I have piled up here are actually too interesting to end up as part of a mash-up. That's particularly true in view of the fact that my time budget during the week does not allow me to discuss them in appropriate detail. So, even if wanted to end up writing >10,000 word posts, this would only work on 48h da...

Whenever the word "vascularity" appears on one of the boards, this image pops up. Now we know that arginine alone won't make your veins pop, but could it be that we have hitherto overlooked that it could help you meet another more important criteria to look like that - namely to drop body fat? In a 2012 paper Mohammad Alizadeh and his colleagues published a paper in the Annals of Nutrition & Metbabolism . The paper deals with the effects of the addition of 5g/day l-arginine to hypocaloric diets in a group of 84 premenopausal women, where the supplement regimen led to significantly greater reductions in visceral obesity (8cm vs. just 4cm reduction in waist circumference within 6 weeks; cf. Alizadeh. 2012). I filed the paper in my "candidates" folder and forgot about it - simply too much interesting news to cover everything. Now, almost a year later, Lucilla D. Monti et al. have published yet another paper on l-arginine in the latest issue of the scienti...

Do thermogenic fat burners only work if you already look like this? I mean, what would be the sure, then and why did the ECA stack work for overweight people, as well? I don't know if you have ever thought about the problems mostly involuntarily obese individuals are facing in their everyday lives!? Even if you discard the constant bullying and the subliminal messages they receive from their peers, not fitting into a regular seat in an airplane certainly is more than just an embarrassment. Now what would you say, if I told you that they are discriminated against even, when they shop at their local GNC, or whichever other supplement vendor they may be using? And I am not talking about the lean guys and girls on the labels of the supplements, here! No, I am referring to a discrimination that takes place on a more fundamental level and it happens right in front of the shelf with every overweight person's favorite supplements: The so-called fat burners! Ok, now that I got eve...

Image 1: If you don't want your brain to shrivel up like that, I suppose you better get more than just an occasional night of good night's sleep and (not or) think about taking some supplemental melatonin. Those of you who are also following me on facebook , will probably have seen the link to the study a group of Indian scientists conducted to assess the effect of melatonin supplementation in overiectomized (=model for human menopause) rats ( Baxi. 2011 ). Much to my own surprise, the melatonin supplement did not only eradicate all the majority of overiectomy-induced metabolic changes, it was also more potent than the standard estrogen treatment that served as a control! And that in the absence of any of the side-effects of regular estrogen therapy. In that, the Baxi study is only one out of a handful of recently published paper, which suggest that melatonin is probably one of the most underrated supplements you can still (as soon as the FDA realizes what this stuff can...

Image 1: The yellow bone marrrow fat turns out to be more than a filler. In Germany there is a common saying that is predominantly used by the mothers of fat kids: "My son, overweight? No. He just has some really heavy bones." Well, I guess few of these proud mothers will be aware that recent research from the Boston Medical School ( Fulzele. 2011 ) and the University of Toledo suggests that there may be more to the bone-bodyweight connection than even they may have thought. In a comprehensive review of the latest findings on bone metabolism ( Fulzele. 2011 ) Keertik Fulzele and Thomas L. Clemens state that the " contemporary model [which] assigns IGFs [insulin like growth factor] as central regulators of cell profileration, survival, and organism growth " and reduces the influence of insulin to the "level of regulation fuel utilization, storage, and energy expenditure" is too simplistic to to accomm...