Aluminum More of a Threat Than Thought? German "Feds" Say: Stay Away From Antitranspirants and Beware of the Dozen of Other Aluminum Containing Junk in Your Life

Cancer, Alzheimer's - The X* effect?
*Most deodorants don't contain aluminum.

I have to admit that I missed the original publication of the inconspicious statement of the Bundesintitut für Risikobewertung (BfR. 2014). I am not sure if there is a US or UK equivalent to the BfR, but if there was an US counterpart, those would be the guys that would tell the FDA what they should do, if the industry, the FDA is actually supposed to control had not already taken their job ;-)

All (sadly true) jokes aside, basically the short paper is a re-evaluation of the safety of aluminum - not aluminum in general, but the amount of aluminum in our immediate surrounding. Sources like the particularly nasty Aluminum from antitranspirants

Table 1: Overview of the "worst offenders" among foods and bakery products scientists from the University of Kentucky (Saiyed. 2005)

Processed foods provide the toxic baseline: Antitranspirants are part of the problem, but as usual it's processed food that supplies the baseline of yet another hazardous substance. If you take a look at the list of "worst offenders" Saiyed et al. identified in a 2005 study in a random selection of food from US supermarkets, it's obvious that all of them belong to the processed, convenient or as some of the enlightened people would say "junk" food category.

The BfR assessed the aluminum absorption from antitranspirants based on experimental data on the its dermal obsorption in healthy individuals and found that the systemic absorption for people with intact skin health is 10.5µg. That's ~2µg more than the EFSA says, the contemporary available evidence would suggest to be safe for a healthy 60kg human being.

This means that the uptake of aluminium from antitranspirants is above the maximal tolerable daily exposure levels. For people with skin problems or someone who uses the antitranspirants after damaging the protective layer of the skin while shaving the systemic aluminum uptake is several magnitudes larger. Consequently someone who shaves and applies his antitranspirant afterwards may exceed his total weekly limit (1mg per week) within the first hour of the day!

Figure 1: Tabular overview of the risk profile the BfR released for aluminum containing transpirants; I have translated the relevant parts of the overview, if you want to, you can download the original here.

As the scientists point out, antitranspirants are yet by far not the only potential aluminum sources in our life. Foods like tomatoes, kitchenware and - above all - other cosmetic products like shampoo, lipsticks, cremes (esp. anti-wrinkle and -aging - funny, eh?), toothpaste, and sunscreen all contain significant amounts of aluminum that can make it through our skin or digestive tract right into our blood.

It is thus no wonder that the following tabular overview (I deliberately use the German original) with translated captions) informs us that it is well possible that the aluminum in antitransparent is a health-hazard for the general population. Luckily, "keine unmittelbare Beeinträchtigung" means that you do not have to expect immediate serious adverse health effects - great, ha?

Much ado about nothing and all is good, right?

In view of the fact that the significance of the currently available data is also still insufficient, one could thus assume that you would be overreacting if you threw your aluminum containing antitranspirants away. If you take a closer look at the last row in tabular overview in Figure 1, though, you see the words "kontrollierbar durch Vorsichtsmaßnahmen" = "manageable by safety measures", though. Now what kind of safety measures could you possibly take?

Figure 2: Auluminum has been linked to all sorts of pathologies. The only decently convincing does yet exist for breast cancer (mechanism | left; cf. Darbre. 2013) and Alzheimer's where the negative effect on cognitive abilities has even been confirmed in controlled animal studies (right | exposure to increasing amounts of aluminum leads to corresponding increases in the rates of cognitive decline; cf. Walton. 2013)

Personally I know only two, though: Never apply aluminum-containing antitranspirants to damaged skin parts - A rule that applies for freshly shaved skin, as well! Or, even better stop using aluminum containing antitranspirants altogether.  I know that this is not feasible for some people, but many of us are just so used to it that we do not realize that the stench from puberty is no longer around.

In the end, the message of the statement that provides additional information about the potential involvement of chronic aluminum exposure in the etiology of breast cancer and Alzheimer's, as well as the more recent publication of a similar warning about aluminum containing cometics in general (BfR. 2014) would yet still suggest that you better replace the shampoo, creme, tooth paste, lipstick, sunscreen and antitranspirant of your choice, if they contain aluminum.

What the wise FDA says: It's funny, that the FDA documents say about thee "GRAS" additives, i.e. substances that are generally recognized as safe, such as the aluminum based food additives that "ingested in excessive amounts, their [sic!] appears to be associated with interference in phosphorus metabolism resulting in rachitic or osteomalacic effects, kidney damage, and interference with glucose metabolism, apparently due to interference with phospho- rylating enzymes." Now, this is obviously no reason to be concerned, because "[t]he high intake of phosphorus in the American diet may provide a protective effects"... hmm, great! So the high amount of phosphor of which scientists long say that it's making people sick "protects" you, my American friend from something the FDA is supposed to protect you from - glorious!

Bottom line: Start with the cosmetics! Unlike the aluminum that leaches into the food from its packaging, the aluminum that makes it from the soil into conventional and organic produce, the aluminum that makes it from the feed into the animals and animal products you eat and the good damn aluminum the f*** up "food" industry adds to their products in form of colorings E 173, stabilizers E 520 (aluminum-sulfate), E 521 (aluminum-sodiumsulfate), E 522 (aluminum-potassiumsulfate), E 523 (aluminum-ammoniumsulfate) and as the leavening agent 541 (acid sodium-aluminumphosphate) in all sorts of baked goods, the "alu lipsticks" are comparatively easy to avoid - to find alternatives that last for a similarly long time and survive kissing and making out, on the other hand, is not going to be easy, I suppose.

If you are no "processed junk junky", ditching antitranspirant & co you cut your intake back to a tolerable 14–35 mg aluminum per week - at least this is what the EFSA estimates a 70kg human being will be exposed to withing 7 days. With a limit of max. 70 mg, you would thus reside in a "green zone" of which no one probably knows how "green" it actually is... in view of an estimated half-life of seven years (Yokel. 1989), I could understand, though, if you say that this is not 100% comforting.

Reference:

• BFR. "Aluminiumhaltige Antitranspirantien tragen zur Aufnahme von Aluminium bei" Position Statement 007/2014 issued by the BFR on February 26, 2014.
• BFR. "Fragen und Antworten zu Aluminium in Lebensmitteln und verbrauchernahen Produkten" FAQ issued by the BFR on February 26, 2014.
• BFR. "Fragen und Antworten zur Risikobewertung von kosmetischen Mitteln" Updated FAQ  issued by the BFR on March 3, 2014.
• Cashman, Allison L., and Erin M. Warshaw. "Parabens: a review of epidemiology, structure, allergenicity, and hormonal properties." Dermatitis 16.2 (2005): 57-66.
• Darbre, Philippa D., Ferdinando Mannello, and Christopher Exley. "Aluminium and breast cancer: Sources of exposure, tissue measurements and mechanisms of toxicological actions on breast biology." Journal of inorganic biochemistry 128 (2013): 257-261.
• FDA. "Aluminum hydroxide." SCOGS-Report 43 (1975). ID Code: 21645-51-2. CFR Section: 184.1139
• Walton, J. R. "Aluminum’s Involvement in the Progression of Alzheimer’s Disease." Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease 35 (2013): 875.
• Yokel, Robert A., and Patrick J. McNamara. "Elevated aluminum persists in serum and tissues of rabbits after a six-hour infusion." Toxicology and applied pharmacology 99.1 (1989): 133-138.

Adelfo Cerame - Road to Wheelchair Nationals '12: Dismiss Calorie Cutting, Pancakes & English Muffins, Embrace Intermittent Fasting, Fruits and Each Step on the Way!

Image 1: Don't get stressed with doing everything right, just do it ;-)

Sometimes its strange how things get together unplanned. With me being on Carl Lanore's Super Human Radio, today at 1pm EST (click here to listen live!), talking about what happens when science and the real world "collide" and how both scientific paradigms and conventional wisdom are probably the most common causes of questionable conclusions (science) and lack of results (real world) and Adelfo sending me his weekly update on how the "wanna lose fat, got to cut calories"-paradigm is still bothering him...

Five weeks out and putting bees into my own bonnet!

I am counting the days, ... mainly because I don’t know what else to do with myself *lol* - It just feels like I need to do something to manipulate my training and my diet even further, but I really can’t do much at this point, but stay the course… I’m trying not to cut any more calories, because I want to avoid either losing muscle or at least running so flat that another "mini-bulk" would be necessary to get stage ready... I must admit, though: It is tough!

Image 2: That would not have happened if she had been eating to satiety before... when your diet turns into a "hunger diet", you are already lost.

I guess it’s just a habit that I have gotten so used to in the past, that the program in my head keeps telling me: "Hey, contest prep. Another week, another cut in calories" It's always been like that in the past. Wanna get leaner? Drop calories! Well, ... at least that's at least what common wisdom tells you and told me. In reality, however, it can - and at some point will - easily backfire. While it is obviously true, that, in order to get lean, and drop body fat, you must manipulate your macros, and gradually reduce calories, but at one point (calorie, or I should say energy-wise) the returns you get (=fat loss) are no longer worth the investments, which is muscle mass, when your cortisol skyrockets and your testosterone and thyroid levels plummet. The further you are pushing from that point, the less fat and the more muscle you lose.

Where this "point of diminishing returns" actually is, differs from person to person and may even change in the course of your lifetime. From what I gather it has a lot to do with what people like to call your "body-fat set point", something I guess, at least some of you may have heard Dr. Andro talk about on Carl Lanore's Super Human Radio back in the day. The basic assumption is that your body has a certain amount of body fat it does (for whatever stupid reason ;-) defend "with its life", or rather your muscle and organ mass. So, if you are hovering towards the "disgustingly ripped zone", like I am, you are already way past the comfort zone, where your body does not really care about the 1-2% more or less of fat on your ribcage.

Don't fix things that aren't broken, just 'cause you like the "tweaking" ...

The fact, that the usual side-effects like constant cravings, lack of energy & libido still have not hit me yet, must - at least in my humble opinion - have something to do with the satiety effect of intermittent fasting. The fasting-feeding-fasting-feeding... I guess Dr. Andro would say "seesaw" *lol* has really allowed me to eat to satiety over the whole 20+ weeks of this otherwise probably unbearably long contest prep.

I mean, there is a reason that the typical bodybuilding prep (at least the hot phase) lasts no more than 2 months. The constant cravings, the insane amounts of cardio the "chicken and rice"-only menus... nothing of that in my diet, which - I know I've said that before, but it is just so f**** amazing - is by far the easiest and most enjoyable prep in my whole bodybuilding career... with a further reduction in calories, however, things could change very easily and thus, I feel that it is better to check my desire to "just try for a few days" (which would be what I would be telling myself, although I knew that it would be a one-way street), if leaving out another 10g of carbs less here and the coconut oil, there...

...STOP! When you are getting to points like that, it is often best to revisit your plan and, more importantly, the reasonings on which it is based and mostly, you will realize that those streaks of "what if's" are largely irrational. For me this means that I will stick (just as planned till ~2 weeks out) to my caloric zigzagging regimen with 1400-1500kcal on training and 1200kcal on rest days and the planned re-feeds on Sunday. After all, I am still making forward progress in terms of the way I look, although I must admit that my objectivity is hugely compromised by the little voice of common wisdom in my ear that says: "Dr. Andro must be mistaken, when he said he saw improvements in my delts and lats... I mean, I did not cut calories and you do...", you know this antics, don't you?

... don't forget to revisit the effect of the tweaks you have made ...

The well-thought changes I made to the exercise side of the equation last week (you may remember that I felt like being at the verge of overtraining), on the other hands, are really paying off. I feel that my regimen is on point! My body responds great to the weekly alternations between EDT, 5x5 and reverse pyramids. As the video on the right goes to show, I did yet incorporate another "body weight" exercise after realizing how well the weighted chins worked for me: Weighted dips!

Video 1 (click to watch): Weighted wheelchair version of the Gironda Dips... I usually do these at the end of my chest & triceps training; instead of doing 5x5’s I just do 5 sets till absolute failure.

Moreover, I did expand my outside of the last weeks of a prep non-existant ab-training to a few minutes after every training session. As I have mentioned previously I am a firm non-believer in the power of isolated ab-work, but in order to make sure I did not miss the slightest opportunity to improve my physique, I better invest the additional few minutes, now, to avoid asking myself later, whether it was the missing ab-work due to which I missed my pro-card.

A much more important factor, in view of achieving optimal conditioning, which is also a recent addition to my routine, is the HIIT "cardio" training I have been doing on my off-days, last week. That has been working fine and I am going to try doing the same protocol fasted, next week... if you wanna know how that went, I'd suggest you mark Thursday, 23, 2012 in your schedule ;-)

... and never forget to get rid of the junk (-food ;-)!
   
If you take a closer look at the usual choices of carbohydrate sources I am consuming on my re-feeds every Sunday (image 3), I suppose that at least some of you will be shocked... a lot of processed (partly also junk-)food. And no, nothing I would ever recommend you should eat on a daily basis, if your goal is to stay healthy, let alone if you are trying to lose weight and/or improve your body composition.

Image 3: With this being my previous choices for Sunday carb-re-feeds, I suspect that even the "fructophobics" out there would concede that my novel combination of fresh and dried fruit, is a major improvement ;-)

As you can see from the pictures on the right and from other previous blogs where I talk about re-feeds; that I’m obviously a Fat Boy at heart!  But now I’m actually having a change of heart with my carb sources. This past Sunday I was really craving fruits for some reason. Whether it was fresh or dried fruit, I knew that I wanted to gorge on fruit. So after church, I past by my local Trader Joe’s and bought all the fresh and dried fruits I could possibly get my hands on… from bananas, dried bananas and banana chips to mangoes, strawberries and dates, you name it, I bought it!

With the majority of my carb source coming from fresh and dried fruit while keeping the highly processed junk food such as the pancakes and English muffins to a minimum, I felt a lot more refreshed than after the my previous junk-bindges... 2 cans of coconut water later, and I felt in heaven ;-)

In view of the fact that it common wisdom tells you that "feeling in heaven" is not seemly for someone preparing for a bodybuilding contest, I should not forget to add that the one thing that felt even better than the food, was the way my physique responded to the combination of fresh and dried fruit. I have made a habit of practicing my poses about 1 hour after my 1st re-feed meal of the day to see how my physique looks and judge the progress I have made over the last 7 days... and I’d have to say, I was very pleased with what I saw this past Sunday in the mirror... not to mention the awesome pumps and the tight contractions upon flexing the muscles.

Recipe of the week:  

Tropical Papaya Chicken Salad

Ingredients:

• 12 oz chicken breast - chopped and marinated in fresh pineapple juices, sea salt, pepper & curry powder
• 1 cup of sliced papayas  - sliced in squares
• 1 whole cucumber - sliced in circles
• ¼ cup of real coconut milk  -the one in the can
• 1 packet of TruviaMacros: 72g protein/ 14g carbs/ 16g fat

How to prepare it: Mix, and toss, then eat and enjoy!

Dr. Andro and I have been talking about reloading glycogen stores before and I remember he mentioned that a 2:1 ratio of glucose to fructose has been shown to do the job just about as well, if not better than your usually overkill of dextrose and/or maltodextrin... I guess, my body must have remembered that and thusly sent me those "fruit cravings" - and what should I say, it certainly felt like it worked. For the future I will thusly be ditching the pancakes and English muffins, to make room for more fresh, ripe and dried fruits and home-made baked potatoes and yams for a more sustained influx of non-fructose carbohydrates to really top those glycogen stores off once in a week.

So, if you want to know more about the short term-effects of fasted HIIT, fruits, potatoes and yams, you better make sure to come back next Thursday, when I will officially reveal not the paleo, but at least one of  the "Adelfo Cerame whole foods re-feed solutions" in the recipe of the week ;-)

Want to Lose Fat? Don't Reward Yourself with Food!

At my gym, I see it over and over again: people staring at the calorie counter of the stairmaster, dreaming of the pot of icecream which is already waiting for them in the fridge. Don't be so stupid or you will end up like the "non-responders" in a recent study on exercise-induced weight-loss done by scientists from the University of Leeds (Finlayson. 2010).

The scientists observed 34 sedentary obese males and females who participated in a 12-week supervised exercise intervention prescribed to expend 500 kcal/day, 5 d/week and classified them into responders (losing weight) and non-responders (maintaining or even increasing weight). By this means the scientists identified a certain pattern of increased appetite in high-fat sweet foods in the non-responders:

 Food reward (ratings of liking and wanting, and relative preference by forced choice pairs) for an array of food images was assessed before and after an acute exercise bout. Results. 20 responders and 14 non-responders were identified. R lost 5.2 kg ± 2.4 of total fat mass and NR lost 1.7 kg ± 1.4. After acute exercise, liking for all foods increased in NR compared to no change in R. Furthermore, NR showed an increase in wanting and relative preference for high-fat sweet foods.

While, obviously, many of you may suffer from those "symptoms" the way to get and stay lean is not to give in to those lustrous desires, but to make healthy food choices 24/7 no matter how many calories you think you have left in the gym hours before.