ONLINE DRIVERS MEDIA

Mozilla looks like were getting ready to make a major announcement regarding the Firefox browser for Android, possibly next month.


It is known from a tweet that comes from the Firefox team which indicate a new development for the Mozilla browser on Android. Tweet posts do not disclose much information, just tell that something big will be present at next weeks Android devices.

Looks like Firefox browser for Android will be updated to version 4.1 and will be introduced next week at the conference event Google I / O for the developer. Hmm, what about the new Firefox to Android? Just wait for its development.

Cortisol is not your enemy. In fact, cortisol is one of the few hormones you really need to survive.

Cortisol is a problem. However, just as it is the case with insulin, its not the fact that your body produces it thats problematic. Its the fact that it tends to so in copious amounts and chronically, simply at the wrong time or - believe it or not - not at all / enough. All that, i.e. changes / problems with the natural rhythm, the up and down, the spikes and troughs that get lost, when you are chronically stressed and/or inflamed - thats the actual problem and not the fact that your body produces a hormone without which you cant survive. Against that background, it may go against everything the supplement industry is trying to tell you, but still cannot be really surprising to hear that E. Allansson Kjölhede and colleagues from the Linköping and Ume a Universities present in their latest paper in Acta Pædiatrica results that show that obese children have low, not high cortisol levels (Kjölhede. 2014).

Using three salivary samples from 342 children aged 6–12 years the scientists had tried to reconcile previous, inconsistent findings and found that the

"average cortisol levels in early morning, late morning and evening were significantly lower in overweight and obese children than in their normal weight counterparts."

Whats particularly interesting is that the early morning spike, we have identified as critical component of a healthy biorhythm, previously (see "All About Cortisol"), was reduced by -33% (see Figure 1):

Figure 1: Morning (8:30 am), late morning (10:30 am) and evening (9:00pm or pre-bed, if earlier) salivary cortisol in 342 normal-weight, overweight and obese children (Kjölhede. 2014).

As Kjölheide et al. point out, these results should be followed up by more comprehensive studies that would allow us to better classify and understand the "relationship between stress and obesity in
children" - and I would like to add: Which of these comes first - being obese or having low morning cortisol and thus not being able to benefit from the "wake-up and get going" effects of cortisol.
Thats also interesting, because previous studies by Toledo-Corral et al. have shown that a dampened cortisol awakening response is not just associated with obesity, it is also a predictive factor of higher carotid artery intima-media thickness (CIMT) in overweight African American and Latino youth (Toledo-Corral. 2013), which in turn is a risk factor for myocardial infarction and stroke.

And Ursache et al. (just because its funny: "Ursache" means "cause" in German ;-) report that  dolescents with insulin resistance exhibited

• a blunted cortisol awakening response (CAR),
• smaller hippocampal volumes, and 
• greater frontal lobe atrophy 

compared to controls. Closer scrutiny of the data also revealed that "a smaller CAR was associated with higher BMI which was in turn associated with fasting insulin levels" (Ursache. 2012).

Despite the fact that it is virtually impossible to tell what exactly the "ursache" for the irrefutable correlation between low morning cortisol levels and high body fatness, artery intima-media thickness, myocardial infarction and stroke is, the cumulative evidence clearly speaks against the use of cortisol-reducing drugs and supplements - at least if their effects are not extremely short-lived and will thus not mess with the natural up-and-down thats lost not just in obese, but also in chronically fatigued patients.

Reference: 

• Champaneri, Shivam, et al. "Diurnal salivary cortisol is associated with body mass index and waist circumference: the Multiethnic Study of Atherosclerosis." Obesity 21.1 (2013): E56-E63.
• Toledo-Corral, Claudia M., et al. "Blunted nocturnal cortisol rise is associated with higher carotid artery intima-media thickness (CIMT) in overweight African American and Latino youth." Psychoneuroendocrinology 38.9 (2013): 1658-1667.
• Tominaga, Yuji, et al. "Licorice Flavonoid Oil Effects Body Weight Loss by Reduction of Body Fat Mass in Overweight." Journal of health science 52.6 (2006): 672-683.
• Tominaga, Yuji, et al. "Licorice flavonoid oil reduces total body fat and visceral fat in overweight subjects: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study." Obesity research & clinical practice 3.3 (2009): 169-178.
• Ursache, Alexandra, et al. "Preliminary evidence for obesity and elevations in fasting insulin mediating associations between cortisol awakening response and hippocampal volumes and frontal atrophy." Psychoneuroendocrinology 37.8 (2012): 1270-1276.
• Zenk, John L., et al. "The effect of 7-Keto Naturalean™ on weight loss: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial." Current therapeutic research 63.4 (2002): 263-272.

Purple rice sushi could actually replace chicken + rice in the BB std.diet

Chicken and rice, these are the staples of a classic bodybuilding diet. As far as the chicken goes, you will all be aware that it qualifies mostly due to its high protein and low fat content. Rice, on the other hand, is a decent carbohydrate source and as such not exactly zeitgeisty... I guess we could easily get lost in the high vs. low carb debate again, which is why I would draw your attention to the fact that Saghar Eslami and his colleagues from the University Putra Malaysia did not feed their thirty two healthy young male subjects (aged 18 to 32 yr), who were recruited for this double-blind clinical conducted in the Faculty of Sport Sciences at the University of Isfahan, in Iran, tons of rice (see bottom line for an estimation of how much it would take).

What they did was to provide their subjects, who were not allowed to drink, smoke or do any other exercise except from the prescribed protocol, with either 2x300mg ?-oryzanol or identically looking placebo capsules (There was no significant difference between the placebo and supplement groups with respect to age, weight, energy, carbohydrate, protein, and fat intakes).
According to Eslami et al. the use of gamma oryzanol, which is found in rice bran, wheat bran and certain fruits and vegetables "as a nutritional supplement for strength in athletes is prevalent" (Eslami. 2014), while the research to date has tended to focus on gamma oryzanol effects in patients, especially hyperlipidemics, rather than on resistance athletes.

If we take a look at the existing evidence there are studies by Bucci et al. who found that the intake of 30 mg ferulic acid per day (extracted from gamma oryzanol) for eight weeks resulted in increasing body weight and muscular strength in weight lifters, and a study by Fry et al. which reports strength increases in response to the ingestion of 500 mg/day gamma oryzanol supplementation in 40 year-old or older adults.

Figure 1: Overview of exercise protocol (left); changes in 1RM on the bench and leg curl machine (Eslami. 2014)

In view of the existing evidence its thus not totally surprising that the complex mixture plant sterols and ferulic acid esters had statistically significant effects on the 1RM strength increase in response to the 9-week resistance training protocol with its 4 weekly supervised RT sessions, a set-count of three and a rep range from 6-12 repetitions (at a pace of 2 sec up and 4 sec down) for each exercise (inter-set rest was 3 minutes; exercise selection see Figure 1).

Visible, but not significant changes in body composition

In contrast to the significant changes in muscular strength, the inter-group differences with respect to the already small changes in the anthropometric measurements (see Figure 2) did not reach statistical significance.

Figure 2: Changes in body composition (all non-significant inter-group differences; Eslami. 2014)

As Eslmai et al. point out, "it might be suggested to use this supplement for longer time" and or to "analyze the antioxidant levels in the blood of the athletes to consider exercise effects on oxidation and free radical production as well as inhibitory effect of supplement" (Eslami. 2014), which would be a first step to understand how ?-oryzanol is actually working - up to now this is still pretty much unknown (Fry et al. speculated about increases in testosterone or androgen receptor interaction, but thats not proven yet; Fry. 1997).
References:

• Boonsit, Panita, Dumnern Karladee, and P. Phongpiachan. "Gamma oryzanol content in purple rice Thailand local genotypes." Tropentag, October (2006): 11-13.
• Bucci, L. R., et al. "Effect of ferulate on strength and body composition of weightlifters." J Appl Sports Sci Res 4 (1990): 110. 
• Eslami, Saghar, et al. "Effects of gamma oryzanol supplementation on anthropometric measurements & muscular strength in healthy males following chronic resistance training." Indian J Med Res 139 (2014): 857-863.
• Fry, A. C., et al. "The effects of gamma-oryzanol supplementation during resistance exercise training." International journal of sport nutrition 7.4 (1997): 318-329.
• Patel, M., and S. N. Naik. "Gamma-oryzanol from rice bran oil: a review." J. Sci. Ind. Res 63 (2004): 569-578.
• Tsushimoto, Gen, et al. "DNA-damaging, mutagenic, clastogenic and cell-cell communication inhibitory properties of gamma-oryzanol." The Journal of toxicological sciences 16.4 (1991): 191-202.