SHR

Metabolic profiles of male meat eaters, fish eaters, vegetarians, and vegans It isn’t far-fetched to think that individuals with difference dietary habits might have different metabolic profiles. However, this issue has not been well investigated, leading Schmidt et al to investigate the differences in concentrations of circulating metabolites in middle-aged healthy men from the Oxford component of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC-Oxford). Using data from a food-frequency questionnaire, the researchers randomly selected 91-97 men per group who could be classified as meat eaters, fish eaters (who do not eat meat but do eat fish), vegetarians (who eat neither meat nor fish), and vegans (who do not eat meat, fish, dairy products, or eggs). Of the 118 total metabolites analyzed, concentrations of 12 sphingolipids (86%), 61 glycerophospholipids (79%), 6 acylcarnitines (67%), 2 biogenic amines (67%), and 12 amino acids (63%) varied across the 4 diet groups. In the...

Despite the well-established benefits of exercise for improving health, the largest and most stubborn barrier for individuals to overcome is adherence. Because lack of time is a common excuse, increasing attention has been given to modes of training that require relatively little time. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) describes exercise characterized by brief intermittent bursts of vigorous activity, interspersed by periods of rest or low-intensity exercise. Considerable evidence currently exists to support a role for HIIT as a time-efficient training method for inducing cardiovascular and muscular adaptations that are linked with improved health outcomes. Thus, HIIT may be a reasonable solution for time-constrained inactive individuals. Two recent studies support this view. The first study involved 23 sedentary, overweight-obese young men from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and randomized them to complete a 6-week HIIT or moderate-intensity continuous training (MIT) program with no other dietary or physical activity guidelines. The HIIT protocol...

If you are a lean, healthy, resistance-training individual interested in building muscle and maximizing body composition, then you are part of a unique and understudied population when it comes to the ideal amount of protein you should be eating. Owed in no small part to the current health state of the world, most research investigating the effects dietary protein on body composition and health is done in unhealthy individuals. From what limited evidence does exist, it has been suggested that protein intakes beyond 2.2 g/kg bodyweight have no additional advantages with regard to body composition or performance. Yet, there is a distinct lack of research looking at intakes beyond this amount. This is what makes research such as the recent study by Antonio et al so exciting – it does investigate the effects of a high-protein diet in a resistance-trained population. The Diet In total, 48 otherwise healthy, resistance-trained men and...

Replacing sedentary time with physical activity and sleep lowers your risk of death The health benefits of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and the health detriments of sedentary behavior (SB) are well-established. It wasn’t long ago that I wrote an article on a potpourri of observational research documenting reduced risk of death with increasing MVPA and decreasing SB. Now, Stamatakis et al add to the literature base by examining the hypothetical replacement of SB with other time-dependent behaviors on death from any cause in a large cohort of 201,000 Australian adults from New South Wales. To perform their statistical analysis, the researchers used isotemporal substitution modeling, which estimates the effects of replacing one behavior with another while controlling for confounding by other time-dependent behaviors. In other words, this model can tell us how a 60-minute block of low-intensity walking will have different health effects depending on whether it displaces an equal amount of...

In a previous article regarding a study performed with mice, we learned that vitamin D is per se necessary for muscle growth and development. The research showed that vitamin D deficiency brought about as a result of genetic deletion of the vitamin D receptor (VDR) led to significant reductions in muscle mass and strength and significant increases in the expression of myostatin and related catabolic genes. Similar but less pronounced changes were observed in healthy mice fed a vitamin D deficient diet as well, suggesting that it is vitamin D signaling that modulates the responses. Now if I were to ask what the number one way to build muscle is, I bet the response would be a majority “resistance training.” This raises the question: Does vitamin-D intake during resistance training improve the skeletal muscle hypertrophic and strength response? Fortunately, an answer comes from a recent publication by Agergaard et al, who...