ONLINE DRIVERS MEDIA

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.

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.

Its obviously to have the 24h effects on testosterone and cortisol than only those measured after the workout , but can we make solid conclusions based on the additional data?

In spite of the fact that the acute testosterone and cortisol response to exercise appears to have little direct effects on the overall training outcome (Schoenfeld. 2013), acute increase in cortisol and reductions in testosterone, i.e. a decrease in the testosterone:cortisol ratio is a classic feature of overtraining and can very well blunt, if not reverse the beneficial effects of exercise on your health and body composition.

Against that background a recent experiment that was conducted by researchers from the University of Chieti-Pescara in Italy could be of great interest to everyone who is performing high intensity interval training on a regular basis. Why?

Well, in contrast to previous studies, Blasio et al. investigated both the acute and 24h effects of a high intensity interval resistance training regimen in trained young men.
To characterize the effects on heart rate and hormonal responses the subjects, eight trained, healthy trained men (28.61 ±3.51 yrs), performed three different workouts which had the same exercises, the same load and number of repetitions for each exercise, but different exercise order, recovery and speed of execution.

• RANDOM workout: the assigned goal was to complete the assigned repetitions respecting only two duties. The first one was don’t stop until all of the repetitions were completed; the second was that there were no assigned order of execution of exercises and no assigned consecutive repetitions to complete.
  
  Participants were thus free to choose both the order of exercises and number of consecutive repetitions for each exercise (i.e. 2 repetitions of kettlebell swing, 10 repetitions of medicine ball slam, 20 repetitions of squat, 4 repetitions of spin with Bulgarian bag, etc.).
  
  No recovery period was assigned, except the time necessary to move from a station to another, and no speed of execution of exercises was assigned: participants were free to choose the preferred speed. 
• LADDER workout: respecting the following order of execution, kettlebell swing, medicine ball slam, spin with Bulgarian bag, squat, pull-up, burpee, participants had to complete the total repetitions according to a pyramidal scheme (e.g. 1st lap 10 repetitions at each exercise, 2nd lap 9 repetitions at each exercise) until the total number of repetitions of each exercise was executed.
  
  Each lap of the circuit was followed by 1 minute of recovery. No speed of execution of exercises was assigned: participants were free to choose the preferred speed. 
• AS SOON AS POSSIBLE (ASAP) workout : respecting the following order of execution, kettlebel swing, medicine ball slam, spin with Bulgarian bag, squat, pull-up, burpee, participants had to complete the total volume in six laps executed as soon as possible.
  
  During each lap participants had to complete the sixth part of total number of repetitions of each exercise without rest among exercises. Each lap of the circuit was followed by 1 minute of recovery.

Salivary samples were collected before and after each workout, at 11:00 p.m. and at 7:00 a.m. of the following day. Salive was also collected during a non-training day. Similarly, before and after the workout, plasma lactate was measured while a beat-to-beat heart rate recording was executed during each workout. Cortisol (C) and testosterone (T) were measured in salivary samples.

2h before the workouts the subjects who had to abstain from sexual intercourse, stimulants and alcohol from 2 days before to the experimental days and until 9:00 a.m. of the following day, consumed a standardized meal that was lower to 400 and consisted of 33 cl of water, 35 cl of orange juice and two 30 g energy bars (Power Sport Double Use, Enervit, Milan, Italy).

Lets look at the results

While the protocols elicited the same heart rate response (the major part of each workout was spent between 80 and 100% of maximal heart rate, confirming the high cardiovascular intensity of the workouts), they elicited different hormonal and lactate variations with the LADDER workout producing the lowest lactate increase and the RANDOM workout eliciting the highest lactate, cortisol and testosterone increases.

Figure 1: Relative changes in hormone and lactate concentration in response to the workouts (Di Blasio. 2014)

When C was considered in ratio with T no significant differences have been shown among workouts-induced variations. Results of the analysis of covariance, executed on significantly modified variables, confirmed that basal hormonal and lactate values did not influence their variations.

When they studied the effects of workouts on prolonged hormones production (i.e. until the morning following the morning, di Blasio et. al. found that observed that observed that

"C had both time (F=179.723; p < 0.001) and group × time effect (F=10.942; p < 0.001): while during non-training day there is a physiological decline of C production at 11:00 p.m., during training days its decline is not present but seems to have a continuous increase from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m." (Di Blasio. 2014)

For the testosterone production the authors found both time (F=443.340; p < 0.001) and group × time effect (F=3.254; p=0.008) even if the group × time effect seems determined by the samples collected at 7:00 p.m., so that the effects cannot be ascribed fully / exclusively to the workout.

Figure 2: 23h hormone profile after the RANDOM, LADDER, ASAP workouts on a control day (di Blasio. 2014)

What is most interesting, though, is the cortisol to testosterone ratio. It shows the greatest inter-group differences and could potentially be of great physiological relevance (Crowley. 1996). In that, the LADDER workout has the most negative effect, as it will totally blunt the natural decline of the C:T ratio at noon.
References:

• Crowley, Michael A., and Kathleen S. Matt. "Hormonal regulation of skeletal muscle hypertrophy in rats: the testosterone to cortisol ratio." European journal of applied physiology and occupational physiology 73.1-2 (1996): 66-72. 
• Schoenfeld, Brad J. "Postexercise hypertrophic adaptations: a reexamination of the hormone hypothesis and its applicability to resistance training program design." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 27.6 (2013): 1720-1730.

"Cuffed up and ready to grow"? Yes, but STRONGER, but not necessarily bigger - thats at least what the latest research seems to suggest. Research thats bringing us back to the influence of exercise induced changes in growth hormone, cortisol and co, we all love so much ;-)

If youve read my article "Strength ? | Size ? - Thats the Result of 7 Weeks With Three Additional Sets of Blood Flow Restricted High Rep + Low Intensity Squats & Bench Presses in Well-Trained Athletes" (read more), you will be aware that the previously reported strength increases in response to the addition of 3 sets of blood flow restricted high rep, low intensity work are dearly bought.

The price youll have to pay for theses strength increases is a reduced increase in muscle size thats particularly pronounced for the pectoralis major (the large chest muscle), where doing those three extra-sets leads - irrespective of whether youre "all cuffed up" or not - to a reduction(!) in muscle size (as measured by chest circumference).

Obviously we cannot explain the catabolic effects,....

... by taking a look at the results of another recently published study on blood flow restriction. What the results Eonho Kim et al. present in their most recent paper in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine could tell us, though, is whether the positive effects on strength development are mediated by BFR-induced changes in the expression of "anabolic" hormones.
As the scientists from the University of Oklahoma point out, the purpose of their study was to determine whether there was an acute hormone response to exercise differed between low intensity blood flow restricted resistance exercise and traditional high-intensity resistance exercise in college-aged women.

Suggested: "Anabolic Workouts Revisited: Testosterone, GH, Prolac- tin & Co - Effects of Workout Type, Volume & Density" | more

As a seasoned SuppVersity veteran youll know that "acute" is not "chronic" and that these acute differences in "hormone response" are difficult to place. Based on the results of the only currently available study with useful data on the relation between the expression of "anabolic" and purportedly "catabolic" hormones on the one hand, and the increase in muscle size and strength in response to classic 12-week resistance training program (see Table 1), we should watch out for increases in cortisol, only (!).

The allegedly catabolic stress hormone, of which most people forget that it is eventually a glucocorticoid and allows you to train without having to have a glucose infusion at hand, is the only  hormone with significant (p = 0.03) positive correlations (r = 0.29) with the strength gains of the 56 young men who participated in the 2012 study by West & Phllips (West. 2012).

What about the cuffed up ladies in the study at hand, then?

If we assume that (a) the acute post-workout increase in cortisol is actually an indicator of chronic strength increases and (b) that this is the same for men and women, we should see higher glucocorticoid levels in the 13 healthy women (aged 18-25 yrs), who participated in the Kim study, when they trained with cuffs, then we do, when they train without cuffs.

Figure 1: Relative changes (pre vs. post) in lactate, growth hormone, hematocrit and cortisol in response to leg presses and leg extensions with (1x30, 2x15 @20% 1RM) and without (3x10 @80% 1RM) blood flow restriction (Kim. 2014)

Well, what should I say? The increases in cortisol, we predicted based on our analysis of the West study are there! The cortisol expression differed significantly between the two training conditions, in the course of which the 13 ladies performed ...

• Dont forget to read more about the "anti-size" effects of BFR" | more

  5 minutes of warm up on a cycle ergometer, plus
• high intensity leg presses and extensions
  for 3x 10 @ 80% 1RM, or
• BFR leg presses + extension
  for 1x30, 2x15 @ 20% 1RM with
• 1 minute rest between sets and exercises.

During the BFR condition the participants wore an elastic cuffs (50 mm width) on the proximal thighs. The initial cuff pressure was set between 40 and 60 mm Hg, then inflated to 120 mm Hg for 30 seconds then released. The cuff pressure was increased by 20 mm Hg incrementally until the target pressure of 200 Hg was reached as described by previously published studies (Abe et al., 2006; Yasuda et al., 2006). Since the cuff was deflated and removed after the completion of the two lower body exercises, the total time of vascular restriction was "only" about 10 minutes.
Reference: 

• Abe, Takashi, Charles F. Kearns, and Yoshiaki Sato. "Muscle size and strength are increased following walk training with restricted venous blood flow from the leg muscle, Kaatsu-walk training." Journal of Applied Physiology 100.5 (2006): 1460-1466. 
• Fragala, Maren S., et al. "Glucocorticoid receptor expression on human B cells in response to acute heavy resistance exercise." Neuroimmunomodulation 18.3 (2011): 156-164. 
• Kim, Eonho, et al. "Hormone Responses to an Acute Bout of Low Intensity Blood Flow Restricted Resistance Exercise in College-Aged Females." Journal of Sports Science and Medicine 12 (2013): 91-96.
• West, Daniel WD, and Stuart M. Phillips. "Associations of exercise-induced hormone profiles and gains in strength and hypertrophy in a large cohort after weight training." European journal of applied physiology 112.7 (2012): 2693-2702.
• Yasuda, T., et al. "Electromyographic responses of arm and chest muscle during bench press exercise with and without KAATSU." International Journal of KAATSU Training Research 2.1 (2006): 15-18.