SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Image 1: The EPIC project unites scientists from all over Europe ( EPIC, IARC. 2011 ) I don't know whether it is a good idea, for an anti-epidemiologist like me (I mean, come on, epidemiology vs. controlled experiments is like astrology vs. astronomy) to post this, but a 13-year (1992-2005) meta-analysis ( Romaguera. 2011 ) of data from 48,631 men and women from 5 countries participating in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study is probably as good as as epidemiology can ever get and with scientists from 12 different institutes all over Europe, there is at least some hope that the results of their investigation into the association of food groups/items consumption "on prospective annual changes in 'waist circumference for a given BMI' (WC BMI ), prox for abdominal adiposity". Unfortunately the first of the typical shortcomings of EPIC studies (pun intended) like this becomes obvious in the previous citation, already...

Image 1: Tetrahydrogestrinone aka THG, aka "The Clear" and the bone of contention in the "BALCO Scandal" could probably have been identified years before, if the WADA detectives already had the new  mammalian androgen responsive reporter gene assays at their disposal. As mentioned in part 1 of this post (cf. Beyond Vida's Book, Part 1/2 ), Houtman and the other scientists from BioDetection Systems B.V. and the Institute of Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, did not exactly want to provide juicers with data on which steroids may cause unexpected side-effects, when they conducted their study in 2008. The original idea was to demonstrate that their technology would be able to identify even those androgens, which have hitherto not been classified as illegal substances - so called "designer steroids", which would not turn up in the chemical–analytical approaches combining gas chromatography (GC) or liquid chromatography (LC) s...

Image 1: Data on the interaction of androgens with the progesterone receptor is scarce, this study has it! This is only blogpost #499, yet at the same time, its a premiere! It's the first time that I am aware of that something you read at the SuppVersity has been covered by the "competition" before. Kudos to my dutch friends from ergogenics.org , who dug up a 2008 paper by Corine J. Houtman et al. ( Houtman. 2008 ) with extensive CALUX(R) bioassay data on the androgen, progesterone, estrogen and corticosteroid receptor response to allmost all popular steroids - it would probable be the "A", as in 4-androstenediol (the "good old 4-AD"), to "Z", if there actually was a common androgen with a "z" as its first character. Note! Due to the fact that the sheer amount of data from this study exceeds the time I can spend on analyzing and compiling it for you, today, this is going to be a two part series , with the second part on wh...

Image 1: Colostrum and other milk products Milky muscle builders or murky allergens? (image from SportRevue 6/2010) Question from Peter Art (via Facebook): Do you still have a plan to release a write up about colostrum or it may be delayed? I am just asking. Answer Dr. Andro: In fact it got delayed, the delay got delayed again and now there is so much delay that I felt like further delaying the write-up would border pathological procrastination... Instead of citing the three existing studies on colostrum, however, I decided to do a more comprehensive " Ask Dr. Andro " segment on the powers and perils of the milky mammalian life-elixir that has been used and later abused (I am referring to the modern way of food processing here) by generations of human beings and is still considered as an "evolutionary inappropriate" foodstuff by some. "Muscle building magic happens, when you put the right stack together", says Carl Lenore in a spot for IronMag...