Fish Oil Switches Fat Storage Cells into Fat Burning Cells

Researchers from Kyoto University have discovered that fish oil can switch your fat storage cells into fat burning cells.

Specifically, they found that consuming fish oil:

1. Activates receptors in your digestive tract which…
2. Engages your sympathetic nervous system…
3. Causing fat storage cells to metabolize your fat

Background Info

Fact #1. You have three types of fat cells 

• White fat – which stores calories and contributes to obesity
• Brown fat – initially thought to exist only in babies, brown fat arises from infant muscles and is designed to help keep their little baby-bodies warm. “More recent imaging data suggested that adults, too, maintain some brown fat’.
• Beige fat – similar looking to brown fat, beige fat doesn’t come from muscle, but is created by the “browning” of white fat in adult humans. It is found in “scattered pea-sized deposits beneath the skin near the collarbone and along the spine in adults”

Fact #2. Previous research has shown that fish oil has a number of powerful health benefits…including fat accumulation.

These two facts led the scientists at Kyoto U to investigate how fish oil and brown fat cells interacted.

The Study

Researchers fed a group of mice “fatty food” while feeding other mice “fatty food with fish oil additives.“

The researchers found that mice who ate the fish oil supplement gained 5-10% less weight and 15-25% less fat compared to the non-fish oil eating mice.

 Figure 1: Fish oil intake reduced body weight gain and fat accumulation

Fish oil intake decreased body weight (A) and abdominal WAT (B) gain in mice. Mice were fed a control diet (C), control diet containing low-dose DHA-enriched fish oil (LD), control diet containing high-dose DHA-enriched fish oil (HD), control diet containing low-dose EPA-enriched fish oil (LE), and control diet containing high-dose EPA-enriched fish oil (HE) for 10 weeks. 

The scientists also found that the fish oil supplements caused an activation of the sympathetic nervous system, forcing white fat cells to transform into beige fat cells.

Figure 2: Fish oil intake induced UCP1 expression in interscapular BAT (brown fat) and inguinal WAT (white fat)

Fish oil intake induced UCP1 protein expression in interscapular BAT (A) and inguinal WAT (B). Fish oil intake also induced UCP1 mRNA expression in interscapular BAT (C) and inguinal WAT (D). Fish oil intake induced beige adipocyte-specific gene expression in interscapular BAT (E) and inguinal WAT (F). 

 

The researchers concluded that it was this transformation of white fat storage cells into beige fat burning cells that protected the lab mice from their “fatty food” diet.

What does this mean to you?

If you’re concerned about gaining or losing body fat…start eating more fatty fish and/or supplementing with fatty fish oils.

Fish Oil Supplements

• Amazon
• Vitacost
• Puritan’s Pride
• Vitamin World
• The Vitamin Shoppe
• Life Extension
• Bodybuilding.com

Which Fish Should You Eat?

The following infographic shows which fatty fish are healthiest (re their good oil) and which fat are the healthiest (re low levels of mercury)

Reference

• Scientific Reports
• What the Heck is Beige Fat and What Can It Do For You?
• White Fat – Beige Fat – Brown Fat
• Is it Possible to Transform White Fat into Brown Fat?
• Scientists Discover How to Create Anti-Obesity Brown Fat

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Yerba Mate Tea Kills Colon Cancer Cells

In a recent study, scientists showed that human colon cancer cells die when they are exposed to the approximate number of bioactive compounds present in one cup of yerba mate tea.

“The Dicaffeoylquinic acids found in mate tea not only induced death in human colon cancer cells, they also reduced important markers of inflammation,” said Elvira de Mejia, study author.

• And as we know, chronic inflammation has been linked to cancer, diabetes, depression, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s, etc.
• And as we also know, most of us have been touched by cancer at some time.  And it sucks.

Personally, someone I love has been recently diagnosed with cancer and we are investigating treatment methodologies – standard and alternative.

I only wish I had found out about this sooner.

Spread the word – drink some mate – don’t get cancer

Reference

• EurekAlert
• Molecular Nutrition & Food Research

 

Homobrassinolide….aka Steroids that taste good on hot dogs

It’s probably a false alarm, but researchers from NC State have found that the plant steroid homobrassinolide has “anabolic steroid-like” effects with minimal side effects.

Testing this plant steroid on lab rats, the researchers documented:

• an increase in appetite
• an increase in lean muscle mass
• an increase in the size & number of muscle fibers
• and an increase in physical performance
• with minimal or no androgenic side-effects

Woo Hoo!!!!

Mustard flavored steroids with no side effects!!!!

So, what the heck is homobrassinolide?

• Homobrassinolide is a brassinosteroid found in the mustard plant.
• Brassinosteroids are plant-derived polyhydroxylated derivatives of 5a-cholestane, structurally similar to cholesterol-derived animal steroid hormones and insect ecdysteroids, with no known function in mammals.
• 28-Homobrassinolide (HB), the specific HB tested in this experiment, is a steroidal lactone with potent plant growth-promoting properties

The Science

In this particular study, 28-Homobrassinolide (HB) stimulated protein synthesis and inhibited protein degradation in L6 rat skeletal muscle cells (EC₅₀ 4 μM) mediated in part by PI3K/Akt signaling pathway.

Oral administration of HB (20 or 60 mg/kg/d for 24 d) to healthy rats fed normal diet (protein content 23.9%) increased food intake, body weight gain, lean body mass, and gastrocnemius muscle mass as compared with vehicle-treated controls.

Note – this dosing protocol equates to a dosage of between 1363 and 4090 mg per day for a 150 lb man.

The effect of HB administration increased slightly in animals fed a high-protein diet (protein content 39.4%).

Both oral (up to 60 mg/kg) and subcutaneous (up to 4 mg/kg) administration of HB showed low androgenic activity when tested in the Hershberger assay.

Moreover, HB showed no direct binding to the androgen receptor in vitro.

HB treatment was also associated with an improved physical fitness of untrained healthy rats, as evident from a 6.7% increase in lower extremity strength, measured by grip test.

In the gastrocnemius muscle of castrated animals, HB treatment significantly increased the number of type IIa and IIb fibers and the cross-sectional area of type I and type IIa fibers.

These findings suggest that oral application of HB triggers selective anabolic response with minimal or no androgenic side-effects and begin to elucidate the putative cellular targets for plant brassinosteroids in mammals.

Conclusion

Don’t get excited when a supplement company comes out with a new homobrassinolide supplement next month.

Even if homobrassinolide pans out as a treatment for muscle wasting and an awesome new supplement for 16 year old boys sick of getting sand kicked in their face….it’s going to be years and years before an effective product comes to market.

Ineffective over-hyped products will be on the market in 2-3 months.

Reference

• The FASEB Journal

Multi Vitamins for people who hate taking vitamins

• My wife hates taking vitamins
• A lot of my clients hate taking vitamins.
• There is even a facebook group dedicated to the hatred of vitamins.

And that’s why I went looking for nutritional supplements that can give you all the benefits of multivitamins without setting off your gag reflex.

And, after an extensive 2 months of guinea pig / training client / wife  testing, I have come up with two products that I can honestly recommend as an alternative to those giant, stinky multivitamins you are choking down this morning with your O.J.

Disclosure – During this little experiment, I tried out products from 7 different manufacturers. These were the two products that I found worthy of recommending to you. The other 5 are in a landfill somewhere.

PRODUCT #1

Athletic Greens

In the past, I have written about my favorite “green food” supplement – Vege Greens.

And while I am still a big fan of Vege Greens, I have always had one big problem trying to convince clients to replace their Flintstone multivitamins with a tub of green food.

While it’s great to know that each scoop of green food has 115 mg of Acerola Berries…

…I have no idea how much Acerola Berry me and my clients need every day.

But, I do have a good idea how much Beta Carotene and Vitamin C and Magnesium we need to consume.

And that’s why I contacted the fine folks at Athletic Greens.

Because unlike with Vege Greens, I can tell my clients that each serving of Athletic Greens contains this much Beta Carotene or that much Magnesium, etc…

Personally, I replaced my Vege Greens with Athletic Greens and was very pleased with the results. In the past, when I have cycled off Vege Greens, I have always noticed a drop off in energy and an increase in my stupid allergy symptoms.Plus, it tastes great and after pestering the owner of the company with about a million emails and questions, I am very happy about the quality of ingredients and manufacturing process of this product.

I felt great on Athletic Greens and now I have a product I can very easily recommend to clients.

UPDATE

A lot of people who have read this article and clicked through to the Athletic Greens site have emailed me complaining about the price of Athletic Greens. And while it’s true that a tub of AG is pricier than a tub of Greens+ or Vege Greens, I always tell them that once they try AG, they will never question the price again.

It’s been almost a year, and I am still buying Athletic Greens for me and my wife.

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PRODUCT #2

Multiforce ORAC

Another product that was really popular with my clients was multiforce ORAC from Prairie Naturals.

Especially popular with those people who just can’t stand the taste of green food, multiforce ORAC not only covers your basic vitamins & minerals, it gives you a serious dose of antioxidant polyphenols from Hi-ORAC berries and fruit

Prairie Naturals is another company whose manufacturing process and ingredient quality I feel comfortable recommending.

On a personal note, I found the multiforce ORAC to be a little too sweet for my tastes, so I cut the sweetness on alternate days with either a splash of lemon juice of a serving of Prairie Naturals Morning Rise & Shine product. And while both the lemon juice and Rise & Shine were equally effective in cutting the sweetness of my morning health drink, the Rise & Shine provided a very noticeable impact upon my digestive regularity.

I am telling you – it was like clockwork.

Long story short… even though I didn’t request a sample of Rise & Shine, I am pretty happy they sent me one.

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So there you go…two multi vitamin alternatives for people who hate to take multi vitamins.

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Caffeine Gum Supercharges Your Workout

Want to get more out of your workouts?

Caffeine Gum may be the answer.

According to this study, chewing caffeinated gum during an interval sprint workout (4 sets of 5 sprints x 30 seconds per sprint) resulted in….

• a 5.4% improvement in performance (mean power output),
• increased testosterone production,
• reduced cortisol production
• and reduced levels of fatigue

Conclusion

Over the past few months, I have been cutting back on my consumption of coffee/caffeine as I found that my desire for coffee was morphing from a want into a need…..and I have no intention of becoming any more addicted to Starbucks than I already am.

However, for days when I want to perform at my best, chewing on some caffeinated gum seems to be a pretty harmless way to boost performance by 5%.

And 5% is more than enough to separate 1st place from 2nd place.

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