SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Who would have thought that something that's good for your teeth could be be good for your pancreas, as well? In a recent study scientists from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa investigated the possible mechanism(s) behind the effects of xylitol on carbohydrate digesting enzymes activity, muscle glucose uptake and intestinal glucos absorption using in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo experimental models. Xylitol is a 5 carbon sugar alcohol with lower glycemic index (13 vs 65) and calorific value (2.4 vs 4.0 kcal/g) compared to sucrose. A number of previous studies reported that xylitol has many other potential beneficial effects such as control and prevention of obesity, diabetes and related metabolic disorders (Amo. 2011). You can learn more about sweeteners at the SuppVersity Unsatiating Truth About Artif. Sweeteners? Will Artificial Sweeteners Spike Insulin? Sweeteners & the Gut Microbiome Each is Diff. Sweeter Than Your Tongue Allows! St...

GABA tea contains comparably low amounts of GABA (180mg/100g; Wang. 2006) and still or, as the results of the study at hand suggest, rather thus helps with sleep (Cheng. 2009). As a SuppVersity reader you know that GABA has been used successfully to revive the pancreas of diabetic animals (Soltani. 2011). As a conspiracy theorist, you believe that it's the pharma business that's paying researchers not to follow up on the results of Soltani et al. and other researchers. And as a physical culturist, you are obviously attracted by the idea that GABA supplements may help you achieve a leaner and more muscular physique... right? I don't care if everything or anything of what I wrote before is accurate. What I do care about, though, are the results Xie et al. present in their latest paper in the Journal of Animal Physiology and Animal Nutrition . Learn more about the effects of your diet on your body composition at the SuppVersity Ladies, Beware! Dieting Makes Gymn...

Coho salmon, shrimp and asparagus with melted butter - better than any diabetes drug ;-) Within the last couple of weeks, I have been moving news-items like this one into the " On Short Notice "  category, or simply totally discarded the dozen or so "herb XYZ" or "extract ABC ameliorates hypoglycemia in rodent model of type II diabetes" papers that are published on a weekly basis. The mere number of studies on whatever exotic, herb, spice or isolated polyphenol from the most remote areas (usually in Asia) the names of which I often even have heard about before, is simply too large to cover them all... and let's be honest: In the end, it's also downright boring to read about stuff that decreases blood glucose in a rodent model to a miniscule extend, when you already know that chances that you ever get your hands on a significant amount of that are zero, right? There are however, two good reasons, why Rahman Md. Hafizur, Nurul Kabir and Sidra ...

In a recent study ( Guerrero-Romero. 2011 ) a group of scientists from the Research Group on Diabetes and Chronic Illnesses from Durango, Mexico, investigated the effect of oral supplementation with magnesium chloride (MgCl(2) ) on "the ability of beta-cells to compensate for variations in insulin sensitivity in [52; placebo + treatment] non-diabetic individual". Obviously, we hear it over and over that 'magnesium is the fourth most abundant mineral in the human body', it is vital, etc., etc. - studies showing real life benefits from oral supplementation are however relatively scarce. Unfortunately, there is one caveat with this study, as well. Guerrero-Romero et al. deliberately selected only those subjects with "significant [magnesium levels ≤0·70 mM/L] hypomagnesaemia, i.e. low magnesium levels. There were no serious adverse events or side effects because of MgCl(2) or placebo. At the beginning of the study, the AUC of the HMbCF was similar in both group...