SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

In 1990 Luft et al. were able to show that, unlike regular salt, of sodium bicarbonate does not trigger an increase in blood pressure - the exact opposite is the case, even if you don't sweat like an athlete. If you follow the news and the SuppVersity Classic  posts on the SuppVersity Facebook Page  it has probably been only two to three weeks since you've read the last post and/or article about the pH buffer. If you belong to those SuppVersity readers , however, who devour only the articles at www.suppversity.com, you will probably have asked yourselves: "Where on earth are the articles about bicarbonate, wasn't that one of Adel's favorites?" Well, guess what: I have been asking myself a similar question when I reviewed the most recent tables of contents of pertinent journals - there was no bicarbonate study to be seen... until, a few days ago, at least. You can learn more about bicarbonate and pH-buffers at the SuppVersity Caffeine + Bicarb Mak...

Hillariously sweet, super cheap, and surprisingly effective: glucose! While most of you will probably already have discarded the notion that you can only lose weight if you eat a diet with an extremely low GI (on a side note: Taubes' own study falsified his "insulin theory of obesity", recently ), the notion that the ingestion of high glycemic index foods before exercise could ruin your performance, because your glucose levels, after an initial spike, will plummet and you will crash, still looms large. With that being said, athletes around the world have, somewhat paradoxically, stuck to complex carbs before competition only to then fuel their performance with extremely sugary intraworkout bars, gels and drinks. Are you a workout junkie? Try bicarbonate or other pH-buffers Caffeine & Bicarb = Perfect Match Build Bigger Legs W/ Bicarbonate HIIT it Hard W/ NaCHO3 Creatine + BA = Perfect Match Bicarb Buffers Creatine Instant 14% HIIT Boost W...

Right vs. wrong supps can make a victory or defeat difference of >90%. I've written about the individual response to caffeine and bicarbonate before. To tackle both of these ergogenic supplements I can actually recommend, however, based on a single study that as just been published in the  Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism  is news. The study was conducted at the Derby University's   Department of Life Sciences, Sport, Outdoor & Exercise Science (Higgins. 2016) and evaluated the effects of ingesting sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) or caffeine individually or in combination on high-intensity cycling capacity. In a counterbalanced, crossover design, 13 healthy, noncycling trained males (age: 21 ± 3 years, height: 178 ± 6 cm, body mass: 76 ± 12 kg, peak power output (Wpeak): 230 ± 34 W, peak oxygen uptake: 46 ± 8 mL·kg−1·min−1) performed a graded incremental exercise test, 2 familiarisation trials, and 4 experimental trials. You can learn more about...

With the publication of Learsi's latest paper the list of things metformin can do for you has just gotten been expanded with another item: Doping! You will probably remember my article about the potential, but unproven ergogenic effects of AMPK mimetics ( read it ). Well, as it is often the case, a new study is released only days after you've published a review of the existing literature. Oftentimes that's not really relevant, but in the case of the latest study from the  Federal University of Alagoas  this may be different. After all, we are dealing with a human study  in  ten healthy, physically active, but non-athletic subjects with a mean (±SD) maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max) o 38.6 ± 4.5 mL/kg per min who performed (i) an incremental test; (ii) six submaximal constant workload tests at 40%-90% V O2max; and (iii) two supramaximal tests (110% V O2max). All tests were performed twice once with a placebo supplement and once with 500mg of metformin. Both, the pl...

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: If you are into running, ladies, beta alanine is for you ;-) Those of you who make sure that they are getting their highly educative daily dose of the SuppVersity *rofl* will be aware that today's blogpost is, once again, dealing with beta alanine. Contrary to yesterday's post , which dealt with its pharmacokinetics, we are today going to have another look at what kind of real world performance outcomes the average (female!) physical culturist can expect from taking at least 3.2g of the beta amino acid per day - a dosage that has been shown in previous studies to increase intra-muscular carnosine levels by 27–39% in fast- and slow-twitch muscle fibers, respectively ( Baguet. 2009 ). And though I do not want to spoil things, I can already tell you that the results make it quite clear why beta alanine is not the next creatine . Somehow ergogenic, yet not really antioxidant For the study that was conducted at the Applied Physiology Laboratory at the University ...

XS Energy Drink. 0 sugar, only 83mg caffeine. Probably tasty, but not ergogenic. If you believe the marketing campaigns of supplement manufacturers (and, of lately energy drink producers), performance - just as about everything in our society - is for sale (in this case at the local GNC). You, as a regular visitor to the SuppVersity are yet aware that supplements, if they do work at all, usually provide a rather minute performance increase that - and here is where the magic happens - may nevertheless decide a head-to-head finish in your favor. It is thus very expedient that XSBlast refers to this X-tra S-mall advantage of their product line in their company name already... wait! You think they imply "XS" as in eXceSs? Well, I guess in the end it does not really matter, because their XS® Energy Drink, a mixture of 83mg caffeine, 1.5 g taurine, 6.0 mg Vitamin B6, 294 µg Vitamin B12, 10 mg Vitamin B5, 20 mg Vitamin B3, 24mg Sodium, 25mg Potassium, as well as undisclosed amo...