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No Time? No Excuse! Three Minutes (One Minute All Out, Only) Exercise Per Week Suffice to Increase One's Skeletal Muscle Oxidative Capacity and Improve Metabolic Health!

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HIIT your weaker self hard, with a total of one minute all out cycling. It's the most often heard excuse you get, when you ask your sick overweight neighbor if he'd like to accompany you to the gym to do something for his health, first, and his physique, second. "Ah, I don't have the time to work out!" Obviously, this is a "perceived lack of time" that is not real for 99.9% of the people, even if we're talking about 30 minutes of exercise every other day. And even if it was not, the results of a recent study from the McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, will totally steal their non-existent thunder and provide you with convincing arguments to drag them to the gym for a quick HIIT session (Gillen. 2014). Why? Well, as the headline of today's SuppVersity article says, the study shows that three (=3) minutes of all-out exercise per week (no typo or other mistake here!) will "Suffice to Increase Skelet al Muscle Oxidative Capacit...
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Are You Still Burning Calories or Already Losing Fat? Study Shows: 5x15 Min HIIT Reduce Body Fat & Improve Fitness Twice as Effectively as 5x40min of Classic Cardio

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Image 1: The number of women striving to be strong & sexy is still too skinny. Despite the fact that the slogan "strong is the new sexy" has become increasingly popular, as of late, my personal experience tells me that women are particular resistant to suggestions, let alone well-meant advice to drop "classic cardio" training all-together. Against that background the data from a study that has been published in the latest issue of the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness , as convincing as it may be, is probably no more than another drop in the bucket, but hey... if there is only one women who's mental bucket is already chock-full it may be the one drop that will eventually make it spill over ;-) "But didn't they lose more weight with classic cardio!" What happens if you take 60 female overweight (BMI>25kg/m² and body fat >30%) university students and tell them they got to lose weight? Well, I guess, 45 will run to the ...
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Growth-Retarding Effect of "Cardio"-Training is not Prevented by BCAA Supplementation. Endurance-Trained Rats Still -3% Smaller than Age-Mates.

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Image 1: Haile Gebrselassie, probably the greatest distance runner in history, set 27 world records; is his sort stature a result of too much "cardio" (image by Alexxx86 ) Did you ever wonder if Haile Gebrselassie (image 1) is such a great long distance runner, because he is only 5'5" (1.65m, imdb )? Well, after all it could turn out that is is just the other way around - Haile could be only 5'5", because he is a great runner! Rumors have it Gebrselassie ran to school every day as a boy... what? You do not see a relation here, well then you should have a look at the data of a recent rodent study from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil ( Campos-Ferraz. 2011 ). For 5 weeks, Patricia Lopez de Campos-Ferraz and her colleagues, put 32 male Wistar rats (21 days old) on one of four experimental protocols: 45mg/kg BCAA  + swimming - Sup/Ex Standard chow + swimming - Ctrl/Ex 45mg/kg BCAA + sedentary - Sup...
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1.200 IU Vitamin D Won't Raise 25OH-D Levels Enough to See Beneficial Effects on Markers of Cardiovascular Health

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In the course of the last weeks, I have refrained from posting each of the 1001 studies on vitamin D that appear in the myriad of medical magazines each month. It is simply too much, mostly very irrelevant information. A recent study by Maki et al. ( Maki. 2011 ) is yet interesting insofar, as it provides some insight into the amounts of supplemental vitamin D one would probably need to see some cardiovascular benefits. After supplementing the diets of their subjects with either a standard multi-vitamin or the multi-vitamin + 1,200IU of vitamin D for 8 weeks, the researcers measured serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) in subjects with high waist circumference and found: There was a significant difference in mean change for 25(OH)D between the MVM and MVM+D treatment groups ( − 1.2 ± 2.5 nmol/l vs. 11.7 ± 3.0 nmol/l, respectively; P  = 0.003). Vitamin D 1,200 IU/day did not inc...
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Vitamin D: 1 Billion People Worldwide Are Vitamin D Deficient or Insufficient

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Actually, I must say that I am surprised: It has been days, almost weeks since my last blogpost on Vitamin D. After all the individual findings of the last weeks, the review Hollick published in Current Drug Targets ( Hollick. 2010 ) offers a comprehensive summary of some of the main findings of recent investigations: Figure 1: In Great Britain Vitamin D3 supplementation appears indicated at least in the winter month It is now recognized that most cells in the body have a vitamin D receptor and they also have the capability of producing 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D(3) which in turn is capable of regulating a wide variety of genes that have important functions in regulating cell growth, modulating immune function and cardiovascular health. Epidemiologic evidence and prospective studies have linked vitamin D deficiency with increased risk of many chronic diseases including autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular disease, deadly cancers, type II diabetes and infectious diseases . ...
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Anti-Oxidant Supplements Beneficial - At least in Patients With Multiple Cardiovascular Risk Factors

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Molecular structure of vitamin E ( HMBD v2.5 ) In the course of the last years studies on the beneficial effects of anti-oxidant supplements on athletic performance have been inconsistent. A recent study by Shagordosky et.al. does yet underline the usefullness of  low/moderate dose anti-oxidant supplementation in patients with multiple cardiovascular risk factors. The scientists found that the participants who received an anti-oxidant supplement with 500 mg vitamin C , 200 iu vitamin E , 60mg co-enzyme Q10 and 100mcg selenium exhibited significant increases in large arterial elasticity index (LAEI) as well as small arterial elasticity index (SAEI). A significant decline HbA1C and a significant increase in HDL-cholesterol were also observed. I would suspect that the different effects of anti-oxidants in healthy and unhealthy individuals may well be attributed to different levels of "pro-oxidant" activity. Recent studies (e.g. Ristow et.al. 2009 ) have shown that a c...
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One Year Aerobic Endurance Training Raises Fat Oxidation During Exercise But Not Resting Metabolic Rate

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While doing aerobics on a regular basis is unquestionably healthy, it will not have the same beneficial effects on resting metabolic rate (RMR) as weight training. At least this is what a recent study ( Scharhag-Rosenberger. 2010 ) suggests. The German scientists observed previously untrained, but healthy subject, who jogged/walked 3 days a week for 45 minutes, over a whole year and recognized positive effects on body composition and rate of fat oxidation during exercise. Relative contribution of fat and carbohydrate (CHO) oxidation to RMR (pie chart: means, data: means ± SD, N = 17). ( Scharhag-Rosenberger. 2010 . Fig.3) On the other hand cardiovascular exercise failed to provide beneficial effects on the subjects' resting metabolic rate. Thus, if you intend to lose weight and to keep it off, you should complemented your jogging/walking sessions by a concurrent strength training regime. The latter will increase RMR (due to an increase in energy consuming muscle mass) and th...
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