SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Image 1: Nature vs. Pharma. Leavs and seeds vs. chemicals - guess who will win! I have been wondering for quite some time now, why I, as a resident of the European Union, do still have to use my hair-care products to sweeten my tea, my yogurt, or whatever else , if I do want to avoid artificial sweeteners or the good, or I should say, "bad" old table sugar... for those of you who are now wondering how hair-care products relate to my sweet tooth - here in Europe, Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni has still not been approved as a food additive, so that the myriad of health-food shops carrying respective products simply relabel them as "hair-care" or "cosmetic products, not intended for internal application"... and as a obedient citizen I would, of course, never even remotely consider ingesting a product such as stevia that is so utterly natural and genetically unmodified that it must be harmful ;-) A pros pos harmful: As it turns out, stevia could in fact be ...

A recently published study by Colin Willborn et al. ( Willborn. 2010 ) found that supplementation with 500mg of the purported aromatase inhibitor Trigonella foenum graecum did increase total testosterone +6.57% and bioavailable testosterone +12.26%  over an eight week period. Yet, the ingredient that is part of several commercially sold " muscle builders " did not increase lean body mass in thirty resistance-trained men. Figure 1: Body-fat loss from baseline testing (T1) through Week 8 (T3), mean Delta ± SD. What it did do, however, was to support a reduction in body fat (-2.0%), beyond the one seen in the placebo group (cf. figure 1). This is particularly interesting, because the hormonal data shows that the extract in fact failed to block aromatization effectively; this may be concluded from the fact, that apart from the rise in testosterone, there was a minor increase in estrogen, as well. In view of the lack of strength gains No significant changes were detected amo...