Mobile Contraception: 850Mhz GSM Mobile-Phone Radiation Reduces Sperm Vitality, Membrane Integrity and Motility.

Image 1: If you carry your phone in your pocket, you reduce your sperms chances to hit a home run ;-)

I don't know if you actually realized that there is a separate category "sex" in the navigation bar of the SuppVersity. Well, I guess if you have, you will probably have been disappointed when you hit the respective button, because sexually exciting news from the realms of exercise and nutrition science are scarce and even today's blogpost is probably not exactly what you would expect when you read the word "sex" on the Internet. If you come to think about it from the increasingly popular paleolithic point of view, sex is however nothing but a means of reproduction, our ancestors have been practicing... well you know the whole ancestral litany ;-)

2,000,000 infertile couples in the US and the figures keep rising

What I am really driving at, here, is that for way more of your fellow human beings than you may think sex becomes a meticulously planned undertaking in a pairs hitherto futile endeavor to parent a child. According to the most recent figures from the American Pregnancy Association, a total of 2,000,000 married couples are considered "infertile" and the figures keep rising year by year and while infertility can have many reasons, of which stress, bad nutritional habits, diabesity and metabolic syndrome are recurrent topics here at the SuppVersity, the "contraceptive potential" of electromagnetic radiation is largely ignored by the iPhone-addicted American (and European) public. Thusly, I personally found it not very surprising that the most recent scientific evidence for the anti-feritility effect of GSM mobile radation (850Mhz, yes the same your beloved iPhone uses) comes from a study that was conducted by a team of researchers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Libya, countries where having more than a single spoiled child is still the norm and not the exception - even among academics.

Image 2: Would you buy underwear from this guy if I told you that he is from the Swiss company Isa Bodywear and sells what he claims is radio-protective slips for 29CHF per piece? No? Even if I told you that the experimental approach from the study at hand was valid?

Update: A brief note on a clever objection regarding the real world significance of this kind of artificial experiment. Darko Zdravić, argued not without good reason on Facebook, that putting a mobile phone next to some sperm in a dish was not exactly a perfect model for the little buggers in your scrotum; and without question, Darko is right. I had in fact thought about that myself before and dug up an even more recent study that is going to be published in the physics journal Health Physics in January 2012, which deals with the validity of this approach and then simply forgot to mention that in the "original version" of this article. According to Mouradi and his co-workers, who constructed an artificial scrotum to test the "protective" effect the multiple tissue levels under which your sperm usually reside, the model is adequate, but you would have to subtract 0.8-1.2cm from the distance that is used when no absorbing tissue is placed in between the sperm and the EMR emitting device (Mouradi. 2012). That being said ~4cm is still about the mobile to sperm distance you would get when you put your phone right into the pocket and don't forget that your beloved iPhone radiates even more intensely than the Nokia phone used in the study ;-)

For their research, Mohamed A. Dkhil and his colleagues collected semen samples from 20 healthy donors, including only donor specimen, which had sperm parameters within the normal range defined by the WHO. The subsequent separation procedures, which somehow sound like they were events in the SpermOlympics, involved a so-called "swim-up test" (I guess I don't have to tell you what part of the lifecycle of a sperm requires some serious up-ward swimming ;-), by the means of which the "best" swimmers, which would obviously have the greatest chance to inseminate the ovocyte, were selected. 50% of these "performance athletes" were subsequently exposed to the electromagnetic radiation of a Nokia73 GSM phone (SAR 1.46W/kg which is about the same specific absorption rate the independent German computer magazine measured for the iPhone4S with 1.62W/kg in UMTS mode) at 5 cm distance, which is similar to carrying the phone right in the front pocket of your jeans.

Figure 1: Reductions in vitality, membrane integrity and mobility of previously healthy (elite ;-) sperm after 60-min exposure to cell-phone radiation (data adapted from Dkhil. 2011)

If you take a look at the data in figure 1 you will have to realize that 60 min of this "totally benign" type of EMR reduced the number of vital sperm (as measured by eosin test), increased the number of sperm with membrane defects (as measured by HOS test) and reduced their total motality by ~88%. If I do now tell you that all those effects had a statistical significance way below the cut off of p<0.05, I hope that you will probably agree with the scientists assessment that their results provide an experimental validation of previous epidemiologic data from Fejes et al. (2005) Erogul et al. (2006) and others, who have been warning the public for years that "the prolonged use of cell phones may have negative effects on the sperm motility characteristics." (Fejes. 2005).

And by the way, even if your sperm survive the chronic electromagnetic assault, chances are that the chronic stress of being within everybody's reach 24/7 will finish them off. So, regardless of whether you want or do not want to father a child in the near future, I suggest you reconsider whether or not it is really necessary, let alone desirable to be enslaved by an electronic gadget and the people at the other end of the wireless line.

How To Get Rid Of Pregnancy Weight? Exercise, Diet Or A Combination Of Both? What Works And Is Safe? Plus: Full Breastfeeding Alone Sheds 12kg of Pregnancy Weight

Mother's love is a natural instinct, the worries about pregnancy weight not, simply because it would hardly ever occur in nature. If anything you'd be worried not to "make" enough weight to nurture your baby after the pregnancy.

If the name “Cochrane review” does not ring a bell, let me briefly fill you in on what the Cochrane Database and the Cochrane reviews are, before we are delving deeper into the topic at hand, which is, or rather which are the results of the latest Cochrane Review on “Diet or exercise, or both, for weight reduction in women after childbirth” by Amorim Adegboye & Linne YM (2013).

I guess, the elevator pitch on what distinguishes Cochrane Reviews from the rest of the pack, would read as follows: They are comprehensive, they are systematic, they review only primary research in human health care and health policy, and they are internationally recognized as the highest standard in evidence-based health care.  When you’ve read one, you should know what the effects of interventions for prevention, treatment and rehabilitation and how reliable the actual results presented are.

Ok, that’s my assessment, now let’s see what the Cochrane Foundation says about their own work:

“Each systematic review addresses a clearly formulated question; for example: Can antibiotics help in alleviating the symptoms of a sore throat? All the existing primary research on a topic that meets certain criteria is searched for and collated, and then assessed using stringent guidelines, to establish whether or not there is conclusive evidence about a specific treatment. The reviews are updated regularly, ensuring that treatment decisions can be based on the most up-to-date and reliable evidence.”

Sounds similar, right? Now, although they certainly have a high standard and are internationally acclaimed for that, this does not protect these review from being subject to scientific bias, themselves and it’s quite normal to get at least 10 rebuttals to rebuttals after one of these reviews is published. Still, I guess the 77 page report from which I will pick just the most important facts for you is at least the most comprehensive review of the post-pregnancy weight-loss I’ve come across up to now.

Enough of the foreplay let’s get right to the time after the pregnancy now ;-)

So guys - I am deliberately addressing YOU, because you usually don’t care how, just that your significant other gets back in shape - what are you supposed to do if you just became a daddy? If you did everything right during the pregnancy and did not support your wife’s tendency to finally overeat after years of chronic starvation, you are already in a pretty good starting position. Otherwise, you and your wife or girlfriend are probably going to have a rough time to get her back in shape. So…

A. To diet or not to diet?

Assuming that you did not support the nutritional super-size escapades of your significant other during the pregnancy you are best advised to keep her from restricting her food intake.

The latter would probably increase the weight loss (-1.7kg), but most of this weight loss would come from lean mass and would set your wife or girlfriend up for the notorious yoyo effect, or life-long dieting; and that for a meager -0.4% less body fat and at the expense of a reduction in breast milk volume of -18g/day.

B. To work out or to sit still?

You don't have to lie around and eat 24/7, just because you are pregnant: 85 sessions (general fitness class, three times/week, 55-60 min/session from weeks 8-10 to weeks 38-39 of pregnancy are nothing but healthy for mother + child (learn more)

While it is not necessary for weight loss in breast feeding women, it is certainly necessary for your significant other’s overall health, fitness (+6.73mL/kg VO2Max) and lean mass (+0.88kg). Just keep her away from arduous hours of cardio exercise if you don’t want your baby to starve or your wife / girlfriend being forced to fed him/her formula and thus set your offspring up for metabolic and immune problems in the future.

While not being significant the Cochrane review still reports a trend for greater reductions in body fat percentage (-2.51%) for women who worked out in the post-partum period. And while it was beyond the scope of this review, SuppVersity readers will be aware that working out offers protection against post-partum depression, as well (Dennis. 2013).

As mentioned above doing too much entails the risk of reduced milk production and thus depressed infant weight gain. Both were yet not found to be statistically significant and occurred only in some of the pertinent studies.

C. What about working out & dieting

Contrary to dieting alone this is a very favorable approach to get rid of the pregnancy weight. In fact, the likelihood of returning to pre-pregnancy weight was doubled in the three trials that investigated the effects of combined exercise and diet programs. The chances to get back to a health weight after crazy pregnancy binges was even four times higher!

Against that background it is not surprising that we see an overall -1.93kg increase in body weight loss and -2.19% higher losses of body fat in women who diet and work out (sanely) after their pregnancy. The fat free mass loss observed with diet alone was not an issue and most importantly the volume of breast milk, infant length growth and infant weigh gain increased (probably alongside the mother’s health).

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Figure 1: Pregnancy-weight left (in kg) in Danish mothers breastfeeding for different time periods 6 months after the baby was born; the x-axis indicates the pregnancy weight gain in kg (Baker. 2008)

So what are the implications for mother's and fathers to be? For the guys, I would say you better make sure to keep the fridge well-stocked with fresh healthy foods to nourish your family and be prepared to watch for the kid (or kids if this is not your first-born), while your wife is at the gym.

For the ladies, on the other hand, it’s actually quite simply. Just eat a clean diet, work out regularly, not arduously and endlessly and by all means, breastfeed your baby. That alone has been shown to suffice to eliminate up to 12kg of pregnancy weight during the recommended 6-months period of exclusive breast feeding in a 2008 study from Denmark (Baker. 2008)

And lastly don't put yourself under too much pressure. Better slow and steady, than fast and failure-prone. 


References:

• Baker JL, Gamborg M, Heitmann BL, Lissner L, Sørensen TI, Rasmussen KM. Breastfeeding reduces postpartum weight retention. Am J Clin Nutr. 2008 Dec;88(6):1543-51.
• Dennis CL, Dowswell T. Psychosocial and psychological interventions for preventing postpartum depression. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2013 Feb 28;2:CD001134.

On Short Notice: 15% Stronger With Kineso Tapes, HIIT With 30-20-10, Combined Training vs. Diabetes, Coffee vs. Scars, Peanuts & Pregnancy, Phosphate & Insulin + More!

Image 1: You like it fast? Then the novel SuppVersity column SuppVersity "On Short Notice" is right for you. So don't forget to bookmark, subscripe to the RSS feed or the email updates (see bottom right of the page) or simply start following me on facebook and/or twitter

Actually I am quite happy that most of you liked last Saturday's first installment of SuppVersity "On Short Notice" - it turned out that just writing down one of those mini-items, whenever I have a couple of minutes to spare yields more great content than a single post can hold. So, despite the fact that I have stockpiled 11 items for you in today's installment I have already written the first ones for next week's installment of this new column. Before we start with those of the past week, I would just like to remind everyone that you can simply add the RSS feed (all SuppVersity posts, only "On Short Notice" posts) to your favorite RSS reader, or start following me on facebook and/or twitter if you like those informational quickies and thus make sure that you won't miss any information from the realms of exercise science, supplementation and nutrition!

30 - 20 - 10  HIIT for maximal conditioning

As a regular at the SuppVersity you have already learned one or two things about the benefits (and in many cases superiority) of high intensity interval training (HIIT) for fat loss and cardiovascular conditioning (read all about HIIT).

Figure 1:  The 30-20-10 protocol consists of a inner 5x1min 30-20-10 'acceleration'-cycles followed by a 2min period of active rest; those 5x 30-20-10 low-, moderate-, and high-speed running + 1x 2min active rest pairs are repeated 3-4 times.

A recently published study by Gunnarson et al. does now show that even moderately trained individuals can benefit from a very simple yet intense 15-20min interval training (see figure 1) similar to the one the 3 women and 7 men in the active arm of the study performed (total number of participants N=20). And I would say that 4% higher VO2max, 21s faster 1,500-m and 48s faster 5-km running times are nothing you would want to miss, either. Specifically, if those come with a 30-20-10 decrease of systolic blood pressure and reductions in total and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) of -0.5 ± 0.2 and -0.4 ± 0.1 mmol/l, respectively - am I right? No, well you should better stick to your arduous treadmill walks in the non-existant  fat-burning zone, then.

Add strength training to your 10-20-30 aerobic regimen and rid yourself of type II diabetes

I guess it goes without saying that the exercise approach to diabetes won't work without other lifestyle interventions, such as dietary modifications and stress reduction / management (e.g. "Chronically Fatigued? Do Qigong!". After all, you would not have gotten into the mess if your nutrition had been in check and your stress-management effective - and don't give me the "bad genes excuse", I hear that from my type II diabetic grandma often enough!

Figure 2: fasting glucose and glycolosated hemoglobin levels before and after a 20-week exercise intervention consisting of either 3x per week of combined resistance and aerobic training or aerobic only training of the same volume (based on Moro. 2012)

As far as exercise goes, a recently published study has (once again) confirmed that a combined aerobic + resistance training protocol is more effective with respect to longterm (20-week) improvements in glycemia than the regular "walk" or even worse "jog an incline for 40-60min everyday" regimen - in the study at hand the aerobics regimen employed one of those classic 'ramps' starting at 15min @ 40-50% in the first week and ramping up volume + intensity to 60 min at 60-70% (Moro. 2012): What is particularly striking about the results (see figure 2) is the differential effects on simple fasting blood glucose levels and the amount of glycolosated hemoglobin, an index for the long-term (24h) glucose stability, which improved significantly more (p < 0.05) with the combined (3x split training with 3 sets à 10-12reps + 20min of light aerobic exercise afterwards), than with the aerobics only 3x per week exercise program.

Assuming that the additional strength training component is also going to help the 24 formerly sedentary participants (men and women aged 60,41 ± 7,87y) to build or at least maintain "metabolic currency" (= muscle) you can bet money that those differences would have been even more pronounced if the trial had lasted 6 or more instead of just 5 months. Remember: You are in this for life!

And if you want do get stronger, just tape your biceps

If you train in one of the gyms, where professional athletes go in and out, you will probably already have seen people come in with those blue, green or pink "package tapes" on their limbs. Usually their coaches and or physiotherapists apply those and send them to the gym, when they are still recovering from an injury and thus cannot perform their regular training sessions.

Figure 3: Concentric and eccentric elbow peak torque with and without kineseo or placebo taping ( (Fratocchi. 2012)

As the data in figure 3 goes to show, this practice could turn out to be the kinesiologic analogon to creatin... well, aside from the fact that it works instantaneously, maybe (Fratocchi. 2012). Done right, the taping can increase your concentric and eccentric peak torgue on a simulated biceps curl (performed on an isokinetic pulley machine) by 13-15%. Whether these results, Fratocchi et al. observed in trained, but not (upper body) strength trained young men and women will translate in similar pronounced strength improvement on real curls - let alone permanent gains, once you remove the tape - remains to be seen. But let's be honest, what do you have to lose? As long as you don't apply the tape wrong (see figure 3, green-framed photo), I would say that the worst thing that can happen is that people laugh at your novel 'gymwear'.

On ultra-short notice:

• Your red blood cells can produce testosterone and other androgens - Believe it or not, but according to a recent study from the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, Chile, human platelets can produce sex hormones from circulating DHEA-S (Garrido. 2012). They can also take up estrone-sulfate and convert it to 17b-estradiol (the most active form of estrogen); taking your DIM does therefore not necessarily prevent that your platelets avail themselves of the estrone your liver is spilling out and convert it back to estrogen, when they "feel that's necessary". If you don't care about that, you may be interested that DHEA can also ramp up insulin sensitivity and help you lose weight and protect your muscle against exercise induced damage - even when you train like a maniac. 

• 

  Image 2: Better smear some coffee paste onto your wound than special creams if you don' want nasty scars.

  Coffee paste applied to a closed wound could prevent scarring - Although the paper does not mention this explicitly (Perez-Aso. 2012), the discovery that the pharmacological blockade of the adenosine A2A receptor prevents scarring suggests that a paste made of/with fresh coffee should actually do the exact same thing. After all, coffee is a natural pan-(=across many)adenosine receptor antagonist. It goes without saying, though that you cannot apply the coffee onto the open wound, right? Well, I guess you can, but it is at least questionable if that would not rather increase your chance for infections that decrease your risk of developing ugly scars. Find out more about coffee!
• EPO increases muscle repair by ramping up satellite cell activity - According to Jia et al., endogenous EPO, i.e. erythropoietin that is produced by your body, plays an important role in satellite cell proliferation and thus the repair and the "structural expansion" of muscle tissue. Based on their studies in wild-type and EPO overexpressing mice, the researchers speculate that exogenous erythropoietin could thus be used to "contribute to increasing satellite cell number following muscle injury, improve myoblast proliferation and survival, and promote repair and regeneration" (Jia. 2012). Read more about EPO or sattelite cells, and the commonly overlooked role of estrogen in satellite cell replenishment and activation.
• IGF-1 from colostral whey is orally active and ameloriates high blood sugar - I have addressed the question whether the more or less complex peptides from milk (see "Colostrum & Milk"), deer antler (see "Ask Dr. Andro: Does Deer Antler Velvet Work?") & co can even work, when they are administered orally several times before - a recent discovery by scientists from the Republic of Korea does now suggest that, at least in diabetic rodents, the IGF-1 fraction in colostral whey exerts similar blood sugar lowering effects as its recombinant (artificial) human cousin (Hwand. 2011). Since this is nothing but another rodent study, the non-negligible blood sugar reductions of 11 and 33 % at weeks 2 and 4, respectively, are yet sill only something for the "ultra-short notice" section of the "on short notice" column of the SuppVersity (if you have not done so already, don't fotget to read up on the anti-diabetic effects of camel milk here).
• People with reactive hypoglycemia shouldn't follow a low carb high protein diet - I knew that from my experience with others (esp. women), but when the issue of reactive hypoglycemia surfaced again in one of the comments, I dug up a 1975 study which clearly shows that avoiding carbs altogether (50-60g /day in the study) will only add impaired glucose tolerance on top of the existing and persistent symptoms (Anderson. 1975). More on potential pitfalls with very low carbing: "Carbohydrate Shortage in Paleo Land" and "Half As Heavy, but Twice As Fat: 'Atkins-Style' No-Carb Diet + Exhaustive Exercise Compromise Body Composition"

• 

  Image 3: Craving peanut butter? The sugar (and thus increased gestational diabetes risk) is probably more of a problem than the "allergens". At least that is what the ~20% reduced asthma and allergic rhinitis risk a recent study reports based on data from the Danish National Birth cohort reports would suggest.

  Peanuts during pregnancy not a problem, but rather beneficial - While real junkies harm their unborn babies by irresponsible consumption of cigarettes, alcohol and other drugs, health junkies could be doing the same by totally avoiding exposure to any kind of potential allergens. At least this is what a recent analysis of data from the Danish National Birth Cohort would suggest. According to the results of Maslova et al., the consumption of potentially pro-allergenic pea- and tree-nuts did not only elicit any changes in terms of future allergies, it was also "inversely associated with a medication-related asthma diagnosis (OR, 0.81) and self-reported allergic rhinitis (OR, 0.80)" (Maslova. 2012) - or put simply: not the consumption, but rather the abstinence of potential pro-allergens appears to dispose unborn children to develop respective allergies in later life.
• High-normal TSH good predictor of visceral obesity; irrespective of insulin resistance - "Your TSH is somewhat high, but no reason to be concerned." If that's what your Dr. told you, you better get another one. After all, a recent study by Muscogiuri et al. shows that those "somewhat high TSH levels" are a pretty good indicator of increased visceral adiposity, and all its potentially fatal health consequences (Muscogiuri. 2012). And if you want to improve your thyroid function naturally, I suggest you read my previous post "Dietary Thyroid Treatment: Beef, Green Vegetables, Full-Fat Milk & Butter Normalize TSH in Subclinical Hypothyroidism"!
• High phosphate content of meal increases postprandial blood glucose and insulin - What are two characteristics of coke and similar soft drinks? Right: They contain tons of high GI sugar and phosphate. A combination of which a group of researchers from the Department of Clinical Nutrition at the University of Tokushima in Japan has recently shown that it leads to a profound increase in postprandial (hours after the meal) blood glucose and insulin levels compared to low GI, but also compared to high high GI low phosphate (400mg vs. 1200mg) meals in 11 young, healthy volunteers. Bottom line: If high GI is bad, high GI + high phosphorus is even worse (Taketani. 2012). I am not sure how much phosphor the sports drink I wrote about roughly two weeks ago contain, but certainly less than coke, and still the average body fat gain per energy drink was ~18g ("Fat Content Per Energy Drink 0g, Body Fat Gain Per Energy Drink 18g!").

References:

1. Anderson JW, Herman RH. Effects of carbohydrate restriction on glucose tolerance of normal men and reactive hypoglycemic patients. Am J Clin Nutr. 1975 Jul;28(7):748-55.
2. Fratocchi G, Di Mattia F, Rossi R, Mangone M, Santilli V, Paoloni M. Influence of Kinesio Taping applied over biceps brachii on isokinetic elbow peak torque. A placebo controlled study in a population of young healthy subjects. J Sci Med Sport. 2012 Jul 6.
3. Garrido A, Munoz Y, Sierralta W, Valladares L. Metabolism of dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate and estrone-sulfate by human platelets. Physiol Res. 2012 Jun 6.
4. Gunnarsson TP, Bangsbo J. The 10-20-30 training concept improves performance and health profile in moderately trained runners. J Appl Physiol. 2012 Jul;113(1):16-24.
5. Hwang KA, Hwang YJ, Ha W, Choo YK, Ko K. Oral administration of insulin-like growth factor-I from colostral whey reduces blood glucose in streptozotocin-induced diabetic mice. Br J Nutr. 2011 Oct 10:1-7.
6. Jia Y, Suzuki N, Yamamoto M, Gassmann M, Noguchi CT. Endogenous erythropoietin signaling facilitates skeletal muscle repair and recovery following pharmacologically induced damage. FASEB J. 2012 Jul;26(7):2847-58. Epub 2012 Apr 9.
7. Maslova E, Granström C, Hansen S, Petersen SB, Strøm M, Willett WC, Olsen SF. Peanut and tree nut consumption during pregnancy and allergic disease in children-should mothers decrease their intake? Longitudinal evidence from the Danish National Birth Cohort. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2012 Jun 26.
8. Moro AR, da Rosa R, da Silva FC, Filho PJBG. Effect of combined and aerobic training on glycemic control in type 2 diabetes. Fisioter. mov. [online]. 2012, vol.25, n.2 [cited 2012-07-13], pp. 399-409.
9. Muscogiuri G, Sorice GP, Mezza T, Prioletta A, Lassandro AP, Pirronti T, Della Casa S, Pontecorvi A, Giaccari A. High-normal TSH values in obesity: is it insulin resistance or adipose tissue's guilt? Obesity (Silver Spring). 2012 Jul 3.
10. Perez-Aso M, Chiriboga L, Cronstein BN. Pharmacological blockade of adenosine A2A receptors diminishes scarring. FASEB J. 2012 Jul 5.
11. Taketani Y, Yamazaki M, Ueda H, Mori Y, Tanaka T, Horie D, Ominami H, Okumura-Yamanaka H, Yamamoto H, Takeda E. Interaction between dietary phosphate and carbohydrate on glucose and phosphate metabolism in healthy young men. Kidney Research and Clinical Practice. Volume 31, Issue 2, June 2012

The Soy Formula: Pregnant or Lactating Mother + Soy = Metabolically Deranged Male Offspring

Image 1: Newsweek title from the
year 2000 - "Fat for Life?"; did his
mother love her soy protein more
than her son's health?

Those of you who listened to my dissertations on yesterday's fourth installment of the Amino Acid Series on Carl Lenore's Super Human Radio will probably remember the lack of carnitine in the not-yet-enriched soy based baby-formula of the late 1970s. Now, a recently published rodent study suggests that the negative effects of soy may well begin before the offspring is even born: Exposure of pregnant and lactating rats to a soy (vs. a casein) based diet "increased the presence of the characteristics of the metabolic syndrome in the offspring" (Jahan-mihan. 2011).

In the course of their study, the results which was published in the latest issue of the British Journal of Nutrition, the scientists randomly assigned pregnant rats (at day 3 of gestation) to one out of two calorically identical diets, which different only with regard to the source of their protein content. While half of the rats were fed a soy based formula, the other half received a casein based diet.

Figure 1: Amino acid composition of the cystein- (C) and cystein+methionine (S) fortified (indicated by the asterisk) casein (C) and soy-based (S) diets rat dams and their offspring were fed in the course of pregnancy and lactation and weening, respectively (data adapted from Jahan-mihan. 2011).

The whole study consisted of two almost identical test series, which lasted 9 (Exp. 1) and 15 weeks (Exp. 2) and provided unambiguously detrimental results for the male pups :

In Expt 1, pups born to S-fed dams had higher fasting blood glucose (BG), systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) at week 4, higher blood glucose (BG) response to a glucose administration (P,0·001) and higher body weight (BW) at week 8 (P,0·05). In Expt 2, consumption of the S diet throughout gestation and lactation resulted in higher BW (P,0·05), DBP (P,0·005) and SBP (P,0·005) in the offspring. They also had higher homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR; P,0·05) and plasma homocysteine (P,0·05) at weaning, higher fasting BG and glucose response to glucose administration (P,0·005) at week 12 and higher HOMA-IR (P,0·01) at week 15.

It goes without saying that in absence of other variables, either the amino acid composition or the genistein, daidzein and glycitein content of the soy diet must have been responsible for the metabolic priming towards high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes.

Figure 2: Relative elevation of glucose, insulin, HOMA-IR (marker of insulin resistance) and corticosteroids (stress hormones) in offspring of soy-fed rats compared to pups of casein-fed mothers at different time-points in their lives (data adapted from Jahan-mihan. 2011).

In that it is worth mentioning that the extension of the duration of the soy feeding from gestation in experiment 1 to gestation + lactation in experiment "resulted in a more robust effect of the S diet on BW, body composition and glucose metabolism in the offspring". These results contradict the hypothesis "that offspring weaned to similar diets as their mothers will adapt more appropriately to their postnatal environment"; an observation a cynic may comment with the words: 'I guess, they did not have enough time for genetic adaption'.

As far as the underlying reasons for these detrimental effects of a soy-based pregnancy and lactation diet go, the scientists argue that bioactive peptides such as valine–proline–proline and isoleucine–proline–proline, which are present in casein, but are not contained in soy proteins, may play a factor. On the other hand, Jahan-mihan et al. discount the isoflavone content of the soy protein (36.1, 31.3 and 4.4µg/g for Genistein, daidzein and glycitein, respectively) as potential cause of the metabolic derangement, because "the genistein content of the S diet was 36 µg/g of the diets, well below that reported (250 mg/g diet) in the maternal diet to affect epigenetic and phenotypic changes in mice". The latter, however, makes me question the reasons, the researchers had to chose exclusively male pubs in their study!? What if not the phytoestrogens in soy would whack up the male pups endocrine system? Be that as it may, if you are a mother to be, you better not make soy protein your no.1 source of dietary protein, in order not to set your children up for high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes in their later lives.

Intramuscular Fat & High Energy Expenditure + Fatty Acid Oxidation. Vigorous Exercise & Feto-Protection. Genetics, Binding Proteins, Phosphorus & Low Vitamin D

Jogging or Tai Chi!? You have the choice - longevity-wise it may not make much of a difference.

20% that's the average risk reduction for all-cause mortality among those of the 61,477 Chinese men in the Shanghai Men's Health Study who practice Thai-Chi regularly.

And what's more, in view of the fact that this is hardly less than the 23% risk reduction the researchers from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee, calculated for  men who walked regularly and only 7% less than the reduction in all-cause mortality Na Wang et al. observed in regular joggers, it is also the SuppVersity Figure of the week (Wang. 2013) - a figure that's not much different for cancer and cardiovascular mortality, by the way. 

Before you go exploring your Qi and prolong your life, I'd still suggest you meditate over the other On Short Notice items for a couple of minutes ;-)

Feto-Protective Effects of Vigorous Exercise in Pregnant Women

Another interesting observation of the study at hand was that the pregnant women did perform the same amount of work during their 40 min workouts, despite the fact that they had to carry significantly more weight and were clearly disadvantaged from a kinetic point of view, theoretically that is to say.

Being pregnant should be a reason to get going, not to "slacken off". After all, the chances a women is already pre-diabetic, when she becomes pregnant is unpleasantly high already. Against that background it is certainly not a good idea to reduce your daily "exercise" from "almost zero" to "minus 1".

Recent evidence for the notion that pregnancy is a reason to exercise, not to "slacken off" comes from a soon to be published study by Michelle F. Mottola et al. who found that 40 minutes of vigorous exercise at 95% ventilatory threshold (for most active individuals that would be a fast jog) yielded significant improvements blood glucose levels and better outcomes in a subsequent glucose challenge (75 g) that was conducted after the workout -- changes of which the researchers say that they are "fetoprotective" and did not lead to adverse effects on birth outcome (Mottola. 2013).

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Listen up fathers-to-be: That you should not  have your pregnant wives or girlfriends do heavy deadlifts in the gym or with the water canisters at home, does not mean that you have to featherbed them - that would be detrimental to both, your loved one and your unborn child.

Gentics, Vitamin D2, D3 and Vitamin D Binding Proteins, Phosphorus & Low Vitamin D

Figure 1: If you don't have the "standard" genes you may in fact be better off supplementing with vitamin D2 to bring your total 25OHD levels up into the >20nmol/ml zone (Nimitphong. 2013)

You still think it's all just about how much vitamin D you have? Well, at least in multiple sclerosis it is probably more important how much of it is bound to vitamin D binding protein... you did not even know that existed? Well, that's the result of too much hype and too little science, which are the main characteristics of the mainstream coverage of vitamin D.

And to get back to the important stuff: If you have MS and want to benefit from vitamin D supplementation, you should try find out what your vitamin D binding proteins are like. After all high levels of VDB did totally blunt the beneficial effects of vitamin D supplementation in a recent study from China (Yang. 2013).

Ah, talking about vitamin D, you may also be intrigued to hear that at least in the 99 women and 41 men (age, 66-96 years) who participated in a recent study from the Justus-Liebig-University in Giessen, Germany (Jungert. 2013), the nutritional intake of vitamin D showed no relation to the amount of circulating vitamin D levels (25OHD3), at all.

It is possible that the high dietary intake of phosphor plays a role in the etiology of the low vitamin D epidemic (learn more)?

And while the same was true for the average calcium intakes, the statistically significant association between the dietary intake of phosphorus and the subjects' parathyroid hormone (PTH; its logarithmic value, to be precise) in the lean study participants. In view of the fact that the levels of PTH correlate negatively with the levels of vitamin D, this should remind you of a previous SuppVersity article about the potential involvement of the overtly high amounts of phosphorus in the standard western diet (cf. "Hypothesis: Does Vitamin D 'Deficiency' Protect Us From Phosphorus Overload? 1,25OHD Production Drops By 19pg/dL With Each 1mg/dL Increase in Phosphorus" | read more...).

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I am convinced... we are far from understanding how vitamin D actually works. Aside from our incomplete understanding of the role the vitamin D binding protein (e.g. is VDB like SHBG for testosterone necessary for the interaction with certain tissues, while blunting the interaction with others), our concept of its interactions with vitamin A is incomplete and the mainstream paradigm of a general antagonism simply flawed. Therefore I am confident that this was not the last mini-update on vitamin D that goes beyond the hoopla of what vitamin D is supposed to be involved in, here at the SuppVersity.

The schizophrenic effects of intramuscular fat (IMTG)

Depending on the way you aquire it, the fat "within" the muscle (intra-muscular triglycerides; IMTG) appears to have very different effects. While it is generally associated with insulin resistance in the morbidly obese (a causal effect has never been proven), it has likewise been shown to increase in response to exercise (Shaw. 2010), where it serves as a readily available endurance substrate.

Things to remember about IMTG:

(1) In lean active individuals, the IMTG pool is regularly depleted during exercise and is replenished during subsequent feeding. Supercompensation is possible.

(2) Reduced IMTG oxidation appears to contribute to the reduction in fat oxidation during exercise in sedentary individuals, where it is accompanied by the accumulation of lipid metabolites and insulin resistance in skeletal muscle.

(3) The IMTG stores are a readily available substrate during workouts.

(4) A high IMTG synthesis rate is a major determinant of IMTG content and keeps lipid metabolite concentrations low and insulin sensitivity high.

(5) IMTG synthesis rates can be increased by exercise, dietary interventions, and combined dietary and exercise interventions. (based on Shaw. 2010)

Van Loon et al. (2003) for example observed a 60% reduction in IMTG content in type 1 muscle fibers following two hours of cycling exercise performed at 60% maximum oxygen uptake (VO2max) and Shaw, Clark and Wagenmakers point out that

"the specific depletion of IMTG in type 1 muscle fibers is a consistent finding and is in line with the greater capacity for IMTG storage and fatty acid oxidation in these fibers. The use of IMTG as a fuel source does not appear to be limited to endurance exercise either, as several studies have also demonstrated a significant reduction in IMTG content after a single bout of resistance exercise." (Shaw. 2010)

Against that background, it is maybe no longer that surprising to hear that a group of Harvard researchers found that those of the overweight children in their study who did not just receive "standardized healthful lifestyle advice" for 8 weeks, but were also randomized to an in-home supervised exercise intervention exhibited increases in both fitness and intramuscular triglycerides ( McCormack. 2013).

Figure 2: Overview of some of the main results of the Harvard study (McCormack. 2013)

What I am pretty sure, though, is going to surprise you is the fact that these increases in the amount of fat in the musculature of the kids (average age 13y) showed a highly significant correlation with greater resting energy expenditure (r = 0.78, P = 0.005) and a decrease in fasting respiratory quotient (r = -0.70, P = 0.02). Or to put is simply: The more intramuscular fat, the more energy your burn sitting around and the more of this energy is going to be from fat.

Against that background, studies investigating the role of ITMG in both obesity and exercise performance begin to appear in a very different light. Let's take insulin's inhibitory effect on adipose tissue lipid oxidation, as an example. Logically you should assume that this effect was a major bummer for any endurance athlete and guzzling glucose containing drinks before or even during a workout would be stupid.

Different rules for glycogen loading and re-pletion (more on the latter)

As Shaw et al. point out in their review, this insulin-induced inhibition of adipose tissue lipolysis could yet lead to an increase in IMTG utilization that would mirror the increase in IMTG utilization seen after pharmacological suppression of adipose tissue lipolysis by Acipimox (= a special form of niacin; van Loon. 2005a, 2005b). In fact, the use of IMTG has been shown to increase ∼twofold when high-GI-index meals are eaten the day preceding exercise.

Moreover, Shinora et al. were able to show that the increase in intra-muscular lipids after a 7-day glycogen loading protocol as it is commonly used by endurance athletes increased the amount of IMTGs and bumped up the fatty acid oxidation rate by 5-6% (Shinohara. 2010)

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Still much to be learned: It remains to be seen how this relates to the increases in energy expenditure the Harvard researchers just observed. What appears to be certain, though is that the common vilification of IMTG is another instance of hilarious over-generalization that does not stand the test of science.

Facebook News Round-Up

As far as the official Short News are concerned, that's it for today. If you want more, I suggest you head over to the SuppVersity Facebook Wall and check out one of the following news items that appeared in the course of the week:

• 

  Some supplements are for drag queens and wanna-be eunuchs, only: "Study Finds 17x Elevated Estrogen, High Progesterone + Reduced DHEA Levels in 65% of Ecdysteroid, Tribulus, Phytoestrogen, Phytosterol and/or Soy Protein Users!" (read more)

  Caffeine stops cirrhosis of the liver -- That's at least what a recent paper from the Department of Gastroenterology, Hanyang University Medical Center in Korea would suggest | read more...
• GH is an abdominal fat annihilator -- While most of you will have seen this news already, you may want to take a peek at the additional information on the "optimal" dosing regimen, I posted, yesterday | lean more...
• Dairy & vitamin B6 decrease, green tea & co increase homocysteine -- Good to know, yet what's even more important to know is that homocysteine is not even associated with an increased risk of CVD | read more...
• Improved body composition w/ DHEA supplementation -- Review of RCTs w/ 1353 elderly male participants says the effects are mediated by the conversion to testosterone and estrogen | learn more...

You've digested them all? Well, in that case you've two options left: (A) You begin practicing Thai-Chi or (B) you start right into an exciting weekend... whatever your choice may be, I hope you enjoy the rest of the day and come back tomorrow for more news from the realms of nutrition, exercise and supplementation sciences.

References:

• McCormack SE, McCarthy MA, Harrington SG, Farilla L, Hrovat MI, Systrom DM, Thomas BJ, Torriani M, McInnis K, Grinspoon SK, Fleischman A. Effects of exercise and lifestyle modification on fitness, insulin resistance, skeletal muscle oxidative phosphorylation and intramyocellular lipid content in obese children and adolescents. Pediatr Obes. 2013 Jun 25
• Mottola MF, Inglis S, Brun CR, Hammond JA. Physiological and metabolic responses of late pregnant women to 40 minutes of steady-state exercise followed by an oral glucose tolerance perturbation. J Appl Physiol jap.00487.2013; published ahead of print June 27, 2013.
• Nimitphong H, Saetung S, Chanprasertyotin S, Chailurkit LO, Ongphiphadhanakul B. Changes in circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D according to vitamin D binding protein genotypes after vitamin D₃ or D₂ supplementation. Nutr J. 2013 Apr 4;12:39.
• Shaw CS, Clark J, Wagenmakers AJ. The effect of exercise and nutrition on intramuscular fat metabolism and insulin sensitivity. Annu Rev Nutr. 2010 Aug 21;30:13-34. 
• Shinohara A, Takakura J, Yamane A, Suzuki M. Effect of the classic 1-week glycogen-loading regimen on fat-loading in rats and humans. J Nutr Sci Vitaminol (Tokyo). 2010;56(5):299-304.
  
• van Loon LJ, Koopman R, Stegen JH, Wagenmakers AJ, Keizer HA, Saris WH. Intramyocellular lipids form an important substrate source during moderate intensity exercise in endurance-trained males in a fasted state..J. Physiol. 2003. 553:611–25.
• van Loon LJ, Manders RJ, Koopman R, Kaastra B, Stegen JH, et al. Inhibition of adipose tissue lipolysis increases intramuscular lipid use in type 2 diabetic patients. Diabetologia. 2005a, 48:2097–107.
• van Loon LJ, Thomason-Hughes M, Constantin-Teodosiu D, Koopman R, Greenhaff PL, et al. Inhibition of adipose tissue lipolysis increases intramuscular lipid and glycogen use in vivo in humans. Am. J. Physiol. Endocrinol. Metab. 2005b. 289:E482–93.
• Wang N, Zhang X, Xiang YB, Li H, Yang G, Gao J, Zheng W, Shu XO. Associations of Tai Chi, Walking, and Jogging With Mortality in Chinese Men. Am J Epidemiol. 2013 Jun 27. [Epub ahead of print]
• Yang M, Qin Z, Zhu Y, Li Y, Qin Y, Jing Y, Liu S. Vitamin D-binding protein in cerebrospinal fluid is associated with multiple sclerosis progression. Mol Neurobiol. 2013 Jun;47(3):946-56.

Baby Weight and Depression? It Doesn't Have to be the Treadmill: 11% and 8% Less Body Fat with Resistance and Flexibility Training Within 4 Months Postpartum

Image 1 (ezineMarks.com): Heidi Klum certainly deserves respect to go from left to right within 5 weeks, but not every woman has a fitness trainers and chefs to make that possible.

I know, this may not be a "regular" SuppVersity post; and no, I am not becoming a father, but I still found that the results of a recently conducted trial by J. D. LeCheminant et al. from the Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, deserved some attention. After all you will usually be confronted with the notion that those celebrity moms run around for (or four?) hours every day to starve themselves back into their size zero jeans within possibly record-braking time (see "The German Fräuleinwunder", Heid Klum in image 1). In fact, breastfeeding alone is associated with a ~618 kcal increase in energy expenditure per day alone would be way above my usual recommendation not to go below a -20% reduction in calorie intake, when you are dieting in order to preserve precious muscle tissue, and should thus well suffice to get you my dear mothers back in shape in no time, even if you did not work out, at all (Thomson. 1970).

Do it like Heidi: Breastfeed and lift weights, as long your baby is still too light to be lifted ;-)

Six weeks after they had given birth and thus way later than Heidi Klum, for example, the young mothers (mean age: 26 years) who had been recruited by LeCheminat and his colleagues from the local community were randomized to one out of two study groups:

Does resistance training increase fertility I guess, this has little to no statistical significance, but upon reviewing the 'collateral' data from the study, I realized that 10% of the women in the RT group withdrew from the study due to another pregnancy. In the FT group, on the other hand it was not a single one. Probably just coincidence (or a side effect of feeling strong and sex?), but interesting, nonetheless ;-)
1. resistance training (RT) - nine exercises (leg extension, seated leg curl, leg press, biceps curl, shoulder press, chest press, lat pull-down, seated row, and abdominal curl-ups) for all major muscle groups, 1–3 sets per exercise (increasing from month 1-4), 90-s rest interval between sets, and 8–12 repetitions per set performed on 2 nonconsecutive
   days per week at a local physical therapy
2. flexibility training (FT) - the protocol was based on the recommendations from the American College of Sports Medicine Position Stand (1998) and included static stretching, four stretches (sets) per major muscle group, and holding each stretch for 10–30s; participation in group stretching once per week was optional

At baseline, 2 months, and 4 months, all participants were tested for strength, flexibility, exercise self-efficacy, depressive symptoms, and objectively measured PA. Body composition (DXA) was assessed at baseline and 4 months. Another parameter that may well be of interest yet was not included in the later  statistical analysis is the breast feeding rate, of which the scientists state that despite the fact that "most" (95%) were breastfeeding, only...

56% were breastfeeding exclusively, 33% combined infant formula with breastfeeding, and 7% combined some solids with breastfeeding. The remaining two participants did not report the extent of breastfeeding combined with formula or solids.

Obviously the statistical power would have been too low for significant results here, anyway, but I would still have been interested if there was - as I would speculate a certain trend for "exclusive breast feeders" to lose their 16kg of pregnancy weight faster than their "formula assisted" peers.

Figure 1: Changes in body composition from begin to the end of the study period (based on LeCheminan. 2012)

Apropos losing weight, as the data in figure 1 clearly indicates that worked almost magically for women in both groups.Although the changes are obviously slightly more pronounced and despite the fact that the women in the RT group quadrupled (+300%!) the amount of vigorous activity they performed on a weekly basis while the women in the FT group increased their vigorous activity levels by "only" 50%, these differences did not reach statistical significance. This does yet not mean that someone who strength trains cannot see better results (especially in the mirror) compared to someone who is just doing some stretches, it does however underline how returning to normal eating habits staying generally active and not sitting depressed next to your child and in front of the television all day long alone, can already help you, your wife, friend or relative get rid of much (~60%) of the 6.5kg the women in the stud had retained of their 16kg of pregnancy weight even postpartum in only 4 months.

Image 2 (TopNews.in): Light resistance training is good for mothers to be and  has no detrimental effects on unborn children.

Working out during pregnancy? Contrary to common believe, a light to moderate strength training workout (35-40min) performed three times per week over the second and third trimester of pregnancy does not have a negative impact on the newborn's body size or overall health (Barakat. 2009). On the contrary, it could help "attenuate the adverse consequences of maternal body weight gain" (Barakat. 2009) and "eliminate or significantly reduce the need for insulin in women with GDM [gestational diabetes]" (Brankston. 2003) - prepartum obesity prevention for you and your child, what more can you ask for, ladies?

Moreover, the women in the RT group however had so profound strength increases, especially in the midsection, that they probably could not only keep pace with, but have probably easy surpassed the weight development of their infants.

Figure 2: Strength development (rel. change vs. baselin) during the 4-months study period (based on LeCheminan. 2012)

What's the use of that? Well aside from probably being stronger (and sexier) than before the pregnancy the fortified midsection, will safeguard these mothers from the dreaded backaches, many of them develop as a consequence of carrying their increasingly heavier toddlers around. Against that a couple of pounds of body fat less may eventually reveal a set of chiseled abs is nothing but a welcome side effect of which I personally feel that it is not absolutely necessary for a woman.

Bottom line: If you want to get in shape after a pregnancy,...

Image 3 (MusclePharm): Regardless of what you think about their products. MusclePharm's advertising guys certainly have their finger on the pulse of the time: A time, where the previous perception of skinny women = sexy women begins to tumble - if you asked me, I'd say it was about time for that to happen! Strong is the new sexy (baby?)!

It is not necessary to starve yourself and your baby (you can hardly expect to have enough breast milk on a low-fat 800kcal diet, can you?) hand it over to granny and do 4h on the treadmill every day. You better get yourself a gym membership, find new friends and train your whole body at least two times a week. That will not only make your mother (or mother-in-law) your toddler and husband happy it will also help you to come to terms with your new self, which - if you do it correctly - will be stronger, healthier, sexier and happier than before, as a side-finding of the study was that the "sedentary time and light-intensity PA time improved to a greater extent in the RT group than the FT group" indicating that resistance training, but not flexibility training "would result in improved confidence to perform PA following childbirth and perhaps facilitate behavioral change toward a sustained increase in spontaneous PA" (LeCheminant. 2012) as it was proposed by Schmitz et al in another context (Schmitz. 2003) and could thus have exponentiated the direct effects of strength training by indirect / downstream effects which counteract the general tendency towards a sedentary, non-active lifestyle in our society.

References:

1. Barakat R, Lucia A, Ruiz JR. Resistance exercise training during pregnancy and newborn's birth size: a randomised controlled trial. Int J Obes (Lond). 2009 Sep;33(9):1048-57. Epub 2009 Jul 28.
2. Brankston GN, Mitchell BF, Ryan EA, Okun NB. Resistance exercise decreases the need for insulin in overweight women with gestational diabetes mellitus. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2004 Jan;190(1):188-93.
3. Lecheminant JD, Hinman T, Pratt KB, Earl N, Bailey BW, Thackeray R, Tucker LA. Effect of resistance training on body composition, self-efficacy, depression, and activity in postpartum women. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2012 Jun 28.
4. Schmitz KH, Jensen MD, Kugler KC, Jeffery RW, Leon AS. Strength training for obesity prevention in midlife women. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 2003 Mar;27(3):326-33.
5. Thomson AM, Hytten FE, Billewicz WZ. The energy cost of human lactation. Br J Nutr. 1970 Jun;24(2):565-72.

30 Min of Exercise Can Avoid Costly & Unhealthy Gestational Diabetes. Carbohydrate Oxydation Determines Appetite After Workouts. Using a Measuring Tape to Judge Visceral Fat Mass. Update: Vitamin D, Age & Obesity.

85 sessions (general fitness class, three times/week, 55-60 min/session from weeks 8-10 to weeks 38-39 of pregnancy are nothing but healthy for mother + child (Barakat. 2013)

Obese mothers with gestational diabetes are more than just a financial burden. That's what the SuppVersity Figures of the Week clearly indicate.

According to a recently published paper from the National University of Ireland Galway woman who develop gestational diabetes during pregnancy (mostly due to pre-existing extra fat-pounds; not BMI), produce 34% higher health-care costs (Gillespie. 2013). Just as the 75% increase in the necessity to have the kids being delivered by cesarean section, this would still be tolerable, though, if their poor offspring did not also have a increased risk of being born with pathological ventricular hypertrophy (Ullmo. 2007) and a 214% higher likelihood of having to be admitted to the neonatal unit, which, in turn, is associated with "increased and/or aberrant adiposity, in addition to postnatal growth retardation" (Gianni. 2012).

Another good reason to (a) get healthy (and contrary to what the soothing news in the mainstream media will tell you this involves having normal body fat levels), before you even think of bringing a baby into this world and (b) not dropping your exercise regimen all-together, when you're pregnant:

 "A supervised program of moderate exercise performed throughout pregnancy is not a risk of preterm delivery for heal thy pregnant women." (Barakat. 2013) 

This, by the way, works not only in type II, but also type I diabetic mothers, whose chance of developing gestational diabetes and/or even more hazardous extreme spikes and troughs in blood glucose can be reduced from 19% to ZERO with only 30 min of light exercise per day (a self-paced walk in the park is enough!) and making the right food choices (Kumareswaran. 2013).

• Related D-News from Japan: Vitamin D deficiency in Japan comes with current smoking, being female, lack of regular walking and low dietary vitamin D intake, study shows (Yoshimura. 2013).
  

  Overall, 81.3% of the subjects in the study from the University of Tokyo were vitamin D insufficient - only 1.2%, though, had a full-blown deficiency, defined as 25OHD levels below 10 ng/ml.
  Being fat is a critical determinant of baseline vitamin D levels and the response to vitamin D supplement in older Irish adults (Forsythe. 2013).

  "In older adults, vitamin D status was inversely associated with BMI (kg/m2), WC (cm), FM (kg and %), FMI (kg/m2) and FM:FFM (%) at baseline (r − 0·33, − 0·36, − 0·33, − 0·30, − 0·33 and − 0·27, respectively, all P values < 0·01). BMI in older adults was also negatively associated with the change in 25(OH)D following supplementation (β − 1·27, CI − 2·37, − 0·16, P = 0·026)."

  What's surprising, though, is the fact that this correlation of which I have previously argued that is is probably based on the pro- and anti-inflammatory effects of obesity and vitamin D and initiated by being fat, not vitamin D deficient, was not present in the younger study participants.
  
  Just as a review I mentioned only a couple of days ago said: There is still much to learn about vitamin D - in that case D2 & D3 - and how their enzymatic hydroxylation influences both our baseline levels as well as their metabolic downstream effects (read more)

• Exercise does not make you hungry, per se, but the more carbs you burn during your workout the hungrier you're gonna be afterwards (Hopkins. 2013) That's the main finding of a recent study from the Leeds Trinity University in the UK.
  
  

  

  There comes a time, when getting fat and sick is no longer only about making the "wrong" food choices or a non-warranted urge to eat. A time, when neither the apple nor granny's pie will satisfy your hunger, and your cells will be starving within a nutritious cocktail of partially oxidized fatty acids and sticky glucose molecules... yet still, or I should say, exactly for that reason simply "cutting calories" won't solve the problem. Learn more about how this state is creeping up on the obesity generation (read more)

  According to the data the researchers gathered in the course of a bout of cycling individually tailored to expend 400 kcal (EX) or a time-matched no exercise control condition in a randomized, counter-balanced order,
  

  "[...] there was a marked individual variability in compensatory EI. The difference in EI between EX and the control condition ranged from -234.3 to 278.5 kcal. Carbohydrate oxidation during exercise was positively associated with postexercise EI, accounting for 37% of the variance in EI (r=0.57; p=0.02)" (Hopkins. 2013)

  That's particularly interesting, because the average total energy intake did not differ significantly between the exercise and the control condition (666.0±203.9 vs 664.6±174.4 kcal, respectively) in the overweight and obese women with a mean BMI of 29.6±4.0 kg/m².
  
  These observations provide further evidence of the detrimental effects of metabolic inflexibility, a classic characteristic of developing or full-blown metabolic syndrome and a state in which your body is heavily (in the worse cases almost exclusively) reliant on glucose as a substrate - a paradox, in view of the fact that thee aberrant insulin resistance of obese individuals has their cells starve in a state of glucose abundance (learn more)

• Toss your scale and use a measuring tape! Nothing predicts metabolic risk and high risk visceral fat as adequately as the circumference of your midsection (Grundy. 2013)
  
  As a SuppVersity reader you should actually have banned your scale into the depth of your "things I will never need again (!)"-cupboard, once you achieved a normal body weight (on a side note: I don't have a functional scale). From the many questions I receive on a daily basis, I do yet know that some of you are either hesitant to do that or fill inclined to get it back out from time to time to ruin their days and results by stepping on the scale at least thrice a week. If that's you, I suggest you take a peak at the results of a recent study from the Clinical Nutrition and Center for Human Nutrition and the Division of Cardiology of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
  
  To find out whether or not a simple measuring tape by the means of which you would assess the circumference of your waist (WC) would be an adequate measure of total abdominal fat (TAF), abdominal subcutaneous fat (ASF) and intraperitoneal fat (IPF) Scott M. Grundy and his colleagues correlated the measuring tape data with results they had obtained from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and found an excellent correlation between WC and total abdominal fat (R² = 0.81 − 0.88) "with progressively lower correlations with ASF (0.65–0.82) and IPF (0.29–0.85)" (Grundy. 2013)
  

  

  Figure 1: Median intra-abdominal fat (median in kg), waist circumferences and corresponding intraperitoneal to total abdominal fat rario (IP/ABS x10) for quintile 1-5 of total abdominal fat in men (left) and women (Gruny. 2013)

  As hinted at in the arrow in figure 1 the accuracy of the waist circumference as a means to quantify the body fat levels and metabolic risk does not only depend on gender, but also on ethnicity, with African American men and women having lower median IPF masses than Whites and Hispanics, in general, but high(er) greater amounts of subcutaneous. In view of the fact that unlike IPF, ASF correlated only with HOMA2-IR, whereas elevated IPF values were also reliable predictor of high triglyceride levels, as well - African Americans may be at a slightly, but probably not significantly lower risk of developing heart disease (high triglycerides are a neat predictor here) than Whites and Hispanics of whom the latter tend to carry the most vicious visceral fat per cm on their waists.

Believe it or not, but that's it for today! I know that was fast and therefore I'll provide you with a couple of additional facebook news, you may be interested in.

• 

  The fact that simply dropping the weight and lying around for weeks could lead to fat gains is actually not that surprising right? So what can be done to make constant progress without overtaxing the system? One of the answers certainly is P-E-R-I-O-D-I-Z-A-T-I-O-N and the Step By Step Guide to Your Own Workout Routine is the series, where you can learn about planning your training schedule in the long and short run to maximize your results and accommodate it to your personal goals (read more)

  Is giving up physical culture worse for your health than being a sedentary slob in the first place Rodent study suggests there is propensity for increases in visceral fat gain during 4-week detraining that surpasses in previously trained rats that of the sedentary controlled (read more)
• Fooled again 2.0: By one way or another Subway bamboozles customers to believe their junkfood was less junky than that of the competition. According to a recent Harvard study, adolescents dining at Subway underestimate the caloric value of their nutrient deficient junk food by more than 500kcal! That's... (read more)
• The "starve yourself to live longer"-bubble is bursting! Now scientists realize that even in yeast, what you eat is more important than how much you eat and that the simple addition of a pH buffer can go a long way (read more)
   
• SuppVersity Suggested Read: Prolotheraphy? Can you actually HEAL those chronically painful tendons, ligaments and cartilage without having to resort to a butcher's... ah, I mean a surgeon's knife? My buddy Sean Casey just posted part II of his scientifically grounded answer (read more).

Now that you're through with these as well, all that's left to be said is: "Have a nice weekend, everyone, and don't forget that the SuppVersity is open on Sundays, as well!"

References:

• Barakat R, Pelaez M, Montejo R, Refoyo I, Coteron J. Exercise Throughout Pregnancy Does Not Cause Preterm Delivery. A Randomized, Controlled Trial. J Phys Act Health. 2013 May 10.
• Forsythe LK, Livingstone MB, Barnes MS, Horigan G, McSorley EM, Bonham MP, Magee PJ, Hill TR, Lucey AJ, Cashman KD, Kiely M, Strain JJ, Wallace JM. Effect of adiposity on vitamin D status and the 25-hydroxycholecalciferol response to supplementation in healthy young and older Irish adults. Br J Nutr. 2012 Jan;107(1):126-34. 
• Giannì ML, Roggero P, Piemontese P, Orsi A, Amato O, Taroni F, Liotto N, Morlacchi L, Mosca F. Body composition in newborn infants: 5-year experience in an Italian neonatal intensive care unit. Early Hum Dev. 2012 Mar;88 Suppl 1:S13-7.
• Gillespie P, Cullinan J, O'Neill C, Dunne F; ATLANTIC DIP Collaborators. Modeling the independent effects of gestational diabetes mellitus on maternity care and costs. Diabetes Care. 2013 May;36(5):1111-6. 
• Kumareswaran K, Elleri D, Allen JM, Caldwell K, Westgate K, Brage S, Raymond-Barker P, Nodale M, Wilinska ME, Amiel SA, Hovorka R, Murphy HR. Physical Activity Energy Expenditure and Glucose Control in Pregnant Women With Type 1 Diabetes: Is 30 minutes of daily exercise enough? Diabetes Care. 2013 May;36(5):1095-101. 
• Ullmo S, Vial Y, Di Bernardo S, Roth-Kleiner M, Mivelaz Y, Sekarski N, Ruiz J, Meijboom EJ. Pathologic ventricular hypertrophy in the offspring of diabetic mothers: a retrospective study. Eur Heart J. 2007 Jun;28(11):1319-25.
• Yoshimura N, Muraki S, Oka H, Morita M, Yamada H, Tanaka S, Kawaguchi H, Nakamura K, Akune T. Profiles of vitamin D insufficiency and deficiency in Japanese men and women: association with biological, environmental, and nutritional factors and coexisting disorders: the ROAD study. Osteoporos Int. 2013 May 15.