SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

While milk with honey is better than milk with glucose (Jalilolghadr 2011), it won't improve - if anything mess - with your sleep quality when it's consumed ≤ 1h before bedtime - noteworthy: the same goes for most foods, though. While I have chosen it as the title image for today's SuppVersity  "Sleep Supplement Special", there's actually surprisingly little (not to say "no") evidence that the notorious hot milk with honey will actually improve your sleep significantly. That's in contrast to a number of supplements that are discussed in a recent review by scientists from the Northwestern University; a review that highlights  both , the short-comings of the existing research on dietary supplements for insomnia  and  encourage health practitioners "to explore existing resources and partner with patients to understand their goals and advise on safe and effective use of dietary supplements" (Ring 2017). Studies related to sleep an...

If you want to take melatonin, take it before bed and thus in sync with your circadian rhythm| learn more If that's not your first visit at the  SuppVersity , the fact that the sleep hormone melatonin is a powerful antioxidant won't be news for you. The fact that it may facilitate weight loss has been discussed in a previous SuppVersity  article from September 2015 ( read it ), too. In the corresponding study, taking 1-3 mg melatonin helped women lose 7% body fat, and gain 3.5% lean mass ... albeit over a time of 12 months. A new study does now suggest that melatonin can help you manage your body weight in the short run, too. Learn more about the effects of Melatonin & co. at the SuppVersity GABA Diabesity Treatment Phenibut Addic- tive or Harmless? All About GABA (+ SHR podcast) Melatonin = Easy Fat Loss? Letrozole? Use Melatonin Instead Bone & Tooth? Melatonin Helps That's partly due to its anti-inflammatory effects, but it's al...

Blindfolds and earplugs can improve your sleep quality significantly. The special beauty of blindfolds is: unlike earplugs, blindfolds may also be used to refresh 'other things' you may be doing beneath or on top of your sheets, which in turn will help those who are struggling with getting restorative sleep ( learn more ) While every idiot will tell you that ZMA is "the shit" (it indeed is, literally ) its purported benefits are either insufficiently proven or even disproven, as it is the case for the alleged  anabolic effect of ZMA, which clearly don't exist (Wilborn 2004) outside of the "alternative facts" supplement companies use in pamphlets people call "write ups". Obviously, this won't stop the bros at the gym from telling you: "Dat ZMA gives me an amazingly anabolic sleep, bro!" The reasons ZMA (unfortunately) hasn't disappeared, yet, is still in the TOP10 of an unfortunately high number of supplement retailers...

Since the natural melatonin production decreases as we age, it is (unfortunately) possible that younger women wouldn't see the same benefits as the >56 year-old subjects of the study at hand. No, I am not recommending laziness here, and I doubt that you will arrive at a cover model physique with nothing but a handful of melatonin pills, but  the results of a recent study from the Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark are too intriguing not to devote a whole SuppVersity  article to them. In said study, Anne Kristine Amstrup and colleagues tested whether there's anything to the rumors that have it that "melatonin [has] a positive effect on body weight and energy metabolism" (Amstrup. 2015). As the researchers rightly point out, previous "evidence for this relies mainly on animal models" (ibid). It was thus about time for someone to "determine the effects of melatonin on body composition, lipid and glucose metabolism in humans" (ibid). Wan...