Low Vitamin D & Insulin Resistance; Ghrelin Response to Overfeeding; Glutamine for the Elderly; 5g/Day Creatine for Women; MSM for GH Activity in Bone; Curcumin for Burns

Vitamin D research hyper-inflation - unfortunately few of the papers will ever be printed, otherwise we could at least use them to heat our homes, in case the price for oil gas and other fossil energy keep rising ;-)

The SuppVersity Figure of the Week is "1614"! That's the number of studies with the exact phrase "vitamin D" in their title that have been published in the past 9 months and 14 days of the year 2013 (more than five papers per day!). Compared to 1,453 papers in the year 2011 and 1,169 papers in 2010. Projected onto the rest of the year that's going to be a +40% increase in mostly redundant papers! I mean, let's be honest, we have not made any significant scientific progress in the area of vitamin D research over the past months: We have still no idea where the associations end and the causations begin and are more or less clueless as to why vitamin D supplementation simply does not yield any of the beneficial results it is supposed to.

And as if that was not already bad enough, due to the advent of an infinite number of second-class online journals that made the vitamin D paper hyperinflation only possible, most of these papers will never be printed. Otherwise I'd suggest we put them to some good use and burn them like the woman in the image on the right was burning paper money during the days of monetary hyperinflation, over here in Germany in the years 1922 - 1923 ;-)

Vitamin D and insulin resistance 

Having low levels does only make a difference, if you are obese. That's the result of the most recent analysis of data from the MONICA10 cohort consisting of 2656 participants (men and women aged 41–71 years) who participated in a 10-year follow-up examination during 1993–1994 as part of a population-wide survey in Denmark (cf. figure 1; data adjusted for sex, season of blood collection, history of CVD, family history of diabetes, physical activity during leisure time, healthy food index, fish intake, supplement use, smoking status, alcohol intake and educational level):

Figure 1: Risk of incident diabetes associated with serum 25(OH)D and waist circumference categorized as normal, overweight and obese (data based on Husmemoen. 2013).

"Low serum 25(OH)D was associated independently with incident diabetes. The inverse association was only found in overweight-obese and not in normal weight individuals, suggesting that obesity may modify the effect of vitamin D status on the risk of diabetes." (Husmemoen. 2013)

These results stand in line with previous research you've read about here at the SuppVersity suggesting that rather than the absolute 25-OHD levels, which are indicative of your "vitamin D reserves", an obesity induced disruption in the management / metabolism of the "sunshine vitamin" appears to be the real culprit that's behind the associations (not causations!) between low vitamin D levels and the metabolic syndrome.

That this problem can't be solved by simply adding more vitamin D to the equation stands to reason and would also explain why the few controlled vitamin D3 supplementation trials in non (morbidly) obese, highly vitamin D deficient individuals that exist did not bring about any of the metabolic benefits the researchers had expected.

Supplemental glutamine prevents non-sarcopenic age-induced weight loss 

We usually think of being overweight, when we talk of "weight problems". For older people it is yet often rather the opposite. Many are losing weight and start to literally wither away. And while glutamine does not help with the muscular aspect (strength training and at least 20g of EAA-rich proteins with every meal), it could at least help with making the most of the food you eat and the supps you take.

While the mechanism is not yet fully elucidated, the results of a recent study by Meynial-Denis et al. clearly suggest that the provision of supplemental glutamine effectively prevents the loss of body weight. A possible mechanism my be related to its concomitant (or upstream?) effects on the integrity and function of the enterocytes in the gut lining of the very old rats the researchers used as a model (Meynial-Denis. 2013).

Therefore I am not convinced that the researchers hypothesis that these effects are brought about by

1. the ameliorative effects of glutamine on the age-induced CO(2)/glutamate ratio, and
2. the role of glutamate as a precursor for glutathione, arginine and proline biosynthesis,

fully explain the observed effects. And even if they are, the additional (maybe in that case downstream) improvement of nutrient absorption subsequent to the conservation or restoration of a healthy/-ier gut lining can hardly be underestimated. After all, it is becoming increasingly clear that much of the age-induced loss of body weight is at least promoted, if not causally related to the decreased absorption of various essential nutrients.

Unexpected ghrelin response during 7-day overfeeding experiment in obese subjects

"Confusing" would in fact be a better term to describe the surprising finding that 7-days on a diet containing 70% more energy than the 68 healthy young, normalweight, overweight and obese men usually consumed did not reduce, but increase the amount of the acylated form of ghrelin (often touted as the "active" = hunger promoting form of ghrelin), in the blood of the study participants (Wadden. 2013). Moreover, ...

• there was no significant difference in fasting acylated ghrelin between normal weight, overweight, and obese men at baseline and
• the amount of acylated ghrelin was negatively correlated with weight and BMI for normal weight and with BMI in overweight men.

Yet while ghrelin also correlated with the changes in body weight and BMI the study participants experienced in the course of the one-week intervention. It was negative (which is obviously what you should expect) only in he normal- and overweight subjects. In the obses study participants, on the other hand, the correlation was positive, i.e. more weight gain = more ghrelin.

Illustration of the global obesity epidemic (WHO. 2005). The study at hand makes it pretty clear that a pathological dysregulation of energy intake is at least part of the problem.

In other words: While there were no differences at baseline an increase in acetylated ghrelin was associated with lower body weights and weight loss in normal- and overweight subjects, while the obese (=pathologically overweight subjects) showed increases in acetylated ghrelin, when they gained weight.

If we stick to the fundamental hyptothesis that ghrelin is in fact a "hunger hormone" and the acylation, i.e. the addition of an acyl functional group to the basic molecule, works like an "on switch" that activates the appetite increasing effects of ghrelin, this means nothing else than overeating and gaining weight makes obese men hungrier. This finding provides further evidence for the hypothesis that the natural regulation of food intake is not simply impaired, but totally out of whack in obese individuals.

MSM turns out to be a local GH booster and bone builder 

MSM? That's the stuff in the joint supplements, right? Correct! Methylsulfonylmethane (MSM) is a naturally occurring sulfur compound with well-known anti-oxidant properties and anti-inflammatory activities that is a longstanding standard ingredient in joint supplements (next to glucosamine sulfate and chondroitin sulfate - you notice the sulf... ah, pattern here, right?).

I guess you knew all that already, but I would be surprised if you had also been aware of the fact that MSM exerts direct anabolic effects on the bone by increasing the expression of GH-related proteins including IGF-1R, p-IGF-1R, STAT5b, p-STAT5b, and Jak2 in osteoblastic cells and mesenchymal stem cells.

"MSM increased IGF-1R and GHR mRNA expression in osteoblastic cells. The expression of MSM-induced IGF-1R and GHR was inhibited by AG490, a Jak2 kinase inhibitor. MSM induced binding of STAT5 to the IGF-1R and increased IGF-1 and IGF-1R promoter activities. Analysis of cell extracts by immunoprecipitation and Western blot showed that MSM enhanced GH-induced activation of Jak2/STAT5b. [...] Furthermore, MSM increased ALP activity and the mineralization of MSCs." (Joung. 2013)

Unfortunately, in vitro studies like these don't provide any information on appropriate dosages, but a study that was published in August 2013 reports that dosages up to 10-fold higher than the dose equivalent of the 300-400mg/day, which are at the upper end of the spectrum of the dosage recommendations of currently available MSM supplements, lead to "dose dependent" decrease in the degeneration of the cartilage in the knee joints in a mouse model of osteoarthritis (Ezaki. 2013). The hilariously high dose of 30-40g (100x the recommended amount), on the other hand, led to significant losses of body, liver, and spleen weight.

So, even with an acute fracture you better keep your MSM intake within reasonable limits - specifically, because we do not even know if oral methylsulfonylmethane will help with either bone-healing or bone strength in humans, at all.

If muscle is metabolic currency, creatine is the cash machine

"Ehhh! This will make me hold water? No thanks I already got enough of that! And muscle, not thanks..." Shut up! Muscle is metabolic currency and gaining muscle and strength is equally beneficial for the health of men and women, alike.

Against that background you may want to print the results from a recently published paper by Andreo Fernando Aguiar from the North University of Paranay and his colleagues and put the print out somewhere where all, not just the older ladies at your gym will see that taking 5g of creatine /day helped eighteen healthy ladies in their best years (64.9±5.0 years) to

If looking gorgeous and being strong & healthy is your goal, creatine is your supplement of choice, ladies...and gents! Changes in body fat percentage and muscle mass in response to 12-week strength training expressed relative pre value in control group (calculated based on Aguiar. 2013)

• train at a more than 2-fold higher volume,
• make 5.1, 3.9, and 8.8% greater progresss in bench press, leg extension, and biceps curl performance
• gain 3.2% more fat-free mass and 2.8% more muscle mass, and
• be more efficient in performing submaximal-strength

...than the nine women in the placebo group (Aguiar. 2013). With a somewhat higher overall training volume and maybe three instead of just 2 sets of 10-15 reps of

• vertical bench press, lat pulldown, 
• biceps curl, triceps pushdown, 
• knee extension, leg curls, 
• seated calf raises, and abdominal crunches

three times per week and a reduced carbohydrate intake (carbs down by 20% to 45% and protein up by 20% to 40% of the total energy intake) I am pretty sure the ladies in the creatine group would also have been able to turn the hitherto non-significant 2% reduction in total body fat into a significant one.

"Strong is the new sexy" and creatine can help you to get there!

About time to pull the emergency break strength train eat and take creatine?!

In a way it's unfortunate that the ability to promote weight loss is an almost necessary prerequisite for an ergogenic to  be attractive to women. If you can't answer the question "Will it make me lose weight... ah, I mean fat?" with a definitive "Yes, ma'am!", they won't buy it. That said, even with the current training and dietary regimen, the women in the creatine group dropped 1.6% total body fat and, due to the increase in lean mass, decreased their body fat percentage by -2.8%, while the ladies in the control group gained 1.2% body fat (total), so that their body fat percentage effectively did not change at all (+0.4%). Stronger, leaner and healthier! What more can you ask for in a dietary supplement?

Topical curcumin improves wound healing (plus tips how to prepare it)

In view of its profound anti-inflammatory effects it is actually not straight forward that curcumin would improve wound healing - at least not in the early, inflammatory phase of the process. Accordingly the researcher from the Department of Dermatology at the Faculty of Medicine of the Namik Kemal University in Tekirdag, Turkey, divided their burned rodents into 3x2 groups who were scheduled to be anesthetized on day 4 (A), day 6 (B) or day 8 (C) after after they had been burned with an aluminum branding iron that had been placed without pressure for 30s on the back of the rats (Kulac. 2013).

Histopathological scores for inflammatory cells, collagen, deposition, angiogenesis, granulation tissue formation, and epithelialization in each group (based on Kulac. 2013); group A (4th day post burn), group B (8th day post burn), group C (12th day post burn)

The rats in the three treatment groups who had received 200 µl of curcumin at a concentration of 100 mg/kg body weight, topically, once daily, showed increased wound healing during all the critical steps of tissue regeneration, i.e. inflammation, collagen deposition, angiogenesis, development of granulation tissue, and the repair of epithelium.

Interestingly, the inflammatory cell infiltration was significantly increased in curcumin groups and that regardless of when the tissue samples were analyzed. Collagen deposition, angiogenesis and granulation tissue formation were likewise higher in curcumin compared to the placebo group, with the earliest squamous epithelial re-epithelialization being observed on the 4th in treatment subgroup (figure 2, Group A).

Self-made curcumin band-aids / pastes

And in case you don't want to waste money or support Johnson and Johnson by buying the tumeric laced bandages they apparently sell in India, here are two ways to prepare a bandage and a tumeric paste that will probably help with sorts of inflammatory skin conditions (Hinkle. 2013):

In India people use tumeric + honey facial masks; also to treat acne, by the way.

• tumeric wrap / band-aid: Combine one teaspoon of dried turmeric powder with two teaspoons of either dried or fresh ginger. Spread the mixture over a cloth, then wrap around the affected area and seal it with a plastic bandage.
• tumeric paste for burns: Combine one teaspoon of turmeric powder with one teaspoon of aloe vera gel and apply it directly to the burned / inflamed part of your skin (make sure not to apply it directly onto open wounds, though!)

Be careful, though! Tumeric is also a powerful dye that's not easy to wash off again. So whatever towel you may be using as a wrap may therefore be ruined and in case the paste gets in contact with your shiny new white shirt, hot pants or whatever those are likely to be ruined, as well.

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Have you ever listened to the to the SuppVersity Science Round Up on Super Human Radio? If not, check out the podcasts

That's it for today, folks. I am not sure whether you feel this is sad or good, but I hope for you, and in a way me and the SuppVersity, that it is the latter, because it may well be that I will increase the frequency of these On Short Notice. In that I will be trying to get even further away from the lengthy items from last week and make them actually short, again ;-)

A pros pos short, those who like these news updates, may also enjoy the weekly SuppVersity Science Round Up that airs live every Thursday at 12.30 or 1.00PM EST, And if you can't tune in live, you can simply have google show you the links to the podcasts of the latest shows.


References:

• Aguiar AF, Januário RS, Junior RP, Gerage AM, Pina FL, do Nascimento MA, Padovani CR, Cyrino ES. Long-term creatine supplementation improves muscular performance during resistance training in older women. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2013 Oct 7.
• Ezaki J, Hashimoto M, Hosokawa Y, Ishimi Y. Assessment of safety and efficacy of methylsulfonylmethane on bone and knee joints in osteoarthritis animal model. J Bone Miner Metab. 2013 Aug 10.
• Hinkle, Lynette. Homemade Remedies With Turmeric. eHow.com - Herbs & Botanicals for Health J-Z. < http://www.ehow.com/way_5402326_homemade-remedies-turmeric.html > retrieved on Oct 13, 2013.
• Husemoen LL, Skaaby T, Thuesen BH, Jørgensen T, Fenger RV, Linneberg A. Serum 25(OH)D and incident type 2 diabetes: a cohort study. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2013 Oct 3. doi: 10.1038/ejcn.2013.134. 
• Joung YH, Lim EJ, Darvin P, Chung SC, Jang JW, et al. MSM Enhances GH Signaling via the Jak2/STAT5b Pathway in Osteoblast-Like Cells and Osteoblast Differentiation through the Activation of STAT5b in MSCs. PLoS ONE. 2013; 7(10): e47477.
• Kulac M, Aktas C, Tulubas F, Uygur R, Kanter M, Erboga M, Ceber M, Topcu B, Ozen OA. The effects of topical treatment with curcumin on burn wound healing in rats. J Mol Histol. 2013 Oct 2.
• Meynial-Denis D, Bielicki G, Beaufrère AM, Mignon M, Patureau Mirand P, Renou JP. Glutamate and CO(2) production from glutamine in incubated enterocytes of adult and very old rats. J Nutr Biochem. 2013 Aug 13.
• Wadden D, Cahill F, Amini P, Randell E, Vasdev S, Yi Y, Zhang W, Sun G. Serum acylated ghrelin concentrations in response to short-term overfeeding in normal weight, overweight, and obese men. PLoS One. 2013;7(9):e45748.

2.1kg Muscle From Fast Food Supplement; No Prolactin, No Fat; Oleic Acid Counters CLA's Inflammatory Effect; Spicy Marinades vs. Salmonella; Flaxseed, Estrogen & Penis Size; TTA in the Emergency Room; Alcohol & Binge Eating

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!

• 

  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. 2013); 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. 2013).
  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.

• 

  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

• 

  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. 2013)

  

  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.

• 

  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. 2013a & 2013b); 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 (2013) 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").

• 

  Figure 3: Alcohol overrides the inhibitory control over food intake (Chapman. 2013)

  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. 2013).
  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. 2013).

  

  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!

  

  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. 2013 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. 2013 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. 2013 Sep;96(3):492-7. Epub 2013 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. 2013 Aug 25.
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