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Leucine Only Tops Ergogenic Effects of BCAAs: Increased Alanine Cycle Activity Spares Muscle Glycogen, Boosts Endurance Performance - BCAAs Have Opposite Effect

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Alanine is the liver's favorite gluconeogenic amino acid and leucine appears to increase its usage. Being among the first to learn about the "Glucose-Repartitioning Effect of Iso-Leucine" in February 2013 ( read up on it ), you, as SuppVersity reader, belong to the selected few who know that valine and isoleucine may be more than unnecessary props in the leucine-powered BCAA show. With the recent publication of a rodent study from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil (Campos-Ferraz. 2013), however, it looks as if you had to revise your perspective on the purportedly auxiliary BCAAs - at least, with respect to their ability to reduce fatigue, and muscle and liver-glycogen degradation, in trained rats and possibly (!) humans. So what did the Brazilian researchers do? Basically, the idea Campos-Ferraz et al. had in mind, when they came up with their 8 week exercise + 2 week supplementation protocol (see Table 1 ) was to ... Table 1: Exercise progression; suppl. ...
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The Oiling of the Liver: The Good & Bad Short- & Long-Term Effects of Tocotrienol + Carotenoid Laden Red Palm Olein, Regular Palm-, Corn- and Refined Coconut Oil

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I would not expect "red palm olein wonders", but more RPO and less corn oil in the American diet may at least buffer the liver disease burden in the US (the figure is based on data provided by the American Liver Foundation) On Turesday, November 19, 2013, you've learned from a study by Subermaniam et al. about the "anti-rust" effects of coconut oil (if you missed that, you can catch up here ), today, we are going back to Malaysia and the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and the results of another team of researchers to learn about the effects the various oils have on the "oiling of the liver" (Dauqan. 2013). I guess most of you will remember my previous comments about the critical role of the liver (and its health or disease) in the development of the metabolic syndrome ( read it up ). It is thus by no means irrelevant, whether the chronic ingestion of a certain type of oil will result in MDA levels of 92µmol/g or  27.3µmol/g. Boring!? No, rathe...
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Arginine Blunts Growth Hormone Response to Resistance Training: Will the -41% Reduction in Post-Workout Growth Hormone Release Hamper Your Strength & Size Gains?

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Arginine-based pre-workout products are more popular with guys than with girls. Could this be the reason that only women complain about unlovedly rapid muscle gains? ;-) No, this is not a typo! The verb in the headline of today's SuppVersity article really is "to blunt", as in "to neutralize partially" (OED Online 2013). I have to admit that I was also surprised, when I spotted the study over in the "ahead of print" section of the International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism . Unless Forbes, Harber and Bell, of whom you will learn later that they've already conducted another 'arginine study', messed up, the results of their most recent experiment do yet leave little doubt: Arginine, an amino acid that is used to test the function of the GH-releasing somatotropic cells within the lateral wings of the anterior pituitary, does - when it is administered at a dosage of 0.075 g·kg-1 body mass right before an acute bout of...
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Rustless Hearts: Adding 15-20ml of Virgin Coconut Oil to Your Diet May Counter the Oxidative Stress From Partially Oxidized Fats and Keep Your Heart Rust-Free

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Could a daily dose of virgin coconut oil really be all it takes to escape the #1 leading cause of death (CDC data) - despite French fries and co? Originally I wanted to post the results of this study from the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia as a short news item in the Facebook News . Then I decided that it may actually be worth to allow you to have a look a the surprisingly pronounced effects the addition (not replacement!) of 3-4 tablespoons of virgin coconut oil had on the in vivo lipid oxidation levels of rodent hearts in the course of this 4 months study at the end of which the researchers did not simply measure the systemic, but the more significant local malondialdehyde (MDA) levels. With the direct analysis of the presence of lipid oxidation production in the heart being a more reliable indicator of whether or not the changes the researchers observed in the study at hand are physically relevant... Ah, I don't want to give it all away. So let's rather take a look a...
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Sugar Sweetened Beverages & Total Energy Intake: Studies Suggest That Normal-, Overweight & Obese Women CAN Compensate for 168 Additional Sugar Calories Per Day

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Usually they are touted as the reason for weight gain: Sugar-containing soft drinks like the Scottish brew Irn Bru . In the study at hand, however, they helped 41 obese women lose weight - how come? Despite the fact that it is not the first of it's kind, I decided that the paper Roy Nelson sent me the a couple of days ago may still be worth being covered in a brief article. Marie Reid and her colleagues were after all able to show that we can, theoretically and without conscious effort, compensate for the additional energy intake from sugar-sweetened beverages. As I already mentioned, this is not the first study Reid and her colleagues from the Hull, Ulster and Herriot-Watt Universities in the UK conducted, but it is the first one where the subjects, obese women, with previous diet experience, came right from the subgroup of the population of whom we simply assume that their weight problems would (partly) result from these "empty calories". Would the women "r...
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Beta Alanine Fails to HIIT Back: No Increased Training Effect in Response to Nine 4x4 Min HIIT Workouts W/ BA Preload, But Evidence in Favor of Chronic Supplementation

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Contemporary scientific evidence suggest that you have to pick the right type of (short intense) exercise if you don't want your beta alanine supplement to end up as another "false starter" in your closet. In the past couple of weeks beta alanine (BA) has gotten some bad press, here at the SuppVersity . While some conspiracy theorists may already have smelled a personal vendetta of a sodium bicarbonate advocate like myself against its 'high tech competitor', the actual reason for the negative, or at least not necessarily exciting news is the exercise specificity of beta alanine (BA) supplementation. The most recent BA study from the  University of Bern and the Swiss Federal Institute of Sport in Switzerland and the Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden is yet another rather disappointing BA study to support my previous assertion that the benefits for the average gymrat are largely overblown. What did the researchers do As Gross et al. point out, t...
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TReaTing Diabesity With Testosterone!? If You Keep DHT in Check + Stay Away From Aromatase Inhibitors, It May Work

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It probably won't turn an overweight pre-diabetic into a fitness model, but a getting a TRT script has the potential of changing a man's physical and psychological health for the better. Despite the fact that more and more men recognize the benefits of supervised testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) and the bodybuilding and fitness community cherishes 'their BIG T' as the be-all-and-end-all, many medical practitioners look at the administration of exogenous androgens as a potential health hazard. I would even bet that it won't be difficult to find one or two MDs who would say that Patricia S. Juang et al.'s idea to administer testosterone to obese men with normal, but low baseline testosterone levels to improve their body composition and insulin sensitivity borders physical injury - and that irrespective of adjuvant 5α-reductase (dutasteride) or aromatase (anastrazole) inhibitor administration. TRT w/ or w/out aromatase or 5α-reductase inhibitor? It ...
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