Complete Meals & GI (Non-)Sense, Glutamine & GLP-1, Low Thyroid & High Trigs, N-3 vs. N-6 Interactions, Optimal DHA Dosage in Kids W/ NAFLD, Selenium vs. Aluminum Toxicity

While this is not the exact combination of chicken breast, mashed potatoes and salad in the first one of today's news items, it's more than likely that the predicted GI (and thus probably what you would find if you looked it up in a table) overestimates the postprandial glucose response to this meal by ~50% and says absolutely nothing about the insulin response. It looks like complex meals and over-simplified theories, don't mix well, at all ;-)

78% that's the SuppVersity Figure of the Week and actually part of the additional information I provided on one of today's On Short Notice items. It's the increase in coronary heart disease risk women with subclinical hypothyroidism have compared to their peers with spot on TSH levels of 0.5-1.5mU/L (Asvold. 2012). In conjunction with other more or less recent studies, such as Mitchel's, Hsu's and Sahai's paper confirming the previously often talked about but not well-established 2-fold increase in congenital hypothyroidism from the early 1990s to the first years of the new millennium (Mitchel 2011), the predictive value of high TSH levels in the first trimester (early pregnancy hypothyroidism) for adverse pregnancy outcomes (Schneuer. 2012), the 30% risk increase in all-cause mortality in both women and men with subclinical hypothyroidism Tseng et al. reported in their paper earlier this year or the impairment of spatial working memory (Yin. 2012), Asvold's results only add to the evidence that the potential pitfalls of an increasingly prevalent metabolic dysfunction may have been ignored way too long.

• More GI lovin' - On the menu today: Mashed potaoes with chicken, rapeseed oil or both (Hätönen. 2011) - I thought a mini-follow-up on Friday's post on the GI would be nice, 'cause some of you have not without reason been complaining that not everyone would eat pure white bread, like my students do.
  
  

  

  Figure 1: The real (=measured) GI of a meal does differ significantly from the theoretical prediction. So, even if the concept was worth bothering, the GIs of complete meals simply wrong, if they are not measured (Hötönen. 2011).

  Moreover, the mere fact that the scientists from the Department of Lifestyles and Participation at the National Institute for Health and Welfare in Helsinki, Finland, found that the addition of chicken breast, rapeseed oil and a salad, individually and in combination, had the GI of a meal containing six mashed potatoes (this was the parameter that was held constant) induced more than twofold changes in GI, with the addition of chicken breast having the greatest deviation from the predicted value in this group of 11 (initially 12) healthy subjects, three men and nine women, aged 36.2 (SD 14.1) years with a BMI of 21.3 (SD 1.7) kg/m² and normal glucose tolerance (see figure 1).
  
  Now given the fact that most data on the GI of complete meals has never been measured, but is actually based on the same predictions the scientists used, it stands to reason that...
  

  [...] this highlights the problems encountered when predicting the GI values of mixed meals. The protein com-ponent of the mixed meal evoked the largest insulinaemic responses and markedly increased the II of the mixed meal containing protein. However, introducing fat into the meal decreased the effect of protein on the insulinaemic responses (Hätönen. 2011)

  So, this does not simply bust the idea that you could calculate the GI, it does likewise show you that people who are still overtly scared of insulin (which is hillarious as long as you are insulin sensitive) are doing he exact wrong thing, when they make food-choices based on GI: Whey protein would in that case be in as much a no-go as simply eating a chicken breast with your mashed potatoes would be, because other than what most people believe, it does increase the insulin spike and thus reduce the glycemic index by allowing your body to clear the glucose more efficiently from the circulation.
  
  Suggested reads: The red box in the "Whey is More Insulinogenic than White Bread" post on the partitioning effects of BCAAs and yesterday's Facebook post on the anti-Alzheimer's effects of insulin.

• 

  Suggested read: Amino Acids for Super Humans the purported ergogenic effects of l-glutamine

  30g of oral glutamine have similar effects on GLP-1 as 75g of glucose (Greenfield. 2008) - Still a follow up on the GI discussion, I think you may be interested in. If you are someone who follows the questionable practice of ingesting large boluses of glutamine in the futile believe that this would increase your gains or speed up recovery, you may be pleased to hear that only 30g of oral l-glutamine produced an increase in the "Fat Burning Satiety Hormone GLP-1" (read more on GLP-1) that's on a gram to gram basis more pronounced than in response to insulin (0.41pmol/L per gram glucose vs. 0.75pmol/L per gram of glutamine; in 8 healthy subjects).
  
  Before you go and buy tons of glutamine, you should however consider that GIP, the pro-insulinogenic peptide and glucagon (ramps up gluconeogenesis in the liver) were likewise increased by the ingestion of this bolus of glutamine. It is therefore no wonder that glutamine has never been shown to be a "fat burner". Nonetheless, a 1999 study by Bowtell et al. would suggest that it may come handy to replenish liver and muscle glycogen after a workout (8g alone did increase glucose storage after a workout to a similar degree as a 18.5% glucose polymer solution and additional 25% glucose storage mostly in the liver, when both were coingested; cf. Bowtell. 1999). And if you don't care about that - your gut integrity could also be a reason to consider supplementation in the vicinity of particular strenuous or length workouts (see "Shedding Some Light on the Leaky Gut <> Exercise Connection") 

• Practical relevance? Based on data from a 12-year longitudinal study, even women with subclinical hypothyroidism have 76% risk for coronary heart disease (p = 0.005), than women with spot on TSH levels of 0.5-1.5mU/L (Asvold. 2012). And even women well within in the "normal range" (TSH of 1.5-2.4mU/l) have a 41% higher risk of heart disease, although this is only borderline significant (p = 0.08). For men the TSH level alone had not predictive value. Spec. w/ regards to T3, there are also reports of increased incidence of ventricular disfuntion (Cassetti. 2009), increased cardiac death in CVD patients (Iervasi. 2003) and impaired recovery after a stroke (Alevizaki. 2007). We do yet have to be cautious, here as "low T3" syndrome could as well be the consequence of overall inflammation and the association does not tell us anything about what's the chicken and the egg.
  Low thyroid, high triglyceride (Hashimoto. 2012) -- If you are wondering why on earth your trigs won't come down, it may well be that it's the absence of sufficient amounts of thyroid hormone. I a soon-to-be-published paper in Endocrinology scientists from the Gunma University in Maebashi, Gunma, Japan, report that thyroid hormone regulates the expression of a Stearoyl-CoA desaturase-1 (SCD-1) which controls the production of trigs from carbohydrates.
  
  Surprisingly the 75% increase due to hypothyroidism and the 75% decrease in SCD-1 mRNA expression (both compared to a euthyroid state) the scientists observed in rodents in response to the administration of T3 were not mediated by receptor binding, but simply as a down-stream effect of direct modifications of the SCD-1 gene promoter between -124 and -92 bp by T3.
  
  On a related side note: It is actually the last mentioned mechanism which is the major new finding in the study at hand and not the fact that T3 can reduce the conversion of carbohydrates to triglicerides that is the actual news here. After all, the latter is something scientist should know, but obviously like to forget about ever since the late 1999s (Waters. 1997)

• Omega-6 intake and not low omega-3 intake is the problem (Liou. 2007) -- Another older study, but one I am posting in response to a discussion some of you are having about omega-3 (ALA) intake in the post about safflower oil and DHT, because I simply feel that it's necessary to shed some light  on the erroneous assumption that by simply upping your intake of omega-3s or fish oil intake you could get away without decreasing your omega-6 intake, which in and out of itself will already increase the amount of anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids (supplementation of DHA can still be advisable, specifically if you are a vegetarian).
  
  

  

  Figure 2: Effect of 4 weeks of high (red) vs. 4 weeks of low (green) linoleic acid (n-6) intake on short and long-chain omega-3 plasma phospholipid content in healthy men (Liou. 2007)

  In 2007, already Liu et al. conducted a very interesting experiment in the course of which they fed healthy men diets with identical amounts of omega-3 fatty acids (1% of the total energy intake), but two different amounts of linoleic acid (omega-6) and found that the high omega-6 intake (10.1% vs. 3.8% of the total energy intake) alone decreased the total amount of EPA among the plasma phospholipids (the major long-chain omega-3 fatty acid in fish oil), not just the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6, in the blood of their 29-45 year-old subjects by more than 25% (see figure 2). The paradoxical effect on DHA, on the other hand, would warrant further investigation, and underlines how reliant we are - if anything on the intake of pure DHA, which dropped in consequence to the test diet, which was devoid of fatty fish, while the original diet of the non-vegetarian subjects had fish in it.
  
  In this context, I would also like to point out that DHA is exactly where real fish is far superior to fish oil caps, because it has a way more favorable EPA:DHA ratio than fish oil caps. Salmon fillets for example have - depending on the fatty acid source in the diet 8.5g : 13.8g, 4.4g : 7.8g and 1.5g : 2.9g (all values per 100g) when the feed contains fish oil, fish and rapeseed and fish + rapeseed and rapeseed, only.
  
  And while the ratios are similar regardless of the chow, the data from the Seierstad et al. clearly shows that the fatty acid content of the diets can induce almost 5-fold differences in terms of the total DHA content and the omega-3 to omega 6 ratio (fish oil diet: 6.5, fish oil + rapeseed: 1.7, rapeseed: 0.6) of salmon fillets (Seierstad. 2003). 

• It does not take much: 500mg DHA not more effective than 250mg  (Nobili. 2012) -- At least if it comes to its beneficial effects against liver steatosis in children  (mean age 11 years; BMI 26.6kg/m² and 24.4kg/m², in the low and high dose groups respectively with with NAFLD, the amount of DHA does not appear to be so important. According to the results of their 2-year registered controlled trial, both 250mg and 500mg of Docosahexaenoic acid lead to identical and profound reductions in the odds ratio of developing more severe steatosis during the study period.
  
  

  

  Figure 3: Odds ratio (comparing DHA supplement vs. placebo) of more severe vs. less severe liver steatosis determined every 6 months during the 24-month study period (Nobili. 2012)

  If you take a closer look at the data in figure 3, you will even have to concede that the lower dosage did a better job - while the mean odds ratios were only marginally lower in the 250mg DHA group, the extremely high standard deviations in the 500mg DHA would suggest that the 250mg dose appears to be more reliable. In this regard it may be interesting that the increase in serum DHA did mirror the dosages. With a 0.65% and 1.15% increase in DHA those were about 2x higher in the 20 boys and girls in the high dose group compared to the 20 kids in the control group who received a 290 mg linoleic acid germ oil supplement "placebo" (by the way, a monosaturated fatty acid placebo would have been more of a placebo than 290mg of omega-6)
  
  In view of the fact that the changes in triglycerides, ALT, HOMA-IR and BMI (which was not even different from the placebo group) were likewise identical, it does not appear as if anything that goes beyond the amount you will find in 2x cheap fish oil caps, or 10g even of the cheapest salmon fillet (see last paragraph of previous item) would be necessary to ellicit the anti-steatosis effect of fish oil - since those kids weight on average 55kg, an adult may want to add in another fish oil cap to get up to 360mg DHA per day or simply eat his fatty fish once or twice a week.

• Selenium ameliorates aluminum toxicity (Viezeliene. 2012) -- With the whole upheaval about the potential negative side effects of the aluminum in vaccines, the formerly overlooked yet well-known neurotoxic (Exley. 1992; Gupta. 2005), hepatotoxic (Abubakar. 2003; Perez. 2005) and nephrotoxic metal (Geyikoglu. 2012) has all of a sudden returned to the center of public interest.
  
  Therefore I thought that you will be interested in the results of a study that's going to be published in the next issue of the Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology - irrespective of whether you believe, like Tomljenovic and Shaw that
  

  "the possibility that vaccine benefits may have been overrated and the risk of potential adverse effects underestimated, has not been rigorously evaluated in the medical and scientific community"(Tomljenovic. 2011)

  After all, vaccines are not the only potential source of aluminum in our environment, so that the ameliorative effects (all values remained normal in the aluminum exposed group, while there were 30%, 55% and 42% increases in GSH in the animals who received only the selenium injection) the co-administration of supplemental selenium had on the GSH reductions in liver, kidney and brain of Balb/c mice weighing 20–25g who were exposed (by i.p. injection)to AlCl3 (25 mg Al(3+)/kg body mass) for 16h could be important, regardless of whether you do or don't intend to get vaccinated.
  
  

  

  There is more about selenium at the SuppVersity, for example on its pro-fertility effects, and its anti-corrosive effects in the brain.

  That said, the dosage requirements necessary to maintain healthy GSH levels are probably much lower than the hillarious (for a healthy individual) in the study at hand 1,250µg/kg body weight of sodium selenite (Na2SeO3). Considering the elemental selenium content in Na2SeO3, the latter would equal to ~3,650µg - unquestionably WAY too much (remember this was a one-time dosage that was specifically co-administered w/ the aluminum). Even the 'no observed adverse effect' level for a 70kg man of intake which is ~1000µg/d (Whanger. 1999) appears unnecessarily high, so that the consumption of a handful of brazil nuts once or twice a week and/or other high selenium foods such as tuna, cod, oysters, shrimp, but also eggs, meats, poultry, mushroom and onions on a regular should suffice to get what you need, to fortify yourself against the constant assault of heavy metals.
  
  What would be interesting, though, is a study into the effects of adding selenium to the "safe" aluminum in vaccines. I mean, you cannot seriously tell me that we could not afford doing that and if it reduced any toxicity issues, why not?

That's about it for today, I did not post all too many new facebook news as of yet (I mean, come on, it's Saturday ;-), but if you are into medicinal horror-stories, you will certainly like the story about the flesh eating killer fungus. If you prefer microbes over fungi, you are probably better off with the latest insights into the associations of certain gutbacteria with the incidence of stroke. And if you are more into other aspects of the digestive tract you may be interested in the effects of gastric emptying time on postprandial gylcemia and insulin release.

If none of those news is to your liking, I suggest you either wait for me to post something else (could be happening within the next hours at www.facebook.com/SuppVersity), or simply enjoy the weekend and come back tomorrow when you are rested for another (hopefully) enlightening SuppVersity post.

References:

• Abubakar  MG,  Taylor  A,  Ferns  GA.  Aluminium  administration  is  associated  with enhanced  hepatic  oxidant  stress  that  may  be  offset  by  dietary  vitamin  E  in  the rat. Int J Exp Pathol 2003;84:49–54.
• Asvold BO, Bjøro T, Platou C, Vatten LJ. Thyroid function and the risk of coronary heart disease: 12-year follow-up of the HUNT Study in Norway. Clin Endocrinol (Oxf). 2012 Dec;77(6):911-7.
• Bowtell JL, Gelly K, Jackman ML, Patel A, Simeoni M, Rennie MJ. Effect of oral glutamine on whole body carbohydrate storage during recovery from exhaustive exercise. J Appl Physiol. 1999 Jun;86(6):1770-7.
• Cassetti G, Pinelli M, Bindi M, Bianchi M, Castiglioni M. [Low T3 syndrome and left ventricular diastolic function]. G Ital Cardiol (Rome). 2009 Aug;10(8):553-7. 
• Exley  C,  Birchall  JD.  The  cellular  toxicity  of  aluminium.  J  Theor  Biol 1992;159:83–98.
• Geyikoglu  F,  Turkez  H,  Ozhan  Bakir  T,  Cicek  M.  The  genotoxic,  hepa- totoxic,  nephrotoxic,  haematotoxic  and  histopathological  effects  in  rats after aluminium chronic intoxication. Toxicol Ind Health 2012;15.
• Greenfield JR, Farooqi IS, Keogh JM, Henning E, Habib AM, Blackwood A, Reimann F, Holst JJ, Gribble FM. Oral glutamine increases circulating glucagon-like peptide 1, glucagon, and insulin concentrations in lean, obese, and type 2 diabetic subjects. Am J Clin Nutr. 2009 Jan;89(1):106-13.
• Gupta  VB,  Anitha  S,  Hegde  ML,  Zecca  L,  Garruto  RM,  Ravid  R,  et  al.  Alu- minium  in  Alzheimer’s  disease:  are  we  still  at  a  crossroad?  Cell  Mol  Life  Sci 2005;62:143–58.
• Hashimoto K, Ishida E, Miura A, Ozawa A, Shibusawa N, Satoh T, Okada S, Yamada M, Mori M. Human Stearoyl-CoA Desaturase 1 (SCD-1) Gene Expression Is Negatively Regulated by Thyroid Hormone without Direct Binding of Thyroid Hormone Receptor to the Gene Promoter. Endocrinology. 2012 Dec 7.
• Hätönen KA, Virtamo J, Eriksson JG, Sinkko HK, Sundvall JE, Valsta LM. Protein and fat modify the glycaemic and insulinaemic responses to a mashed potato-based meal. Br J Nutr. 2011 Jul;106(2):248-53. 
• Iervasi G, Pingitore A, Landi P, Raciti M, Ripoli A, Scarlattini M, L'Abbate A, Donato L. Low-T3 syndrome: a strong prognostic predictor of death in patients with heart disease. Circulation. 2003 Feb 11;107(5):708-13.
• Liou YA, King DJ, Zibrik D, Innis SM. Decreasing linoleic acid with constant alpha-linolenic acid in dietary fats increases (n-3) eicosapentaenoic acid in plasma phospholipids in healthy men. J Nutr. 2007 Apr;137(4):945-52. 
• Mitchell ML, Hsu HW, Sahai I; Massachusetts Pediatric Endocrine Work Group. The increased incidence of congenital hypothyroidism: fact or fancy? Clin Endocrinol (Oxf). 2011 Dec;75(6):806-10.
• Perez  G,  Pregi  N,  Vittori  D,  Di  Risio  C,  Garbossa  G,  Nesse  A.  Aluminium  expo- sure  affects  transferrin-dependent  and  -independent  iron  uptake  by  K562  cells. Biochim  Biophys  Acta  2005;1745:124–30. 
• Schneuer FJ, Nassar N, Tasevski V, Morris JM, Roberts CL. Association and predictive accuracy of high TSH serum levels in first trimester and adverse pregnancy outcomes. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2012 Sep;97(9):3115-22.
• Seierstad SL, Seljeflot I, Johansen O, Hansen R, Haugen M, Rosenlund G, Frøyland L, Arnesen H. Dietary intake of differently fed salmon; the influence on markers of human atherosclerosis. Eur J Clin Invest. 2005 Jan;35(1):52-9.
• Waters KM, Miller CW, Ntambi JM. Localization of a negative thyroid hormone-response region in hepatic stearoyl-CoA desaturase gene 1. Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 1997 Apr 28;233(3):838-43. 
• Whanger P, Vendeland S, Park Y-C & Xia Y. Metabolism of sub-toxic levels of selenium in animals and humans. Annals of Clinical Laboratory Science. 1996;26, 99-113.

Commercially Available Teas "Not Suitable For Human Consumption": Potentially Hazardous Amounts of Lead, Aluminum, Arsenic & Co in Every Cup

Would all commercially available teas have to be labeled like this?

I am usually not a fan of articles with titles like this one (see above) - they have what you call in Germany "Bildzeitungsniveau" (the German tabloid with news like "World about to disappear in a black hole, when CERN starts operating). It is however hard to resist the urge to use a headline like the one above, if the it fits the results of peer-reviewed scientific paper so well, as it is the case with the relatively recent paper from the University of Alberta and the Luleâ University of Technology in Sweden this SuppVersity article is (almost) all about.

The corresponding experiment, the results of which were published in the peer-reviewed open-access Journal of Toxicology in October 2013, already, addresses the increasing concern about contamination of foodstuffs and natural health products. With the emphasis being on foodstuff and health, it's only logical that tea, or more precisely all currently available off-the-shelf varieties of black, green, white, and oolong teas sold in tea bags were used for analysis in the said study.

So what did the researchers do?

Schwalfenberg, Genius (no joke, the 2n author is a real 'Genius by name') and Rodushkin conducted a three-step analysis in the course of which they analyzed the content of previously identified tea contaminants like aluminum, fluoride, mercury, lead, cadmium and arsenic (Fujimaki. 2004; Lung. 2008; Wang. 2008; Alvarez-Ayuso. 2011; Tan. 2012) in commercial tea preparations.

Table 1: There are not just bad, but also healthy minerals in tea!

Before we get to the "bad stuff", though, let's start with the positive findings of their investigation. The data in Table 1 is after all evidence enough that there are also "healthy" minerals in tea - the amount is not high enough to cover your RDA, but this does not mean that it could not be at least partly related to the undeniable health benefits researchers all around the world report for people who consume uncontaminated tea on a regular base. As a loyal SuppVersity readers you know most, if not all of them from previous articles on tea. The reason I still believe it's worth enumerating them again is that I don't want you to give up on your beloved (?) tea too easily - I mean, Coke is not an alternative and for coffee fungi and other stuff could make a similarly unhealthy "supplement" to your breakfast beverage:

• Cardiovascular benefits - When we are talking about health in general and heart health in particular, most people will think of green tea. That's pretty unfortunate, because there is ample research for all varieties of teas that they can lower blood lipids, provide "clean" and thus heart healthy energy, and exert antithrombotic and anti-hypertensive effects.
• Anticancer effects - Despite the fact that the anti-cancer effects have mostly observed in in-vitro studies, there is plenty of epidemiological evidence that tea drinkers have a lower cancer risk, than the average coke guzzler (not necessarily breast cancer, though ➫ SuppVersity Facebook News).
• Metabolic syndrome - While more recent studies clearly suggest that the active weight loss effects of tea, in general, and green tea, in particular, have been totally overblown, there is still a host of controlled trials, where adding tea (not necessarily green tea) improved the effects of a energy restricted diet. Compared to the rodent trials which are still fueling the myth of the potent thermogenic effects of (green) tea, the real world results in human beings are however downright disappointing.

• 

  A green tea marinade will keep your meats fresh | learn more

  Anti-infective properties - Only few people (SuppVersity readers included - of course) know that green tea can be used as a mouthwash and is currently researched as an anti-bacterial food additive by researchers all around the world. According to a paper by Steinmann et al. (2013), the anti-infective effects are mediated by the antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal properties of Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG). The same EGCG about which you've read only recently on the SuppVersity that it is not exactly as useful as a fat loss adjuvant, as the hype would have you believe.
• Other beneficial effects - Under "Miscellaneous Effects", Schwalfenberg et al. also list the nephropotective effects of green tea, which could come very handy if you guzzle mercury contaminated green tea, everyday (unfortunately, mercury is your least problem with tea), the anti-depressive researchers have observed in people consuming 4+ cups of tea per day and the hitherto unconfirmed hypothesis that tea drinkers are (better) protected against Alzheimer’s and neurological decline.

In view of these benefits it's only logical that the Canadian + Swedish research team chose to repeat  the dichotomous health effects of drinking tea in the title of their paper "The Benefits and Risks of Consuming Brewed Tea" (my emphasis in Schwalfenberg. 2013)

Organic is not better than regular tea

To obtain a dataset that would be as comprehensive, accurate and practically relevant as possible the authors bought 30 different organic and non-organic white, green, oolong, and black teas from the the shelves of Canadian supermarkets and analyzed (a) the "raw" tea leaves (LEAF), (b) tea that had been steeped for 3-4 minutes (3MIN), (c) tea that had been steeped for 15–17 minutes (15MIN).

Know your teas: As a SuppVersity reader you will probably know that all teas come from the same plant. It's the processing that determines if we call it "white", "green", or whatever else:

• White tea: young leaves or new growth buds, withered, uncured, baked dry 
• Green tea: steamed or dry cooking in hot pans to prevent oxidation; dried tea leaves may be separate leaves or rolled into pellets (gunpowder tea)
• Oolong tea: withering of leaves under sun and warm winds with further oxidation standard between green and black teas
• Black tea: leaves are completely oxidized, withered

Due to the processing of the leaves tea from the same camellia sinensis plant can contain different amounts of contaminants depending on whether you buy it as white, green, oolong or black tea, or shredded green tea supplement.

Still, the main determinant is and remains the soil it was grown on (see Table 4)?

All tea samples underwent the same standardized procedures before they were analyzed in their raw form (cut / shredded leaves) or as an infusion that had been prepared with only one tea bag (containing 2-3g of tea) in 250 mL of distilled water in fine bone china cups.

As you will already have expected, the scientists did not just detect the previously mentioned "good minerals" (exact values see Table 1), and a host of other beneficial trace elements, i.e.

• boron 19–115µg/L, cobalt 0.4–3.56µg/L, 
• copper 26–106µg/L, chromium 0.2–14.6µg/L, 
• iron 19–62.5µg/L, manganese 534–6351µg/L, 
• molybdenum 0.03–0.131µg/L, 
• selenium <0.1–0.34µg/L, 
• vanadium <0.01–0.151µg/L, and zinc 44.6–187µg/L,

in their samples. Schwalfenberg et al. found highly significant and, more importantly, physiologically relevant amounts of toxic elements, as well:

Table 2: Established toxicant limits in supplements (µg/day).

If you look at the value in Table 3 and compare them to the limits in Table 2, there is one thing you should keep in mind: These limits have been set by average exposure, not based on toxicity tests - that sounds very comforting, right?

"Public health warnings or industry regulation indicated" -- It sounds pretty fearmongering and I would not have used it as a subheading right beneath the introduction, if the statement "Public health warnings or industry regulation might be indicated to protect consumer safety." (Schwalfenberg. 2013) was no literal citation from the conclusion of the paper I have here right in front of me.

Table 3: Levels of mercury (Hg), lead (Pb), aluminum (Al), arsenic (As) and cadmium (Cd) in tea infusions after 3-4 or 15-17 min of brewing; all values in µg/L (Schwalfenberg. 2013)

A brief glimpse at the data in Table 3 does moreover confirm there are plenty of toxins in the average Canadian super market tea, but it does not tell you how problematic the contamination actually is. To understand that you'd have to cimpare those values to the established toxicant limits Table 2, which do - and this is and will always be ridiculous -  obviously depend on where you live *sarcastic laughter*... but enough of the unproductive sarcasm, let's see what we've got:

"All teas contained significant amounts of aluminum. Tea  leaves contained from 568 to 3287 ng/g of tea. All brewed teas steeped for 3 or 15 minutes contained detectable levels of aluminum. The range was 1131µgm/L to 8324µgm/L steeping for 3 minute and 1413µgm/L to 11449µgm/L steeping for 15 minutes. Only 2 teas had levels above acceptable limits at 3 minutes of brewing but 6 of the teas had levels greater than the upper acceptable daily limit of 7000µgm/L. Clearly letting tea steep for longer than 3 minutes is not advisable. Two of the organic green teas had levels above 10,000µgm/L brewed for 15 minutes."

In view of the fact that tea is by far not the only aluminum source you are expose to, the high levels of this toxic metal that easily accumulates in the body should be reason enough not to brew your tea - especially not organic tea - for more than 3 minutes.

Organic tea is a worse offender than regular

If you take a look at the amount of lead in the various tea samples it becomes even more obvious that "organic" tea is not necessarily better for your organs, as well. This is particularly true for the best-sellers green and black tea, both of which contain significantly more lead in the "organic" vs. "regular" variety.

Table 4: Toxicant levels according to origin; Pb: lead, Cd: cadmium, Al: aluminum, As: arsenic (Schwalfenberg. 2013)

Probably the main factor that influences the toxicant levels of teas is the place of origin, thoug. As you can see in the overview in Table 4, the highest amount of arsenic, was detected in Chinese oolong teas (organic or regular). The total arsenic levels in all teas, which ranged from 0.06µgm to 1.12µgm/L for tea that had been steeped for 3 minutes to 0.08 to 1.27µgm/L for tea that had been steeped for 15 minutes was highest in white tea - obviously also from China. And last but not least, ...

"...[a]ll tea leaves had detectable levels of cadmium. 21 teas had detectable levels after 15 minutes brewing while only 18  teas had detectable levels after 3 minutes brewing suggesting that there is further leaching of this toxicant into the water over time. [As the overview in Table 4 already suggests] the highest level was 0.067µgm/L found in standard oolong tea from China." (Schwalfenberg. 2013)

Not listed in the tables are the levels of tin, barium, antimony and thallium, which were detected in all tea samples, but at levels of which the authors state that they don't have to be "considered to be of concern" (Schwalfenberg. 2013).

Should you stop drinking tea? You know that I don't like to tell people what to do. Unless, obviously I am 100% sure that I am convinced that there is a serious health risk involved.

In the case of green, black or white tea, the evidence that this is the case is yet insufficient. Personally, I will still make sure to check the geographic origin of the tea leaves (not where it was processed and packaged!) and avoid all products with the bad 5-letter word C-H-I-N-A on the label.

Bottom line: "Not of concern" is not exactly what I would say about the overall results of the study at hand. I mean, in the end, the high levels of toxicants in some of the commercially available tea preparations - specifically those from China - could actually explain why the real-world results with commercially available teas and tea supplements often fall short of the rodent studies, which are often conducted with highly purified green tea products from companies like Sigma Aldrich.

Ah, ... one last thing to keep in mind is that 18 out of 30 tested commercial tea preparations contained mercury in amounts that were as high as 20 ng/g, but did not make it from the leave to the tea. With your digestive tract being a much more efficient nutrient and (unfortunately) toxicant extractor than hot water, tea supplements could pose an even greater risk of heavy metal exposure than tea.

References:

• Álvarez-Ayuso, E., Giménez, A., & Ballesteros, J. C. (2011). Fluoride accumulation by plants grown in acid soils amended with flue gas desulphurisation gypsum. Journal of hazardous materials, 192(3), 1659-1666.
• Hayacibara, M. F., Queiroz, C. S., Tabchoury, C. P. M., & Cury, J. A. (2004). Fluoride and aluminum in teas and tea-based beverages. Revista de Saúde Pública, 38(1), 100-105.
• Lung, S. C. C., Cheng, H. W., & Fu, C. B. (2007). Potential exposure and risk of fluoride intakes from tea drinks produced in Taiwan. Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, 18(2), 158-166.
• Steinmann, J., Buer, J., Pietschmann, T., & Steinmann, E. (2013). Anti‐infective properties of epigallocatechin‐3‐gallate (EGCG), a component of green tea. British journal of pharmacology, 168(5), 1059-1073.
• Tan, Z., & Xiao, G. (2012). Leaching characteristics of fly ash from Chinese medical waste incineration. Waste Management & Research, 30(3), 285-294.
• Schwalfenberg, G., Genuis, S. J., & Rodushkin, I. (2013). The Benefits and Risks of Consuming Brewed Tea: Beware of Toxic Element Contamination. Journal of toxicology, 2013.
• Wang, X. P., Ma, Y. J., & Xu, Y. C. (2008). [Studies on contents of arsenic, selenium, mercury and bismuth in tea samples collected from different regions by atomic fluorescence spectrometry]. Guang pu xue yu guang pu fen xi= Guang pu, 28(7), 1653-1657.

Aluminum More of a Threat Than Thought? German "Feds" Say: Stay Away From Antitranspirants and Beware of the Dozen of Other Aluminum Containing Junk in Your Life

Cancer, Alzheimer's - The X* effect?
*Most deodorants don't contain aluminum.

I have to admit that I missed the original publication of the inconspicious statement of the Bundesintitut für Risikobewertung (BfR. 2014). I am not sure if there is a US or UK equivalent to the BfR, but if there was an US counterpart, those would be the guys that would tell the FDA what they should do, if the industry, the FDA is actually supposed to control had not already taken their job ;-)

All (sadly true) jokes aside, basically the short paper is a re-evaluation of the safety of aluminum - not aluminum in general, but the amount of aluminum in our immediate surrounding. Sources like the particularly nasty Aluminum from antitranspirants

Table 1: Overview of the "worst offenders" among foods and bakery products scientists from the University of Kentucky (Saiyed. 2005)

Processed foods provide the toxic baseline: Antitranspirants are part of the problem, but as usual it's processed food that supplies the baseline of yet another hazardous substance. If you take a look at the list of "worst offenders" Saiyed et al. identified in a 2005 study in a random selection of food from US supermarkets, it's obvious that all of them belong to the processed, convenient or as some of the enlightened people would say "junk" food category.

The BfR assessed the aluminum absorption from antitranspirants based on experimental data on the its dermal obsorption in healthy individuals and found that the systemic absorption for people with intact skin health is 10.5µg. That's ~2µg more than the EFSA says, the contemporary available evidence would suggest to be safe for a healthy 60kg human being.

This means that the uptake of aluminium from antitranspirants is above the maximal tolerable daily exposure levels. For people with skin problems or someone who uses the antitranspirants after damaging the protective layer of the skin while shaving the systemic aluminum uptake is several magnitudes larger. Consequently someone who shaves and applies his antitranspirant afterwards may exceed his total weekly limit (1mg per week) within the first hour of the day!

Figure 1: Tabular overview of the risk profile the BfR released for aluminum containing transpirants; I have translated the relevant parts of the overview, if you want to, you can download the original here.

As the scientists point out, antitranspirants are yet by far not the only potential aluminum sources in our life. Foods like tomatoes, kitchenware and - above all - other cosmetic products like shampoo, lipsticks, cremes (esp. anti-wrinkle and -aging - funny, eh?), toothpaste, and sunscreen all contain significant amounts of aluminum that can make it through our skin or digestive tract right into our blood.

It is thus no wonder that the following tabular overview (I deliberately use the German original) with translated captions) informs us that it is well possible that the aluminum in antitransparent is a health-hazard for the general population. Luckily, "keine unmittelbare Beeinträchtigung" means that you do not have to expect immediate serious adverse health effects - great, ha?

Much ado about nothing and all is good, right?

In view of the fact that the significance of the currently available data is also still insufficient, one could thus assume that you would be overreacting if you threw your aluminum containing antitranspirants away. If you take a closer look at the last row in tabular overview in Figure 1, though, you see the words "kontrollierbar durch Vorsichtsmaßnahmen" = "manageable by safety measures", though. Now what kind of safety measures could you possibly take?

Figure 2: Auluminum has been linked to all sorts of pathologies. The only decently convincing does yet exist for breast cancer (mechanism | left; cf. Darbre. 2013) and Alzheimer's where the negative effect on cognitive abilities has even been confirmed in controlled animal studies (right | exposure to increasing amounts of aluminum leads to corresponding increases in the rates of cognitive decline; cf. Walton. 2013)

Personally I know only two, though: Never apply aluminum-containing antitranspirants to damaged skin parts - A rule that applies for freshly shaved skin, as well! Or, even better stop using aluminum containing antitranspirants altogether.  I know that this is not feasible for some people, but many of us are just so used to it that we do not realize that the stench from puberty is no longer around.

In the end, the message of the statement that provides additional information about the potential involvement of chronic aluminum exposure in the etiology of breast cancer and Alzheimer's, as well as the more recent publication of a similar warning about aluminum containing cometics in general (BfR. 2014) would yet still suggest that you better replace the shampoo, creme, tooth paste, lipstick, sunscreen and antitranspirant of your choice, if they contain aluminum.

What the wise FDA says: It's funny, that the FDA documents say about thee "GRAS" additives, i.e. substances that are generally recognized as safe, such as the aluminum based food additives that "ingested in excessive amounts, their [sic!] appears to be associated with interference in phosphorus metabolism resulting in rachitic or osteomalacic effects, kidney damage, and interference with glucose metabolism, apparently due to interference with phospho- rylating enzymes." Now, this is obviously no reason to be concerned, because "[t]he high intake of phosphorus in the American diet may provide a protective effects"... hmm, great! So the high amount of phosphor of which scientists long say that it's making people sick "protects" you, my American friend from something the FDA is supposed to protect you from - glorious!

Bottom line: Start with the cosmetics! Unlike the aluminum that leaches into the food from its packaging, the aluminum that makes it from the soil into conventional and organic produce, the aluminum that makes it from the feed into the animals and animal products you eat and the good damn aluminum the f*** up "food" industry adds to their products in form of colorings E 173, stabilizers E 520 (aluminum-sulfate), E 521 (aluminum-sodiumsulfate), E 522 (aluminum-potassiumsulfate), E 523 (aluminum-ammoniumsulfate) and as the leavening agent 541 (acid sodium-aluminumphosphate) in all sorts of baked goods, the "alu lipsticks" are comparatively easy to avoid - to find alternatives that last for a similarly long time and survive kissing and making out, on the other hand, is not going to be easy, I suppose.

If you are no "processed junk junky", ditching antitranspirant & co you cut your intake back to a tolerable 14–35 mg aluminum per week - at least this is what the EFSA estimates a 70kg human being will be exposed to withing 7 days. With a limit of max. 70 mg, you would thus reside in a "green zone" of which no one probably knows how "green" it actually is... in view of an estimated half-life of seven years (Yokel. 1989), I could understand, though, if you say that this is not 100% comforting.

Reference:

• BFR. "Aluminiumhaltige Antitranspirantien tragen zur Aufnahme von Aluminium bei" Position Statement 007/2014 issued by the BFR on February 26, 2014.
• BFR. "Fragen und Antworten zu Aluminium in Lebensmitteln und verbrauchernahen Produkten" FAQ issued by the BFR on February 26, 2014.
• BFR. "Fragen und Antworten zur Risikobewertung von kosmetischen Mitteln" Updated FAQ  issued by the BFR on March 3, 2014.
• Cashman, Allison L., and Erin M. Warshaw. "Parabens: a review of epidemiology, structure, allergenicity, and hormonal properties." Dermatitis 16.2 (2005): 57-66.
• Darbre, Philippa D., Ferdinando Mannello, and Christopher Exley. "Aluminium and breast cancer: Sources of exposure, tissue measurements and mechanisms of toxicological actions on breast biology." Journal of inorganic biochemistry 128 (2013): 257-261.
• FDA. "Aluminum hydroxide." SCOGS-Report 43 (1975). ID Code: 21645-51-2. CFR Section: 184.1139
• Walton, J. R. "Aluminum’s Involvement in the Progression of Alzheimer’s Disease." Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease 35 (2013): 875.
• Yokel, Robert A., and Patrick J. McNamara. "Elevated aluminum persists in serum and tissues of rabbits after a six-hour infusion." Toxicology and applied pharmacology 99.1 (1989): 133-138.

Science Round-Up Seconds: "Tomatorade(R)" or Why Tomato Juice is the Better Intra- & Postworkout Beverage. Up to 90% B12 Deficiency in Vegetarians & Vegans. Aluminum in Your Testes? Not With Vitamin E & Zinc.

Can't find "Tomatorade(R)", at your local supplement store, yet (surprising, right ;-)? The guys over @ SimplyRecipes have an easy and tweakable recipe describing how you can make your own "Tomatorade" or however you want to call it (photo by SimplyRecipes).

If you listened live to yesterday's installment of the SuppVersity Science Round-Up on Super Human Radio, you will probably have noticed that due to the technical problems and my teacherly tendency to talk for hours, Carl Lanore and I did not cover all the topics (click here do download the podcast if you haven't already done so)... but hey, that leaves more stuff for today, doesn't it?

I guess I will best package the newsitems into three servings, starting out with the one I like best, namely my Tomatorade(R) aka plain tomato juice news... but before I do so, I must thank Maxim Okhrimenko who corrected the statement I made about vodka in Russian babies' tea or other beverages. Normal Russians don't this. I actually did not intend to make that sound like "common practice" - sorry if it got across like that.

My sincere apologies for promoting prejudices like that. From a science perspective you could even argue that the Brits came up with the idea. In the 1850s William Woodward "invented" a concoction of dill seed oil, sodium bicarbonate and alcohol, called it "gripe water" and sold it as a soothing remedy for gastrointestinal troubles (Agarwal. 2000).

Tomatorade(R) - Tomato Juice turns out to be the ideal periworkout carb drink

What's LDH and CPK? While the former stands for lactate dehydrogenase and the latter is identical to CK, which is creatine kinase, both are considered markers of muscular exertion (LDH) and damage (CK) due to exercise. Very high levels of LDH occur for example in hemolytic situations, i.e. at times your red blood cells disintergrate or after a major trauma to a muscle (incl. a myocardial infarction), the same is true for CK, for which most laboratories will analyses tissue specific isoforms with CK-MB being the one that's indicating muscle damage from the minor DOMS after a leg workout to full rhabdomyolysis.

I know many of you will probably be shuddering, right now. "Carbohydrate drinks? I don't care if it's Tomato- or Gatorade, I don't want any of them." Still, what would you say, if I told you that "Tomatorade(R)", which consists of nothing else but 100% tomato juice could not just replenish your muscle glycogen levels, but would also reduce and even normalize LDH and CPK levels? Allow you to regenerate faster, train more frequently and eventually increase your performance and muscle gains- specifically if you are into weight lifting or other anaerobic activities? I see, now, I got you interested.

According to a paper that is going to be published in the next issue of Food Chemistry and Toxicology, the administration of tomato juice instead of a commercial exercise beverage to 9 out of 15 anaerobically trained athletes (11 men, 4 women) with elevated LDH (>300mg/dl) and CPK(>210mg/dl) baseline levels (as the scientists have it a clearcut sign of "endothelial dysfunction through oxidative stress" (Tsitsimpikou . 2013)) returned the LHD ad CPK levels back into the normal range in the course of the two months study period.

Figure 1: Effects of two month on an isocaloric amount tomato juice (here jovially called "Tomatorade(R)" ;-) vs. the regular carbohydrate workout drink the subjects usually consumed during and after their workouts (Tsitsimpikou. 2013)

Moreover, the consumption of vitamin, mineral and polyphenol-laden superdrink, in place of the athletes regular carbohydrate drink (the scientists made sure that the energy content was identical) also reduced the highly health relevant markers of whole body inflammation, homocysteine and C-reactive protein (CRP; see figure 1) - whether the mainly lycopene induced reductions in homocystein is actually protecting against endothelial damage or not, is yet still (or I should say, again) a matter of scientific debate (cf. Xaplanteris. 2012).

Brief update:  Just got a question from Sofeen on facebook about simply eating tomatoes. Now, you would have to eat plenty of them to see the effect, but in essence it should work. Nevertheless, when I contemplated the question I came up with an even better alternative: Tomato paste! When Tomatorade(R) is the carb beverage, then the paste would be one of those fancy carb gels - a gel, by the way, which has a 2.5x higher bioavailability for lycopene than you would get from regular tomatoes (Gärtner. 1997).

Vitamin B12 defieciency is rampant among vegetarians and (even more) vegans

I have previously pointed out that unless you are at least lacto-ovo-vegetarian, which means that you eat dairy products and eggs, you are going to have a very hard time building and maintaining the physique of your dreams. As a recent meta-analysis and review study by Pawlak et al. suggests, not being the leanest and most muscular on stage should yet actually be your least concern.

Suggested Read: "Want B12 But Hate Meat? Drink Milk!" Even some of the more advanced supplements cannot compete.

According to the data the researchers from different US institutions collected, the deficiency rates for "normal" vegetarians are

• 62% among  pregnant  women,
• between  25% and almost 86% among children,
• 21–41% among adolescents, and
• 11–90% among the elderly

Even higher rates, bordering the 90%+ range, when they were measured by holo-transcobalamin II essays were reported for vegans (adults). On top of that the scientists did not find any confounding factors,:

"The main finding of this review is that vegetarians  develop  B12 depletion or deficiency  regardless  of demographic  characteristics,  place of residency,  age, or type of vegetarian  diet. Vegetarians should thus take preventive measures to ensure adequate intake of this vitamin, including regular consumption of supplements containing B12." (Pawlak. 2013)

As preferable dietary sources the researchers suggest, the aforementioned dairy products and eggs:

• milk, which contains between 0.3 and 0.4 mg/100 g of B12, with an absorption rate of about 65%.
  
• the B12 content of cheese or cottage cheese ranges from 20 to 60% that of milk.
• the amount of B12 in a whole egg is between 0.9 and 1.4 mg/100g

Unfortunately, the amount of B12 is profoundly reduced during the heating process. For milk the B12 loss amounts to up to 30-50%, when you boil it and I bet you won't be much better off with hard boiled (yolks = hard) eggs.

If you avoid meat not for ethical reasons, but because you are afraid it's bad for you, read the "Meat-Ology" post

The scientists also point out that the vegan myth that your body a great ability to store B12 and it would take years if not decades for them to be depleted:

"Studies do not support the position that it takes up to 20 or 30 years to develop a deficiency.7 According to Donaldson, 47% of the sample developed a deficiency, and most of these individuals had adhered to a raw vegan diet for between 23 and 49 months or about 2–4 years. In a study conducted by Herrmann et al.66% of German participants who had adhered to a vegetarian diet for at least 2 years were found to be B12 deficient." (Pawlak. 2013)

Since the whole problem is further increased by the lack of hydrochloric acid (low-to-no intrinsic factor production, which is necessary for the absorption of B12), low iron induced damage to the gut mucosa and subsequent nutrient malabsorptions, I'd suggest that all of you who insist on following a vegetarian life-style go, have their levels checked and get some B12 injections if you are where Pawlak et al. believe you are: Rock bottom.

Protect your testes, rescue your sperm and testosterone production

A recently published paper has taken yet another look at ways to prevent testicular damage / toxicity subsequent to heavy metal exposure. Other than usual, the "suspect" is yet not lead, but rather aluminum, which was administered in toxic doses to male albino rodents.

Figure 2: Relative levels of testosterone, FSH, LH and prolactin in aluminum (50mg/kg) treated male albino rats after the administration of zinc, vitamin E or both; data expressed relative to healthy (non-Al intoxicated) control (Rawy. 2013)

As the data in figure 2 goes to show you, the Saudi-Arabian researchers were able to counter much of the detrimental effects on testicular morphology, spermatogenesis and hormone production by administering either zinc sulfate or vitamin E alone or in conjunction at human equivalent doses of 8mg/kg zinc sulfate (I may remind you that these were 8mg/kg of zinc sulfate, not of elemental zinc, so that we are talking about ~1.8mg/kg elemental zinc) and 2.4mg/kg vitamin E (~1,200-1,500IU), respectively.

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Now while that's it as far as today's Seconds are concerned, tomorrow is Saturday and in case you are into those shorter news items, you better make sure to come back for another installment of On Short Notice. And just in case you have not done so already, I would also suggest that you take a peek at the following recent Facebook news:

Older tomato news: The dehydrotomatine, α-tomatineand trigonelline from green tomatoes has fat burning effects (read more).

• Galactooligosaccharides increase bifido bacteria content in obese patients and result in positive effects on the immune response, and insulin, total cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations (read more). 
• Women with brittle bones cannot squat? False! They must squat, recent study says (read more)
• The fries a mother eats during pregnancy predispose her kids to become obese and develop metabolic syndrome syndrome - at least if the oil was (as it almost always is) oxidized during the heating process (read more).
• The Zinc equation: For every doubling in Zn intake, the difference in Zn serum or plasma concentration is 6% - this assumes zinc intakes in the normal range of <30mg/day (read more).

As usually there will be more for you to read in the course of the next 24 hours - so just "like" the SuppVersity Facebook page to make sure you are not missing out on anything important ;-)

References

• Agarwal KN, Gupta A, Pushkarna R, Bhargava SK, Faridi MM, Prabhu MK. The gripe water story.J R Soc Med.2000;93:172-174.
• Gärtner C, Stahl W, Sies H. Lycopene is more bioavailable from tomato paste than from fresh tomatoes. Am J Clin Nutr. 1997 Jul;66(1):116-22.
• Pawlak R, Parrott SJ, Raj S, Cullum-Dugan, D Lucus, D. How prevalent is vitamin B12 deficiency among vegetarians? Nutrition Reviews. 2 JAN 2013 [epub ahead of print]
• Rawy SM, Seif Al Nassr FM. Zinc sulphate and vitamin E alleviate reproductive toxicity caused by aluminium sulphate in male albino rats. Toxicol Ind Health. 2013 Jan 2.
• Tsitsimpikou C, Kioukia-Fougia N, Tsarouhas K, Stamatopoulos P, Rentoukas E, Koudounakos A, Papalexis P, Liesivuori J, Jamurtas A. Administration of tomato juice ameliorates lactate dehydrogenase and creatinine kinase responses to anaerobic training. Food Chem Toxicol. 2013 Jan 3.
• Xaplanteris P, Vlachopoulos C, Pietri P, Terentes-Printzios D, Kardara D, Alexopoulos N, Aznaouridis K, Miliou A, Stefanadis C. Tomato paste supplementation improves endothelial dynamics and reduces plasma total oxidative status in healthy subjects. Nutr Res. 2012 May;32(5):390-4.