Classic Beats Super Slow; Single 198 Second Sprint More Time Efficient Than Work-Matched HIIT; Exercise Better Than THC; Metformin + Cardio + Lifting = Anti-Obesity Triplet; Self-Efficiacy & Training Adherence - Plus: More!

This is just a random selection of the unlimited movement patterns your body has been designed to execute - don't make the mistake and rely on only one of them!

The amount of really interesting, let alone revolutionary new studies on the effects of different exercise modalities is not exactly high, to say the least. I am not quite sure, what the reasons are, but as I have stated before, part of it certainly is that you cannot monetize on the results by producing patentable drugs based on your findings and will thus have a hard time to find sponsors / get funding. It is therefore no wonder that many published papers are spin-offs of small scale trials that have been conducted as part of dissertations. Others simply use rodent models, which may provide relatively reliable data, when it comes to the effects of running on a treadmill, but are not exactly what I would want to see, when it comes to weight lifting or any other of the myriad complex movement patterns our bodies can, but these days way too often don't do.

I have nevertheless been able to compile another potpourri of studies of which I would hope that one or the other will enlighten or at least entertain you. That being said, let's get started with this weeks installment of the Exercise Science Special of "On Short Notice", here at the SuppVersity...

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HIT it short, hit it hard, hit the glucose and be smart! Yo, this awesome rhyme would be my advice to the very busy chubby manager-types with compromised insulin sensitivity out there and it's based on the results of a very recent study by scientists from the Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences at the College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences of the University of Glasgow in the UK (Whyte. 2013)

Figure 1: Power, workload (top) and metabolic effects of SIT and ES regimen (vs. control; bottom)

When Laura J. Whyte and her colleagues compared the effects of the single bout of very high-intensity exercise (SIT: 4x 30-s maximal sprints w/ 4.5min recovery between each) to a single maximal extended sprint (ES) matched with SIT for work done, they found that the immediate advantage of higher insulin sensitivity (measured via oral glucose tolerance test) in the work-matched continuous sprint the shorter duration 190s (TOTAL!) as well as almost identical...

• decreases is RER and carbohydrate oxitation, and
• increases in fatty acid oxidation

on the day after the exercise bout, in the presence of statistically significant reductions in insulin sensitivity only after the ES trial.

In other words: A single all out sprint on a braked cycle ergometer (as fast as you can; with obviously decreasing power in the course o the sprint) elicits greater metabolic effects within a 85% shorter timespan (198s vs. 1360s!), than work-matched classic HIIT training, with allegedly very long periods of active recovery.

That being said, I strongly caution against taking the results of this study as an incentive to perform the classic "go as fast as you can, for as long as you can" HIT sessions on exercise bikes, treadmills or ellipticals - those SUCK! *full stop* Be smart and either perform that one 3min sprint (if you really have no more time), or modify your HIIT training to incorporate longer high intensity phases (45-90s) at a work to active recovery ratio of 1:3 - 1:2, so that a resulting workout could look like that 4x 60s sprints, interspersed by 120s of active recovery. I would bet money that this protocol outperforms a work-matched continuous sprint in terms of its immediate and long-term metabolic effects.

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Opioid-like effects of exercise depend on intensity I guess you will be familiar with the term "runner's high"? Now, while the latter is usually ascribed to the exercise induced release of serotonin, the improved affect, the sense of well-being, the anxiety lowering and calming effects of exercise are probably mediated by the release of endocannaboids, of which scientists from the University of Arizona, the University of Texas Health Science Center and the Eckert College in St. Petersburg, Florida, have recently shown that the levels of these endogenous THC-like compounds depends on the intensity of the workout (Raichlen. 2013).

Liar, liar, THC junkie on fire ;-) You don't need to smoke weed before a workout if you get the intensity right! But could exercise also help people who recover from major depression to battle their tendency to obsess with negative thoughts and feelings?

At least in the 10 healthy regular runners who participated in the study, the results of which have been published in the Journal of Applied Physiology the endocannaboid exercise induced increase in circulating anandamide was most pronounced (~2x), when the subjects exercised at ~72% of their maximal heart rate (the workout consisted of 30min of treadmill walking, jogging, running at 45, 72, 83, and 92% of their maximal heart rate). Moreover, the post hoc analysis of the blood samples that had been immediately before and after the workout revealed that exercising at both the lowest and highest intensities had the exact opposite effect, although the reductions in serum anandamide were - when considered in isolation - were not statistically significant.

In conjunction with the results of another recent study that has been conducted at the Stanford University, it becomes evident that these results could actually be more than just "scientific masturbation", so to say. The Stanford researchers compared the reactions of 41 female patients who had recovered from major depressive disorder (MDD) and those of 40 healthy control, both of whom had been randomly assigned to either exercise for 15 minutes or quiet rest, to two sad mood inductions (once before and once after exercise or rest) and found that

"[while r]ecovered depressed participants who had not exercised exhibited higher NA [neagtive affect] after the second sad mood induction [...], both recovered depressed participants who had engaged in acute exercise and healthy control participants showed no increase in NA in response to the repeated sad mood induction." (Hogan .2013)

A reaction that goes against the so-called sensitization effect, which describes the tendency of depressed people (or people with a propensity to develop depression) to react with an increased level of negative effect to a repeated negative stimulus (Eisenstein. 2001) and would thus predict an increase in negative affect in response to the second stimulus as it was observed in the non-exercise group (figure 2, red box).

Figure 2: Negative and positive affect after 1st and second sad mood induction (left) and before and after exercise (right), respectively, in 41 female patients who had recovered from major depressive disorder (data from Hogan. 2013)

Moreover, the 15 minutes of exercise at an intensity the participant felt comfortable with led to an increase in positive affect participants in the exercise groups after the exercise bout, but failed to produce the same beneficial effect on the positive affect in the subsequent double-exposure to the filmic sad mood stimuli:

"However, in contrast to our hypothesis, we did not find any interaction between exercise condition and diagnostic group in level of reported PA following the repeated sad mood inductions that would be consistent with the notion of sensitization or habituation." (Hogan. 2013)

And who knows, if the exercise intensity had been higher, so that there had been more anandamide and other endocannaboids floating around in the brains of the study participants, this could even have changed the positive affect trajectory from the first to the second filmic sad mood induction? "Yo, that's so sad... hahaha" ;-)

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Image 1: Otsuka Long-Evans Tokushima fatty rats (OLETF, right) have a  genetic disposition to develop type II diabetes.

When metformin is good for the obese (pre-)diabetic and exercise is good, as well, metformin + exercise cannot be bad, right? At least in OLETF rats, one of the common rodent models of the metabolic syndrome, this assumption appears to apply (Jenkins. 2013).

According to the recently published paper by Nathan T. Jenkins and his colleagues, metformin and exercise do in fact work synergistically - at least as far as the obesity induced inflammation is concerned. While metformin decreased the pro-inflammatory overexpression of leptin, the rodents that have been exposed to an endurance type exercise regimen exhibited higher levels of the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10, which limit and ultimately terminate inflammatory responses (Moore. 2001).

Not just in view of the fact that IL-10 has also been implicated in the prevention and even treatment of auto-immune diseases, such as lupus erythematosus and multiple sclerosis (Beebe. 2002), I would always choose exercise over metformin - this is all the more true, if you are not morbidly obese in the first place!

And if you want to go even one step further, you simply add couple of interval sprints to the equation as those have been shown - in the same rodent model, by the way - to elicit greater improvements in HbA1c, the long-term marker of glucose management that "classic" steady state endurance exercise (Martin. 2013). Since the latter were mediated via differential microvascular changes than those Martin et al. observed in endurance trained OLETF rats, it is furthermore almost certain that they will add up. Probably not 1+1, but 1.5 and even 1.1 would still be better than 1.0, wouldn't it?

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The lack of the feeling of  self-efficacy is one of the best predictors of not sticking to a workout routine. And you know what? Oftentimes it's not your your, Joe or Jane who is to blame, but simply their cookie-cutter trainer or unqualified cousin who's dragging them to the gym. Now, think about that... could it be that you are a cousin / trainer like that!? No way, right?

A feeling of accomplishment is one of the main determinants of exercise compliance Have you ever wanted why you really enjoy going to the gym, while your obese cousin will only drag his ass over there if you kick him into the latter? Well, according to the latest study from the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and Division of Cardiology at the The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, it may in fact be you and not Joe or whatever his name is, who is to blame. Probably you are just having him copy what you do, with either way too much weight, or so little weigh that he does not just feel bad about it, but cannot make real progress either (Nam. 2013).

The scientists call that which Joe is lacking a feeling of "self-effiacy", when he is going to the gym training next to his 75lbs lighter cousin, lifting sissy weights and looking like a fat balloon.

No wonder he is falling off the wagon! Specifically, if you also take into consideration that in addition to the missing feeling of accomplishment, which increases his chance of non-compliancy by 19%, Joe also exhibits most of the other features Nam et al. have found to increase the chance of dropping out, specifically,

• low fitness - 26% increased chance of dropout and
• higher insulin resistance - 17% increased chance of dropout,

in the course of their experiment with 140 overweight, sedentary individuals with type II diabetes, who were randomly allocated to a 6-month, 3 times per week exercise intervention or a non-exercise control. And while bodyfatness, i.e. a higher total and subcutaneous abdominal fat percentage appeared to be indicators of higher compliance, when the scientists just looked at the raw data, these positive effects vanished, when they plied a multiple logical regression analysis.

So what's the take home message, here? Cousin or not, people won't do well on cookie cutter plans that won't allow them to make, see and feel progress.

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Isn't it astonishing how versatile and important these stem cells from the bone marrow are (image NIH. 2001)

1h of exercise thrice a week increases hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) count in the bone marrow With the almost magic effects of stem cell therapy being on everybody's lips, these days. You will probably be intrigued to hear that researcher from the McMaster University have recently established that a very reasonable amount of 3x 1h of exercise per week increased the quantity of hematopoietic stem cells in the bone marrow of exercised mice by +20% compared to their sedentary peers (de Lisio).

With it's likewise statistically significant effect on the proportion of whole BM cells in G(2)/M phase of cell cycle (p<0.05 and an increase in the number of spleen colonies (+48%, p<0.05) in those "model patients" who received transplants from the exercised compared to transplants from sedentary mice, it is thus likely that people who exercise regularly will benefit from both the quantitative increase, as as well as the qualitative improvements these multipotent stem cells, which  give rise to all the blood cell types from the myeloid (monocytes and macrophages, neutrophils, basophils, eosinophils, erythrocytes, megakaryocytes/platelets, dendritic cells), and lymphoid lineages (T-cells, B-cells, NK-cells), undergo in response to a moderate amount of exercise.

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Finally acknowledged: "[C]ombination exercise g[ives] greater benefits for weight loss, fat loss and cardio-respiratory fitness than aerobic and resistance training modalities", alone! And this is only the first part of the conclusion of a recently published paper by Suleen S Ho, Satvinder S Dhaliwal, Andrew P Hills and Sebely Pal, who explicitly suggest that

"Therefore, combination exercise training should be recommended for overweight and obese adults in National Physical Activity Guideline" (Ho. 2013)

How the scientists came to that conclusion? Well they could simply have read the SuppVersity news, but instead they conducted a 12-week trial, in the course of which 97 overweight or obese men (n = 16) and women (n = 81) (BMI >25 kg/m² or waist circumference >80 cm for women and 90 cm for men), aged 40 to 66 years, were randomly assigned to a either aerobic, resistance or combined training regimen (n=16 for each) or a sedentary control group (n=15). The results, spoke for themselves.

Figure 3: Changes in body fat (%; top) and VO2Max (bottom) in the course of the 12-week trial (based on Ho. 2013)

In the absence of statistically significant reduction in energy intake, or macronutient composition, the combination subjects in the combination group were the only ones to lose statistically significant amounts of

• body weight (-1.6kg),
• body fat (-1.9kg or 1% body fat), 
• android (=visceral) fat (-1.3kg),

had the most pronounced reduction in waist circumference (-2.6% vs. -2.5% in RT and -2.0 in AT) and were the only ones with statistically significant improvements in VO2Max, a marker of general cardiovascular fitness.

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Is there maybe more room in your training regimen for slow reps, than you may have thought? If you go by the statement "Slow speed-resistance training induced a greater adaptive response compared to training with a similar resistance at 'normal' speed" from a paper by Mark D. Schuenke and his colleagues from the University of New England, the Rocky Vista University, the College of Health Sciences and Profession and the Ohio-University that was published in the October Issue of the Journal of Applied Physiology (Schuenke. 2013), it would seem so.

If you do however take a closer look at the actual results you realize how important the adjoining qualificatory remark "However, training with a higher intensity at 'normal' speed resulted in the greatest overall muscle fiber response in each of the variables assessed" really is. After all, the "intensity" is per definitionem 20-45% higher in a classic strength training regimen compared to the often laughed at slow-speed resistance training (SS), which was - at least in the study at hand - defined as follows:

• SS: 6-10 reps, super-slow (10s) concentric (no typo!) and slow (4s) eccentric TUT, 40-60% of the individual 1-RM

Both the traditional strength training (TS) as well as the strength endurance regimen (TE) to which this protocol was compared used a TUT of 1-2s on the concentric and eccentric phase, but differed in terms of the weight and rep-numbers, which were

• TS: 6-10 reps at 80-85% 1-RM
• TE: 20-30 reps at 40-60% 1-RM

So, based on the qualificatory remark and a short glimpse on figure 4 you already know that the TS regimen yielded the best results during this 6-week resistance-training program that targeted the quadriceps femoris muscle group, in a total of 17 training sessions (only 2 in the first week), which were supervised to ensure that the 34 young, untrained female participants went to positive failure within the targeted repetition range on all three sets of the three exercises (leg press, squats, and knee extension) they performed after brief warm-up with ~2 min rest between sets and exercises.

Figure 4: Changes in body composition (left) and changes in muscle fiber cross-sectional area (all expressed relative to group baseline; data calculated based on Schuenke. 2013)

What's still missing though is the effect on overall body composition, where the super slow regimen did in fact produce almost identical results, while the "pump" workout ... ah, I mean the "strength endurance workout" sucked here just as it did as far as its effect on the increase in growth the number of hypertrophy-prone type II fibers is concerned.

So what's the take home message here? If you want some diversity, you can incorporate super slow sets into your regimen... but do you have to? At least based on the results of the study at hand, which was unfortunately conducted with untrained young women (who by the way love this alternative training styles) and is therefore not exactly representative for the average advanced trainee, the answer is "rather not, no!"

What neither the advanced nor the rookie who is striving to improve his or her body composition should do, however, is to train in the hilarious strength endurance range of 20-30 reps per set. If you want to build muscular endurance you either go out sprinting, beat the punching bag or do plyometrics.

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As I know you, you still want more, hah? Well, too much volume is not good for you and in case you cannot wait until next week, there will be some intriguing exercise news in the days to come, probably more on the SuppVersity Science Round-Up with Carl Lanore, on the Super Human Radio Network on Thursday, this week and obviously every day on the SuppVersity Facebook Wall @ www.facebook.com/SuppVersity - like it and always be the first to now!


References:

• Beebe AM, Cua DJ, de Waal Malefyt R. The role of interleukin-10 in autoimmune disease: systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and multiple sclerosis (MS). Cytokine Growth Factor Rev. 2002 Aug-Oct;13(4-5):403-12. 
• Eisenstein, E. M., Eisenstein, D., & Smith, J. C. The evolutionary significance of habituation and sensitization across phylogeny: A behavioral homeostasis model. Integrative Physiological & Behavioral Science. 2001; 36, 251–265.
• Ho SS, Dhaliwal SS, Hills AP, Pal S. The effect of 12 weeks of aerobic, resistance or combination exercise training on cardiovascular risk factors in the overweight and obese in a randomized trial. BMC Public Health. 2013 Aug 28;12(1):704.
• Jenkins NT, Padilla J, Arce-Esquivel AA, Bayless DS, Martin JS, Leidy HJ, Booth FW, Rector RS, Laughlin MH. Effects of Endurance Exercise Training, Metformin, and their Combination on Adipose Tissue Leptin and IL-10 Secretion in OLETF Rats. J Appl Physiol. 2013 Sep 27. 
• de Lisio M, Parise G. Characterization of the Effects of Exercise Training on Hematopoietic Stem Cell Quantity and Function. J Appl Physiol. 2013 Sep 27.
• Martin JS, Padilla J, Jenkins NT, Crissey JM, Bender SB, Rector RS, Thyfault JP, Laughlin MH. Functional adaptations in the skeletal muscle microvasculature to endurance and interval sprint training in the type 2 diabetic OLETF rat. J Appl Physiol. 2013 Aug 23.
• Moore KW, de Waal Malefyt R, Coffman RL, O'Garra A. Interleukin-10 and the interleukin-10 receptor. Annu Rev Immunol. 2001;19:683-765.
• Nam S, Dobrosielski DA, Stewart KJ. Predictors of Exercise Intervention Dropout in Sedentary Individuals With Type 2 Diabetes. J Cardiopulm Rehabil Prev. 2013 Sep 24.
• National Institute of Health (NIH). Stem Cell Information Webpage. June 17, 2001. < https://stemcells.nih.gov/info/2001report/chapter4.asp > retrieved on Oct 01, 2013.
• Raichlen DA, Foster AD, Seillier A, Giuffrida A, Gerdeman GL. Exercise-induced endocannabinoid signaling is modulated by intensity. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2013 Sep 19.
• Whyte LJ, Ferguson C, Wilson J, Scott RA, Gill JM. Effects of single bout of very high-intensity exercise on metabolic health biomarkers in overweight/obese sedentary men. Metabolism. 2013 Sep 19.

Less Than 15mg of DHEA Exert Identical Beneficial Effects on Insulin Sensitivity as 1h of Cardio 5x Per Week. Both Effects Mediated Via Increases in Intra-Muscular DHT

Image 1: It has long been established that diabetics have particularly low DHEA levels (Loviselli. 1994), but what's the chicken and what's the egg here?

It is quite funny, sometimes you don't hear about certain supplements, (pro-)hormones, exercise-modalities etc. in years and then, all of a sudden, there are two studies on the respective topic in one week; and moreover, two pretty interesting ones! Last Friday, exactly 7 days ago, you've read here at the SuppVersity about the muscle-protective effects of low-dose dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) supplementation during a 5-day intense multiple-type exercise protocol (cf. "DHEA Blunts Muscle Damage During 5 Days of Combined Endurance, Strength and HIIT Training in Young Men"). Today, I have another interesting set of data for you - data which could not just shed some light onto the underlying mechanisms of the said protective effects against skeletal muscle damage, but also on DHEA's beneficial effects on insulin sensitivity.

Not younger, but leaner with a minimalist dose of DHEA?

In a 6 week trial, and thus over a more than eight times longer timespan than in the previously mentioned human study on skelatal muscle damage, Koji Sato and his (or her?) colleagues from the Ritsumeikan University, the Senshu University and the University of Tsukuba (all in Japan, as you probably already suspected) investigated the effects a low dose of DHEA (human equivalent: 0.16mg/kg per day => 10-15mg/day) supplementation on the insulin, QUICKI (=quantitative insulin-sensitivity check index) and intramuscular DHEA and DHT (dihydrotestosterone) levels in sedentary or exercised dietary obese male rodents.

Figure 1: Relative insulin levels, QUICKI, intramuscular DHEA and DHT content in obese male rodents after 6 weeks of DHEA or combined DHEA + exercise (1h, 5days/week) treatment (data adapted from Sato. 2013)

As you can see in figure 1 the effects of both 5x/week running on a treadmill (ETA: 1h) and orally administered DHEA were profound. If you compare the "exercise only" group (red) to the two DHEA groups (green and violet), you will yet notice interesting parallels. Not only were the decreases in serum insulin and the increases (=improvements of insulin sensitivity) in the QUICKI test very similar, the exercise regimen alone yielded a +56% increase skeletal muscle DHEA content and a +71% increase in DHT.

Exercise increases intramuscular DHEA & DHT...
 

Figure 2: Hormonal cascade from DHEA to DHT; all enzymatic conversions can take place on a systemic and intra-cellular level!)

At least the latter, i.e. the increase in DHT should not be news to you if you have been following the in-depth articles at SuppVersity over the past couple of months. From the Intermittent Thoughts on DHT you know that exercise in general and HIT endurance exercise in particular has been found to boost intramuscular dihydrotestosterone levels, as well. The bros, or friends of bros among you, will probably also have heard the horrific stories about creatine monohydrate leading to increased levels of DHT (van der Merve. 2009), of which every reasonable person must actually assume that they are nothing but a downstream effect of increased training loads and/or improved adaptation... I mean, think about it "paleo style": Why would the mammalian body (rodent and human appear to react alike here) increase the DHEA and, via 5-alpha reductase (cf. figure 2), the dihydrotestosterone levels in response to high volume exercise, if not as a means of adaptation?

Oral DHEA + exercise = double-whammy against obesity

The combined treatment, or I should say the exogenous support of the exercise induced changes had - and this is not visible from the data in figure 1, astonishingly profound effects on the diet induced weight gain of the lab animals. While all other rodents became fatter, those in the exercise + DHEA group remained at a steady body weight level; an observation the researchers comment as follows:

Although DHEA administration and exercise training each produced beneficial effects, 6-weeks of combination treatment were more effective for obesity. The precise mechanisms that reduced abdominal fat weight in the combination group remain unclear, yet we can propose several plausible hypotheses. 2 weeks of DHEA administration has been shown to activate fatty acid metabolism-related enzymes, such as long-chain fatty acyl-coenzyme A synthase, and to increase free CoA levels in liver (Mohan. 1998; Mohan. 1990). In addition, exercise training is  known to reduce adipogenesis via upregulation of fatty acid metabolism and increased energy expenditure (Hou. 2003). Therefore, 6-weeks of combination treatment may have promoted additive reductions in abdominal fat volume.

In other words, while DHEA increases the efficacy of fatty acid oxidation, exercise takes care of the increase in energy expenditure which is - all convictions wrt to "calories don't count" and the "calories in vs. calories out"-hypothesis aside - still a fundamental prerequisite that the fatty acids do actually get burned and are not released into circulation to be restored or replaced a couple of hours later.

"Ok, I am just ordering some DHEA, how much should I take?"

Before you head over to the online vendor of your choice to make sure you get your share of DHEA before the FDA hears that it could hamper the sales of diabetes drugs and removes it from the OTC market, I would like to remind you that despite the fact that Sato et al. rightly claim that a "combination treatment [with DHEA and DHT] may be more beneficial than either therapy alone", a cursory glance on the data in figure 1 should suffice to tell you that those additional benefits as statistically significant as they may be are just that "additional" and that exercise alone yielded about equal results, is free of negative and full of beneficial side effects (update: as long as you don't overtrain; thanks Stapedius for this important note) and does not have the same host of studies refuting its efficacy as DHEA has (Clore. 1995).

It is nevertheless intriguing that a hormone the medical orthodoxy has, more or less all of a sudden, dropped like a hot potato and declared "questionable" and "ineffective" is now, roughly 15-20 years being rediscovered... and I am pretty sure that this was not the last DHEA study you will see and read about here at the SuppVersity ;-)

References:

1. Clore JN. Dehydroepiandrosterone and body fat. Obes Res. 1995 Nov;3 Suppl 4:613S-616S. Review.
2. Hou CW, Chou SW, Ho HY, Lee WC, Lin CH, Kuo CH. Interactive effect of exercise training and growth hormone administration on glucose tolerance and muscle GLUT4 protein expression in rats. J Biomed Sci. 2003 Nov-Dec;10(6 Pt 2):689-96.
3. Loviselli A, Pisanu P, Cossu E, Caradonna A, Massa GM, Cirillo R, Balestrieri A. [Low levels of dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate in adult males with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus]. Minerva Endocrinol. 1994 Sep;19(3):113-9.
4. van der Merwe J, Brooks NE, Myburgh KH. Three weeks of creatine monohydrate  supplementation affects dihydrotestosterone to testosterone ratio in college-aged rugby players. Clin J Sport Med. 2009 Sep;19(5):399-404.
5. Mohan PF, Cleary MP. Effect of short-term DHEA administration on liver metabolism of lean and obese rats. Am J Physiol. 1988 Jul;255(1 Pt 1):E1-8.
6. Mohan PF, Ihnen JS, Levin BE, Cleary MP. Effects of dehydroepiandrosterone treatment in rats with diet-induced obesity. J Nutr. 1990 Sep;120(9):1103-14.
7. Sato K, Iemitsu M, Aizawa K, Ajisaka R. Testosterone and DHEA activate the glucose metabolism-related signaling pathway in skeletal muscle. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2008 May;294(5):E961-8. Epub 2008 Mar 18.
8. Sato K, Iemitsu M, Aizawa K, Mesaki N, Ajisaka R, Fujita S. DHEA administration and exercise training improves insulin resistance in obese rats. Nutr Metab (Lond). 2013 May 30;9(1):47. [Epub ahead of print]

Science Round-Up Seconds: Rare Sugar Syrup, HFCS 2.0? Body Recomposition W/ 7 Marathons in 7 Days!? Reduced REM Sleep With Intense Workouts in the Evening.

99% of the guys & gals on this photo are not going to see anywhere similar improvements in body composition from marathon running as the highly trained 7x7 runners in the Karstoft study.

It's Friday and that means its time for the wrap-up of yesterday's installment of the Science Round-Up on SHR. Well, let's see then what this weeks Round-Up of the Round-Up has to offer. Somehow I felt like picking up something we did actually cover in the live-show yesterday (download the podcast here). I guess I want to give everyone the chance to look at the data himself in order to decide whether "rare sugar syrup" (RSS) is going to be the savior of the Western world and the unfortunate rest who's currently "westernized" by the big Ms, the big As and the rest of the corporate alphabet soup with a vested interest in the prosperity of mankind, or - to be precise - that the part of mankind who owns their shares ;-)

Rare Sugar Syrup has 90% of the sweetness of regular sugar + "cleaner taste" than HFCS

(IIda. 2013) -- Assuming that you've by now all listened to the podcast, I will stick to some additional explanations, citations and graphs in this follow up.

While D-psicose is not the only fructose epimer in rare sugar syrup, it is probable the one with the most potent beneficial effects on blood glucose management (learn more). One potential caveats of RSS is that its d-psycose content is only 5% with te rest being other hexoses including D-allose, D-sorbose, and D-mannose,

As the scientists point out, the main intention of their study was to assess whether their rare sugar syrups would suppress

"body weight gain and abdominal fat accumulation in rats fed on diets composed of different carbohydrate sources: starch, starch + HFCS (50:50), and starch + RSS (50:50) were examined. (Iida. 2013)"

Accordingly, they maintained their rodents on otherwise identical diets containing (on a per weight not per kcal basis!) 57% carbs, 18% protein, 4% fat, cellulose, added methionine and a couple of vitamin and trace elements with either plain corn starch, corn starch and HFCS or cornstarch and rare sugar syrup (see figure 1, left).

Now, as mentioned in the show, there is no debating that this feeding regimen worked and with "90% of the sweetness of sucrose, and a more rich and clean taste than HFCS" replacing HFCS with RSS could even improve the taste of respective products, but let's be honest: How likely is it that we are going to see products without HFCS and 50% of rare sugar syrup actually making up the lion's share of the processed junk in the super market anytime soon?

Figure 1: Carbohyrate content of the diets and weight of different visceral fat pads after the 8-week dietary intervention in otherwise healthy rodents on a cornstarch only, cornstarch + HFCS or cornstarch + RSS diet (Iida. 2013)

Isn't it more likely that you will see labels like "now with rare sugars" on the front of the packaging and the hardly legible figure "contains 3% carbohydrates from rare sugars" hidden on its back? I would think so and the fact that neither this study nor the general existence of this HFCS substitution did as of now hit the media certainly doesn't refute contradict this hypothesis.

7 marathons (!) in 7 days - A marathon a day keeps the fat stores at bay?

(Karstoft. 2013) -- I probably don't have to preface this part of the seconds with a "don't do this at home" (or anywhere else ;-), but I think it's nevertheless newsworthy that accordingly trained people can actually run 7 marathons  in 7 days without the dreaded negative effects the average bro is expecting when he is just walking for 40min on a treadmill.

Figure 2: Body composition before and after the race (left) and changes in markers of muscle damage as well as hormonal changes and differences in markers of blood glucose management (right) in 8 experienced recreational runners participating in a multiple-marathon running event in which 7 marathons were completed on consecutive days (Karstoft. 2013)

Doesn't look so bad, ha? The reason I still stick to the initially voiced recommendation not to copy this protocol if you intend to lose body fat is pretty simple. The main reason "nothing" happened here is that the subjects were conditioned to run marathons.

That's the same "repeated bout effect, we have seen only a couple of days ago in the "No Pain No Gain" post (click here to go back) and the ~2kg of "muscle mass" are (despite being measured with DEXA) probably rather a result of glycogen hyper-compensation from tons of energy gels and pasta (the subjects did not follow a prescribed diet, but simply ate, drank and supplemented what had helped them on previous marathons), than structural increases in muscle tissue.

No high intensity training before a good night's sleep

Unless you have read the SuppVersity Circadian Rhythm Series, you have no right to complain about being overweight or undermuscled (read it ;-)

(Wong. 2013) -- After listening to the show, you know what you got to do once you got out of the bed, namely to switch on your bright light therapy lamp, but what do you have to do before you go to bed? I did actually discuss most of the things you should do (curtains, ear-plugs, turn the temperature down, etc.) in the Circadian Rhythm Series, but with the recent publication of a study by Wong et al. there is another thing you should - or in this case should not do and that's working out at a high intensity.

According to the results the researchers present in their soon-to-be-published paper in the Journal of Sports Science, a cycling exercise at intensities of  65% and 75% VO2Max lead to significant increases in light sleep and reductions in the recuperative REM sleep from 22.5% to 19& and 18.7% of the total sleep time.

Light exercise, in this study done at 45% and 55% of the VO2max, on the other hand did not have these side effects it did however not improve sleep, which is by the way an urban myth of which Driver and Taylor wrote in a Y2k paper in the Sleep Medicine Review that it "has yet to be established empirically" (Driver & Tailor. 2000).

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That's it for today, unless you want to head over to the SuppVersity Facebook Wall and check out some of the news that are already available over there, e.g.

• 

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

  "High" dose supplementation with vitamin C and/or E increases cataract risk - 1,000mg of vitamin C increase the risk +36% and 100mg of vitamin E by 57% (read more)
• Aerobic fitness could have greater impact on academic achievement than obesity -- Although obesity is a concern for children, this study shows that aerobic fitness can have a greater effect on academic performance than weigh (read more) 
• Aqua Mel, Portuguese "folk medicine" works for the alleviation of simple symptoms of upper respiratory tract -- Effect probably mitigated by the phenols in the honey this product is made of (read more).
• Serum albumin carries cholesterol out of the cells -- Hitherto scientists thought that this was a prerogative of HDL (read more)

If you don't like these or the other ones I did not mention just wait for further news to be posted. Alternatively switch of the computer and your mobile devices and head off into a well deserved weekend!

Don't worry, there is going to be a whole heap of short news tomorrow, you won't get bored... ah, you don't get bored on the weekend, anyway - do you?

References:

• Driver H.S., Taylor SR. Exercise and sleep. Sleep Medicine Reviews. 2000; 4(4):387–402
• Iida T, Yamada T, Hayashi N, Okuma K, Izumori K, Ishii R, Matsuo T. Reduction of abdominal fat accumulation in rats by 8-week ingestion of a newly developed sweetener made from high fructose corn syrup. Food Chem. 2013 Jun 1;138(2-3):781-5.
• Karstoft K, James Solomon TP, Laye MJ, Pedersen BK. Daily Marathon Running for a Week - the Biochemical and Body Compositional Effects of Participation. J Strength Cond Res. 2013 Feb 25.
• Wong SN, Halaki M, Chow CM. The effects of moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise on the sleep need of sedentary young adults. J Sports Sci. 2013 Feb;31(4):381-6.

From 16% to 8% Body Fat in 10 Weeks: Crossfit Workout Gets The Leanest Shredded - But Only the Fittest Survive

Crossfit doesn't fit well with everyone. In  fact you have to be pretty fit already if you intend to benefit - specifically if you don't have someone who tailors the workouts to your specific needs. If you don't or are still miles apart from being fit, don't be bamboozled by the results of people who have been training for years.

This certainly sounds a little sadistic, but I hope you've been missing the Science Round-Up last Thursday. If that's the case, you will be happy to hear that Carl and I are back on track, and ready to talk about topics ranging from magnesium supplementation over the potentially fatal combination of NSAIDs and exercise and what's that got to do with gut health / integrity, how light therapy won't make you lighter, but help you cut body fat, how intense workouts compromise your sleep, and how intense sweeteners make you fat - at least if you add them on top of a Western diet. If we will have time, we will also take a look at how much protein it actually takes to preserve lean mass on a diet and how protein supplementation is not necessary and in a recently published study not even conducive to building muscle. And while these were only 50% of the news I've on my list of potential topics, I won't give away more... just tune in live at 1PM EST on the Super Human Radio Network.

For the time that remains and for those of you who are just arriving here after having listened to the live-stream, I still have a special goodie... have you ever pondered over the following question:

How much can you achieve within 10 weeks of training?

Even if you have already decided on a certain type of training, for example HIIT, you will have to adjust your routine to "Make HIIT a HIT" read Part I and Part II of the eponymous series and learn how to turn a HIIT workout into your HIIT workout to avoid overtraining and maximize its efficacy (learn more)

There is obviously no definite answer to this question. I mean, it goes without saying that we would first have to define, whether we are talking about muscle growth, overall conditioning, fat loss, etc. - what people often overlook, however it also depends on where you are coming from. Sometimes I feel like I am the only one who dares telling someone who's been "running" - in most cases this is rather sitting and driving - around at 2x his/her normal weight for years, is past his early 20s and has a life beyond working out and dieting is very unlikely to ever achieve a cover model physique. On the other hand, we've got the average trainee, who's been training for years has a high degree of leanness and is just about to see his sixpack shine through, who will necessarily make much smaller improvements within a given time-frame than his obese colleague who's just about to start working out for the first time of his/her life.

The previous paragraph should have made it quite clear, compared to the (overweight) beginner, an advanced trainee must invest much more thought into his/her diet and exercise regimen. That real intermittent fasting would probably be a better alternative for him/her than the "buffered every other day fat" has already been mentioned in yesterday's SuppVersity Article, but what about the exercise regimen?

Working out for fat loss and conditioning - Crossfit rules!

Fast paced high intensity workouts are gathering more and more momentum even outside of Crossfit gyms. Some of them may look somewhat "Jane Fonda", but as a previous review of the workout DVDs Insanity vs. TurboFire revealed, even hopping around in front of your TV set is more productive than the fat burning zone on the treadmill in next to your sofa (learn more)

Let's say he or she is working out primarily to increase his/her conditioning and drop a (if by any means possible) a significant amount of body fat? What would be the best way to train, then?

According to the results of a soon-to-be-published study from the  Ohio State University Health & Exercise Science in Columbus, Ohio (Smith. 2013), there is no question that this would be a Crossfit-esque workout - or, as the scientists refer to it, a crossfit-based high intensity power training (HIPT) program, they describe as follows:

"[...] a crossfit-based HIPT program using basic gymnastic skills (hand- stands, ring, and bar exercises) and traditional multiple-joint, functional, resistance exercises (squat, press, deadlift, Olympic lifts) performed as quickly as possible at a high intensity (low repetition, high percentage of 1-RM)." (Smith. 2013; my italics)

The 10-week program was varied so that some exercises were performed for a best time, and others were performed in the “as many rounds as possible” style (AMRAP; for a little more versatility check out Adelfo's EDT-CrossOver training) within anything from 10 to 20 minutes.

While there were no prescribe recovery times during the strength/skill portion of the exercise session, the WOD portion of the session did not allow for any real "rest" between the sets, as all the exercises were to be performed as quickly as possible.

Wow, who survived that? - Good question, indeed!

Only the fittest survive: Please do me a favor - If you are the aformentioned overweight person who's still carrying around another guy/gal's weight as body fat, don't even think of crossfitting, if you don't want to end up like 9 of the 11 dropouts (the study started with 54 participants), who retired willingly due to overuse or injuries, ok?

I guess you won't be surprised to hear that the 23 men and 20 women who survived and of whom the scientists state that they were "spanning all levels of aerobic fitness and body composition" were actually the typical already reaonably fit Crossfit clientele of whom Smith et al. somwhat awkwardly point out that they "had already been following a 'Paleolithic' type diet prior to and following completion of the training protocol." In other words the "levels of aerobic fitness" the participants spanned ranged from the untrained yet 100% healthy male with a VO2max of ~35 ml/kg/min to the hardcore crossfitter with a starting VOMax of >50ml/kg/min - the aforementioned heavily overweight and thus by now average (see "Obese is Going About to Become the New Normal") Westerner was yet not part of the study population.

Still, the presence of subject spanning the divide between "just healthy" and ripped and well-conditioned is in fact what attracts me as the author of a webpage that's dedicated to anyone ranging from those who just want to be / get / remain healthy and look not all-too shabby in front of the mirror to those who are looking to max out on their own physical performance and appearance. Long story short: The data you see in figure 1 is relevant for all of you. Even if you are still a couple of inches away from matching at least the initially criteria, you will sooner or later arrive at a point, where you'll find a representative counterpart of yours among the subjects of the study at hand.

Figure 1: Body fat percentage (left) and VO2Max (right) before and after the intervention (Smith. 2013)

I guess the data in figure 1 do actually speak for themselves: There is actually pretty much you can achieve within just 10-weeks of serious training: A significant (P<0.05) improvement of VO2max of 2.64% if you are a man and 11.78% if you are a women and (probably much sexier in the eyes of most of you) a 4% respectively 3% decreaes in body fat!

"To our knowledge no research on the aerobic benefits of HIPT has been conducted. HIPT focuses on high intensity resistance training usingmultiple joint exercises, with little to no focus on traditional aerobic activities. In spite of this, our results show that this type of training also provides aerobic and body composition benefits. Theincreased aerobic capacity of the subjects in our HIPT study were similar to those found in past research (Tremblay. 1994; Burgomaster. 2005). Based on the results presented here, individuals of all fitness levels and either gender can realize body composition and aerobic benefits from HIPT. Given that our subjects were following a Paleolithic diet, we cannot relate all of the observed weight loss to HIPT training. However, HIPT and Paleolithic diet in combination could be used to promote positive changes in body composition."

Now, all the scientists write is unquestionably true (also the part on the "paleo diet", as long as it is not very low carb paleo, cf. "Carbohydrate Shortage in Paleoland") and still, for me there are two things Smith et al. don't mention in the paragraph cited about and these are (A) the sex differences in terms of the VO2Max gains (maybe a result of the fact that women are not the ones who would otherwise do HIIT-esque workouts (=aerobic training at high intensities), so that the new stimulus will yield a greater results and (B) the fact that Crossfit is a workout regimen, from which even those benefit who are already fit and lean (keep in mind that the 16% in the lean group are for men and women, so that is lean!).

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Bottom line: Crossfit appears to be the high intensity workout regimen which can help experienced trainees to make the transition from lean to ripped!

Want to do some more aerobics but also stick your classic weight lifting routine and just add cardio in? Now you are asking yourself, when this would make sense? Before, after or in between? Is that's you, go back in the SuppVersity archives and learn more.

As exciting as this may seem, a brief glance at the data in figure 1 will yet also tell you that those who are not up to the intensity and athletic demands of crossfitting don't just risk getting injured (please read the red box further up in the article, as well), they are also wasting their time with a workout that's not designed for their fitness level an will thus yield suboptimal results. This may not necessarily be the case in absolute terms - after all -4% body fat reduction certainly is not bad, but that's -4% from a pretty chubby baseline of 33% and actually could be achieved with basically any well-planned nutrition + exercise regimen. The latter obviously cannot be said of the -50% relative reduction in body fat percentage in the lean subjects on the other side of the "body fat divide". These men and women are most likely people who have been working out for all their lives in one way or another.

The "gifted ones" are in fact rather the ones who are often literally accused of being "genetically gifted" by accusers who simply don't take into consideration that it is above all the epigenetic priming of years of high school, college and other sports that renders them ostensibly resistant to the "obesity virus".

If you are still infected with the obsisty virus and have just found your way to physical culture you hardly qualify as one of those individuals by whom the original Crossfit workouts were created and are therefore certainly not among those people for whom these metabolically and technically demanding workouts were and still are designed. 

If you do "qualify", however (and that is nothing you have to be born wirth, I myself once believed that I just did not have the genes to see my abs), cross fitting could fit in particularly well in your "beach-ready" plan, of which I'd hope you are already thinking about... I mean, spring is less than 3 weeks away (click here to learn more about setting up a workout routine)!

Addendum: Since I got several people asking for the lean mass changes, I thought I'd mention that there was a +1kg increase in lean mass in men and women. Unfortunately the scientists don't provide differential information for lean and heavier subjects, but if your body fat percentage decreases you do at least have  to lose much more fat than lean mass and since there was no dieting involved, I bet the lean guys and girls did not lose any muscle..

References:

• Burgomaster KA, Hughes SC, Heigenhauser GJ, Bradwell SN, Gibala MJ. Six sessions of sprint interval training increases muscle oxidative potential and cycle endurance capacity in humans. J Appl Physiol. 2005 Jun;98(6):1985-90.
• Smith MM, Sommer AJ, Starkoff BE, Devor ST. Crossfit-based high intensity power training improves maximal aerobic fitness and body composition. J Strength Cond Res. 2013 Feb 22. 
• Tremblay A, Simoneau JA, Bouchard C. Impact of exercise intensity on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism. Metabolism. 1994 Jul;43(7):814-8.