SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Chronic overtraining is one of the main contributers to the occurrence of often likewise chronic injuries, which persist even, when you finally realized that your own ambition is about to ruin your health. It's the last day of the SuppVersity Exercise Science Week with a topic of which you actually have read as an aside, or "read up on" note in the previous installments, already: Overtraining and the infamous athlete's triad (read the whole SuppVersity Special here ). Since I know that especially the male SuppVersity readers tend to believe they were bullet, or rather overtraining proof by nature, I decided to add a more general follow up to the results of a tightly controlled rodent experiment from the Graduate School of Sport Sciences at the Waseda University and the National Institute of Health and Nutrition University in Japan (Yanaka. 2012), which provide insights into the etiology of the (female) athlete triad phenomenon. A follow up with a potpourrie of...

Do you really get along without estrogen when you want to build muscle ( read the answer ) You thought I would already have forgotten my promise from last week to tell you about the other potential testosterone & libido (+fertility) boosters? How dare you ;-)! I just wanted to keep thrill of anticipation and in order to prolong that a little further, I will start out - as on every Thursday - with a sneak preview on today's Science Round-Up   (airs on the Super Human Radio Network on 1PM, click here to listen live ). As you may imagine there were not all too many novel papers published since last week. Notwithstanding, I could assemble enough material for the 1h show. According to my current plan , the schedule will look like this: the fat burning effects of n-6 sesamin, AA and D-GLA the antibacterial effects of raspberry extracts fermented green tea and liver protection the optimal brewing time for tea depending on your goals the futility of using green tea as a...

No need to raid another tomb, Lara, the quest for the one and only ideal macronutrient composition that will yield optimal results for the rest of your life ends here (img courtesy of Paramount )! I am not planning to bore you with a longish summary of the previous installment(s) of this series, here. Still, I don't want to head on to the 2nd step of the "Road to Recovery", which is going to deal with the quest for the "optimal" macronutrient ratio, without a brief reminder of the central role of nutrient availability in both the etiology, as well as the recovery from the athlete triad - or, as Dr. Zanker from the Carnegie Research Institute at the Leeds Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom puts it, the simple fact that the "exercise associated reproductive dysfunction in women is attributable to deficits of readily available energy" (Zanker. 2006) In a couple of more general remarks some of you have recently (not without good reaso...

Image 1: I am not aware of the effect the process of making yourself up has on androgen levels, but the PCPs in many cosmetics could in fact lead to hormonal imbalances. One of the things you hear and read increasingly often, when it comes to topics such as detoxification , the use of anti-inflammatory supplements or simply increased intakes of omega-3 fatty acids to counter the "hazardous omega-6 overload in your diet" , is the analogy of somebody banging his head against a wall asking for a helmet, instead of simply stopping this stupid practice. Likewise, it does not really make sense to invest $50 into an already more or less worthless natural testosterone booster, when, at the same time, you are eating or even supplementing one of the items on the following list of proven anti-androgens: anti-androgenic drugs - cyproterone acetate, spirolonactone, flutamide, ketoconazole, finasterid e & co.: It stands to reason that your doctor will have had good reason to pre...

As avid visitor of the SuppVersity you may remember that taurine appears to exert beneficial effects on insulin resistance, body composition and overall health , but did you know that it is a vital nutrient for the formation of testosterone? In a recent study by Jang et.al. ( Jang. 2010 ) taurine has been shown to p rotect the rat testis from oxidant damage . Their study done on isolated rat leydig cells and living laboratory rats also revealed that the positive effect of taurine on testicular testosterone production is dose-dependend and bi-phasic, i.e. low concentrations of taurine (0.1–100 lg/ml) could stimulate testosterone secretion, whereas high concentration of taurine (400 lg/ml) could inhibit testosterone secretion. It is however relatively unlikely that levels >400lg/ml and thus negative effects will be achieved by orally administered doses of taurine . This hypothesis is validated by the results of the study (cf. Jang. 2010 Figure 5; below) which clearly illustrat...

A recent study by Shark, et.al. ( Shark. 2010 ) found that a 30 minute (or time to exhaustion) submaximal 55' climbing route significantly increased plasma testosterone (T) and growth hormone (GH) in ten male rock climbers at the age of 21-30 years: T concentrations significantly (p < 0.05) increased from Pre (6.04±0.31 ng/mL) to IP (7.39 ± 0.40 ng/mL), and returned to baseline at P15 [=15 minutes post exercise] (6.23 ± 0.33 ng/mL). Cortisol levels did not significantly change during the protocol. GH significantly (p < 0.01) increased from Pre (0.63 ± 0.17 ng/mL) to IP (19.89 ± 4.53 ng/mL) , and remained elevated at P15 (15.03 ± 3.89 ng/mL) . In short: If you want to achieve an optimal anabolic endocrine response to exercise, keep the exercise duration short and the intensity high .

The release of a new PCT-supplement by Fusion Supplement ingeniously called " Post Cycle Matrix " triggered my interest in the biological functions of L-histadine. According to the producer L-histadine will "compliment the increase of LH production from the Cordyceps, this compound acts to increase the responsiveness of the Leydig cells which use the LH to produce testosterone. These two components work together to jumpstart the Testosterone Feedback Loop back into production and finding your body's delicate balance. L-Histadine is a direct precursor to histamine which is an important component in the production of the testosterone activators and has been shown to increase the responsiveness of Leydig cells." Although there is no scientific evidence that oral L-histadine (according to my research this is identical to l-histidine, cf. servinghistory.com ) supplementation will increase LH and thus the release of androgens, there is scientific evidence for reduc...