SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

No, the sun does not kill you. If you control your exposure it may extend your life and improve your life-quality significantly. It's about time to "let there be light" to illuminate the benefits of regular well-timed exposure to sunlight and it's short frequency component. Only recently, researchers from the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) were able to show that daytime light exposure has significant beneficial effects on cognitive brain activity. Significant enough to have the subjects perform better on an oddball task and to significantly increase cortical activity related to cognitive processes (Okamoto. 2014). But is that really all, bright light, or more specifically, the regular and well-timed exposure to bright light can do for you? The effects on circadian rhythm could be behind the Sun's anti-cancer effects Sunlight, Bluelight, Backlight and Your Clock Sunlight a La Carte: "Hack...

Jogging or Tai Chi!? You have the choice - longevity-wise it may not make much of a difference. 20% that's the average risk reduction for all-cause mortality among those of the 61,477 Chinese men in the Shanghai Men's Health Study who practice Thai-Chi regularly. And what's more, in view of the fact that this is hardly less than the 23% risk reduction the researchers from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee, calculated for  men who walked regularly and only 7% less than the reduction in all-cause mortality Na Wang et al. observed in regular joggers, it is also the SuppVersity Figure of the week (Wang. 2013) - a figure that's not much different for cancer and cardiovascular mortality, by the way.  Before you go exploring your Qi and prolong your life, I'd still suggest you meditate over the other On Short Notice items for a couple of minutes ;-) Feto-Protective Effects of Vigorous Exercise in Pregnant Women Another int...

Yet another reason why calorie counting is not good for your sanity: The "average" sexual intercourse burns only 14 kcal more than watching TV.  and significantly less than a fast paced walk on the inclined treadmill. Luckily weight loss & maintenance is more complex than calories in vs. out, anyway ;-) "14" that's the SuppVersity figure of the number of extra calories you will expend when you and your significant other decide to have sex instead of sitting on the couch watching TV tonight. I got that figure from a paper my buddy Sean Casey from CasePerformance has brought to my attention. Published in the latest issue of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (Casazza. 2013), it discusses the 7 most commonly held "false and scientifically unsupported beliefs about obesity" the scientists identified in a thorough analysis of popular media and scientific literature. "The scientific community needs some more honesty" Whi...

While there is a positive trend in the percentage of US adults who meet the 2008 federal physical activity guidelines according to which they have to "devote at least 150 minutes/week to moderate, or 75 minutes/week to vigorous intensity exercise, or an equivalent combination", the number of people who have gotten the message that a combination of both strength and aerobic training (red line) is much more efficient than doing just aerobics (blue line) remains the same (CDC. 2012) 48%! That's the SuppVersity figure of the week and the percentage of US adults aged 18 and over who met the 2008 federal physical activity guidelines for aerobic activity in 2012 - that's 5% more than in 1997. It would be better to see it up in the 75%+ region, but it's nice to see that more and more people are devoting at least 150min/week to moderate intensity exercise, or 75 minutes/week to vigorous intensity exercise, or an equivalent combination. What's not so nice is tha...