Image 1: A beehive in one of the beehives Koompassia excelsa (‘Tualang’) trees which grow in the Rain Forest of Kedah, Malaysia.
"Have you already had your tablespoon of honey, Honey?" If that's what your girlfriend or wife asked you this morning, she is probably concerned about your testicular health... A group of Malaysian scientists has recently been able to show that 1.2g/kg/day (human equivalent: 0.2g/kg/day or about 1 tablespoon for an average adult man) of a off-the-shelf Malaysian Tulang honey protected the testis of rats, who had been exposed to cigarette some for 8 minutes three times per day, from damage and oxidative stress (Mohamed. 2011).
Before the experiment, the scientists had conducted FRAP and DPPHI assays to determine the in-vitro antioxidant activity of the sweet gummy superfood from "beehives built on a tall tree, Koompassia excelsa (locally named as ‘Tualang’ tree) that grows in the Rain Forest of Kedah".
Figure 1: Total phenolic content (Eq/kg), antioxidant activity (FRAP; µmol of Fe Eq/L), free radical scavenging activity (DPPH assay % inhibition of DPPH radicals) and sugar composition of the Tulang honey used in the study (data adapted from (Mohamed. 2011).
As the data in figure 2 shows, the anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant effects of the honey (cf. figure 1), were so pronounced that the +234% increase in TBARS (thiobarbituric acid reactive substance) cigarette exposure induced in the unsupplemented group was completely abolished by the Tulang honey"supplement" (I deliberately put this into quotation-marks, because I would not consider the "human equivalent", i.e. putting a tablespoon of honey in the tea you have with breakfast as "supplement").
Figure 2: Effect of 13 weeks of honey supplementation (H: 1.2g/kg/day), exposure to cigarette smoke (CS: 8 min, 3x daily) or both (H+CS) on oxidative stress markers from rat testis (Mohamed. 2011).
Accordingly, the Leydig cell sections from the "smoking rats" that received supplemental honey (H+CS; -15% Leydig Cell count), did not show similarly pronounced degenerations as their standard fed peers in the CS (8min 3x daily exposure to cigarette smoke; -23% Leydig cell count) group (cf. figure 3).
Figure 3: Representative photomicrographs of testicular sections showing Leydig cells in intertubular space from the control, the cigarette smoke and the honey + cigarette smoke groups (graphic is based on photos from Mohamed. 2011).
Even if, as I would hope, you have not yet seen how "damaged" Leydig cells look like, the photomicrographs in figure 3 leave no doubt that even with the protective effect of honey, 13 weeks of only 24 minutes cigarette smoke exposure wreak havoc on the morphology of those cells of your best parts that are responsible for the production of testosterone.
Image 2: Believe it or not, despite the fact that it has carbs (you could also argue that it is pure sugar!) honey is not only good for your testis, but for your blood sugar levels as well (photo from readmyreview.com)
Just a quick note to all you sugar-haters out there who are afraid that the one tablespoon of honey will give you diabetes, heart attacks and strokes (let alone all those unaesthetic body fat you will gain ;-): A very recent review on the health effects of honey consumptions comes to the conclusion that (Cortes. 2011)
compared to glucose and sucrose, the consumption of honey decreases glycemic levels and blood lipids in healthy, diabetic and hyperlipidemic individuals. Moreover, long periods of honey intake seem to reduce fasting glucose levels in humans, suggesting that honey consumption influences plasma glucose regulation, mainly through a normo- or hypoglycemic effect.
Digest this before you pass on the honey, because "it has carbs in it!" *scary*
So, while we all know that testosterone won't make you aggressive (ScienceDaily. 2009), there is another sort of "testosterone-related" issue that always has me close to freaking out: Male and female tobacco junkies who dare to light their weeds right next to their own kids... and I bet you, those poor little buggers won't be fed a teaspoon (that should be enough given their smaller body weight) of Malaysian Tulang honey a day.
Vitamin D is all the rave. Even mainstream nutritionists are now jumping on the vitamin D bandwagon and the hype is spilling over from the Internet to newspapers and TV stations. "Take your Vitamin D!" is what children and adults, men and women, couch-potatoes and top-level athletes are told. Recently discovered problems related to the accurate measurement of actual vitamin D levels aside (e.g. Shah. 2011), a recent investigation into the immediate effects of vitamin D on aromatase activity in Sertoli cells of rat testes, suggests that we have to reevaluate whether this advice, which is hitherto largely based on epidemiological data, is not overgeneralizing, to say the least.
Image 1: Transverse section of a tubule of the testis of a rat. X 250. (Wikipedia)
After all, the results of the aforementioned study, which has been published in the Journal of Vertebrate Reproduktive Science & Technology (Zanatta. 2011), clearly indicate that, contrary to common believe, your testosterone levels will not benefit from high vitamin D levels. On the contrary, in their in-vitro study Zanatta et al. found that incubation of Sertoli cells with 100nm 1,25D "increased the amount of aromatase transcript [...] in [Sertoli cells of] 30-day-old rats". Additionally, the scientists were also able to show that the increased aromatase activity was not exclusively due to a genomic effect, but was mediated via a "non-genomic activation of the membrane-bound vitamin D receptor involving the PKA pathway". Whether this is a tissue-, rat- or even age-specific effect does yet still warrant further investigation. The latter is especially true in view of conflicting data on the effects of vitamin D on aromatase activity in especially in view of previous studies such as Lundgvist 2011 et al. (Lundgvist. 2011) who found that
In breast cancer MCF-7 cells, aromatase gene expression and estradiol production were decreased, while production of androgens was markedly increased. In NCI-H295R cells, 1α,25-dihydroxyvitamin D(3) stimulated aromatase expression and decreased dihydrotestosterone production. In prostate cancer LNCaP cells, aromatase expression increased after the same treatment, as did production of testosterone and dihydrotestosterone. In summary, our data show that 1α,25-dihydroxyvitamin D(3) exerts tissue-specific effects on estrogen and androgen production and metabolism.
So, will taking supplemental Vitamin D3 (1,25D) transform you into a hermaphrodite? Will you get rid of gynecomastia (gyno), but develop testicular cancer? The answer to both questions is probably "NO" And I amby no means suggesting that you extrapolate the rat data from isolated sertoli cells to human beings, but In view of these findings, it is nevertheless becoming increasingly questionable whether the correlations between testosterone and vitamin D that have been observed in epidemiological studies have not been misinterpreted as causative, where in fact, both, higher testosterone, as well as vitamin D levels, are a mere results of confounding variables such as an overall healthier, more active lifestyle. After all, our previous understanding of the connection between vitamin D and testosterone could have been as misleading as the idea that firetrucks cause fire, because an "epidemiological" investigation of fires would show that they are present whenever ones breaks out.
Video 1: Clifford L. Johnson, MSPH (CDC):
"The Importance of Monitoring Vitamin D Status in the U.S.",
Thursday, August 19, 2010, at 9 a.m. (EDT)
A pros pos epidemiological studies: A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics in Maryland (see video above) states that in the US...
[t]he risk of vitamin D deficiency increased between 1988-1994 and 2001-2002 in both sexes but did not change between 2001-2002 and 2005-2006.
With two-thirds of the population having, what the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention considers "sufficient vitamin D" levels, you probably better follow my previous advice and just get your level tested before starting on any kind of supplementation regime. If you want to do me a favor, you also check how taking additional D affects your testosterone levels. I promise to publish your results - anonymously, of course ;-)
