ONLINE DRIVERS MEDIA

The advantage of HDL is its stability that reduces the risk of plaque build-up in the intestinal wall, which is clogged by the remnants of oxidized LDL and causes heart disease & co.

First things first: We are not talking about "hard experimental evidence" as you could generate it in a randomized controlled trial in a metabolic ward. The data I am reporting today is from a cohort with 1,566 participants with extensive lipid phenotype data completed the Harvard Standardized Food Frequency Questionnaire to determine their daily micronutrient intake over the past year - an epidemiological study that used stepwise linear regression was used to separately evaluate the effects of dietary covariates on adjusted levels of HDL-C, HDL-2, HDL-3, and apoA1.

Interestingly, this is the first study with a quality data-set that determined the association between specific dietary micronutrients with HDL-C, HDL-2, HDL-3, and apoA1, and how these dietary associations differ across the various measures of HDL - not just one.
To identify the HDL-promoters in the diet, the scientists use demographic and clinical variables in the base model. What they found was that numerous dietary intakes increased total HDL-C variance.
The results of their stepwise linear regression model in Table 1 indicate - probably for some people much surprisingly - that all alcohol intake levels were positively associated with HDL-C.

"In addition, magnesium, folate, and the saturated fat, myristic acid (14:0), were all positively and independently associated with HDL-C. Carbohydrate intake, iron, and % of fat derived from animal sources were each negatively additive for HDL-C." (Kim. 2014)

Similar effects from dietary intakes were observed for HDL-2, of which we know that it is decreased in women with rheumatoid arthritis (Arts. 2012) and individuals with other inflammatory diseases (including metabolic syndrom) and associated with a slightly higher reduction in acute myocardial infarction risk than "regular" HDL in several studies (Salonen. Salonen. 1991; Stampfer. 1991; Buring. 1992; Gaziano. 1993) for all alcohol intakes, magnesium, folate, and myristic acid (14:0), eicosapentaenoic acid (20:5, a ?-3 EPA), all of which were positively and independently associated with HDL-2 levels.

Table 1:  Best-fit model from stepwise linear regression predicting HDL-C levels using dietary intake data (Kim. 2014)

The opposite was the case for arachidonic acid (20:4, an ?-6 ARA), carbohydrate and iron intakes, which were both negatively associated with HDL-2 (see Table 1).

Dont forget to put things into perspective!

And just to make sure, I dont get angry emails from bulletproof coffee drinkers: Your coffee is fine, the content of the only "good" saturated fat, i.e. myristic acid, happens to be especially high coconut oil (41%; Sodamade. 2013) and relatively high in butter (12% independent of whether its grass-fed or not; Couvreur. 2006) - surprised? Not really, I guess. As a SuppVersity reader you are by now aware that the bad reputation coconut oil and butter have for being mostly saturated fats is no longer supported by contemporary scientific evidence (Dias. 2014).

And with respect to the total animal fat intake - for the average Westerner thats a good measure of how much processed meat he / she eats, so I would not overrate the small negative association (1/80 of the one of having a ton of carbohydrates in your diet!) the scientists found in the study at hand.
References:

• Arts, Elke, et al. "High-density lipoprotein cholesterol subfractions HDL2 and HDL3 are reduced in women with rheumatoid arthritis and may augment the cardiovascular risk of women with RA: a cross-sectional study." Arthritis Res Ther 14.3 (2012): R116.
• Buring, J. E., et al. "Decreased HDL2 and HDL3 cholesterol, Apo AI and Apo A-II, and increased risk of myocardial infarction." Circulation 85.1 (1992): 22-29.
• Couvreur, S., et al. "The linear relationship between the proportion of fresh grass in the cow diet, milk fatty acid composition, and butter properties." Journal of dairy science 89.6 (2006): 1956-1969.
• Dias, C. B., et al. "Saturated fat consumption may not be the main cause of increased blood lipid levels." Medical hypotheses 82.2 (2014): 187-195.
• Gaziano, J. Michael, et al. "Moderate alcohol intake, increased levels of high-density lipoprotein and its subfractions, and decreased risk of myocardial infarction." New England Journal of Medicine 329.25 (1993): 1829-1834. 
• Kim et al. "Effects of dietary components on high-density lipoprotein measures in a cohort of 1,566 participants." Nutrition & Metabolism 2014, 11:44.
• Leon, ARTHUR S., and OTTO A. Sanchez. "Response of blood lipids to exercise training alone or combined with dietary intervention." Medicine and science in sports and exercise 33.6 Suppl (2001): S502-15.
• Salonen, Jukka T., et al. "HDL, HDL2, and HDL3 subfractions, and the risk of acute myocardial infarction. A prospective population study in eastern Finnish men." Circulation 84.1 (1991): 129-139. 
• Sodamade, A¹, and O. S. Bolaji. "Fatty acids composition of three different vegetable oils (soybean oil, groundnut oil and coconut oil) by high-performance liquid chromatography." Chemistry and Materials Research 3.7 (2013): 26-29.
• Stampfer, Meir J., et al. "A prospective study of cholesterol, apolipoproteins, and the risk of myocardial infarction." New England Journal of Medicine 325.6 (1991): 373-381.

No sweat, just some wires? Study shows: It does not take much effort to lose belly fat.

Liposuction is an invasive procedure that is not without risk. Against that background its no wonder that people are marketing alternative methods like high-frequency current therapy as allegedly safe go-to methods to rid yourself of unwanted body fat. The question is: Do these currents actually help you to lose body fat? That is: Can electrocuting your belly "electro-cut" significant amounts of body fat? Practitioners who use this technology will say "yes". From a scientific standpoint, though, the question is difficult to answer, because the use of high-frequency current therapy has been given little attention in the scientific community.

As Kim et al. point out in a recent paper in the J. Phys. Ther. Sci., some previous studies have failed to provide evidence for the effectiveness of high-frequency current therapy in women with obesity, whereas more recent studies have indicated that a high-frequency current therapy decreases female abdominal obesity (Kang. 2005; Han. 2010). Accordingly, their latest study aimed to determine whether high-frequency current therapy can be effectively used to reduce female abdominal obesity.
To this ends, the researchers recruited twenty-two female volunteers who were randomly allocated to either the experimental group (EG) (n = 12; age, 21.17 ± 0.72 years; weight, 63.17 ± 7.91 kg; height, 159.63 ± 4.56 cm) or the control group (CG) (n = 10; age, 21.10 ± 0.74 years; weight, 68.79 ± 11.73 kg; height, 161.69 ± 5.25 cm). Inclusion criteria were as follows:

• a body mass index (BMI) of ?23 kg/m2 and a waist-hip circumference ratio of  ? 0.8013
• no past or present neurological, musculoskeletal, or cardiopulmonary disorders that would have affected health condition;
• no smoking and drinking habits; and
• no psychological problems.

Futhermore, pregnant women were excluded as well. The subjects of both groups were asked to keep a regular dietary habit during the experimental process. A nutritionist drew up a diet plan of 2,000 to 2,500 kcal/day across 3 meals (8 a.m., 1 p.m., and 6 p.m.) for the 6-week intervention. In addition, subjects were asked to avoid extra activities and exercises beyond daily routine activities.

Figure 1. Changes in BMI, waist circumference, subcutaneous body fat and total body fat (%) after 18 sessions of high-frequency current therapy in Korean women (Kim. 2015).

Only the subjects in the EG group were subjected to high-frequency current therapy, with a frequency of 0.5 Mhz. The treatments were performed exclusively on the abdominal region while subjects were supine using specific equipment (CWM-9200; Chungwoo Medical, Seoul, South Korea) for 60 minutes, 3 times per week, for 6 weeks (a total of 18 sessions).

"High-frequency current therapy was performed in 2 phases: 2 sets of 15-minute applications of capacitive electric transfer (CET) and resistive electric transfer (RET) with the pulsed current option (current conduction time, 0.7 seconds; rest interval, 0.3 seconds) for the fist 3 weeks, followed by a 30-minute application of the CET and RET modes with continuous current conduction in the final 3 weeks. The intensity was individualized within a range of 6–7 mA to comfortably adjust the heating sensation during the intervention. An insulated electrode and a stainless steel electrode (8 cm in diameter) were used for the CET and RET modes, respectively. Conductive gel (Body Rubbing Cream; SA’COS, Incheon, South Korea) was used to facilitate skin moisture and current conduction, and high frequency current therapy was delivered by making circular motions of the electrode over the abdominal region at a moving speed of 5 cm/s, avoiding focused pressure on therapeutic areas" (Kim. 2015)

The comparison of the pre- vs. post-data showed here significant main effects of time with respect to waist circumference, abdominal obesity, subcutaneous fat mass, and body fat percentage, which differed significantly between the groups (see Figure 1), "suggesting the effects of high-frequency current therapy in decreasing obesity" (Kim. 2015).
References:

• Han, J. S., Y. O. Park, and C. K. Zhoh. "The effect of high frequency treatment and meridian massage on the abdominal fat pattern of obesity women." J Korean Soc Esthet Cosmeceutics 6.1 (2010): 1-8.
• Kang SO, Won YK. "The effect of high-frequency therapy on women’s obesity." Kor J Aesthet Cosmetol 3 (2005): 121–131.
• Kim, Jin-seop, and Duck-won Oh. "Effects of high-frequency current therapy on abdominal obesity in young women: a randomized controlled trial." Journal of Physical Therapy Science 27.1 (2015): 31-33.
• Song MY, Kim HJ, Lee MJ. "The review on the evidence: effects of nonsurgical localized fat treatments." J Korean Med Obes Res 6 (2006): 1–10.

If you want other to see your pump, you got to be ripped. If not, why care about reductions in BMR?

If you remember my posts about the first generation, arginine-based pre-workout products you will be aware that the only pump they produced was the word "pump" in their name or product description. The reason was and still is simple. The mere provision of l-arginine, which is a precursor to nitric oxide does not lead to an increase in nitric oxide production. Why? Well, think of a building a house: Just buying some concrete wont make you a proud home owner, either ;-)

The bad thing: Arginine didnt work. The good thing: This means it didnt decrease your BMR, either

Against that background its quite astonishing that arginine and citrulline based pre-workout products have dominated the top-seller lists of the big supplement vendors for decades. A fact thats probably partly due to other potential benefits of these amino acids, of which one - you as a SuppVersity reader know that - could be fat loss | learn more about the potential fat loss effects.
With more and more people openly declaring that they would no longer waste money on "good tasting, but expensive and disfunctional products", they industry was yet pressed to develop alternatives. Luckily, our body has two options it can chose from, when producing nitric oxide.

Fortunately, the industry has developed better alternatives...?

You know option #1, the arginine ? nitric oxide pathway, and - with all the hype and hyperbole that surrounded the introduction of the first nitrate supplements - I am pretty sure, you know the other one as well, the nitrate-nitrite ? nitric oxide pathway

Figure 1: The Arginine- and the Nitrate-Nitrite - NO pathway are the yin and yan of nitric oxide production (Lundberg. 2008).

As the illustration (Figure 1) I have "borrowed" from a comment by Jon. O. Lundberg et al. (2008) illustrates quite nicely, the arginine and nitrite nitric oxide pathway are the yin and yan of NO production.

With the "yan", i.e. the nitrate-nitrite ? nitric oxide pathway being a relatively "new kid on the NO block", that recycles (=reduces) inorganic anions nitrate and nitrite to form bioactive NO in blood and tissues during physiological hypoxia.

It goes without saying that there is a bottle neck to this process as well, but the rate limiting availablility of oxygen which hampers the argine-based NO generation by NOS becomes limited as oxygen levels fall is actually a signal for the nitrate–nitrite ? nitric oxide to really kick in.

There is more yin and yan, here

If you take a closer look at the results of a study in the America Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Figure 2), you will yet have to realize that there is "more yin and yan", here than youd probably hope for. According to the data scientists from the venerable Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, present in their paper, "[d]ietary inorganic nitrate reduces the RMR." (Larsen. 2014)

Figure 2: VO2 consumption (marker of fatty acid oxidation) and basal metabolic rate (BMR) relative to means (left), thyroid hormone (T3, T4) levels after 3-d dietary intervention with sodium nitrate (Larsen. 2014)

Whut? Yes, you read Larsen et al. right: In their randomized, double-blind, crossover study, in the course of which the Swedish scientists measured the resting metabolic rate (RMR) of 13 perfectly healthy 18–49 y olds (17 women) via indirect calorimetry after a 3-d dietary intervention with sodium nitrate (NaNO3 @ 0.1mmol/kg body weight) or a placebo (NaCl), Larsen, Schiffer, Ekblom et al. observed a statistically and (probably) physiologically significant reduction BMR reduction of 4.2% which correlated strongly to the degree of nitrate accumulation in saliva (r²= 0.71) and fits in nicely with the reduced O2 consumption of which Bailey et al. were the first to observe it in response to nitrate supplementation during exercise (Bailey. 2009).

Interestingly, these effects were not - as you may have been speculated - brought about by changes in thyroid hormone status. And the subjects insulin sensitivity, glucose uptake, plasma concentration of isoprostanes, as well as their total antioxidant capacity were unaffected, as well.
Reference:

• Bailey, Stephen J., et al. "Dietary nitrate supplementation reduces the O2 cost of low-intensity exercise and enhances tolerance to high-intensity exercise in humans." Journal of Applied Physiology 107.4 (2009): 1144-1155.
• Hotta, Yuji, et al. "Oral l?citrulline supplementation improves erectile function and penile structure in castrated rats." International Journal of Urology (2014).
• Larsen, Filip J., et al. "Dietary inorganic nitrate improves mitochondrial efficiency in humans." Cell metabolism 13.2 (2011): 149-159.
• Lundberg, Jon O., Eddie Weitzberg, and Mark T. Gladwin. "The nitrate–nitrite–nitric oxide pathway in physiology and therapeutics." Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 7.2 (2008): 156-167.
• Neuzillet, Y., et al. "A randomized, double?blind, crossover, placebo?controlled comparative clinical trial of arginine aspartate plus adenosine monophosphate for the intermittent treatment of male erectile dysfunction." Andrology 1.2 (2013): 223-228.