SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Image 1: As it turns out, changes within the broad physiological range, have only negligible effects on muscle mass. Their potential negative impact on body fat is yet startlingly pronounced (see also fig. 2) Welcome back! I am not going back on yesterday's promise and won't let "the Big T" slip out of chokehold of science ;-) So, where was I? Ah, yes... we have seen that out of the >11,000 published studies where the authors used the words "testosterone administration" (numbers according to Google Scholar ), there appears to be exactly one (this is "1" as in only one ;-), in which the researchers dared to "proof" that testosterone alone, i.e. in the absence of exercise or dietary interventions, "builds muscle" - and that in otherwise completely healthy young men . We have also seen that there is a clear cut dose-response relationship with the largest increases in lean muscle mass and the most profound decreases in bo...

Image 1: Silybum marianum , a medical plant that has been used to treat liver disease for >2,000 years and is a staple in many "post cycle therapy" supplements you can current purchase at your favorite supplement store. Whether or not you are into "performance enhancing drugs" does not really matter. If you have browsed through the range of one of the myriad of on-line supplement vendors, you will have seen them: the "liver protectors" , "supplements for liver health" , or simply "post-cycle recovery" supplements. The most common ingredient, you will see on the labels of supplements listed in these or similar categories, is silymarin , a flavonoid complex consisting of silybin (the most active component), silydanianin and silychristin , which is either extracted or simply contained in a crude extract of the seeds of Silybum marianum , a flowering plant of the daisy family, the manufacturers put into their capsules. While scien...

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...

Image 1: "Diabetesity" is prevalent almost every- where in the USA (CDC data from 2007) What if I told you that the magic anti-obesity bullet, everybody is looking for these days is already out there? How much would you be inclined to pay for me to tell you this secret? Well, here you have it for free: Exercise & insulin management. Now, before you get mad at me, because you are to lazy to go through the lifestyle changes, which are usually necessary to achieve this aims, I better tell you that articles in the current issues of the Journal of Lipid Research and the Journal of Clinical Therapeutics suggest that a pharmacological short-cut is already out there ... Coming from scientists from the Universities College of Pharmacy and Health in Atlanta and the School of Pharmacy and Health Performance at the University of Atlanta is a review ( Ryan. 2011 ) of the therapeutic use(-fulness) of Liraglutide, a subcutaneously ...