SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Can you replace androgel or injectable T with regular chlomiphene citrate tablets? Or is this just "broscience"? While many of the things people will tell you about the negative side-effects of testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) are scientifically questionable, un- or even disproven, there's one nasty side effect that is simply unavoidable: the decline in natural testosterone production. Needless to say that this is why natural testosterone boosters, i.e. products that contain (natural) ingredients that may boost your own endogenous testosterone production, are so popular. Unfortunately, these pills have a larger impact on their manufacturers revenue than your T-levls. If they even work, the meager 20%-30% T increase they have to offer is simply not enough for someone whose testosterone level hovers at <250 ng/dl and thus 50ng/dl below the "low T" cutoff. Higher T levels won't build tons of muscle on its own, but it will make these more effectiv...

Are today's "muscle men" not going to be able to procreate? If you are frequenting any of the popular fitness and bodybuilding bulletin boards, you will know that "broscience" is a mixture of anecdotal evidence and hilarious claims that is spiked with cherry picked scientific references. Against that background it may sound funny that researchers from the New Castle Fertility Center  devoted a complete study to the analysis of drugs and protocols highlighted by the online community of users for prevention and/or mitigation of adverse effects of steroid use. If you think about it, however, it's only logical that doctors will be better able to help their patients if they understand what brought them in a situation in which they have to see a doctor at a fertility clinic. Resistance training is the only powerful  muscle builders  with positive health effects! Tri- or Multi-Set Training for Body Recomp.? Alternating Squat & Blood Pressure - Pro...

Weight-supported sports such as cycling precipitate overtraining "20%", that's the SuppVersity figure of the week. It tailors directly to the first item in today's installment of On Short Notice and denotes the amount of professional athletes who exhibit symptoms of overtraining syndrome at any given time in their career. "The prevalence varies by sport and is thought to be highest in endurance sports requiring high volume intense training, such as swimming, triathlon, road cycling, rowing and, to a lesser extent, distance running."  (MacKinnon. 2000) What all those sports (except for distance running) have in common are long training hours on 6 days per week for several months without appreciable time off. Notably, the chances of overtraining also increase, when the equipment supports your body mass. With weight-bearing activities, such as distance running, on the other hand, the risk of musculoskeletal injury limits training volume and therefore r...

Image 1: Iris Kyle's back is a living testostomy, ah... pardon testimony to the muscle building powers of estrogen ;-) Although we have identified a hell lot of verified and purported mechanisms by which testosterone, "the Big T" works its muscle building and fat burning magic, the results of the last installments of the Intermittent Thoughts was nevertheless not really satisfying. After discussing how testosterone programs stem cells to become muscle, not fat cells, how it increases the number of  motor neurons and thusly improves the voluntary neuronal activation of skeletal muscle tissue etc., we were still left with the question whether it was actually testosterone of maybe its central or local aromatization or reduction to estrogen or dihydrotestosterone (DHT) which was responsible for the effects. Now, since estrogen is associated with "all things female" and I am a gentleman of the old school, I decided to start with the latter after realizing that i...

Treatment with estrogens, mainly in women, and selective estrogen modulators (SERMS), which are also interesting for the average juicer, may yield hitherto unknown metabolic side effects. Scientists from Portugal ( Moreira. 2010 ) have found that both, tamoxifen as well as estrogen treatment influence the oxidative capacity of mitochondria: Fig. 1. Effects of E2 and/or TAM treatments on glutathione levels of liver, heart and brain mitochondria. ( Moreira. 2010 ) In spite of the distinct effect on glutathione levels, their effect on lipid peroxidation appears to be contrary: TBARS levels were used to determine the extension of lipid peroxidation (PX) induced by the pro-oxidant pair ADP/Fe 2+ . Fig. 3 A shows that liver mitochondria isolated from E2 + TAM females in the presence of ADP/Fe 2+ produced significantly lower levels of TBARS when compared with liver mitochondria isolated from the other groups of experimental animals. No significant alterations were ob...

A few weeks ago, LG released Natadrol , a product containing a new, self-proclaimed  "potent muscle-building androgen found naturally occurring in our environment". Sounds like an invitation for a "SuppVerSive" investigation into its somewhat exotic ingredients .* So lets see what we have here * Tinospora Cordifolia (TC) has androgenic activity, established exclusively in the prostate ( Kapur. 2009 );  lowers blood sugar ( various studies );  good for immune system ( various studies );  potent antioxidant ( Singh. 2006 );  good for the heart ( Rao. 2005 );  hypolipidemic, i.e. it lowers blood fats ( various studies ) Overall: If TC is androgenic in the prostate it might as well work as an androgen elsewhere, other than that there is no evidence that apart from being "healthy" (outside the prostate) it might in itself be anabolic . Note: LG is honest and lists it under "androgenic factor" < so their claim holds true, yet it has...