Branched Chain Amino Acids

A study from Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut showed that taking branched chain amino acids decreased the amount of muscle damage from exercise in untrained volunteers. Branched chain amino acids are protein building blocks that can be converted easily to sugar by your body. A likely explanation for the advantage shown in this study is that muscles become damaged when they run out of their stored sugar and start to burn protein in the muscles themselves for energy.
Journal reference

However, it makes no sense to spend a lot of money on these expensive protein supplements. You will get the same benefit from any food that contains protein. Eat some cheese, seafood, peanut butter, chicken, nuts or any other convenient source of protein when you exercise for more than an hour.

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Eggs Do Not Raise Cholesterol

For more than 50 years eggs have been called unhealthful because they are among the foods that contain the highest levels of cholesterol. However, in recent years eggs have been rehabilitated. This month, a team of researchers at Mahidol University in Bangkok showed that adding an egg a day to the diets of healthy people in Thailand raised the good HDL cholesterol that prevents heart attacks. It did not affect the bad LDL cholesterol or triglycerides (Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand, March 2008).

Adding as many as three eggs per day to your diet will not raise cholesterol. More than 80 percent of the cholesterol in your body is manufactured by your liver, and less than 20 percent comes from the food you eat. When you eat more cholesterol, your liver makes less. When you eat less cholesterol, your liver makes more. However, if you add eggs you must subtract another equal source of calories, because increasing caloric intake will raise cholesterol. So this is not an invitation to eat an unlimited amount of eggs. The study supports other research showing that eggs in moderation are not harmful, and that up to one egg a day may have specific health benefits. How to lower cholesterol

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Men Underestimate their Waist Sizes

Men report that their waist circumferences are an average of 3.1 inches slimmer than they actually are, according to a study from University of Leicester in England. They can die from this vanity. Storing fat in your belly is a major risk factor for diabetes that causes blindness, deafness, heart attacks, strokes, amputations and kidney disease.

Almost all men who have more than three inches of fat underneath the skin over their bellies are either diabetic or pre- diabetic. More than 80 percent of people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes are overweight at the time of their diagnosis. Since insulin causes fat to be deposited primarily in the belly, storing more than three inches of fat underneath your skin is a sign of high insulin levels. Almost all type 2 diabetics who still make insulin go through periods of extremely high insulin levels long before their insulin levels drop. The disease is usually caused by inability to respond to insulin, so blood levels of insulin just keep on rising as a person gains weight. If these men would accept the existence of their fat bellies, they might recognize that they are at risk for diabetes and change their lifestyles before they develop complications from a potentially fatal disease. More

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Coconut Oil Does Not Make Frying Safe

The author of a popular natural health newsletter is selling coconut oil based on this claim. He is correct that frying with various oils causes carcinogens to form, but nobody has shown that coconut oil doesn't also form these same carcinogens.

Fats are classified by how many double bonds they have in their structures. Double bonds are the weak links in a molecule that break down with heating to form all sorts of harmful chemicals that increase cancer risk. Monounsaturated fats have only one double bond in each fatty acid. Polyunsaturated fats have more than one double bond. Since saturated fats have no double bonds, and all the others have double bonds, saturated fats are more stable and less like to break down to form heterocyclic amines. Plant sources that are high in saturated fats include coconut, palm and palm kernel oils. Animal-source frying oils such as clarified butter are also high in saturated fats.

However, they all break down with burning and high-temperature frying. You should not burn any fats. If you enjoy deep-fried foods, keep them as occasional treats; don't believe that using any particular type of oil will make them healthful. More on fried foods

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High Fructose Corn Syrup is No Worse than Sugar

You may have heard that the obesity epidemic in America is caused by high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) found in most sugared drinks and many types of foods. However, the evidence now blames any sugar in drinks and not the high fructose corn syrup in particular.

Researchers in the Netherlands showed that beverages sweetened by HFCS do not affect energy levels, appetite-related hormone levels or obesity any more than milk or drinks sweetened with sucrose. People did not eat more food after drinking HFCS beverages than they did after drinking milk or non-HFCS sodas. They also showed that the obesity hormones (insulin, ghrelin, glucose and glucagon-like peptide 1 or GLP-1) were affected similarly by all types of sweetened drinks. Journal reference

A sucrose-sweetened beverage contains 64 per cent glucose and 36 per cent fructose, while the HFCS is 41 per cent glucose and 59 per cent fructose, a not very significant difference. The researchers concluded that "energy balance consequences of HFCS-sweetened soft drinks are not different from those of other iso-energetic drinks: a sucrose soft drink or milk." Currently, many scientists believe that any sugar in drinks promotes obesity because sugar in liquid form does not fill you up to make you eat less in the same way that sugar in solid food does. If you want to lose weight, I recommend that you exercise more and eat less, and avoid sugar in liquid form. More on HFCS

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Cramps Probably Caused by Muscle Damage

Even though muscle cramps are extremely common in athletes and exercisers, we really do not know what causes them. Nobody has shown consistent benefit from any of the most common treatments: multivitamin pills; mineral pills with calcium, zinc, magnesium, salt and/or potassium; massage or chiropractic manipulation; drinking large amounts of water; dietary manipulations; or bio-mechanical stretching and strengthening.

Known medical causes of muscle cramps are extremely rare in athletes. These include narrowed blood vessels, usually from atherosclerosis; compression of nerves, low thyroid function, or side effects of medications such as diuretics. Some cramps are caused by low mineral or fluid levels. However, for the vast majority of people who suffer exercise-associated muscle cramps, blood levels of sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium are normal. Research in athletes after they ran in 52-mile races showed that the runners who suffered cramps had the same level of dehydration and blood mineral levels as those who did not get muscle cramps. Cramping during exercise usually occurs in healthy people without any underlying disease or known cause. Journal reference

I think that the most common cause of exercise- associated cramps is damage to the muscle itself. Before you get a cramp, you will probably feel that muscle pulling and tightening. If you slow down, the pulling lessens, but if you continue to push the pace, the muscle goes into a sustained cramp and you have to stop exercising to work the cramp out. Further evidence that muscle damage is the cause of the cramp is that the muscle often hurts for hours or days afterwards.

You may be able to prevent cramps by exercising more frequently but less intensely and for shorter periods of time, but most serious exercisers do not want to do this. There is some evidence that taking sugared drinks and foods during prolonged exercise helps maintain endurance and muscle integrity which helps prevent cramps. So take a source of sugar every 30 minutes or so during a vigorous workout, and back off if you feel a group of muscles pulling and tightening during exercise. Most exercisers just accept that occasional cramps will occur and cause no long-term harm.

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Fast Eater? Slow Down!

An interesting study from Japan suggests that eating fast is a risk factor for diabetes. Researchers at Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine in Aichi studied middle-aged men and women and found that the faster a person ate, the more likely he or she was to be fat (Preventive Medicine, February 2008). Furthermore, both insulin levels and blood sugar levels were higher in people who ate faster. High insulin and blood sugar levels are markers for being diabetic or at risk for developing type II diabetes.

Before insulin can do its job of driving sugar into cells, it must first attach to special hooks on the surface of cells called insulin receptors. As a person gains weight, excess fat blocks insulin receptors so they cannot drive sugar into cells. Blood sugar levels rise and the pancreas responds by putting out large amounts of insulin. Insulin makes you ever fatter by acting on your brain to make you hungry and it acts on the liver to make even more fat and on the fat cells in your belly to pick up and store that extra fat. Early diabetes is characterized first by high insulin levels, then by storing fat in the belly, rather than the hips. Eventually the pancreas exhausts itself and stops making insulin completely, and person then must take insulin. More on insulin resistance

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