SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Mixed news about nutrition, exercise, and supplementation. In the absence of game-changing nutrition, exercise, and supplementation science I decided to post one of the recently rare installments of the good old " on short notice " column at the SuppVersity . This installment of the " short news " features two plus one papers from the latest issue of "Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise"  and their, as of yet, unpublished "ahead of print" articles. While we'll start with a short discussion of the latest investigation into the accuracy (or rather usefulness) of your (old) Fitbit Charge 2.0 , I suspect that most of you will be more interested in the "training low [carb/glycogen]" study which is the first to quantify the (to be expected) increase in protein/amino acid requirements in those who avoid carbs to maximize the mitochondrial response to exercise (see "Maximizing Training-Induced Cellular Adaptation: T...

Think you cannot eat the whole pizza? Add salt - this should "help" with the hardest all-you-can-eat challenges. I am not telling you something new if I tell you that excess fat consumption has been linked to the development of obesity. I hope that it's also not news to you that the consistent association between high(er) fat intakes and weight gain in epidemiological studies cannot be reproduced in human studies where the diet is just high in fat and doesn't have the perfect "potato chips"-combination of fat and carbohydrate that has not just been proven to increase food intake, but also to have pro-addictive effects on the brain (Hoch. 2015). The fat to carbohydrate ratio Hoch et al. identified as a crucial determinant of snack food intake and brain reward responses in their 2015 study is yet not the only characteristic feature of potato chips. Learn more about the effects of your diet on your health at the SuppVersity Only Whey, Not Soy Work...

Salt reduction is for "hard-sweating" athletes not. Whenever I am browsing the latest studies, I see at least one of those hilarious "salt kills" papers citing official recommendations to reduce sodium intake, in order to lower your risk for hypertension, diabetes, stroke and what not. So, if everyone recommends it and scientists write about, it must be true, right? Well, I guess after reading today's SuppVersity article, you may question the way the average Westerner thinks: What the government suggests you should do is not always good for you. You, a decently lean & insulin sensitive individual who works out at least thrice a week, and someone who takes the stairs instead of the elevator at least every other day, may in fact put himself / herself at risk of hampering your workout performance and eventually even your health if you reduce your salt intake too much. Normal salt and sodium bicarbonate are not bad for athletes: The Hazards of Acid...

A single Triple Whopper or about six whole steaks, what do you chose to get >75% of the 2g/sodium per day the feds are telling you you should maximally consume on a daily basis? Today I felt kind of bored with covering only the latest studies. So I dug up one from 1999 that deals with the effects of dietary salt restriction on endothelial vasodilation (increased blood flow in the arteries) and insulin sensitivity by Ross D. Feldman and Nancy D. Schmidt. Yeah, the study is 14 years old, but when you've read today's SuppVersity article you'll probably still have learned something new - at least about "common wisdom". If you also listen to the SuppVersity Science Round-Up on the Super Human Radio Network , you should be aware that very different rules apply with respect to salt consumption for athletes and physical culturists on a whole foods diet and the average sedentary inhabitant of the Western obesity belt (check out past episodes of the Science Round-U...

It has not always been this way, but these days our beauty ideal has at least one potentially healthy feat: The tan! I don't know if you have been able to listen live to yesterday's in many ways "extraordinary" episode of the SuppVersity Science Round Up on Super Human Radio ( click here to download the podcast), but if you were , you may have made the same observation I did: Whenever you feel that you got more than enough time to get a task done or, in this case, a list of topics discussed, you start loiter, to go on tangents and to end up in interesting, yet in the end "off-topic" discussions about all and sundry or "Gott und die Welt" as people in Germany woul say (literally translated: "God and the world"). Personally, I enjoyed the less packed format of yesterday's show , though. What about you? Shall we aim to discuss less news items in the future and thus have time to discuss those we picked in more detail or do you pr...

Piglets would buy MSG food ;-) Mono-sodium glutamate (MSG) and the "Chinese restaurant syndrome", obesity and overeating are often thrown together into a single psedo-scientific crock pot with the result being a brew that's 50% hear-say, 40% fear and 10% science. The study we are going to look at today is unquestionably part of the latter ingredient and its results do stand in line with my previously stated concern "that MSG is one of those substances that is usually found in foods with a whole host of other nutrient-poor ingredients, anti-nutrients and proven obesogenic, pro-inflammatory and otherwise unhealthy substances and food additives" (" MSG, NFALD, Leaky Gut & Brain ... ") and could thus rather be corollary to, than causative of the toll the fast, convenient and nutrient deficient foods in the Western diet are taking on our health. Published ahead of print in the online version of the journal Amino Acids you will find a study by a...