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Intermittent Thoughts on Insulin Resistance: Episode I of the "Insulin Resistance Saga" - Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Lurks on Your Way to the Kindergarten

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Image 1: Map with the 2007 Rates of Overweight and Obese Children in the USA. With a childhood obesity rate of 44.4% Mississipi is the uncontested no.1 (source NCSL ) When we look back at the last installment of the Intermittent Thoughts the maybe surprising, maybe foreseeable end of the "Insulin Resistance Saga" was that that our protagonist, the human body ended up in a state, in which its cells are starving - and that despite exogenous, as well as as endogenous overabundance of energy in form of readily available calorically dense food (exogenous) and body fat stores that are bursting at the seams... but was it really Granny's pie that is to blame for all of that? Or was not enough exercise, after all? I guess to answer these and other questions and to get a little more insight into what people like to call the etiology of something - in this case, obviously insulin resistance and the obesity epidemic - we will have to go back, way back in time... Flashback to ...
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Intermittent Thoughts on Insulin Resistance: Fats, Carbs & Lack of Exercise - Where is Our Scapegoat? Plus: Chicken or Egg - Which Came First Obesity or Insulin Resistance?

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Image 1: You may think it's ugly because it is not comply with the current beauty ideal, but this small quantity of subcutaneous is probably rather a sign for high insulin sensitivity, than resistance. In the last installment of this series , I tried to establish a new, a certainly unconventional perspective on a physiological process many people consider the #1 plague of the 21st century: Insulin resistance. As it turned out, the desensitization of our cells to insulin and the subsequently reduced glucose uptake into the cells, can be an advantage. In the course of a marathon, for example, it helps our bodies to maintain a relatively stable blood sugar level and shift from a largely glucose-dependent to a more fat-dependent metabolic state. The existence of this often overlooked beneficial side of insulin resistance does yet bring up the question, why insulin resistance and obesity usually go hand in hand. I mean, if insulin resistance turns you into a fat burning machine, ho...
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Intermittent Thoughts on Insulin Resistance: The Marathon Paradox - How Temporary Exercise-Induced Insulin Resistance Paves the Way for "Fat Burning Machines"

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Image 1: Is this man temporary insulin resistant? Probably, otherwise he would hardly have made it to the finish line. After weeks of discussing the physiological foundations of building muscle, I figure at least some of you will share my personal desire think about something else, at least "intermittently", so to say. Now, before some of you start complaining, let me say this: I will try to attack today's topic from various angles, meaning that even those of you who may now be thinking "insulin resistance" that's just for lazy fat-asses will see that a better understanding of what some people perceive to be the root cause of most if not all of the major health concerns of the western convenience society could also help you in your efforts to get even more jacked. When I come to think about it, the notion that "insulin resistance is just for the friends of Ronald McDonald" and the "health conscious" part of the population was immune...
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Intermittent Thoughts on Building Muscle: A Preliminary Conclusion - Exercise, mTOR/AKT/MAPK, IGF-1, Testosterone, Estrogen, DHT, Nutrition, Supps & Sleep

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Image 1: Arnold obviously is flabbergast that neither of the factors mentioned in the title of this blogpost was necessary to build the impressive physique of the Arnold statue which now stands in front of the Schwarzenegger Museum . I don't know if some of you have seen it, but on January 3, 2012, ScienceDaily published a brief news-item titled " How work tells muscles to grow ". It relates to a recent study by Guerci et al. who have found that the so-called serum response factor, which basically another "gene switch", is responsible, or I should say required for exercise induced satellite-cell mediated hypertrophy ( Guerci. 2012 ). If you have been following all of the past installments of the Intermittent Thoughts from the early "Hypertrophy 101" ( Part 1 , Part 2 ), in which I explained the difference between the increase in myonuclear domain sizes as a consequence of increased protein synthesis, on the one hand and the formation of new myonu...
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Intermittent Thoughts: Dihydrotestosterone (DHT) - Bigger, Stronger, Faster or just Balder, Fatter and Unhealthier?

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Image 1: The ancient Greek ideal of the male body has probably more to do with DHT than the freaky physiques of today's IFBB Pro bodybuilders. I guess after the revelations about the importance of estrogen in the process of skeletal muscle hypertrophy in the last installment of the Intermittent Thoughts you will probably be eager to hear what its male counterpart dihydrotestosterone (DHT), is able to do... I mean, with DHT being the male hormone par excellence it is only reasonable to assume that its effects on skeletal muscle mass and strength, two characteristic features of the male persuasion, must be significant, right? Before we are going to address this vitally important questions, let's briefly take a look at what the dihydrotestosterone actually is. DHT the hormone to which testosterone is just another prohormone Similar to estrogen, DHT (exact name 17β-hydroxy-5α-androstan-3-one ) is a testosterone metabolite. The process by which your body (male and fema...
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Intermittent Thoughts on Building Muscle: Estrogen, Friend or Foe of Skeletal Muscle Hypertrophy? Plus: "Hey, Bro! Are You 'SERMing' Away Your Satellite Cells?"

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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...
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