SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Tribulus terrestris extracts - While the boxing gloved protect a boxers fists from damage, the TT extracts may protect his muscle. Recent study yields surprising results and insights into the performance enhancing effects of TT and why it may have failed to work in previous studies. Yes, it's (a) not a rodent study, (b) published in a peer-reviewed journal, (c) not sponsored by a supplement company (but the Chinese government), and was (d) conducted not just with untrained and mostly sedentary or "recreational trained" human beings, but even with fifteen highly trained male boxers (national second-level athletes, 2–3 years of training) who were recruited from the boxing team of Shanghai University of Sport Affiliated School of Sports in China. This alone makes the latest study from the Shanghai University of Sport newsworthy. The fact that the scientists actually observed significant and practically effects when they 'fed' their subjects 1.25g of a standardize...

If you feel totally wasted after every workout, I have bad news for you. In the two-a-day studies at hand the rest between the first and second workout was only 2h! Not exactly much time to recover, but the idea is to "train low" (on glycogen) on the second workout. It sounds like madness or something for the "enhanced" athletes, but an older scientific study I recently dug out, accidentally, says that "training twice every second day may be superior to daily training" (Hansen. 2005). When I tried to learn more about this topic, though, I had to realize that the evidence is scarce. Similar results have been presented by Yeo et al (2008), though, albeit for trained triathletes and cycling. In their study, Yeo and colleagues determined the effects of a cycle training program in which selected sessions were performed with low muscle glycogen content on training capacity and subsequent endurance performance, whole body substrate oxidation during submaxim...

About to go for a walk? Have fructose for breakfast to keep the hunger at bay. I know very well that fructose is the nutritional boogyman of the 21st century, but avoiding it altogether is about as unwarranted as consuming it by the pound is unhealthy. A recent study from the  Department of Health and Physical Education at the  Hong Kong Institute of Education  and the  Department of Sports Science and Physical Education  at the  Chinese University of Hong Kong  does now show a new, hitherto unknown, or at least under-appreciated effect of fructose: The ingestion of a fructose containing, albeit not fructose only (not tested, though) breakfast will significantly reduce the desire to eat that will usually rise sharply after a 60 minute bout of "cardio" training in form of walking at 50% of one's individual VO2max. Learn more about fructose at the SuppVersity Bad Fructose not so Bad, After All! Learn its Benefits. Fructose From Fruit is N...

Not allowing young athletes to lift weights may in fact increase, not decrease, their injury risk and hamper their recovery. I am not sure why, but people won't stop inventing new reasons why professional athleticism would be bad for adolescents. One of the more recently heard claims is that early resistance training will lead to a "non-uniform adaptation of muscle and tendon in young athletes" that may "result[] in increased tendon stress during mid-adolescence" (Mersmann. 2015). In a recent longitudinal study Mersmann et al. investigated the development of the morphological and mechanical properties of muscle and tendon of volleyball athletes in a time period of 2 years from mid-adolescence to late adolescence and the results are quite unambiguous. Read previous True or False!? Articles at the SuppVersity You Cannot Consume too Much Whey?! Caffeine and Creatine Don't Mix, do They?! Creatine is Better Taken After Workouts!? Low Fat fo...

Yes, that's how real cinnamon look like. It does not grow as powder in plastic boxes on trees as I suspect the members of the generation McBurgerSubway believe ;-) No, this is not  absolutely new. In fact this is just "another" SuppVersity  articles on the anti-diabetic effects of cinnamon, but I promise it's going to be the most comprehensive one. One that discusses the currently available evidence from human trials, as well as the things we know and believe to know about how cinnamon acts its anti-diabetic magic qualitatively and quantitatively. Before I even go into further details, though, I would like to address one of the "cinnamon myths" that says that only the highly expensive Ceylon or Sri Lankan Cinnamon would do the trick, while the commonly sold Cinamon cassia would be useless or even dangerous due to its high (and in fact toxic) coumarin content. Trying to improve your blood glucose management? Learn how at the SuppVersity Protei...