SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Figure 1: Molecular structure of dihydrotestosterone (DHT) (from Wikipedia) I assume jogging is not what crosses your mind, when somebody is talking about "manly" exercises!? DHT, the acronym for dihydrotestosterone , on the other hand, is what experts like Dr John Crisler (from allthingsmale.com) hold responsible for all things male. So, if, as a recent study ( Aizawa. 2011 ) published in the Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine reports, running on a treadmill for 30 minutes, 5 times a week increased dihydrotestosterone levels in skeletal muscle of male rats, it is pretty likely that moderate jogging can trigger similar hormonal changes in men and thus render them "more manly". What Aizawa et al. found was that an increase in "mRNA expressions of 3[beta]-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (HSD), aromatase cytochrome P450 (P450arom) and 5[alpha]-reductase in the skeletal muscle of trained rats" if compared to sedentary controls. These c...

This relevant for all of you - regardless of whether you can or cannot spare the time: Tune in live and listen to me @ Carl Lenore's Super Human Radio to learn that amino acids are far more than just the building blocks of the proteins of your body... Listen live to SHR @ 12:00PM ET Beyond Building Blocks: Amino Acids for Super Humans. (update: click here to download podcast ) Metabolic, Endocrine and Neuroendocrine Functions of Amino Acids In the first installment of the series we will lay the foundations. What is an amino acid? What does it do, but being incorporated into proteins? How do we get (enough) amino acids? What on earth does our body do, once those little nitrogen containing molecules enter our blood streams? As always, I will do my best to provide relevant examples and relate the theory to practical advice. The magic of individual amino acids will be tackled in the shows to come. Update: The show is now available for download .

In view of everything, you as regular visitor of the SuppVersity have learned about nutrition and exercise science, you probably would not need the results of the following study, to know better than to consume a sugary pre-workout drink, if your main goal is to lose fat and get ripped. Just in case, however, your friends or relatives belong to the group of unconvertible carbohydrate addicts, who still (want to?) believe that "fat burns in the fire of carbohydrates", printing this blogpost and sticking it to their gymbag may in fact turn out to be a "fat burning" endeavor... Figure 1: Respiratory Exchange Ratio (RER) following the consumption of a  low carb (LC) or low fat (LF) mealt; remember: a lower RER is associated with a higher percantages of fatty acid oxidation / lower carbohydrate oxidation (data adapted from Gregory. 2011 ) Sara Gregory and her colleagues from the Department of Exercise Science and Sports Studies at Springfield College recently publ...

Maybe you have been wondering that I am posting relatively little information about the stilbenoid resveratrol . And you may also be surprised to hear that this is not despite, but rather because the grape polyphenol is among the current favorites of each and every lab-coated petri-dish attendant, who either has or is just in the process of obtaining his PhD. There is a massive amount of rather useless studies on its in vitro effects on dubious cancer cells and a whole bunch of other data without practical relevance published day by day. Studies such as the one Lasa et al. ( Lasa. 2011 ), which actually contribute to our understanding of how resveratrol actually works, on the other hand, are scarce. Figure 1: Increases in hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL) and adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL) mRNA levels (=gene activity) in two different human adipocyte cell lines (SGBS vs. 3T3-L1); data adapted from Lasa. 2011 In their study, which is going to be published in the Journal o...

Finally, a study ( Roschel. 2011 ) related not only to nutrition and supplementation for exercise, but to exercise itself! The respective paper was published in the Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism on April, 13th, and reports the results of a study on the effects of exercise velocity on markers of muscle hypertrophy, specifically, Akt/mTOR/p70 s6k . Figure 1: Schematic illustration of the mTOR signaling cascade ( Betz, Charles. Wikipedia ) Roschel, et al. had 20 subjects, "not enrolled in any form of strength training for at least 6 months prior to the study and without any history of musculoskeletal disorders" perform 5 sets of 8 repetitions of an eccentric knee extension exercise at either a slow (20°·s –1 ; ES) or fast execution speed (210°·s –1 ; EF) . After the workout, biopsies were taken from vastus lateralis at three timepoints: baseline (B), immediately after (T1), and 2 h after (T2). The results did not confirm the scientists' working hyp...

Did you ever want to know how your favorite fruit would perform in the most prestigious disciplines of the "Fruit Olympics", i.e. antioxidant capacity and phenolic content ? Yes? Well, I guess a group of researchers from China has just done you a favor... Xu et al. ( Xu. 2011 ) analysed the antioxidant capacity by Ferric-reducing antioxidant power ( FRAP ) assays and the free radical scavenging capacities by Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity assays ( TEAC ) and found: Seven fruits had the strongest antioxidant activities among 62 tested fruits [...] they were Chinese date, pomegranate, guava, sweetsop, persimmon, Chinese wampee and plum (sanhua) . In addition, olive showed the strongest free radical scavenging ability , and cherry and pineapple also had high antioxidant capacities. Because of their high antioxidant activities, it could be speculated that these fruits will be beneficial for the diseases caused by oxidative stress. An interesting observation is that t...

Figure 1: Cordyceps sinensis (photo NW Botanicals ) Would you have suspected that the parasitic relationship between the fungus and the larva of the ghost moth would turn out to be a powerful ergogenic? No? Well, what if I told you that this very "relationship" is the resource of which the commonly known fungus Cordyceps sinensis is derived? Ok, I see you know this one... A very recent study ( Kumar. 2011 ) which was published in the  Journal of Ethnopharmacology confirmed earlier study results that have attracted supplement companies to this inconspicuous, yet highly ergogenic fungus from the order of the Hypocreales. The Indian scientists investigated the effect of 200 mg/kg of air-dried cordiceps powder (human equivalent approx. 33mg/kg) to rats for 15 days . The 24 rats were randomized to one out of four groups: control (C), CS supplemented without exercise (CSS), exercise (E, swimming exercise 1h/day without load) and CS supplemented along with exercise (C...