SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Now you tell me there was nothing magic about milk (poster from the CMPB "Got Milk" campaign) If you actually made it to the end of yesterday's podcast and were not so bored that you fell asleep (specifically during the passage where Carl was praising me to the skies ;-) you will already know that today's summary is above all going to provide you with some figures, suggested reads and, of course, references. Hey, David! Is there something magic about milk? I would also like to emphasize that both explanations I presented to explain the absence of beneficial effects of full-fat dairy and the non-significant detrimental effects of full-fat milk, yesterday, are just as the word implies "hypothetical" and I am not claiming to be sure that any of them fully explains the high vs. low fat difference. To be honest, I would be flabbergast if only one of them was the - meaning the only - reason that full-fat milk consumption does not yield the same reduction...

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...

Chi Latte is a sugar bomb, but no healthy, antioxidant beverage. Over the past couple of weeks it has become relatively quiet in the "tea is good for your health", "tea makes you lose weight magically", "tea reduces diabetes risk", etc. column of the science news here at the SuppVersity, and in general. Ok, you still got your daily "green tea reduces inflammation study", but let's face it. That's boring. What is interesting, however, are the results of a recent study that's about to be published in Food Chemistry (Korir. 2013). In this very paper, a group of researchers from the Egerton University in Kenya, the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in East and Central Africa in Uganda and the Tea Research Foundation of Kenya report that... Adding milk or sweeteners to your tea will reduce its antioxidative capacity And the effects the researchers observed in vitro and in vivo, were pretty significant, as y...

Type II diabetes and insulin resistance has long become an issue for lean individuals as well. But can you really abuse your "pump supplement" as a means to stash away your post-workout carbs at a significantly increased pace? Statements like "XY boosts" and figures like "+30%" are real attention-grabbers. I mean 200mg/dl glucose vs. 300mg/dl glucose after a 2g/kg glucose load that must certainly be significant, right? Well, as always, there are exceptions to the rule, but I can reassure you: it's not the case with the latest study from the College of Medicine at the University of Cincinnati (Clemmensen. 2013). How I know that? Well the I wrote about the real world significance of the increased glucose clearance, as well as the brown-adipose-tissue building and white adipose tissue burning effects of arginine, previously (see " Arginine: BAT Builder and WAT Killer " & " Arginine Enriched Biscuits for Diabetics "). Thus, th...

Training "on" D-Aspartic Acid is like training on guar gum. Busted! D-Aspartic acid aka DAA is another "natural anabolic agent" that turns out to be more of a revenue- than a hormone-booster with muscle building prowess. And you know what? It took Darryn S. Willoughby and Brian Leutholtz from the  Exercise and Biochemical Nutrition Lab, Human Performance, and Recreation at Baylor University exactly 28 days and 20 apparently healthy, recreationally active, resistance trained (3x per week or more in the past year) men with an average age of 22.8 ± 4.67 years (BMI 24.65 kg/m²) to prove that d-aspartic acid (DAA) supplements belong to this never-ending list of supplemental non-starters. Things that work: 28 days, 4x per week heavy resistance training; things that don't work DAA capsules Better supplement w/ "K" than with DAA - potassium (K)  (in German it's Kalium)! Potassium vs. Diet-Inducded Insulin Resis. In the Lime Light: The Ill ...

No, your muscles are not the primary gas guzzler in your body. The problems arising as a consequence of a diet-induced reduction of the metabolic rate are among the recurring themes here at the SuppVersity . For a good reason, as I would say. After all, they are the #1 reason for weight loss plateaus and the yoyo effect. Although the notion that "calories count" is not very popular these days there is no debating that an energy deficit is a necessary prerequisite for weight loss. The problem however is that you cannot determine your energy balance with a calculator, a body fat caliper and a scale. There are way too many other factors involved - the amount, macro- and micronutrient composition, timing, frequency, volume, texture and palatability of the ood you eat, stress, hormonal factors, etc - all of which will affect the amount of energy you expend and subvert the results of over-simplistic calories-in vs. calories-out calculations. What are the most notorious gas g...

We all know and follow the fundamental rules of the marketplace, but when we are in the gym we tend to forget about profit maximization and the minimal investment, maximal returns principle. It is quite funny that our gyms are among the few places in our economy-driven society where people tend to forget about the fundamental rules of the marketplace. The way many of weekend-warriors and fitness junkies train is in fact the exact opposite of the all-governing principle of profiteering. In their desperate and in many cases misinformed efforts to maximize their muscle gains, fat loss or overall fitness, many of them fail to realize that the "optimal" training strategy is not the one that leads to suboptimal results at a maximal level of exhaustion. Think about the 2h cardio sessions in the non-existent fat burning zone, for example, or the two hour resistance training workout with 10 different exercises per body part. Even if you don't belong to this group of miserabl...