Energy Drinks Before Workout Make You Thirsty. Single HIIT Session Every 14 Days Maintains Fitness in the Off-Season. Postprandial Walk Decreases HbA1c by 5%. Cardio Before Weights Increases pAKT +87% Over Weights Alone

You simply cannot start "working out" too early - even if it's just child's play.

"Three for one!" No, I am not trying to sell you three bottles of "uberpotent" test-boosters for the rat of one. Three for one that's the SuppVersity Figure of the Week and it is the ratio of the decrease in breast cancer risk in women and the hours of physical activity per week during their adolescence.

According to a 2004 review by Lagerros, Hsieh and Hsieh, each additional* hour of weekly physical activity is associated with a -3% risk of developing breast cancer later in life (Lagerros. 2004)

Needless to say that the "additional" hours are in addition to the low physical activity in the laziest of the study participants, who had a 20% higher risk of developing breast cancer than their most active peers.

So what else do we have today? With this primer on the importance of physical activity esp. in the critical periods of your / your children's and grand-children's lives, let's delve right into a "special edition" of the Saturdaily "Short News" with a focus on a selection of very recent results from exercise-related studies.

• Energy drink before a workout make you thirsty. don't enhance performance (Tanskanen. 2013) While the mantra of the "intra-workout" beverage producer that you need at least a small amount of carbohydrates to optimally absorb the added salts, a recent study from the University of Jyväskylä in Finland showed that the ingestion of both high- and low-carb (33g vs. 10g) caffeine-containing energy drinks before the workout resulted in a temporary increase in thirst compared to to both caffeinated (106mg, just as the two energy drinks) an non-caffeinated water.
  
  

  With +1kg Fat in 4 Weeks from less than 2 energy drinks/day, thirst may be the least problem you will have if you guzzle "energy drinks" (learn more).

  The fact that the increase in thirst was only transient, and decreased in the course of the 60min cycling exercise (60% VO2max) the healthy young adults had to perform, as well as the non-existent differences in hydration status between the groups do yet show that these effects were practically irrelevant. Incidentally, the latter has to be said for the promised / expected performance enhancing effects of energy drinks - with the relatively low amount of caffeine in the drinks, there were no significant differences between the the time the 10 participants cycled on an incremental test to exhaustion that followed the "steady-state-cardio" during each and every of the four testing days of this randomized, crossover study.

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  Putting things into perspective: The fact that previous trials yielded different results, esp. wrt to the performance enhancing effects of caffeine, is probably attributable to a the low dosage of caffeine. Another very recent study by Ranchordas & Kenzie, for example has just confirmed that a compbination of 32g of carbs and 300mg of caffeine can "enhance some aspects of soccer-related fitness including acceleration, maximal velocity, 20-m sprint speed, speed-endurance, and lower RPE during repetitive sprints compared with CHO-only and PLA beverages." (Ranchordas. 2013)

 

• Remember the "Iranian HIIT Solution" - 9% body fat in 12 weeks? Perfect evidence: HIIT is not for athletes, only.

  It does not take much to stay fit, a single every other week HIIT session is enough (Rønnestad. 2013) Right from the former Olympia "Metropolis" *rofl* Lillehammer comes a study which shows that trained athletes like semiprofessional soccer players can maintain their baseline fitness levels in the off-season by no more than a single HIIT session, which consisted of five bouts of 4 min running at 87–97% of age-predicted maximum heart rate, every other week.
  
  The overall loss in the distance the subjects covered during the 20-m shuttle run did obviously decline (-8% ± 6%), but the difference to the control group that performed the same HIIT sessions on a weekly basis was non-significantly different from the every-other-week group.Moreover, both groups maintain their VOmax over the whole six week study period.

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  Bottom line: A little of HIIT can go a long way ... wait, this is almost the title of a previous SuppVersity post, i.e. "Some HIIT For Life & Less LISS For More! How to Burn 27,300 Kcal Extra W/out Losing a Single Extra Pound of Fat!", of which I would really suggest you read it now, in case you are still not convinced that a reasonably dosed amount of HIIT makes a valuable addition to almost every trainees regimen.

 

• Hit the weights! If you want to do more than just increase your daily activity levels to lower your HbA1c, don't waste your time on the treadmill. Increase your daily activity level and lift weights! Three supervised resistance training sessions per week for 10 weeks have been shown in a 2009 study by Bweir to be significantly more effective in lowering the Hb1Ac levels than in adults with type II diabetes than an isoenergetic (=spending the same energy during the workout) treadmill exercise (Bweir. 2009).
  The postprandial stroll in the bark is an effective means to lower your HbA1c (Nygaard. 2013) While the former post on the conservation of the conditioning of a trained athletes by HIIT does confirm the notion that "aerobic exercise" in the original sense of the meaning, which would imply that you increase your body's exercise capacity (as evidenced by VO2max), another recently published study shows that metabolic benefits of exercise can be achieved with much lower intensities.
  
  At least in the in the South Asian immigrants with high risk of type 2 diabetes who participated in a recently conducted 12-week intervention, it took nothing but the figurative "walk in the park" (30min+ of physical activity of any sort) after a meal, to reduce their HbA1c levels - a marker of long(er) term glucose levels - by allegely relatively unimpressive, but statistically highly significant ~3% (p = 0.012). That the intervention in the course of which the average subject increased his / her daily activity by 40min compared to the control group did not yield any significant changes in body composition should yet be as evident as the fact that it was 100% side-effect free.

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  Bottom line: It really depends on where you are and if you are a sedentary slob, even 40min of extra (light) activity a day can make a difference. After all, previous studies have shown that each 1% increase in HbA1c is associated with a 1% increase in cancer risk (data fro 25,476 patients with type 2 diabetes registered in the Swedish National Diabetes Register; cf. Miao Jonasson. 2012). 

• Rodent study says: Cardio does not hamper anabolic signalling (Souza. 2013) While the comprehensive review by Wilson et al. you've read about here at the SuppVersity several times (e.g. April 2012, January 2013, etc.) found that there is a
  

  "significant negative relationships between frequency (-0.26 to -0.35) and duration (-0.29 to -0.75) of endurance training for hypertrophy, strength, and power." (Wilson. 2012)

  a very recent study from the Universidade de Sao Paulo would suggest that the negative influence of endurance training on the anabolic stimulus of restistance training is either
  
  1. species specific and occurs only in humans, but not in rodents,
  2. occurs only with chronic high volume trainging, or
  3. is at least not related to changes in the AMPK, TSC2, mTOR, or p70S6K1 ratios
  Now while each of the former is certainly possible, my best bet would be that the training volume, i.e. 5 sets of 10 reps on a "rodent leg trainer" and a 60min endurance workout on the treadmill, and the fact that the protocol was performed only once are the main reasons that the AMPK, TSC2, mTOR, or p70S6K1 ratios were identical.

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  Doing cardio before strength workouts results in a higher testosterone:cortisol ratio after the workout (learn more)

  One thing is remarkable, however: The scientists observed a pretty remarkable +87% increase in Akt phosphorylated/total ratio that occurred 2h post only in those rodents who performed a 60min bouts of treadmill running before their leg workout. What? Yeah, that's actually what Carl and I have been talking about in the past - "pre-workout glycogen depleting cardio as intensity technique" (learn more)

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So what's left to do now? Ah, yes of course. The best wishes for the weekend and a brief link-list for those of you who can't be without SuppVersity news for another 24h.

• "Going Nuts On Berries: Ellagic Acid in Rasp- and Blueberries, Pecans, Walnut & Co Protects Against Visceral Obesity" - I hope you are not one of the guys who spits the tiny seeds of the raspberries out. That is not just disgusting, you would also spit away ~90% of their ellagic acid content (learn more).

  Do you stand right? Scientists investigate the influence of dynamic vs. static posture on leg stiffness and future risk of fall (read more)
• Anabolic steroid use has distinct effects on tendons. Scientists speculate that the increased stiffness and higher modulus contribute to the frequent ruptures in chemical athletes (read more)
• Oldie but goldie: Do you cook the creatine out of your steaks? A mid 20th century paper shows that cooking degrades creatine to creatinine (read more)
• More walnut lovin' Despite the fact that you have to be careful with what you say about the health effects of walnuts, these days a group of reseachers does not fear the repressions from the FDA and says: "We found two novel mechanism that explain why walnuts are good for your heart!" (read more)

These and other news are already waiting for you on Facebook and you can bet that there will be at least half a dozen additional ones posted before the next official SuppVersity article will see the light of the day, tomorrow.

References:

• Bweir S, Al-Jarrah M, Almalty AM, Maayah M, Smirnova IV, Novikova L, Stehno-Bittel L. Resistance exercise training lowers HbA1c more than aerobic training in adults with type 2 diabetes. Diabetol Metab Syndr. 2009 Dec 10;1:27. doi: 10.1186/1758-5996-1-27.
• Miao Jonasson J, Cederholm J, Eliasson B, Zethelius B, Eeg-Olofsson K, Gudbjörnsdottir S. HbA1C and cancer risk in patients with type 2 diabetes--a nationwide population-based prospective cohort study in Sweden. PLoS One. 2012;7(6):e38784.
• Nygaard H, Grindaker E, Rønnestad B, Holmboe-Ottesen G, Høstmark AT. Long-term effects of daily postmeal physical activity - Preliminary results.International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism,2013, 23, S1 -S15.
• Ranchordas M, Kenzie J.Effect of carbohydrate only and carbohydrate plus caffeine co-ingestion on a battery of reliable soccer-specific tests. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism,2013, 23, S1 -S15.
• Rønnestad BR, Slettaløkken G. High-intensity interval training every second week maintains VO2max in soccer players. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism,2013, 23, S1-S15.
• Souza EO, Tricoli V, Bueno Junior C, Pereira MG, Brum PC, Oliveira EM, Roschel H, Aoki MS, Urginowitsch C. The acute effects of strength, endurance and concurrent exercises on the Akt/mTOR/p70S6K1 and AMPK signaling pathway responses in rat skeletal muscle. Braz J Med Biol Res. 2013 Apr 19:0.
• Tanskanen M, Heikkinen T, Linnamo V. Effects of caffeine drinks on endurance performance, fluid balance, and subjective feelings. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism,2013, 23, S1 -S15.
• Wilson JM, Marin PJ, Rhea MR, Wilson SM, Loenneke JP, Anderson JC. Concurrent training: a meta-analysis examining interference of aerobic and resistance exercises. J Strength Cond Res. 2012 Aug;26(8):2293-307.