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| Image 1: Scientifically proven muscle builder - 2.1kg lean mass in 3 months, no post-cycle therapy necessary! |
I was just about to write another one of my artistic introductions, trying to incorporate all the exciting
On Short Notice news I've piled up for you into a brief narrative, when I realized that
you probably don't really appreciate those introductions (I guess, I would skip them myself, so don't worry, this is more of an objective assessment than an accusation). So, I listened to my gut and decided to skip this part of this series, today, and rather spend the time to edit another item I did actually not want to post today. It's the one on the
"IIFYM slightly gone wrong fast food bulk" in the Hambre study, to be precise; and I would venture the guess that you won't mind taking that instead of a longer introduction, once you've read and digested the impossible: You cannot only gain muscle with "fast food supplements", you won't even get fatter than you would if you just used a classic whey protein... oh my, I see, you are already scrolling down: What I said, I would have been wasting my time, had I written a longer introduction. But dare you, if you don't at least read the other items, as well!
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| Figure 1: Food intake (top, lef) and energy expenditure (bottom, left) as well as body fat % (top, right) and body weight development of the normal vs. prolactin negative mice after 14 weeks on standard chow (SC) or high fat diet (HFD; Auffret. 2012); btw: taking super-doses of vit. B6 will induce nerve damage, not fat loss! |
Without prolactin mice can't get fat! If that is true for humans as well, this would mean that Julien Auffret and his colleagues would have made a very important finding that could help us solve at least part of the diabesity pandemic, if we found a way to mimick the effects the "beigening" (=making white adipose tissue behae similar to the fact burning brown adipose tissue) effect the genetic ablation of the prolactin receptor on the fat cells of the mice in the Auffret study had on their susceptibility to diet induced obesity (Auffret. 2012).
In particular, the scientists found that the ablation of the prolactin receptor gene in the mice results in profound increases in the expression of master genes controlling brown adipocyte fate (PRDM16) and mitochondrial function (PGC1α, UCP1), which allow - and this is the actual caveat,, here - for an inrease in thermogenesis.
The latter, in turn, allows the rodents to burn off a major part of the fat they would otherwise store and thus keeps them relatively lean despite HFD feeding. Aside from the fact that the hyperphagic rodents on the high fat diet were still fat (there is no debating that!), you may savely assume that the effects will be way less pronounced in human beings, where 9/10 "thermogenic" agents that have been successfully tested in rodents do nothing at all, anyway. Against that background the hunger-promoting effects of the prolactin recetor ablation would suggest that it is almost as likely that a drug that block prolactin completely would make obese individiuals even fatter, since that's usually what happens if you eat more - like the mice in the prolactin (-/-) group did (see figure figure 1), without burning more.
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| Figure 2: Comparison of MUFA : CLA ratios in steak and mince from grass fed or conventional beef and milk from mares, sows, women (human milk ;-), goats and cows (based on Dhiman. 1999; Jahreis. 1999; McAfee. 2011); higher values indicate more MUFA per unit of CLA, but more must not necessarily be better - in fact too much MUFA could completely block the fat loss effects of CLA and thus maybe explain why it rarely works in humans - our diets are pretty high in oleic acid and thus the ratio will be much lower, than in the high dose CLA rodent trials |
Conjugated linoleic acid needs oleic acid to work without side effects. That's the main take-home message from a recent study conducted by researchers at the at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who found that oleic acid, the mono-unsaturated fatty acid from olive oil & co, does prevent the expression of inflammatory genes in adipocytes treated with the "anti-fat fat CLA"..
So, until my friends from the supplement industry read this post and come out with yet another
SuppVersity science powered product with
CLA in olive oil* you simply make sure to have a spoon of the liquid gold from time to time, when you feel that you need to take
CLA to burn more fat. Unfortunately, this could not just mean that you can rid yourself of the nasty side-effects as discussed in "
CLA Destroys Body Fat! But at Which Costs?", but also that the "body fat destruction" will at least be ameliorated if not totally absent :-(
* I had hardly written this post, when I browsed the web and found that a certain newcomer and as of late very succesful "yellowish green" company has already a CLA + Olive Oil + Avocado Oil combination on the market, for them this would mean that they didn't even have to change their formula
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| Image 2: It's funny how so many things people (or at least chefs) have been doing forever, here marinating meats, simply make sense, isn't it? |
Antibacterial marinades for your meat! Don't worry this is not yet another dysfunctional functional food that's going to make you sick, but an all-natural mixture of
green tea, lemon and
turmeric you will have to smear onto your chicken meat if you want to make sure to get rid of the
C. jejuni and
S. enteritidis
it may be contaminated with.
All it takes are 24h of "incubation", but
that's nothing else than leaving your meat lying in the marinade in
your fridge and thus something you would do anyway, right? That's what I would call a convenient, effective and above all totally natural and healthy way of gettting rid of Samonella and Campylobacter :-)- Tons Flaxseed flour in your diet will increase estrogen, but won't decrease the size of your penis, well at least not visible ;-)
That's probably the most straight-forward summary of the results,
Ludmila Ferreira Medeiros de França Cardozo and her colleagues present
in the latest issue of Food and Chemical Toxicology after
analyzing the effect of a flaxseed flour containing diet on the
expression of hormone levels and penis morphology of male rats (de
Franca. 2012)
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| Image 3: Flaxseed bread won't turn you into an hermaphrodite overnight, don't worry. |
While the rats that were maintained on a diet containing 25g
of flaxseed flour per 100g for 250days had significantly elevated
estrogen levels in the blood 39.5 vs. 32.5 pg/mL (+22%), the minor drop in
testosterone did not reach statistical significance and the reduced
diameter of the corpus spongiosum, which helps to maintain the urethea as a viable channel for the ejaculation was obviously no
problem for the fertility, either - at least the scientist don't mention anything in this regard; unfortunately, they did not really test it, either, as the poor male Wistar rats that were abused in this experiment were bachelors against their will.
In view of the fact that flaxseed ain't the best source
of omega-3s, anyway, and there appears no other good reason (for men and women!) why you
would eat them in large quantities (I am not talking about the occasional tablespoon of flaxseed, here), I would still suggest to stay away
from it.
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| Image 4: In farm-raised salmon chronic TTA administration has been shown to improve cardiac function and immune activity; it does however also lead to cardiac growth during viral infections, so that the benefits of chronic administration are still by no means certain (Grammes. 2012a & 2012b); long-term human studies, on the other hand, are not yet available. |
Acute TTA administration soothes the flames and keeps the coronary vessel open You will unquestionably remember my
previous posts about the fat burning fatty acid
tetradecylthioacetic acid (TTA) and how it's ability to accumulate in various tissues of your body
could potentially become problematic. In the short term however, it's anti-inflammatory effects can come very handy. So handy, in fact, that the a recently published study by Pettersen et al. would suggest that we are soon going to see TTA balloons being inserted into coronary vessel walls, in order to deliver the
sulfur-containing fatty acid right to an obstructed vessel that's being operated on, in order to suppress the local expression of inflammatory cytokines, as well as the subsequent macrophage infiltration and the unwanted collagen formation, which would precipitate restenosis (=further clogging) of the very heart vessel that has only just been opened operatively.
You may now rightly ask yourself what this has got to do with you? Well, if it works locally, it could work similarly systemically and other studies such as Bjørndal (2012) do confirm just that: 0.4% TTA reduce TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-6 in an experimental model of colitis and render the rodents guts more of less bullet..., ah, pardon, dextran sulfate sodium (DSS; a chemical used to induce cholitis) proof. The long-term effects of the continous consumption of ~3g of TTA, which would be the human equavalent of those 0.4% TTA in the rodent diets is yet still not fully established (re-read: "TTA & Fish Oil" and "TTA & Fish Oil - Revisited").
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| Figure 3: Alcohol overrides the inhibitory control over food intake (Chapman. 2012) |
Of TV watching, sleep deprivation and alcohol consumption, booze has the most pronounced negative effect on reward saliency and inhibitory control of food intake!
That's the conclusion Colin Daniel Chapman, Christian Benedict,
Samantha Jane Brooks, and Helgi Birgir Schiöth mkae based on their
latest meta-review of pertinent studies from pubmed (N=23). With an
impact factor of 1.03 on a scale from -4 to 4, alcohol is by far the
worst the greatest effect on food intake and shows the highest
correlation with obesity (Chapman. 2012).
Compared
to booze, both sleep deprivation (50% less) and TV watching (20% less)
appear almost harmless. Their contribution in the non-drinking part of
the population may yet still not be underestimated, also because the
urge to do the latter, i.e. watch TV, when you ought tho sleep,
precipitates the former and subsequent derangements in the circadian
rhythm (suggested read: "
The SuppVersity Circadian Rhythm Series").
- IIFYM was yesterday, ROWFYM is today, but what's going to be tomorrow? If that's all Greek to you, let me first bring you in the loop on the acronyms. While IIFYM designates "If It Fits Your Macros", implies (in the most extreme case) that you give a sh*t about what you eat, as long as you hit your macronutrient ratios for the day ("Carbs? Gimme that pizza!") and is getting increasingly popular among those who are fed up with broccoli and chicken breast and either unwilling or unable to see that those are not the only, and I would say, by far not the most healthy foods you can eat, ROWFYM is my own invention, means "Regardless Of Whether It Fits Your Macros" and would probably end up for way too many trainees in a protocol similar to the one 12 of the 24 subjects in a recent study from the Linköping University in Sweden were following for 12 weeks (Hambre. 2012).
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| Image 5: "WTF do you want, I am doing ROWIFYM, here! That's serious bulking, man. Scientifically validated." If you want to follow his example, go ahead... but 3 months really is the absolute max and only if you are still healthy - regardless of whether the blood markers return to normal in the course of your next diet. |
While those lucky (?) twelve healthy young men (aged 19–32 years) in what I will from now on call the "fast-food arm" of the study had to add a delicious (???) fast food menu (1350 kcal, 41 g protein)
on top of their diets, the other twelve participants had to contend themselves with a blatant protein shake (33g of whey) as their bulking supplement of choice. The reasoning behind this at first sight unquestionably highly questionable experiment was that the Swedish scientists wanted to elucidate, whether it would really make a difference whether you are eating "clean" (=adding a whey protein shake) or simply stuffing yourself with the next best, allegedly protein-laden fast food you can find during a 3-months bulking cycle (at least three lifting sessions per week) and the results were, ... well, let's say surprising.
As you would expect, subjects in both groups managed to gain some weight. The first surprise is that subjects in both groups gained identical amounts of weight, namely 3.6kg. That's not all, however. Even the lean mass increases 2.1kg did not differ between the groups (measure by DEXA scans) and the sophisticated (compared to a similar calories in vs. calories out calculation) measurement of the resting metabolic rate, the scientists had conducted yielded that both groups had compensated for the overeating by a statistically highly significant (p < 0.0001!) + 10% increase in resting metabolic rate!
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| Figure 4: Kaplan-Meier plots indicating the percentage of patients that made it to time-point X (see horizontal axes) without adverse event after their first coronary event - patients w/ (thin line) vs. w/out (bold line) metabolic syndrome (top), patients with high (thin line) vs. low (bold line) ApoB leves (bottom; based on Corsetti. 2005); ApoB turns out to be a way better risk predictor than having metabolic syndrome |
Before you do now jump into your car and head for the next drive-in "restaurant" with a big yellow "M" in front of it, you may want to take into consideration that this extended ROWIFYM version of the IIFYM approach, where you may hit the protein but overshoot on the carbs and fats (and certainly not the good ones), did lead to statistically significant increases in fasting insulin and ApoB, a building block of LDL that has been associated with increased risk of arterial plaque formation (Gebel. 2008), compared to the "clean bulk" (= whey only) group. And while those changes (as well as the increase in RMR) were reversed on the 12 months follow-up, I am not sure if especially those people, who are most fond of bulking approaches like that, i.e. men (and very rarely women) who have been following a junk food diet for way too long already, should take the results of this study as an incentive to do a 3-month fast food bulk during the winter. After all, it could be that one additional LDL molecule that nests in the already existent arterial plaque which will eventually break the camel's, no your neck - or for those who like it more explicitly, which won't let the next mini blood clot pass by and causes a stroke, which could, in the worst case, end deadly!
That's it as far as the official
On Short Notice items go, for today. If you don't have enough yet, I suggest you take a glance at the 6-10 news-items I've piled up on the
SuppVersity Facebook Wall for you to review. Maybe you've read that
sleeping with wife and children in a room would decrease your testosterone levels? False! Maybe it decreases the intellectual capacity of the reporter who wrote the respective news-item you may have read, but what really happens, is an increase in the amplitude of the circadian pattern with higher morning and lower evening testosterone levels (
click here to read more). And if you neither have or plan to have children or don't care about your or your significant other's testosterone levels, you may be interested in a study that
debunks the use of a "slim belt" for weight loss purposes, the
idiotic idea to counter BPA toxicity with soy, the way
working out can make depressed old people happy again, and more... ah, I almost forgot, there will also be an
exercise special of
On Short Notice very soon - and I am not talking about next Saturday, here - so stay tuned, it could be published anytime (Tip: If you subscribe to the
SuppVersity Facebook Page you won't miss it ;-)
References:
- Auffret J, Viengchareun S, Carré N, Denis RG, Magnan C, Marie PY, Muscat A,
Fève B, Lombès M, Binart N. Beige differentiation of adipose depots in mice
lacking prolactin receptor protects against high-fat-diet-induced obesity. FASEB
J. 2012 Sep;26(9):3728-37.
- Bjørndal B, Grimstad T, Cacabelos D, Nylund K, Aasprong OG, Omdal R, Portero-Otin M, Pamplona R, Lied GA, Hausken T, Berge RK. Tetradecylthioacetic Acid Attenuates Inflammation and Has Antioxidative Potential During Experimental Colitis in Rats. Dig Dis Sci. 2012 Aug 2.
- Chapman CD, Benedict C, Brooks SJ, Birgir Schiöth H. Lifestyle
determinants of the drive to eat: a meta-analysis. Am J Clin Nutr. 2012
Sep;96(3):492-7. Epub 2012 Jul 25.
- Corsetti JP, Zareba W, Moss AJ, Sparks CE. Apolipoprotein B determines risk for recurrent coronary events in postinfarction patients with metabolic syndrome. Atherosclerosis. 2004 Dec;177(2):367-73.
- de França Cardozo LF, Boaventura GT, Brant LH, Pereira VA, Velarde LG, Chagas MA. Prolonged consumption of flaxseed flour increases the 17β-estradiol hormone without causing adverse effects on the histomorphology of Wistar rats' penis. Food Chem Toxicol. 2012 Aug 25.
- Dhiman TR, Anand GR, Satter LD, Pariza MW. Conjugated linoleic acid content of milk from cows fed different diets. J Dairy Sci. 1999 Oct;82(10):2146-56.
- Gebel E. Meet LDL's partner in plaque. ApoB puts the "bad" in bad cholesterol. Diabetes Forecast. 2008 May;61(5):39-40.
- Grammes F, Rørvik KA, Takle H. Tetradecylthioacetic acid modulates cardiac transcription in Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar L., suffering heart and skeletalmuscle inflammation. J Fish Dis. 2012a Feb;35(2):109-17.
- Grammes F, Rørvik KA, Thomassen MS, Berge RK, Takle H. Genome wide response to dietary tetradecylthioacetic acid supplementation in the heart of Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar L.). BMC Genomics. 2012n May 11;13(1):180.
- Hambre D, Vergara M, Lood Y, Bachrach-Lindström M, Lindström T, Nystrom FH. A
randomized trial of protein supplementation compared with extra fast food on the
effects of resistance training to increase metabolism. Scand J Clin Lab Invest.
2012 Aug 30.
- Jahreis G, Fritsche J, Möckel P, Schöne F, Möller U, Steinhart H. The potential anticarcinogenic conjugated linoleic acid, cis-9,trans-11 C18:2, in milk of different species: Cow, goat, ewe, sow, mare, woman. Nutrition Research. October 1999; 19:10. 1541–1549.
- McAfee AJ, McSorley EM, Cuskelly GJ, Fearon AM, Moss BW, Beattie JA, Wallace JM, Bonham MP, Strain JJ. Red meat from animals offered a grass diet increases plasma and platelet n-3 PUFA in healthy consumers. Br J Nutr. 2011 Jan;105(1):80-9.
- Murali N, Kumar-Phillips NS, Rath NC, Marcy J, Slavik MF. Effect of Marinating Chicken Meat with Lemon, Green Tea and
Turmeric Against Foodborne Bacterial Pathogens.International Journal of Poultry Science. 2012; 11(5): 326-332.
- Pettersen RJ, Salem M, Rotevatn S, Kuiper KK, Larsen TH, Bohov P, Berge RK, Nordrehaug JE. Effects of local delivery of Tetradecylthioacetic acid within the injured coronary vessel wall. Scand Cardiovasc J. 2012 Aug 30.
- Reardon M, Gobern S, Martinez K, Shen W, Reid T, McIntosh M. Oleic Acid Attenuates trans-10,cis-12 Conjugated Linoleic Acid-Mediated Inflammatory Gene Expression in Human Adipocytes. Lipids. 2012 Sep 2.
