SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

If it does not make you as swole as the colorful ad promised it must not be working, right? The jury was not even any longer "out there" for glycerol, but a recent study makes you rethink, whether you just have to look in the right place to see the benefits. Another of the "odd" Thursdays without an update from "Your's Truly" Adelfo Cerame . And since there is holiday today, over here, I even thought there would not be a SuppVersity Science Round Up today. But hey, you are lucky you (and Carl) got to work, so you can tune in live at 1PM EST, or even better, start listening live at 1PM in order not to miss the Strength and Hypertrophy Round Table ! As far the  topics for today's installment of the SuppVersity Science Round Up are concerned, you are actually only a couple of lines away from reading about one that's on the list:  The effects of glycerol on exercise performance. I don't have to tell you though that this is not everyth...

Figure 1: Betaine content (in mg/100g) in some common food items (data based on Craig. 2004). Makes me wonder if Popeye ate wheat germ as well or whether he was celiac and stuck to spinach to get his daily dose of pro-anabolic betaine? Trimethylglycine (TMG) the sciency name for a molecule most of you probably know by the name "betaine" is actually no longer a new-comer to the supplement scene (please note that this is not betaine HCL (!), the stuff you will find in digestive aids). I have already written about its purported ergogenic effects several times and there are actually quite a handful of proprietary blends with mostly undisclosed, but judged based on the total serving size and amount of ingredients in them, hilariously underdosed amounts of the zwitterionic compound and a methyl derivative of glycine in it on the market. Friends and followers of the SuppVersity will also be aware that betaine is also found naturally in a variety of food sources such as sug...

Image 1: Beta alanine It is not new that there exists an antagonistic relationship between muscle carnosine (M-Carn, which is increased via beta-alanine supplementation), on the one hand, and muscle taurine (M-Tau) levels on the other.  The study by Harris, et.al. (Harris. 2010) is however the first to report on the immediate effect of supplementing with 2x800mg of a time-released beta-alanine (structure, cf. image 1 on the right. HMDB v2.5 ) formula on muscle taurine content in seven male subjects after four weeks of daily supplementation. A realistic scenario as these dosages can be found both in stand-alone, as well as an kitchen-sink approach supplements such as NO-Xplode & Co : Pre and post supplementation M-Carn was 25.9 ± 4.3 and 41.3 ± 5.5 mmol.kg -1 dry muscle and M-Tau 28.1 ± 7.1 and 22.6 ± 7.0 mmol.kg -1 dry muscle . Despite the 20% fall in M-Tau , values of M-Tau remained within the normal physiological range . Before supplementation M-Tau was negative...