SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Many currently available supplements lack sufficient scientific backup. It has been a while since I published the last supplement science update - the recent release of the latest edition of the  Journal of Dietary Supplements reminded me of that. In issue 1 of volume 14 of this journal that "addresses important issues that meet a broad range of interests from researchers, regulators, marketers, educators, and healthcare professionals" (Aims & Scope according to the publisher ) you will find studies on (you already know that from the headline) "TeaCrine®, Tribulus, Guarana, ALA, Sesamin, Fish Oil & More", studies the design and results of which I will briefly summarize for you in the following paragraphs: Read about rather exercise-related studies at the SuppVersity Tri- or Multi-Set Training for Body Recomp.? Aug '15 Ex.Res. Upd.: Nitrate, Glycogen, and ... Pre-Exhaustion Exhausts Your Growth Potential Full ROM ➯ Full Gains - Form Coun...

Vibration training is for lazy men & women, only - right? It cannot speed up the adaptation process in athletes, right? And it certainly has no effects on body composition, right? Not exactly, scroll down and find out why. For those of you who haven't read yesterday's first installment of this research update, I highly suggest you head over now, or after you've read today's follow up on additional vibration training for athletes, caffeine and the effect of muscle size on the strength boosting effects of caffeine, the benefits of and perfect time to psyche up before a sprint event and the muscular myoastatin response to strength, interval and combined training, to make sure you don't miss half this research update. And if you are not interested in any of these news you may still appreciate the bottom line with a brief review of the latest evidence for the differential or identical effects of strength and hypertrophy training on the acute biochemical and ne...

From a paper in the Journal of Cereal Science : Histological structure of wheat grain showing bioactive components which are related to the fiber fraction of wheat and are present in whole meal but absent in refined flour. (Brouns. 2013). A recent study from the CSIRO Food Futures National Research Flagship and the University of Adelaide says: The data indicate that many adult Australians are consciously avoiding consumption of wheat foods, predominantly without any formal diagnosis. Reported symptoms suggest a physiological but not allergenic basis to this behavior. Can this be? Can your "gluten intolerance" really be in your head? Certainly it can, it's what scientists call a nocebo effect: A situation, where a harmless substance taken by a patient is associated with harmful effects due to negative expectations or the psychological condition of the patient. But wheat is no harmless substance, right? Certainly not. At least not for those people who suffer fro...

Yeah! I am in the active arm of the study! Now I Can Eat All The Crap in The World and Still Lose Weight! I have been waiting for this study to be conducted for years and am by no means surprised that a group of scientists from the Tunghai University and the National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan found that "[u]sing weight-loss supplements may produce unintended consequences on dietary self-regulation." I mean, don't we all know someone who succumbed to the psychological liberation when he or she was using a weight-loss supplement? Yes, we do!  Is it any wonder that weight loss pills suck, if the experiment Yevvon Y. Chang and Wen-Bin Chiou conducted confirmed what we expected altogether? You can learn more about fat burners at the SuppVersity Capsaicin as a Thermogenic Piperine vs. Silbutramine New Ephedra Sources? Inflammation = True Fat Burner Fat Oxidation ￪￪ w/ Caffeine High Calcium Diets = Fat Burner? After consuming a purporte...

A neat threesome, anyone? A threesome is always quite entertaining, especially, when it's one that can help you (a) increase your stamina, (b) boost your sprint performance, and (c) decrease your fasting insulin levels by 10%. Ok, I have to admit it will probably not suffice if you only read the following paragraph, but buying 40g of galactose, playing a couple of psycho-games on yourself and the adherence to the regular exercise program you are already performing anyway (right!?) is something you will probably manage to do, as well. 40g galactose before a workout will increase your stamina (O'Hara. 2014) -- Basically that is already the main finding of a recent study by John P. O'Hara et al... well, aside from the fact that the same dose of glucose didn't produce similar benefits - but let's tackle one thing after the other... The researchers evaluated the effects of the pre-exercise (30 minutes) ingestion of galactose (Gal) or glucose (Glu) on endurance c...

Image 1: How free is your "free choice" really when it comes to when, what and how much you eat or consume? Are you controlled by cunningly placed triggers and cues? One, if not the most important ideal of the modern Western world is (supposedly) "freedom"! *hold the obligatory minute of silence, here* And still, the whole system would probably collapse in no time, if we were not all slaves to a whole host of endogenous and exogenous constraints, restraints and compulsions, which influence our public and private behavior and decisions. From the shirts we wear at a club to the foods we buy at the grocery, more often than not, our choices have little to do with the deliberate decision the term seems to imply. Take the obese 300lbs person from across the street for example - does he chose to eat his family pizza alone in front of his telly, when he comes home from the office? What about the bag of chips? Did he chose to eat the whole bag, before he gets up from th...

Image 1 ( myrtlebeachalternatives ): This picture captures the essence of Qigong artistically. Adelfo took the word "holiday" to the heart and totally forgot about his blogpost, today. I guess this means I will have to pull something of interest out of my hat (or head?) and what would be better suited than a post about taking timeouts, well sort off... In a recently published paper in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine , R.T. Ho and his (or her?) colleagues from the University of Hong Kong report on the truly amazing progress a group of chronic fatigue patient s made in the course of a 4-months Qigong intervention program (Ho. 2012). Qigong means "life energy cultivation" and that's exactly what it does - it helps you cultivate the life energy that's so easily lost in our hectic and allegedly productive lives. The participants in the intervention study took part in supervised Qigong exercise training (Wu Xing Ping Heng Gong, 五行平衡功) twice a week for...