SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Image 1: Nutrition, exercise and most importantly the right mindset will always be the foundation of leading a long, strong and healthy life - irrespective of how many supplements you take - you cannot out-supplement a bad diet, laziness and a lack of motivation and determination. The hype was, as usual, huge, when back in the day Beta-Hydroxy-Beta-Methl-Butyrate (HMB), marketed as the natural alternative to Deca (Nandrolone; update : thx to anonymous for the heads-up that it was not just Anavar , as I original thought ;-), hit the market. What was yet even bigger than the hype, though, was the disappointment of customers who felt ripped off; and that not without reason, because the early HMB supplements were not only touted to be as effective as the previously mentioned anabolic steroid, they were also sold at similarly high prices and low doses, of which every scientists could easily have told you that the one thing that would grow were the purses of the manufacturers.When the ma...

Image 1: Tetrahydrogestrinone aka THG, aka "The Clear" and the bone of contention in the "BALCO Scandal" could probably have been identified years before, if the WADA detectives already had the new  mammalian androgen responsive reporter gene assays at their disposal. As mentioned in part 1 of this post (cf. Beyond Vida's Book, Part 1/2 ), Houtman and the other scientists from BioDetection Systems B.V. and the Institute of Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, did not exactly want to provide juicers with data on which steroids may cause unexpected side-effects, when they conducted their study in 2008. The original idea was to demonstrate that their technology would be able to identify even those androgens, which have hitherto not been classified as illegal substances - so called "designer steroids", which would not turn up in the chemical–analytical approaches combining gas chromatography (GC) or liquid chromatography (LC) s...

Image 1: Data on the interaction of androgens with the progesterone receptor is scarce, this study has it! This is only blogpost #499, yet at the same time, its a premiere! It's the first time that I am aware of that something you read at the SuppVersity has been covered by the "competition" before. Kudos to my dutch friends from ergogenics.org , who dug up a 2008 paper by Corine J. Houtman et al. ( Houtman. 2008 ) with extensive CALUX(R) bioassay data on the androgen, progesterone, estrogen and corticosteroid receptor response to allmost all popular steroids - it would probable be the "A", as in 4-androstenediol (the "good old 4-AD"), to "Z", if there actually was a common androgen with a "z" as its first character. Note! Due to the fact that the sheer amount of data from this study exceeds the time I can spend on analyzing and compiling it for you, today, this is going to be a two part series , with the second part on wh...