Mercury, From Fish to Toenail; Less Testosterone Needed W/ TRT + Tongkat Ali; R,R-Monatin the Next Stevia From South Africa! Plus: Magnesium Protects Mitochondria from LPS & Caffeine Arteries from HIIT Induced Platelet Activity!

Image 1: Looks like the Terminator was concerned about "bone" health, maybe he should consider Tonkgat ali as an addition to his TRT... or whatever regimen;-)

If you want to, you can call today's news a special installment of "On Short Notice", I have already had a couple of interesting news and before I am piling up another truckload, I thought I could make at least some of you happy and put a handful of them out before the Super Human Radio & SuppVersity Science Round-Up on Thursday (you better make time to listen live, Thursday, 12PM/EST and download the first installment if you haven't done so, already ;-) and the "official" Saturdaily installment of "On Short Notice", here at the SuppVersity.

So let's see what we have here: Contrary to the order in the headline we will check out your toenails later, after all, I don't know what they look like and don't want to kill your appetite so that you cannot fully appreciate the findings of Fry et al. who discuss the potential application of an extract from the bark of Sclerochiton ilicifolius A.Meeuse as an all natural sweetener that's probably at least as, if not sweeter than stevia and - you guessed it - 100% calorie free! The same, i.e. being calorie free is obviously true for magnesium aspartate... whatever, in view of its potent protective effects against lipopolysaccharide induced mitochondrial damage and decay, you should not care about that, anyways.  And despite the fact that I would hope that the same goes for the minor pro-thrombotic effects of interval training, there may be one or another of the SuppVersity readers who's having issues with platelet activity already and will therefore be relieved to hear that a cup of coffee before your workout will not increase, but rather decrease the risk of thrombosis in response to the post-exercise increase in platelet activity.

You don't want to miss this week's installment of the joint Super Human Radio + SuppVersity
Science News Roundup - the show airs each Thursday, 12PM/EST (tune in live!)

The latter, i.e. the risk of thrombosis would by the way be even higher, if you were one of Xun et al.'s study participants who consumes one or more servings of fish per day. This would place you at greater risk of having high toenail mercury levels and with those being representative of whole body and tissue mercury levels you would already have higher baseline platelet activity than Mr. or Mrs. Healthy Average Joe, which would probably be a reason for your doctor to tell you that he cannot, by any means, put you on TRT (testosterone replacement therapy) - and that even if you were about as hypogonadal as the castrated rats in the Saadiah Abdul Razak study from the latest issue of Evidence Based Complementary Medicine. A study by the way you could print, show it to your doctor and say: "Look, I don't want to lose my muscle and break my bone, so let's do this you give me a script for low dose TRT and I get myself some quality Eurycoma longifolia extract and we will see how my values look like in 6 weeks from now." 

You see, as usual, even doctors can learn something, here at the SuppVersity so let's not put them on the rack for another paragraph or two and start right with our first item for today:

• 

  Image 2: Could the bark of these twigs from a spiny-leafed, hardwood shrub from South Africa hold a likewise natural stevia alternative?

  Is R,R-Monatin the new stevia? I know you all love your stevia, but there are people who simply hate the taste and still don't want to resort to any of the dubious sugar alcohols let alone the 100% artificial sweeteners, who may be interested that John C. Fry and a couple of other researchers published ad paper on a novel all natural sweetener from the bark of a South African spiny-leafed, hardwood shrub that goes by the name of  Sclerochiton ilicifolius A.Meeuse (Fry. 2012).
  According to the Fry et al., the compound has a potency above 3000 at 5% sucrose equivalent, which would make it (theoretically) even sweeter than stevia. Since the latter hit the market, we do yet all know how unrealiable these theoretical values are so that we will probably have to wait until the first monatin-based sweeteners become available - and you as a SuppVersity would be the first to know what's in there ;-)
  If we assume that there are no hitherto undisclosed health issues with monatin and it does in fact taste sweet and not disgusting, metallic or whatever, it is also likely that we are going to see new "proprietary" blends of stevia + monatin, similar to their artificial counterparts you still see in Coke Zero & Co - the quasi "natural" way to get as close as possible to the "true sugar taste", people are still craving, these days... if they don't hurry, I do yet doubt that there will be a market for products like that very long, as we are more or less trained to crave the "real sugar" taste, but this would be the topic for another blogpost ;-)

• 

  Figure 1: Effect of different doses of pre-supplementation with magnesium aspartate on markers of LPS induced mitochondrial decay, antioxidant activity and oxidative damage (data calculated based on Ahmed. 2012)

  250mg/day magnesium counter the metabolic derangements from lipopolysaccharide (LPS) intoxication When Lamiaa A. Ahmed added 20mg/kg or 40mg/kg (~125mg or 250mg in human equivalents) of magnesium aspartate to the chow mice that were pretreated with LPS injections, the researcher from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Cairo found that this regimen restored body temperature (low dose) and heart rate (high dose) of the profoundly inflamed to normal, restored the lowered glutathione levels (both doses) and reduced (low dose) and normalized (high dose) the elevated creatine kinase (marker of cell damage) and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS; marker of oxidative damage) levels that had been elevated by the lipopolysaccharide treatment (Ahmed. 2012).
  The ATP:ADP ratio, the activity of the sodium potassium pumps and the creatine phosphate levels (CrPh protects the cell wall from damage as you remember from a previous installment, right?) were not completely restored to, but the pathological changes were minimized dose-dependently. In conjunction with the normalization of the lactate to pyruvate ratio, a sign of either exertional exercise or - if it occurs at rest, as it does here - mitochondrial failure, these observations indicate that Mg therapy could be a reliable protective agent in LPS-induced cardio- and general myotoxicity. In that it should be noted that higher, but not exorbitantly high (250mg is roughly 2/3 of what you should aim to get from our diet everyday, anyway) doses were more effective in reducing cell membrane damage as well as in improving the intracellular acidosis, energy production, oxidative stress and Na+,K+-ATPase activity and corresponded with a better perseverance of the mitochondrial ultrastructure.
  And while Ahmed sees the main application of Mg aspartate therapy in "critically ill" patients, I would say that the large group of patients (and non-patients) with other pathologies such as a leaky gut would benefit as well, since the defective gut barrier opens the door for the "excrements" of your gut bacteria, to induce all sorts of pathologies including mitochondrial damage and decay, but also depression, obesity, diabetes, etc. (Maes. 2008; Musso. 2010)... and before I forget to mention it is not unlikely that cheap magnesium citrate (if tolerated) would do the job just as well - maybe in a slightly higher dosage of say 300mg per day (best taken in divided doses with food).

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  Image 3: Coffee is full of wonders ;-)

  Antithrombotic effects of caffeine blunt platelet activity in response to interval training The use of 3mg/kg (equiv. to ~1 large cup of strong coffee or 2 smaller cups of regular coffee) of caffeine as an ergogenic aid during aerobic interval training cannot just improve your performance, it will also prevent the pro-thrombotic platelet function activation that occurs during exercise. That's the somewhat surprising finding of the one of the latest studies from the Health Innovations Research Institute at the School of Medical Sciences on the campus of the RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia (Whittaker. 2012).
  Whether this effect is of any importance to you certainly depends on your personal health. Personally, I would say that it is negligible for the vast majority of people who engage in strenuous athletic activities, if you belong to a risk group where platelet function is either high (risk of developing thromboses) or low (risk of bleeding) you may want to keep these results in mind.
  And if you don't care about platelet function, you may be considering to have another cup of coffee, when I tell you that ~3 cups per day appear to offer some protection against skin cancer, parkinson's and non-alcoholic-fatty-liver disease (click on the links to read the full stories on the SuppVersity Facebook Wall).

• 

  Image 4: Remember last week's post on the mercury in fish and how it's not simply excreted with the selenium, let alone the cysteine it's bound to? It looks like the toenails of young Americans would confirm those lab results.

  Something fishy about toenail mercury levels I guess all of you will remember my "shocking" post about the mercury toxicity from fish (cf. "Mercury in Fish NOT Harmless, Regardless of Cysteine, Selenium, EPA or DHA!"), this one could actually go as sort of a follow up post, as it deals with the real-world consequences of mercury exposure and the subsequent deposition of the heavy metal in the toe nails of the 4,344 American male and female participants (age 20–32y) in the CARDIA Trace Element Study researchers from the Gillings School of Global Public Health and School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina have recently examined (Xun. 2012).
  I know, it may sound gross, but toenails have, among the various biological specimens you could theoretically analyze, the advantage of providing a relatively reliable long-term measure of Hg exposure (from a few months to a year), are easily collected, transported,stored, and cleaned and are relatively sheltered from environmental contaminants and less likely to be contaminated by shampoo, hair treatments, and medication (Morris. 1983, He 2011).

  

  Image 5: Who would have thought that your toenails provide a way better measure of the toxic load you have accumulated than your hair, for example? Just looking at them is yet not enough for a thorough analysis

  Since the Hg levels in toenails also have relatively high correlation with both mercury intake (r = 0.54; Ohno. 2007) and the mercury deposition in critical organs (spec. in the brain - r = 0.65 ; Bjorkman. 2007), it should be obvious that the association between toe nail mercury levels and fish intake in all, but those participants who lived in Oakland and had the lowest (0.45 servings per day) fish intake per day could have a significant impact on the health of the subjects that consume more than one serving of fish per day and have a 76% higher beta coefficient of the natural logarithm of toenail Hg level than those who consume fish / seafood less than once per day (this mean that the mercury in the toenails of daily fish eaters increases 75% more rapidly towards that level than in those who eat 0.35 to 1.03 servings). Interestingly this was particularly true for the Caucasian men in the study, where the beta coefficient was another 45% higher (beta = 0.64 vs. beta = 0.44).
  Despite the fact that these results seem to confirm that eating one dose of untested canned tuna (which would probably go as way more than one serving in the eyes of the scientists) is not necessarily the best idea. It does however not mean that you cannot have you once or even twice a weak salmon steak or sushi - just keep your diet more versatile and don't make fish (or any other single foodstuff your only "allowed" source of protein or fat.

• 

  Figure 2: Weight of castrated rats on TRT, TRT (50% dose) + Eurycoma longifolia  (EL) or Eurycoma longifolia, alone, at the end of the 6-week supplementation phase, ratio of bone building osteocalcin to CRX a marker of bone resorption and actual bone strength, as measure by maximal tolerable load and Young's Modulus; all data expressed relative to sham operated (=intact) rats (data calculated based on Saadiah Abdul Razak. 2012)

  Low dose testosterone + long jack better than TRT alone? The results Saadiah Abdul Razak et al. present in the latest issue of Evidence Based Complementary Medicine don't actually look like they were interesting for muscle heads, I mean "androgen dependent osteoporosis", where are the word hypertrophy, skeletal muscle, or at least ripped & jacked? And I have to admit that of these only "skeletal muscle" makes its appearance somewhere in the introductory remarks of the discussion and only in the context of the "auxiliary functions" of testosterone as a growth hormone and IGF-1 booster and muscle builder. I do still believe that the data in the figure 2 on the right is going to get your attention - after all, the combination treatment of testosterone + Eurycoma longifolia did not "just" restore the balance of the "bone builder" osteocalcin to the "bone eater" ORX (actually it's just a marker of bone resorption) to normal (=sham levels), it did also effectively build the strongest bones, with the highest maximal load in Newton and the greatest elastic stability, as measured by the Young's Modulus.
  What's interesting, as well, is that all treatments were equally effective in restoring normal body weight - who knows maybe 15mg/kg/day (HED: 2.4mg/kg; ~170-250mg/day) of Eurycoma longifolia (EL) extract would even make a valuable stand alone (no pun intended ;-) testosterone booster for mild cases of real hypogonadism (not the one where your diet is shitty, your training sucks and it's your "low T" that you believe is to to blame that you make no gains), or an adjunct to HRT that would allow you to use only half the regular dose (this was done in the study at hand) and see similar results!? That it's good for sperm quality and testosterone, when it's administered in ~13x higher dosages in rodents (Chan. 2009) and for sperm health in men (at about the dosage used here; cf. Tambi. 2010) has already been established.
  And still, the "major gap" of which Bhat et al. postulated that it existed "in [sic!] providing scientific base for commercial utilization and clearance of the Tongkat Ali products with regard to consumer's safety" is still in existence. Moreover, the same could be said about our knowledge with respect to the individual effects of the potentially biologically active component(s) in the plant and respective extracts. Before those issues are not solved, the "extract" you may buy could be anything from uberpotent to simply toxic... although I suspect that it is still most likely that it will simply be ineffective.

What? That went too fast? Don't worry, it's just two days to the Thursdaily Science News Roundup on SHR, four days to the next official installment of "On Short Notice" and just one click away from a handful of additional up-to-the-minute news on the SuppVersity Facebook Wall such as

• the correlation of low growth hormone levels with NAFLD (= non-alcoholic fatty liver disease), 
• a study on how digestion potentates the antimicrobial activity of coconut oil,
• a potential successor to metformin that triples muscular glucose uptake in the absence of insulin 

and all the other interesting tidbits I have already and am still going to post there even before the next SuppVersity news is going to be published right here, tomorrow! Ah,... and by the way it's not prohibited to share articles you like on Facebook and other social media outlets ;-)

References:

• Ahmed, L.A., Protective effects of magnesium supplementation on metabolic energy derangements in
  lipopolysaccharide-induced cardiotoxicity in mice. Eur J Pharmacol. 2012.
• Bhat R, Karim AA. Tongkat Ali (Eurycoma longifolia Jack): a review on its ethnobotany and pharmacological importance. Fitoterapia. 2010 Oct;81(7):669-79. Epub 2010 Apr 29. 
• Bjorkman L, Lundekvam BF, Laegreid T, Bertelsen BI, Morild I, Lilleng P, Lind B, Palm B, Vahter M. Mercury in human brain, blood, muscle and toenails in relation to exposure: an
  autopsy study. Environ Health. 2007; 6:30 
• Chan KL, Low BS, Teh CH, Das PK. The effect of Eurycoma longifolia on sperm quality of male rats. Nat Prod Commun. 2009 Oct;4(10):1331-6. 
• Fry JC, Yurttas N, Biermann KL, Lindley MG, Goulson MJ. The Sweetness Concentration-Response of R,R-Monatin, a Naturally Occurring High-Potency Sweetener. J Food Sci. 2012 Aug 27.  
• He K. Trace elements in nails as biomarkers in clinical research. Eur J Clin Invest. 2011;  41(1):98–102.
• Maes M, Kubera M, Leunis JC. The gut-brain barrier in major depression: intestinal mucosal dysfunction with an increased translocation of LPS from gram negative enterobacteria (leaky gut) plays a role in the inflammatory pathophysiology of depression. Neuro Endocrinol Lett. 2008 Feb;29(1):117-24.
• Morris JS, Stampfer MJ, Willett WC Dietary selenium in humans: toenails as an indicator. Biol Trace Elem Res. 1983; 5:529–537.
• Ohno T, Sakamoto M, Kurosawa T, Dakeishi M, Iwata T, Murata K. Total mercury levels in hair, toenail, and urine among women free from occupational exposure and their relations to renal tubular function. Environ Res. 2007;103(2):191–1.
• Saadiah Abdul Razak H, Shuid AN, Naina Mohamed I. Combined Effects of Eurycoma
  longifolia and Testosterone on Androgen-Deficient Osteoporosis in a Male Rat Model. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2012;2012:872406. Epub 2012 Aug 9.
• Whittaker JP, Linden MD, Coffey VG. Effect of Aerobic Interval Training and Caffeine on Blood Platelet Function. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2012 Aug 29.
• Xun P, Liu K, Morris JS, Jordan JM, He K. Distributions and determinants of mercury concentrations in toenails among American young adults: the CARDIA Trace Element Study. Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2012 Aug 25.

Magnesium vs. Diabetes - Which Form is Best? Exercise, Energy Intake & the HPTA. Glutamine & CHO For Sprinters & HIITers. Mercury & Diabetes, Amalgam, Se, Zn & Detox

Won't take long until China is the world economy #1 and not much longer until they are the fattest economy, as well ;-)

Let's see which one do I pick? Oh, ok... The SuppVersity Figure of the Week is 0.19. This is the correlation coefficient that describes the statistical relation - which is as every SuppVersity student knows no evidence of causal relationships (!) - between the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) and the prevalence of obesity as it was calculated by Mario Siervo and colleagues from the Newcastle University and the UCL Institute of Child Health in London as part of their analysis of country-specific prevalence estimates of overweight, obesity and hypertension and their relation to nutrient and food intakes and (and this is new!) the economy (Siervo. 2013).

The scientists used the WHO Global Infobase database, year- and country-specific Food Balance Sheets (FBS) and information on urbanization rates, per capita GDP and physical inactivity and did so much statistical shenanigan that of all the baseline correlations (incl. milk consumption and egg consumption, as predictors of obesity and high blood pressure) only the already mentioned per capita GPD, as well as physical inactivity (PA) and cereal consumption (CE) remained as highly significant predictors of being overweight (GPD), being obese (PA) and not being obese (CC). Statistical significant, but very low correlations were also observed for obesity and the relative energy intake from sugar (regression coefficient B = 0.03).

Makes me wonder what the addition of the average population-based magnesium intake would have had to contribute to the results... why? Well, the diabesity-protective role of magnesium is the first topic of today's installment of On Short Notice.

The importance of adequate magnesium intake can hardly be overestimated

The latest issue of the Journal of Nurtition (US) features yet another article showing how important adequate magnesium intakes are for an optimal glucose metabolism. Since a messed up glucose management it one of the root causes of most of the features of the metabolic syndrome, the results Adela Hruby and a ton of colleagues present in their latest paper are of great importance not just for individual, but also for public health. The latter is particularly true in view of the fact that the researchers who started out with the hypothesis that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs ~= minimal genetic differences between person A and B) would explain / influence the potential differences of the association between magnesium intake and fasting glucose and insulin on an individual level.

It's not going to work for everyone but there is scientific evidence that 500mg/day magnesium can help with headaches (learn more)

To verify / disprove this hypothesis the researcher analyzed data from fifteen studies from the CHARGE (Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology) Consortium . The studies provided data from up to 52,684 participants of European descent without known diabetes. In a fixed-effects meta-analyses, they quantified

1. cross-sectional associations of dietary magnesium intake with fasting glucose (mmol/L) and insulin (ln-pmol/L) and 
2. interactions between magnesium intake and SNPs related to fasting glucose (16 SNPs), insulin (2 SNPs), or magnesium (8 SNPs) on fasting glucose and insulin. 

After adjustment for age, sex, energy intake, BMI, and behavioral risk factors, the found that each  50-mg/d increment in magnesium intake was inversely associated with fasting glucose (β = −0.009 mmol/L, P < 0.0001) and insulin (−0.020 ln-pmol/L, P < 0.0001). Plus - and this is the actual news - these improvements (within a "normal" intake of magesium wa below the  2xRDA dose of 720mg) was not generally  related to the individual genetic make-up of the healthy stud participants.

However, rs2274924 in magnesium transporter-encoding TRPM6 showed a nominal association (uncorrected P = 0.03) with glucose, and rs11558471 in SLC30A8 and rs3740393 near CNNM2 showed a nominal interaction (uncorrected, both P = 0.02) with magnesium on glucose.

Now what's interesting, here, is that previous studies investigating the effects of familial TRPM6 polymorphisms showed that a mutation / loss of the former SNP, i.e. TRPM6, will disrupt the regular magnesium flux in the kidney and epithelial tissue an is accompanied by hypo- (=low) not hyper-(=high) glycemia (Schlingmann. 2003; Chubanov. 2005).

Are there other reasons you may be set to be obese (learn more)?

These observations, as well as results from a case-controlled study by Romero et al. who did not find gene variations in TRPM6 and its cousin TRPM7 to "be useful predictors for T2DM risk assessment" (Romero. 2010). Clearly point towards the negligent effects genes have on the magnesium <> diabetes connection. In other words: Keeping an adequate magnesium intake is one of the easiest ways to reduce your risk of developing type II diabetes regardless of your genetic make-up.

What's the best magnesium supp? Cap, tablet or powder? Oxide, citrate, lactate, ...?

Speaking of solutions, magnesium and glucose management - Did you know that no-calorie sweeteners disrupt early response to glucose ingestion, reduce GLP-1 expression and could thus promote overeating (learn more)

Although the urinary excretion of magnesium after the ingestion of equal amounts of magnesium oxide in the form of everescent tablets vs. regular powder-filled caps is not a direct quantitative indicator of tissue accumulation (t's still better than the serum mg / creatinine ratio; cf. Bøhmer. 1990), the +100% increase in this parameter Siener et al observed in 2011 with the former preparation is still good evidence for the superiority of the highly soluble tablet preparation (Siener. 2011).

In a similar study, Marcelín-Jiméne et al. found that the pharmacokinetics of a single 500mg oral dose of Mg-valproate 500-mg ingested eiher as a solution, suspension, or in form of enteric-coated tablets were identical (Marcelín-Jiméne. 2009). So, if we discard  the initial surge in magnesium with the solution an suspension that was absent with the enteric-coated tabs (they took ~2.5h to fully kick in)  it is probably not necessary that you crush your tabs to make a "crushed  tab magnesium suspension" out of them ;-)

I do yet suspect that you will probably be more interested in the results of one one of the most comprehensive evaluations of the consequences of chronic supplementation with different types of magnesium supplements, namely the inorganic magnesium salts MgCl2, MgSO4, MgCO3 and magnesium-acetate and their organic cousins in which the magnesium is bound to pidolate, citrate, gluconate, lactate or aspartate from a 2005 rodent study by Coudray et al.:

Figure 1: Plasma an bone (primary axis) as well as red blood cell (RBC; 2ndary axis(!)) content after 14 days of supplementation with identical amounts of magnesium in different organic and inorganic forms (Coudray. 2005)

Now regardless of which of these magnesium supplements you pick, one thing probably holds for all of them, if your levels are already saturated you will only increase the workload on your kidneys (Altura. 1994). Or put simply, if you pick one of the expensive versions such as mg-lactate the result is expensive urine (matches well with the tons of B-vitamins you hopefully peeing out and not retaining from your 12x overdosed "high potency B-supplement") - So, if you eat tons of magnesium rich foods already, save the money for more of those goods foods.

Review underlines the importance of adequate energy intake in reproductive function 

Figure 1: Reproductive hormone changes in exercising cynomolgus monkeys undergoing energy restriction (Williams. 2001)

Everyone who has read all parts ot the SuppVersity Athlete's Triad Series has hopefully absorbed the message that "under-eating" is the main reason for the endocrine disturbances in both men and women. The latter and the non-significance of cortisol outside of its function as a glucocorticoid (=hormone that does everything to keep your blood glucose from dropping) is also what Fuqua and Rogol emphasize in their latest review of the literature (Fuqua. 2013):

The data in figure 1, which shows parameters of the endocrine . function of female monkeys who were placed on a fixed caloric intake and then trained to run on a treadmill for increasing lengths of time, shows that after only 2 blocks, the reproductive function was totally lost (again, usually male mammals remain fertile, but often loss of libido, sexual dysfunction, as well as depression and the obvious weight loss and exercise performance plateaus are non-sex-specific).

As Fuqua et al. point out, the onset of amenorrhea was accompanied by  decreases in gonadotropins, estradiol, and progesterone. In that, the endocrine hormones are yet nothing but "slaves" to the changes in ghrelin, leptin and PYY, of which particularly the former, i.e. ghrelin suppresses pulsatile LH secretion in adult men and women. If you are interested in learning more, check out the Athlete's Triad Series, if you haven't done that already.

Glutamine & maltodextrin keep anaerobic power up to the last sprint

It wasn't part of the post of PWO glucose repletion, but theoretically glutamine could help here as well.

In an article that was published ahead of the next print issue of the Asian Journal of Sports Medicine Roohi and Khorshidi, two researchers from the Tehran University of Medical Sciences report that the ingestion of both 50 mg of maltodextrin and/ or 0.25g/kg body weight glutamine has significant ergogenic effects on repeated sprint performance.

What's interesting about this study is that the participants were all "well-trained physical education students who were participating in a training regimen (three or more days a week for at least an hour)" and not the next best sedentary volunteers the scientists were able to find (most importantly, they were not smoking water pipe - you got to love those cultural differences ;-)

As you can see in figure 2 the provision of the supplements two hours before the first of three RAST test, which consisted of 6x35m discontinuous all-out sprints, with 10 seconds rest between the individuals sprints (all six sprints are one bout), did yield ergogenic effects from the very first exercise bout on.

Figure 2: Minimal and maximal power on subsequent 6x35min sprints (1h in between bouts) with or without matlodextrin and/or glutamine supplementation 2h before the workout (Raahdi. 2013)

Statistical significant were yet only the difference between the placebo supplement (water) and the combined treatment during the third of the RAST tests. What's particularly interesting is the additive nature of the effects about which the Iranian researchers speculate that it could be "due to greater storage of carbohydrate in sites other than skeletal muscle, the most likely candidate being the liver" (Roohi. 2013), as well as glutamine's own role as a substrate for gluconeogenesis in the liver.

"Real world" evidence: Early exposure to mercury precipitates diabetes in man

From rodent studies, we already know that early mercury exposure increases the susceptibility to develop diabetes later in life. With the soon-to-be-published results from a prospective cohort of 3,875 American young adults who were 20-32 years old and free of diabetes in 1987, when the first data-set was acquired, the number of subjects who had abnormally high toenail mercury levels was extraordinarily high in the 288 incident cases of diabetes that occurred in the years up to the 18 years of follow-up.

Did you know that there is no correlation between amalgam fillings and Hg levels in the toe nails? At least according to a 2007 study by Björkman et al. who analyzed brain, blood, muscle and toenails of 30 deceased individuals the statistically non-significant correlation between the surface area of amalgam fillings and toenail mercury is even negative (meaning more fillings = lower Hg levels in the nails; Björkman. 2007). This is yet no reason to be relieved. In fact, it's rather the exact opposite: While the Hg levels in the toenails may have been low, the levels of the hardly less toxic inorganic mercury in the brain, as well as the total mercury concentrations in the pituitary and thyroid were significantly correlated with the surface area of amalgam fillings.

After adjustment for age, sex, ethnicity, study center, education, smoking status, alcohol consumption, physical activity, family history of diabetes, intakes of long-chain n-3 fatty acids, as well as serum magnesium, and toenail selenium levels the toenail mercury levels were still positively associated with the incidence of diabetes. With a probability of only 2% that we are dealing with a statistical outlier and an increased diabetes risk of 65% this provides another reason to give all mercury containing stuff an extra wide berth (He. 2013).

Against that background it appears to be all the more important to keep an adequate dietary intake of nutrients such as selenium and zinc, which have only recently been shown to useful adjuvants to a standard treatment of thiol chelator (DTT) regimen in a rodent model of acute mercury exposure (Deepmala. 2013) . The latter is obviously the extreme version of the slow, but constant onslaught of mercury most of us are exposed to, but our bodies' very own detoxification mechanism rely on the presence of adequate amounts of zinc (for the necessary metallothioneins; cf. Durnam. 1997) and selenium (for glutathion repletion; read more about selenium).

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Since these "Short News" got a little longish, I have just updated the facebook news with a couple of shorter items, influcing among others...

• 

  Man or woman, trying to build muscle or get ripped, always prefer whole proteins (and whole foods in general) over isolated nutrients. That this is particularly true for amino acids has been addressed in way more than the two most recent posts on the repartitioning effects of isoleucine and respective peptides in whey (learn more) and the related post "Don't Judge a Protein By Its Amino Acids" (read it) here at the SuppVersity

  EAA induced protein synthesis - Additional energy from carbohydrates or alanine does not increase protein synthesis beyond what 10g of essential amino acids alone will do (read more)
• Human data on ergogenic effects of fish oil "inconclusive" - Scientists also point towards problems with increased immunosuppression and prolonged bleeding times (read more)
• Probiotics for bone health -An exclusively male thing? At least in rodents their beneficial effect on bone density appears to be sex-specific (read more)
• Alternate day fasting and exercise make a perfect match - 2x higher weight loss exclusively from body fat and greater improvements in cholesterol particle distribution in the combination group (read more)

There are as usual more sort news for you to spend the hours to whatever you have planned for Saturday night, so I suggest you briefly surf over to www.facebook.com/SuppVersity check out the rest and comment and discuss the latest news. 

References:

• Altura BT, Wilimzig C, Trnovec T, Nyulassy S, Altura BM. Comparative effects of a Mg-enriched diet and different orally administered magnesium oxide preparations on ionized Mg, Mg metabolism and electrolytes in serum of human volunteers. J Am Coll Nutr. 1994 Oct;13(5):447-54.
• Björkman L, Lundekvam BF, Laegreid T, Bertelsen BI, Morild I, Lilleng P, Lind B, Palm B, Vahter M. Mercury in human brain, blood, muscle and toenails in relation to exposure: an autopsy study. Environ Health. 2007 Oct 11;6:30.
• Bøhmer T, Røseth A, Holm H, Weberg-Teigen S, Wahl L. Bioavailability of oral magnesium supplementation in female students evaluated from elimination of magnesium in 24-hour urine. Magnes Trace Elem. 1990;9(5):272-8. 
• Coudray C, Rambeau M, Feillet-Coudray C, Gueux E, Tressol JC, Mazur A, Rayssiguier Y. Study of magnesium bioavailability from ten organic and inorganic Mg salts in Mg-depleted rats using a stable isotope approach. Magnes Res. 2005 Dec;18(4):215-23.
• Chubanov V, Gudermann T, Schlingmann KP. Essential role for TRPM6 in epithelial magnesium transport and body magnesium homeostasis. Pflugers Arch. 2005 Oct;451(1):228-34. 
• Deepmala J, Deepak M, Srivastav S, Sangeeta S, Kumar SA, Kumar SS. Protective effect of combined therapy with dithiothreitol, zinc and selenium protects acute mercury induced oxidative injury in rats. J Trace Elem Med Biol. 2013 Feb 18. 
• Durnam DM, Palmiter RD. Analysis of the detoxification of heavy metal ions by mouse metallothionein. Experientia Suppl. 1987;52:457-63.
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