Conditioning Research

Just to point you towards a couple of great recent posts on low carb eating: Matt points to a study about carb intake and sleepiness - "Higher fasting insulin levels were positively correlated with sleepiness. This is why refiend carbs are so deadly: they increase hunger which leads to weight gain, and they also make people more sluggish and less likely to exercise." Brad Pillon - of Eat Stop Eat fame - recently made a similar observation : " ......I can't recall the last time bacon and eggs made me sleepy. But I know that anytime I have a big "sugar bomb" type of meal, I'm out like a light about 30 minutes after I'm done eating. " Dr Briffa - of whom I am a huge fan - asks " Where weight loss is concerned, could it be that it’s more than calories that count? " . He reminds us that ".... that one way to lose weight is to eat a diet that tends not to get stored as fat. The fat storage hormone in the body is insulin, which i...

I wanted to get a post up to point to a couple of pieces of research that I have seen in the last week, about which I've not had time to write: A study which might indicate that garlic is helpful in treating exercise induced muscle damage: Effects of allicin supplementation on plasma markers of exercise-induced muscle damage, IL-6 and antioxidant capacity. Yet another complication associated with statin use! This time it a French study confirmed previous anecdotal reports that statins seem to trigger tendinitis or even an Achilles rupture. The study is reported here and here . Statins are full of potential side effects which are swept under the carpet by physicians desperate - for some reason - to reduce cholesterol. Once again I'd encourage you to read some of the cholesterol sceptics (e.g. this essay ) and think for yourself about whether or not cholesterol deserves to be so demonised!

Regular readers will have noticed that I often write about intermittent fasting (IF) . A new blog has just started which is looking at IF and you may want to check it out: The IF Life Mike has a good introductory post on how to start IF and also a collection of studies (a few of which are also scattered around this blog) on a useful resources page . It looks like it will be worh keeping an eye on his writings. If you want to read a bit more on the subject, I think that Fast 5 and East Stop Eat remain great introductions to the science and practice of IF. Or just check out some of the previous posts here .

We have looked at this before in the post " stretching doesn't prevent sore muscles " Now it appears that the New York Times has caught on...... The Claim: Stretching Can Prevent Soreness and Injury Stretching — long promoted as a way to prevent injury, to reduce soreness and to speed post-exercise recovery — may not fulfill its promise. Over the years, scientists have found that stretching before or after a workout has little effect on either risk of injury or what is commonly known as delayed onset of muscle soreness, the discomfort that comes a day or more after challenging physical activity. Of course readers of this blog now know how to prevent sore muscles ;-)

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is the pain or discomfort often felt 24 to 72 hours after exercising and subsides generally within 2 to 3 days. Once thought to be caused by lactic acid buildup, a more recent theory is that it is caused by tiny tears in the muscle fibers caused by eccentric contraction , or unaccustomed training levels. Since lactic acid disperses fairly rapidly, it could not explain pain experienced days after exercise, and some concentric-only exercises produce lactic acid, but rarely produce DOMS Well that is what Wiki says. But we have all experienced it, even - dare I say it - enjoyed it. I used to feel that it was a sign that I had really trained hard and had stimulated growth.....masochist to the last. The thing is I am not sure that such soreness is necessarily good. Certainly for those of a less obsessive / masochistic tendency it can put them off exercise all together. Soreness itself is maybe a warning a sign of tissu...

Just spotted this on Science Daily Cases of esophageal cancer (adenocarcinoma) in the U.S. have risen in recent decades from 300,000 cases in 1973 to 2.1 million in 2001 at age-adjusted rates. A new study shows that these rates in the U.S. closely mirrored trends of increased carbohydrate intake and obesity from 1973-2001. Here are a couple of quotes that the orthodoxy may not like: Obesity is a risk factor for many types of cancer, and a diet that includes a high percentage of calories from refined carbohydrates is a common contributor to obesity. and Carbohydrates were also unique in that no other studied nutrients were found to correlate with esophageal cancer rates. The abstract is below if you want to learn more: Carbohydrate Consumption and Esophageal Cancer: An Ecological Assessment OBJECTIVES: The incidence of esophageal adenocarcinoma is on the rise in the United States. In this ecological study using the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program (1973–2001) a...

If you live in the UK - and are a sports fan - you can hardly fail to be aware of the horrendous injury suffered by Eduardo de Silva this weekend. All I remember is when I looked down at my foot it had turned the other way.... The Arsenal player was tackled in the 3rd minute of a match against Birmingham on Saturday in what initially appeared to be a late but not a serious challenge. However, the reaction of all players on the pitch spoke volumes about the seriousness of the injury. They were all sickened by the severity of the broken leg which Eduardo suffered. If you have the stomach for it - and watching it on TV made me feel queasy - you can see a photo here which illustrates the severity of the injury. Thankfully, it looks like the player will recover and play again, but such injuries do not always heal: David Busst had to retire from the game after a compound fracture go infected with MRSA and he ended up with much tissue damage, as he explained in the Guardian today . I w...