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Creatine, obviously monohydrate and no expensive and often impotent spinoff (Jäger. 2011) is useful for any athlete.

The number of items on the list of health and performance benefits of creatine is about as high as the number of boring articles about "the benefits of creatine" you can find all over the Internet. And even here at the SuppVersity they have been piling up in a way that has me ignore the majority of "creatine supplementation increases strength gains in XY" studies that appear on a monthly, sometimes weekly basis. Against that background I will cut todays creatine post short and get straight to the facts, Giuseppe Potrick Stefani et al. report in their latest paper in (how else could it be) the peer-reviewed Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (Stefani. 2014).
In what turns out to be another rodent study Stefani et al. investigated whether creatine supplementation exerts intra and/or extracellular antioxidant effects and if it plays a synergistic role in the adaptation of antioxidant enzymes associated with resistance training. The actual aim of the study was thus

"to evaluate the effects of monohydrate creatine supplementation associated, or not, with RT on oxidative stress and antioxidant enzymatic activity in the plasma, the heart, the liver and the gastrocnemius of rats." (Stefani. 2014)

And the results were unambiguous. As you can see in Figure 1, the anti-oxidant capacity of plasma, heart and liver of all 40 male Wistar rats which had been divided into four groups, i.e.

• sedentary (SED),
• sedentary + creatine  (SED-Cr), and
• resistance training (RT) and resistance training + creatine (RT-Cr),

increased significantly in response to the provision of creatine (0.3 g/kg/day of creatine for seven days, 0.05 g/kg for the rest of the 8-week study period).

Figure 1: Oxidative stress in heart, liver and muscle after 8 weeks of intervention.Concentrations of MDA and CAT activity. Values are mean ± SD; n = 10 for all groups (Stefani. 2014).

As you can see, both treatments, creatine-only and creatine + resistance training led to significant improvements in heart, liver and muscle antioxidant status - and that, this is important, in the absense of those direct free radical scavenging abilities that turn vitamin C, vitamin E & co into highly questionably agents with potential anti-adaptational effects (learn more).

Works w/ and w/out exercise, but with the latter creatine really excels

Compared to the sedentary animals the rats in the exercise group did yet significantly increased catalase levels (=good, because it catalyzes the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide - the bad stuff - to water and oxygen - the benign stuff) in the heart and - obviously - increased strength gains.

Figure 2: Absolute and relative 1RM strength before and after the intervention (Stefani. 2014).

What is (positively) surprising, at first, is the fact that the latter, i.e. the increases in 1-RM strength in response to creatine supplementation occurred even in the absence of resistance training.

If you look closely, you will yet realize that the relative increase in strength, a much better gauge for lasting real-world strength gains, in the sedentary rodents was ZERO. So that it is very likely that they would disappear with the increased water the rats were holding, as soon as the creatine supplementation is seized.
References:

• Jäger, Ralf, et al. "Analysis of the efficacy, safety, and regulatory status of novel forms of creatine." Amino Acids 40.5 (2011): 1369-1383.
• Stefani, Giuseppe Potrick, et al. "Effects of creatine supplementation associated with resistance training on oxidative stress in different tissues of rats." Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition 11.1 (2014): 11.

Brain builders and muscle builders are similarly effective DNA protectors in the elderly.

As a SuppVersity reader you wont be surprised to hear that Bernhard Franzke and his colleagues from the University of Vienna were able to confirm that resistance training can improve the resistance of human DNA to H2O2 damage in institutionalised elderly. What may be news to you, though, is that very similar effects can be achieved by cognitive training in form of coordinative or cognitive tasks that were performed only two times per week by the 105 institutionalised elderly women and men (aged 65–98 years) the scientists recruited from five different senior residences in the area of Vienna (Franzke. 2014).
In the recent Austrian study, the subjects had been randomized to three groups. The previously described cognitive training group, which also served as a "control", as well as two resistance training groups.

"The RT groups (RT and RTS) performed two sessions of RT per week, supervised by a sport scientist, conducted on two non-consecutive days. Training attendance was recorded every session. The only equipment used was exercise bands and a chair. [...] The main part consisted of 10 exercises for the main muscle groups (legs, back, abdomen, chest, shoulder and arms). One training session started with 10 min of warm-up, continued with 30–40 min of strength training and ended with a 10-min cool-down. To keep the training stimulus high enough, the exercise program was adjusted to the participants’ individual needs, by either adapting the resistance of the elastic band (shorter or stronger band) or by modifying the exercise, by means of performing a more diffiult version. In the initial phase (4 weeks) one set of 15 repetitions was performed in order to learn the correct form of each exercise. From the fifth week on, the intensity and volume were progressively increased from two sets of light exercises to two sets of heavy resistance. If the participants could easily perform two sets of 15 repetitions they were told either to take more resistance or to perform a more difficult version of the exercise" (Franzke. 2014).

In contrast to the RT group, which did "nothing", but the previously described resistance training regimen, the subjects in the RTS group consumed a multi-ingredient supplement every morning, as well as directly after each training session. Said supplement consisted of 20.7g protein [56 energy (En) %, 19.7g whey protein, 3 g leucine, >10 g essential amino acids], 9.3 g carbohydrates (25 En%, 0.8 BE); 3.0 g fat (18 En%), 1.2 g roughage (2 En%), 800 IU (20 ?g) of vitamin D, 250 mg calcium, vitamins C, E, B6 and B12, folic acid and magnesium (one portion FortiFit, Nutricia with a total energy content per drink of only 150 kcal).

Figure 1: Changes in parameters of DNA damage and antioxidant enzyme expression (Franzke. 2014).

In spite of the fact that the intake of the nutritional supplement was controlled at breakfast as well as after the training sessions, it did not provide significant additional benefits on top of the regular resistance training protocol.

We should keep in mind, though, that (a) non-significant benefits were visible for the formamidopyrimidine DNA glycosylase (FPG) and the expression of superoxide dismutase and that (b) the actual benefits of protein supplements would have become visible only if the scientists had accessed the changes in body composition, as well.
References:

• Franzke, B. et al. "The impact of six months strength training, nutritional supplementation or cognitive training on DNA damage in institutionalised elderly." Mutagenesis (2015):147–153.

Dont obsess about "optimal" antioxidant contents, just eat your veggies!

Over the past couple of weeks, ... no actually over the past years I have repeatedly written about the concept of (mito-)hormesis and its consequences for the well-established, but not necessarily accurate free radical theory of aging (and for some people everything else). ROS, i.e. reactive oxygen species, have been established as an important signalling molecule that is - among other things - heavily involved in the insulin sensitizing effects of exercise. "Inflammation" makes muscles grow and burns body fat and the "what doesnt kill me makes me strong" principle appears to reign everywhere you look.
That being said, the latest study from the Institute of Health and Environmental Medicine in Tianjin, China, opens another "anti-antioxidant" Box of Pandora. One that puts a huge questionmark behind the implications of hundreds of thousands of scientific studies, when it says in its title, already: "No correlation is found for vegetables between antioxidant capacity and potential benefits in improving antioxidant function in aged rats"

"Skin of Grape Tomatoes Contains Max. Amount of Antioxidants" - You can find this and dozens of other daily updated SuppVersity Science News on www.facebook.com/SuppVersity

This is a title that may in fact change the way we look at study results like those of a recent study by Valdez-Morales, et al. (2014) investigating the "best" = highest antioxidant tomato, the results of which you are about to find among the ~20/day SuppVersity Facebook News @ www.facebook.com/SuppVersity - dont forget to like it, or youll miss out on the latest science news!

If the results of the study can be confirmed by an independent team for vegetables other than lotus root, rape or cucumber and if there is an identical mismatch between the in-vivo anti-oxidant capacity and the potential benefits in improving antioxidant function in (aged) humans.

This would be big and highly consequential news for nutrition experts, scientists and average Joes and Janes like you and me. Why? Well,...

• any ranking of "superfoods" that was based even partly on in vitro data derived with the good old ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) assay would be invalid, ...
• every scientist who has been following up on "promising" data from FRAP assays would have been wasting his time, ...
• and you may have been eating all the wrong foods for years...

... hell no, as long as you ate your veggies over the past years, I wouldnt worry if you may have made a "suboptimal" selection (which would be different based on whatever new criteria you select).

Figure 1: FRAP value, vitamin C and vitamin E content and total amount phenolics in the powdered vegetables that were added to the rodent diets in the study at hand (Ji. 2014)

Honestly, Id hope that you didnt select your foods only based on the orthorexic principle of maximal antioxidant content, anyways. 

Never forget the three principles of veggie eating: Variety, seasonality, colorfulness

Against that background Id recommend you keep eating your lotus roots, if you like them, although, they have a significantly lower beneficial effect on SuperOxide Dismutase (SOD, a group of antioxidant enzymes) than rape and cucumber.

Figure 2: Serum markers of anti-oxidant status / oxidative damage after 6 weeks on the three experimental diets (Ji. 2014)

Moreover, if you look closely at the data in Figure 1+2, you will realize that lotus may suck at SOD and its ability to reduce hemolysis (the destruction of red blood cells), but will have the most profound beneficial effects on the levels of malondealdehyde (MDA), a marker of lipid oxidation, and the amount of plasma carbonyls, which have - just as in cellular regulation, aging, and disease (Levine. 2002). Just like their similarly radical cousins, carbonyls will thus play a dual role so that in the end, their reduction may not be beneficial in each and every case.
Reference: 

• Ji, Linlin, et al. "No correlation is found for vegetables between antioxidant capacity and potential benefits in improving antioxidant function in aged rats." Journal of Clinical Biochemistry and Nutrition 54.3 (2014): 198-203.
• Levine, Rodney L. "Carbonyl modified proteins in cellular regulation, aging, and disease^{2, 3}." Free Radical Biology and Medicine 32.9 (2002): 790-796.
• Valdez-Morales, Maribel, et al. "Phenolic content, and antioxidant and antimutagenic activities in tomato peel and seeds, and tomato by-products." Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (2014). Accepted Manuscript.