SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Regardless of the low-carb-craze of the last years, there is still plenty of scientific evidence that an overtly high fat intake (especially without restricting carbohydrate intake) puts you at risk of developing insulin resistance. What's new to the findings of Hoeg et al. (Hoeg. 2010) is that men are obviously more susceptible to lipid induced insulin resistance than women. At least this is, what the data obtained from the infusion of intralipid or saline for 7h to 16 young well matched healthy men and women suggest: Intralipid infusion reduced whole body glucose infusion rate 26% in women and 38% in men (p<0.05) and insulin stimulated leg glucose uptake was reduced significantly less in women (45%) than men (60%) after intralipid infusion. So obviously, if you are a male, you got to watch your blood lipids more carefully than women. As far as the reasons for this gender-bias are concerned the scientists are at a loss: This insulin resistance ...

We all know, women are tough, but would you have expected them to recover much faster from an all out bench press session at the gym? Judge et.al. ( Judge. 2010 ) investigated the effect of recovery time on strength performance following a high-intensity bench press workout in 12 athletes (6 males and 6 females) and age-matched college students of both genders (4 males and 4 females). The subjects completed a 3-wk resistance training program involving a bench press exercise, 3 d/wk, to become familiar with the testing procedure. After the completion of the resistance training program, the subjects, on three consecutive weeks, participated in two testing sessions per week, baseline session and recovery session. During the testing sessions, subjects performed five sets of the bench press exercise at 50% to 100% of perceived five repetition maximum (5-RM). After resting 4-, 24-, or 48-h strength measurements were estimates of one repetition maximum (1-RM), using equivalent perce...