SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Make room for cardio & strength training in your workout routine. Both offer significant and scientifically proven health benefits, but neither cardio or strength the will prevent diet-induced obesity, when you eat everything in sight. Time for another installment of the SuppVersity Short News on exercise science. This installment features the effects of strength training associated with whole body vibration training on running economy and vertical stiffness (Roschel. 2015), the acute effects of plyometric intervention on sprinting performance (Mackala. 2015), the anti-colon-cancer effects of aerobic training (Frajacomo. 2015) and, finally, the effects of exercise training and energy expenditure following weight loss (Hunter. 2015). When we are already talking "metabolic damage", let's top that off with a brief reminder that hyperphagia = eating everything in sight, not a reduced energy expenditure is the most significant contributor to post-diet weight regain. ...

I am sorry, but if you still believe this was a healthy breakfast, I am not sure you will be able to escape diabesity ;-) You may have read it on one of the major Science News Portals, on Saturday: "[Orange juice] could contribute to chemoprevention at every stage of cancer initiation and progression. Among the most relevant biological effects of OJ [orange juice] is the juice's antigenotoxic and antimutagenic potential, which was shown in cells in culture and in rodents and humans." (Taylor & Francis. Press Release from 13. September 2013). Really? And what about the >20% increased diabetes risk from drinking fruit juices (Muraki. 2013)? If that's what you have just been thinking, I bet you will like to get some more information about the hesperidine and naringenine content of orange juice and how these could influence cancer development. Three epidemiological studies! Really? It does not take much these days to turn hopes into hypes - for ora...

Just like type II diabetes, NAFLD is a life-style disease. While it may not be obvious, today's SuppVersity post is very closely related to Sunday's post about supplements to battle insulin resistance . The recent revelation that the liver enzymes alanine transaminase (ALT aka GPT), aspartate transaminase (AST aka SGOT) and gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT aka gamma-GT) and not free fatty acid levels are the most reliable predictors of insulin sensitivity in overweight and obese, non-diabetic adults does after all show clearly support the notion that we (scientists, doctors, patiens) should pay much more attention to the liver. It's the liver that controls blood glucose, lipids and even our hormone levels, not the adipose organ. Therefore it is in the liver, our metabolic organ #1, is where the dark diabesity magic happens. Heal the liver, cure the insulin resistance Just in: A recent Stanford study shows that the use of VEGF inhibitors that are usually prescri...

This is not exactly what I was talking about, when I said "going nuts", but in this case it would actually qualify as "going pistachios" ;-) Walnuts, almonds and Brazil nuts, these are the stars among the hard-shelled fruits people tend to go nuts about (all puns intended ;-). Pistachios, on the other hand, get very little love. I have in fact written about their surprisingly low effective energy content and their highly bioavailable phenolic content before ( learn more ), but what the myriad of phenols in these small nutritional powerhouses the ancient Egyptians used as incense, preservative and breath sweetener, while their Iranian neighbors in the North East already knew about their beneficial effects on digestive, hepatic and kidney health (Avicenna. 2008) can do for our health has not been covered here at the SuppVersity . So what is it pistachios can do for you? With their traditional use as a remedy for digestive, liver and kidney issues, you already ...

While you don't have to bath in coffee, one cup per day is probably not enough to protect your mammary glands. Initially today's SuppVersity post was just about coffee and breast cancer risk. Today, a couple of days and a hand full of news on other interesting papers that are piling up by dozens in my archive, I found that the paper has proliferated ;-o Well, not exactly, but in conjunction with a recent meta-analysis on the potential anti-breast-cancer effects of coffee today's news certainly covers data from almost 380,000 women world-wide and will thus probably yield somewhat more reliable data on whatever relation may exist between a woman's coffee / caffeine consumption and her risk of developing breast cancer. It takes Canadian women at least 5 cups of coffee to elicit significant reductions in breast cancer risk Against that background, both the detailed 7-item sub-analysis of the data from the Women’s Diet and Health Study and the unique inclusion of ...

Lactobacilli are hip, vitamin A is not - at the SuppVersity you still get news on both 1kg! That's the amount of weight you could probably lose if you rid yourself of all the microbes in your gut - from the weight of the bacteria alone, of course. Whether this would be a good idea or not, is however very questionable. On the one hand, we do have the still not fully understood studies on obesity-resistant germ free mice and an accumulating amount of evidence that having the "wrong" bacteria in the gut is at least associated with an increased obesity risk (Blaut. 2012). On the other hand, however, we are seeing new studies on the various benefits of having the "right" gut microbiome being published on an almost daily basis. So what? Before we take a closer look at a definite benefit of having the "right" gut bacteria, though, let's start out with another likewise gut-related news item on the role of retinoic acid in T-cell education. In a way i...

Image 1: Astragalus membranaceus , one of the 50 fundamental herbs in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). A purported telomerase activator that contains potent antioxidants. There is hardly one month passing without some media reports about a group of scientists who supposedly found the royal route to health and longevity . With all those potentially life-extending drugs, herbals and nutritional supplements that have thus surfaced in the course of the last decades, it is actually almost surprising that we still die like flies, isn't it? Well, one possibility would obviously be that the scientifically-backed wonder-potions you can buy in the snake-oil shops all over the Internet do not work at all - impossible? I don't think so. Consequently, I was and still am very skeptical about the dubious claims about the "life-extending" effects of a patented Astragalus membranaceus (also Astragalus propinquus ) extract - and that despite or, I should say, because of its ...