SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

While milk with honey is better than milk with glucose (Jalilolghadr 2011), it won't improve - if anything mess - with your sleep quality when it's consumed ≤ 1h before bedtime - noteworthy: the same goes for most foods, though. While I have chosen it as the title image for today's SuppVersity  "Sleep Supplement Special", there's actually surprisingly little (not to say "no") evidence that the notorious hot milk with honey will actually improve your sleep significantly. That's in contrast to a number of supplements that are discussed in a recent review by scientists from the Northwestern University; a review that highlights  both , the short-comings of the existing research on dietary supplements for insomnia  and  encourage health practitioners "to explore existing resources and partner with patients to understand their goals and advise on safe and effective use of dietary supplements" (Ring 2017). Studies related to sleep an...

If "that's you" and "that's you" more than four times a year, you better read today's SuppVersity article and learn which Flavenoids may reduce your number of upper respiratory tract infections into the normal range of 2-4 per year. The number of purported anti-URTI (=anti U pper R espiratory T ract I nfection) agents is unquestionable higher than the average number of yearly upper respiratory infections of the average US citizen, which is 2-4. Which of these usually natural agents actually have the ability to protect you from at least one of the previously cited 2-4 infections, however, is far from being obvious. The scientific evidence is ambiguous and confusing and therefore I am happy that researchers from the  University of Auckland  and colleagues from the College of Sport and Exercise Science at the Victoria University  have recently conducted a large-scale meta-analysis of no less than 387 studies - ok, that's the number they began with...

Tea will naturally contain both theanine and caffeine, but will it work, as well as supplemental theanine and caffeine? While everybody knows caffeine (see last SV article comparing caffeine to coffee ), theanine aka L-γ-glutamylethylamide or N5-ethyl-L-glutamine, an amino acid analogue of the proteinogenic amino acids L-glutamate and L-glutamine, is less well known, but as a recent study shows not less potent when it comes to its effects on cognition and neurophysiological measures of selective attention aka "focus" on a task / object (Kahathuduwa. 2016). You want to know why the researchers from the Universities of Peradeniya, Kelaniya  and the Texas Tech University  know that? Let's take a look at what the researchers did and why they conclude that the effects of caffeine & theanine add up. You can learn more about caffeine at the SuppVersity For Caffeine, Timing Matters! 45 Min or More? Coffee - The Good, Bad & Interesting Three Cups of C...

Caffeinated soft drink, coffee or tea, caffeine alone or caffeine + l-theanine what's going to yield the desired afterburner effect for your brain? The answer to this question came out probably less straight forward than you'd expected. "L-theanine, coffee or both? What's going to get your brain going?" That's the question form the title of today's SuppVersity article and it's a question with an astonishingly simple answer:  Both ! I guess you will be well aware that both caffeine and l-theanine have scientific evidence to support their usefulness as cognitive enhancers (Quinlan. 2000; Hindmarch. 2000; Nathan. 2006). Their interactions however have not been studied that extensively. It's thus worth to take a closer look at the data Hira Zameer et al. collected for their most recent paper in the International Journal of Endorsing Health Science Research - data on the effects these agents can have on the cognitive performance and reaction ...