ONLINE DRIVERS MEDIA

GMO Soybean oil? Better for cars only.

I am pretty sure there will be rebuttals to the results of this study... although, its published in the OpenSource journal Nutrients and was conducted by scientists from Saudi Arabia and the UK who probably dont have the media-connections the scientists who conducted the GMO-corn study back in the day had.

Against that background its unlikely that non-SuppVersity-readers will even hear about the paper El-Kholy et al. published in the June edition of Nutrients (El-Kohly. 2014) -- Well, that is - unless you spread the word, obviously ;-)
Lets take a look at the methods and results, now. Needless to say that we are talking about preliminary rodent data, here - data from 40 adult male albino rats, to be precise. The rats were used in this study and divided into four groups.

• The control group of rodents was fed basal ration only. 
• The second group was given basal ration mixed with extra virgin olive oil (30%). 
• The third group was fed basal ration mixed with soybean oil from GM-soy (15%).
• The fourth group survived on a combination of EV olive oil, GM and the basal ration.

All rodents were kept on the respective diets for 65 consecutive days. On day 65, blood samples were collected from each rat for antioxidant enzyme analysis.

Figure 1: Lipid oxidation and glutathione levels (El-Kohly. 2014)

"In the group fed on basal ration mixed with GM soyabean (15%), there was a significant increase in serum level of lipid peroxidation, while glutathione transferase decreased significantly. [...] the amount of DNA and NCE were significantly decreased. [...] We can conclude that adding EV olive oil to the diet of rats appears effective in inhibiting oxidative damage and may act as a protective agent against chronic diseases such as liver fibrosis, hyperlipidemia and diabetes. In addition, EV olive oil may also have a protective function against carcinogenic processes." (El-Kohly. 2014)

Thats an intriguing result and one of which I am asking myself if youd see it with regular soybean oil, as well.
Reference:

• El-Kholy, T.A.; Hilal, M.A.; Al-Abbadi, H.A.; Serafi, A.S.; Al-Ghamdi, A.K.; Sobhy, H.M.; Richardson, J.R.C. The Effect of Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Soybean on DNA, Cytogenicity and Some Antioxidant Enzymes in Rats. Nutrients 2014, 6, 2376-2386.

If you want to know how to get of pubertal acne, you got to ask professional pubescents ;-)

The study at hand is not only the first experimental verification of the efficacy of omega-3 + gamma linoleic acid supplementation in acne treatment, its also "paleo approved", because it cites a study by no one else but Loraine Cordaine himself ;-) Dont worry, I am just kiddin around. In spite of the fact that Cordains study "Acne vulgaris: a disease of Western civilization" (Cordain. 2002) is in fact the #1 on the reference list, the scientists from the Seoul National University College of Medicine refrain from (paleolithic) dairy bashing in their evaluation of "the clinical efficacy and safety of omega-3 fatty acids and of GLA for the treatment of mild to moderate facial acne." (Jung. 2014)

If you google "natural acne treatment" it will usually not take long until you find a reference to fish oil and gamma linoleic acid (as in borage or starflower oil). Against that background it is surprising that the Korean scientist are obviously the first to scrutinize the efficacy of 2,000 mg of eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid and 400 mg ?-linoleic acid (from borage oil) in a parallel design dietary intervention study.

Long-standing "natural acne cure" now scientifically proven

The 45 participants with mild to moderate acne, were allocated to either of the intervention groups for 10 weeks, after which the effect on their skin was evaluated visually and via heamatoxylin, eosin and immunohistochemical staining of the lesions.
And what the scientists observed was ... positive, at least in the omega-3 group, the mean inflammatory acne lesion count was significantly reduced (from 10.1 ± 3.2 in week 0 to 5.8 ± 3.4 in week 10; p < 0.05).

Figure 1: Changes in inflammatory acne lesion counts with time (left, top), noninflammatory acne lesion counts with time (left, bottom), and changes in patients subjective assessment (VAS) with time (right; Jung. 2014)

As you can see in Figure 1, a similar change was observed in the GLA (9.8 ± 5.2 before vs. 8.0 ± 4.6 after 5 weeks vs. 6.6 ± 3.7 after 10 weeks, p < 0.05), but not in the control group (9.9 ± 4.3 before to 10.2 ± 6.2 after 10 weeks).

Figure 2: Before (top) and after (bottom) photos (Jung. 2014)

"Mean non-inflammatory acne lesion counts were also reduced by omega-3 and GLA supplementation (23.5 ± 9.2 to 18.9 ± 8.3, p < 0.05, and 22.8 ± 8.4 to 19.2 ± 7.2, p < 0.05, respectively) at final visits, whereas mean lesion count in the control group was unchanged (from 21.8 ± 9.7 to 22.0 ± 8.6). Significant differences were evident between the treatment groups and the control group after 10 weeks (p < 0.05)." (Jung. 2014)

In the end, there was no no significant difference between the two treatments for any of the measured parameters, so that it is probably up to you, whether you try to control the "fire within your skin" with GLA or DHA + EPA supplements.
References:

• Cordain, Loren, et al. "Acne vulgaris: a disease of Western civilization." Archives of Dermatology 138.12 (2002): 1584-1590.
• Jung, Jae Yoon, et al. "Effect of Dietary Supplementation with Omega-3 Fatty Acid and gamma-linolenic Acid on Acne Vulgaris: A Randomised, Double-blind, Controlled Trial." (2014).
• Wolf, Ronni, Hagit Matz, and Edith Orion. "Acne and diet." Clinics in dermatology 22.5 (2004): 387-393.

FSR ? more muscle = no news for ya!

For the average SuppVersity reader the sentence "Acute Post-Exercise Myofibrillar Protein Synthesis Is Not Correlated with Resistance Training-Induced Muscle Hypertrophy in Young Men" is not just the title of a recent paper in the open access journal PLOS|ONE, its also the experimental verification of a claim Ive made in almost all my articles about the acute effects of certain training modalities and/or supplements on myofibrillar protein synthesis and the corresponding increases in muscle size some people appear to expect from a 2h-long 10% increase in fractional protein synthesis (learn more).

And yes, practically speaking these findings imply that we have to question the real world significance of all the neat studies on the "superior muscle building effects" of whey protein, BCAAs and even more so leucine, in which the authors base their recommendations on acute increases in post-exercise protein synthesis.
In the corresponding experiment that was funded by the National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada Cameron J. Mitchell et al. determined whether the acute myofibrillar protein synthesis measured acutely in training-naive subjects after their first bout of resistance exercise with protein consumption would correlate with the actual increase in muscle size after 16 weeks of resistance training.

Suggested read: "Protein Intake & Muscle Catabolism: Fasting Gnaws on Your Muscle Tissue and Abundance Causes Wastefulness " | more

Before the actual experiment began, the subjects, healthy young recreationally active normal-weight men (177 cm; body mass index = 26.4 kg/m²; men age 22 years) without previous strength training experience, underwent a magnetic resonance imagining (MRI) scans of their right thigh to determine muscle volume, a dual, energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scan to assess whole body fat and bone-free mass (lean mass) and standardized strength tests to determine their maximal isotonic strength (often labeled the 1RM) for all training exercises.

After all baseline measurements (including baseline muscle protein synthesis) were recorded, the subjects completed 16 weeks of RT while ingesting a protein rich beverage (30g of the same whey protein of which Burd et al. showed in 2012 that it elicits a higher increase in MPS than casein) immediately after their exercise session and with breakfast on non-training days.

"Briefly, participants trained four times weekly with two upper and two lower body workouts. Lower body exercises are described above in the acute exercise session. Upper body exercises consisted of chest press, shoulder press, seated row, lat pulldown, bicep curl and tricep extension. The program was progressive in linear manner moving from 3 sets of 12 repetitions to 4 sets of 6  repetitions. At the end of the training period, MRI, DXA scans and strength testing were repeated." (Mitchell. 2014)

If you look at the above description of the workout (and supplementation regimen) you will probably agree that this is pretty much what the majority of resistance physique oriented gym-goers do.

Figure 1: Myofibrillar fractional protein synthesis rate (left) measured acutely after a single workout and changes in muscle volume (%) over the whole 16-week study period as a function of the 1-6h post-workout FSR (Mitchell. 2014).

People who hope that the often reported increases in fractional protein synthesis would pay off and yield increased net muscle gains and thus exactly what Mitchell et al. did not observe in their study, which could not establish the corresponding correlation between the actute increase in post-workout fractional protein synthesis (Figure 1, left) and the chronic change in muscle volume (Figure 1, right).

Figure 2: Changes in muscle volume (%) expressed relative to acute increases in 4E-BP (Mitchell. 2014).

If anything, it was the expression of the Eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E-binding protein 1 aka 4E-BP1 one of the motors of protein synthesis, but not the increase in myofibrillar fractional protein synthesis that looked as if it could have any predictive value with respect to the increase in muscle volume, the young men experienced in the course of the 16-week training period.

After thinking about the implications of these findings for a minute, I do yet have to admit that the assumption that this would refute the previously invoked recommendations completely, is probably premature.
Reference:

• Burd, Nicholas A., et al. "Greater stimulation of myofibrillar protein synthesis with ingestion of whey protein isolate v. micellar casein at rest and after resistance exercise in elderly men." British Journal of Nutrition 108.06 (2012): 958-962.

Ever since the Vinson study showed that green coffee bean extracts can help overweight women lose weight, green coffee is sexier than roasted one.

Only weeks after Vinson et al. were able to show that "Green Coffee Bean Extract Helps Pre-Obese Men and Women Shed 16lbs in 22 Weeks" (read more), green coffee bean supplements began to swamp the market - a great financial success for the supplement producers, and that despite the fact that follow-up studies that would confirm the amazing effects Vinson et al. report are still lacking. Two recent studies, one from the Queen Margaret University in the UK (Revuelta-Iniesta. 2014), the other from the  Jiangxi Agricultural University in the Peoples Republic of China (Zheng. 2014) could now shed a little more light on the weight loss effects of green coffee beans and the combination of caffeine and cholorgenic acid (CGA), the allegedly most important active ingredient in unroasted, green coffee beans.
In their 24-week rodent study, Zhang et al. (2014) tried to elucidate the mechanism by which CGA and caffeine regulate lipid metabolism. To this ends, they randomized their forty hairy subjects to diets containing no CGA or caffeine, CGA, caffeine, or CGA + caffeine.

Figure 1: Rel. (vs. control) body weight changes and liver and intraperitoneal adipose tissue weight (Zhang. 2014)

Over the course of the 24-weeks study, the scientists recorded body weight, intraperitoneal adipose tissue (IPAT) weight, and serum biochemical parameters of the rodents, tracked the the activities and mRNA and protein expression of lipid metabolism-related enzymes and analyzed the effects of caffeine, CGA and the combination of the two. What they found was...

1. Figure 2: Effects of chlorogenic acid (CGA) and caffeine on the hepatic protein expression levels of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), adipose TAG lipase (ATGL) and fatty acid synthase (FAS; Zhang. 2014)

   decreases in the body weight and IPAT weight of mice fed the CGA + caffeine diet,
2. significant decreases in the serum and hepatic concentrations of total cholesterol, TAG and leptin of mice fed the CGA + caffeine diet,
3. increases of the activity of carnitine acyltransferase (CAT) and acyl-CoA oxidase (ACO), 
4. decreased levels of fatty acid synthase (FAS) and the respective mRNA levels
5. significantly upregulated mRNA expression levels of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), CAT and ACO
6. pronounced reductions of PPARg2

If we group these findings as follows 3 + 5 and 4+6, we could say that they triggered 1 + 2 by (a) increasing the oxidation of fatty acids (3+5) and (b) decreasing the synthesis and storage of fatty acids (4+6) - an observation that could certainly explain the benefits Vinson et al. observed in their human study which has been retracted in October 2014, though. On the other hand, the amount of CGA and caffeine in the rodent diets (0.2 % CGA + 0.03 % caffeine) was quite significant and previous rodent studies on other allegedly promising fat burners were not replicable in human beings either (example: CLA). Against that background its good to have study #2 by R. Revuelta-Iniesta and E. A. S. Al-Dujaili, who investigated the effects of green coffee (GC), rich in chlorogenic acid, and black coffee (BC) on cardiovascular markers.

New human data with surprising results

The researchers designed a randomised pilot crossover study with healthy subjects who consumed both coffees for 2 weeks.

• The green coffee (GC) used in this project was Ethiopian Harrar 4 (100% Arabica) and the black coffee (BC) was Sainsbury’s Original Blend Cafetitère Coffee.
• The BC was  a blend of Brazilian, Colombian, Mexican, Nicaraguan, Peruvian, and Rwandan beans.

The study participants were asked to have 40 g of GC and BC per day distributed throughout the day into four cups of coffee. Thus, the scientists tried to ensure that high plasma coffee antioxidant concentrations were maintained over a period of time, "allowing effects to take place and the body to develop tolerance to caffeine, which can take 2-3 days." (Revuelta-Iniesta. 2014).

Table 1: Concentration of total polyphenols and antioxidant capacity determined in GC and BC as compared by the three methods of  coffee preparation (Revuelta-Iniesta. 2014).

The GC beans were grounded to powder using an electric coffee grinder. Instructions on how to make the coffee were provided and the Italian cafetière, the French cafetière, or the filter coffee machine was used to prepare the coffee drink.

The researchers measured anthropometry, blood pressure, and arterial elasticity after each intervention and collected urine samples to monitor antioxidant capacity. The free cortisol and cortisone levels you see in Table 2 were obtained from urine and analysed by specific ELISA methods.

Table 2: Comparison of results obtained (mean±SEM) after 14 days of green coffee vs. black coffee intervention (2-week cross over study); F: cortisol; E: cortisone; orange = almost bordeline significant; green = statist. significant inter-group difference (Revuelta-Iniesta. 2014).

In view of the short duration of the study (remember 2 weeks on each coffee), its not really surprising that we didnt see changes in any of the anthropometric measures. On the other hand, the mere fact that the cortisol/cortisone ratio (indicating 11beta-HSD1 activity) was reduced after GC (from 3.5 +/- 1.9 to 1.7 +/- 1.04, P = 0.002) does not suggest that you will see beneficial effects on body composition in the absence of significant reductions in energy intake. A reduction in glucocorticoid activity can in fact hamper not accelerate weight loss (learn more) and the researchers hypothesis that "GC can play a role in reducing cardiovascular risk factors" (Revuelta-Iniesta. 2014) is a possible, but unconfirmed hypothesis.
References:

• Jaquet, Muriel, et al. "Impact of coffee consumption on the gut microbiota: a human volunteer study." International journal of food microbiology 130.2 (2009): 117-121.
• Revuelta-Iniesta, R., and E. A. S. Al-Dujaili. "Consumption of Green Coffee Reduces Blood Pressure and Body Composition by Influencing 11?-HSD1 Enzyme Activity in Healthy Individuals: A Pilot Crossover Study Using Green and Black Coffee." BioMed Research International 2014 (2014).
• Vinson, Joe A., Bryan R. Burnham, and Mysore V. Nagendran. "Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, linear dose, crossover study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of a green coffee bean extract in overweight subjects." Diabetes, metabolic syndrome and obesity: targets and therapy 5 (2012): 21.
• Zheng, et al. "Chlorogenic acid and caffeine in combination inhibit fat accumulation by regulating hepatic lipid metabolism-related enzymes in mice." British Journal of Nutrition (2014). Ahead of Print.