Category Archives: strength

Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, Ketosis, muscle, Protein, strength

Tagged Atkins, body composition, calories, carbs, energy expenditure, exercise, ketogenic, ketosis, muscle, nutrition, obesity, processed food, protein

Anabolic Heterogeneity Following Resistance Training: A Role for Circadian Rhythm?

Posted on July 23, 2018 | Leave a comment

YES!

Resistance exercise stimulates muscle growth, strength, and functionality (Camera, 2018), although the inter-individual variability in response is hyooge. People used to think there were “responders” and “non-responders,” although now we know everyone benefits but there’s a wide spectrum. WHY?

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Exercise timing? There are definitely circadian clock genes and rhythmic expression of many genes involved in muscle growth, strength, and functionality.

Physical inactivity and sedentary behavior in general is bad. Physical activity is good. Load-bearing resistance is exercise is better. Is proper circadian timed exercise even better? Can you get slightly better benefits at the same workload?

WHY is this important?!

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, circadian, Exercise, muscle, strength, Sun

Tagged circadian rhythm, melatonin, muscle, nutrition, protein

New study: very low carb diets don’t impair high intensity interval training (Cipryan et al., 2018)

Posted on June 16, 2018 | Leave a comment

Effects of a 4-week very low-carbohydrate diet on high-intensity interval training responses (Cipryan et al., 2018)

Relevant study design details: 18 young, healthy, moderately-trained males. First, this was a study on exercise performance. Had it been on glucose management in patients with type 2 diabetes or obesity, this is not the population they would have selected. Second, they needed at least a moderately-trained population otherwise both groups would’ve made big n00b gainz which may have out-weighed any differences incurred by ketoadaptation in 4 weeks.

Third, 4 weeks is a good duration for this kind of study because maximal ketoadaptation occurs in about 3 weeks and doesn’t get stronger thereafter (gains seen beyond 3 weeks are more associated with training effects).

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, endurance, Energy balance, Ketosis, muscle, Protein, strength

Tagged carbs, diet, ketosis, muscle, nutrition, protein

Intermittent fasting is homeopathy-level #nothingsauce

Posted on May 24, 2018 | Leave a comment

From all of the published human studies and “n=1’s” I’ve seen on online forums, intermittent fasting is #nothingsauce. Don’t @ me.

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When people lose weight via IF, it’s because of caloric restriction. There’s no metabolic advantage, and if anything, maybe the opposite. Restricting your feeding window to a very short period = metabolic mayhem.

2000 kcals in one sitting?

*smh*

I believe “early Time-Restricted Feeding” #eTRF showed promise in that recent study because of the “early” part; no so much on the “TRF” part. I believe this, in part, because the large majority of our population suffers from some degree of circadian arrhythmia. Social jet lag, too much artificial light at night, skipping breakfast, etc., etc. An EARLIER feeding window is one way to re-align circadian rhythms.

It STARTS with Sleep. Wanna improve body comp and make mindlessly better food choices? Fix your circadian rhythms.

Now onto the one of the weirdest, but potentially most revealing human studies on time-restricted feeding…

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, chronopharmacology, circadian, Dopamine, melatonin, muscle, Protein, strength

Tagged calories proper, circadian rhythm, diet, energy balance, exercise

Starvation ketosis and “priority” of brain fuels

Posted on March 15, 2018 | Leave a comment

“Priority” is a funny concept the fields of nutrition, metabolism, etc. For the brain, it is said to be glucose. It’ll use ketones when glucose is low and ketones are really high, like during starvation, but otherwise it’s just glucose. Why is this? One of my mentors had some great insights…

“It seems that the loss of some energy as ketones in the urine is the price we pay to provide the brain with a suitable fuel. But there are a number of unanswered questions about brain fuel use. Why does the brain not use free fatty acids? The usual answer given is that they are not transported across the blood-brain barrier fast enough to be used as a major fuel and this is probably true. However, why did the brain not develop a suitable transport system, or localized store of glycogen for that matter.”

WHY NOT FATTY ACIDS?

Textbook: Biochemical, Physiological, and Molecular Aspects of Human Nutrition

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The Biology of Starvation (intro)

Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Energy balance, insulin, Ketosis, Protein, strength

Tagged carbs, diet, ketones, ketosis, nutrition

Metabolism of starvation/fasting =/= low carb diet

Posted on March 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

The Biology of Starvation: Renal Gluconeogenesis

One of the major [obvious] differences in metabolism between fasting and low carb dieting is nitrogen metabolism… because you’re eating protein on a low carb diet, not so much while fasting. During fasting/starvation your body tries to downregulate the urea cycle because you can’t really afford to be ‘wasting’ amino acids/protein. I bet you never thought about the muscle-sparing effect of fat-derived fuels like that!

“Glucose production in starvation” is important because you need to make all of it and reduce the use of it.

For the rest of this article and more, head over to Patreon! Five bucks a month for full access and there are many other options.

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Energy balance, Exercise, insulin, Ketosis, Protein, strength

Tagged Atkins, calories, calories proper, diet, insulin, ketosis, mortality, muscle, nutrition, protein

7 Worst Heart Health Sins (Page 20)

Posted on February 27, 2018 | Leave a comment

I read this on a magazine cover and my level of impending disappointment rapidly increased as I approached page 20. Aaaaand….

It wasn’t horrible! Could use some tweaking, but hit a lot of important points and didn’t say “NO RED MEAT EVER.”

1/ You sneak a smoke.

DUH. Smoking cigarettes is the worst way to get your nicotine hit imaginable. Use a patch, chew nicotine gum, suck on a lozenge. Just. Don’t. Smoke. It also ages your skin faster.

2/ You skip your walk.

BOOM! We all know the power of a good walk, amirite? Get sunlight and fresh air, get off your butt as often as possible!

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Exercise, melatonin, Protein, sleep, smoking, strength, Sugar, Sun

Tagged circadian rhythm, diet, ketosis, mortality, nicotine, nutrition, processed food

3 strikes – funny

Posted on February 2, 2018 | 1 comment

Weight reduction does not induce an undesirable decrease in muscle mass, muscle strength, or physical performance in men with obesity: a pilot study (Kim et al., 2018)

Cut & paste abstract. Literally.

“To date, there have been no reports on whether weight reduction causes decreases in muscle mass, muscle strength, or physical performance that could lead to health problems. Thus, in this pilot study, we investigated the appropriateness of the changes in muscle mass, muscle strength and physical performance after weight reduction.

Obese men who completed a weight reduction program to decrease and maintain a body mass index (BMI) of less than 25 kg/m2 for one year were recruited for the study. One year after the completion of a weight reduction program, the participants’ muscle mass, muscle strength, and physical performance were compared with those in a reference group composed of individuals whose BMI was less than 25 kg/m2. Whole-body scanning was performed using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry to analyze muscle mass. Handgrip strength and knee extensor strength were measured to evaluate arm and leg muscle strength, respectively. For physical performance, a jump test was employed.

The results showed that the biceps, triceps, subscapular, and suprailiac areas of professional fashion models were significantly thinner than those of women in general (p<.001), and that their waist size was also significantly smaller (p<.001). However, hip circumference showed no significant difference. Body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio, and body fat (%) in professional fashion models were significantly lower than those in women in general (p<.001), while the body density in professional fashion models was significantly greater (p<0.001).

Weight reduction participants showed an average reduction in body weight of -16.47%. Normalized arm muscle mass and handgrip strength were significantly greater in the weight reduction group than in the reference group; however, no significant differences were detected between the two groups with respect to the other variables. After one year, there were no significant differences between the two groups.”

Wait, wut

O_o

I’m blaming that one on the journal. They made a mistake — strike 1. I read it twice before laughing out loud.

Table 1.

Given the title of the paper… statistically significant reductions in all of the muscles they measured. Strike 2.

I reiterate: given the title of the of the paper, statistically significant reductions in nearly every measure of performance. Strike 3. Strikes 2 and 3 are on the authors.

You’re OUT hahaha

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1 Comment

Posted in Advanced nutrition, muscle, strength

Start paying attention to REV-ERB alpha

Posted on January 17, 2018 | 2 comments

Hey team, remember when I was making wild predictions about REV-ERB alpha?

Beta-hydroxybutyrate inhibits activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome.

“Food for thought: an endogenous ligand of Rev-erb is heme (the iron-binding element in red blood cells). Heme is degraded into bilirubin. Elevated levels of bilirubin cause jaundice. A treatment of neonatal jaundice is exposure to blue light. Blue light is a major regulator of circadian rhythms and Rev-erb is an executive-level player in this game. The primary mechanisms of blue light appear unrelated in these two models (melanopsin activation vs. bilirubin photoisomerization), but seem intertwined, because heme activates Rev-erb. Cool.” (From HERE)

and statements:

“Pharmaceutical-grade circadian augmentation = unwittingly better-timed meals? Improved body composition? …they were eating more and moving less. … One possible mechanistic explanation comes from mice lacking Rev-erb in skeletal muscle (Woldt et al., 2013). Mitochondrial biogenesis was impaired and exercise tolerance was reduced in these mice. Spontaneous physical activity was lower; thus, it stands to reason that Rev-erb agonism may improve skeletal muscle mitochondrial function. This isn’t entirely consistent with the drug study, but pretty close.” (From HERE)

REV-ERB is really really good for skeletal muscle.

Well, so does REV-ERB alpha! In a new study, knocking down REV-ERB alpha jacked up NLRP3 and pharmacologically enhancing it attenuated NLRP3 (Pourcet et al., 2017). The consequence of this in REV-ERB KO mice injected with LPS was hyper-inflation. No bueno. Mice given the commercially-available REV-ERB alpha agonist “Stenabolic” were protected.

I’m geeking out about REV-ERB alpha & SR9009. And fwiw, I don’t think anything will actually fully replace the benefits from actual physical activity and/or exercise, although it’s very hard for some people; eg, COPD, CHD, etc. In those populations, if they can’t exercise enough to really improve their condition, something like this might help. But I’m sure perfectly healthy people are going to try it. If you do, let us know in the comments!

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Regulation of Circadian Behavior and Metabolism by Synthetic Rev-erb Agonists (Solt et al., 2013)

Rev-erb alpha modulates skeletal muscle oxidative capacity by regulating mitochondrial biogenesis and autophagy (Woldt et al., 2013)

SERcadian Rhythms

“Seriphos“

2 Comments

Posted in angiotensin, Bromocriptine, Cabergoline, chronopharmacology, circadian, depression, Dopamine, Exercise, melatonin, muscle, sex, sleep, strength, Sun, vasopressin

Tagged body composition, circadian rhythm, energy expenditure

Is gluconeogenesis demand-driven? answer: it depends (#context strikes again!)

Posted on January 4, 2018 | Leave a comment

Context #1. The easiest way to explain gluconeogenesis (GNG) is how it relates to starvation. If you’re not eating food, your brain still needs a steady supply of fuel. Mostly glucose at first (ketones come later), but since you’re not eating anything, glucose comes from hepatic GNG (huge potential supply*) or glycogenolysis (limited supply). *One of the precursors for GNG, glycerol, comes from stored fat (which you’ll die of something else before you run out of stored fat bc GNG).

In this case, it is mostly true that GNG is demand-driven.

If you’re interested in this, more HERE.

Context #2. Protein (which also contains GNG precursors) doesn’t acutely increase glucose. But you might think protein does convert to glucose via GNG but protein also induces a splash of insulin which is why blood glucose doesn’t rise. Read this blog post at least up to the awesome Fromentin study: “8% of the blood glucose produced under optimal gluconeogenic conditions came from dietary protein.” But also check out the Conn & Newburgh studies. And Gannon.

This is usually the reason recreational keto dieters say they can be high protein, which either ends up looking like PSMF or it’s probably not very ketogenic (which doesn’t really matter in this #context; protein is restricted in therapeutic ketogenic diets).

#BenignDietaryKetosis #BDK

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Context #3. the mouse doctor is in 🙂

Context #3b. Chronic high protein.

Context #4. Random thoughts on animal foods.