Hey all, a little backlogged with projects and posts right now. Your pardons as I sort everything out in one big vomitus:

Last Thursday, the New England Journal of Medicine released a study comparing low-fat, Mediterranean, and low-carb diets. The big winner? The low-carb diet (much to everyone’s chagrin - false sarcasm). There are two extensive write-ups on this study over at Dr. Eades‘ and Scott’s blogs, but allow me to present the highlights:

First (and certainly to the delight of Rich and Andrius), the low-carb diet was a vegetarian low-carb diet. From the study text: “…the participants were counseled to choose vegetarian sources of fat and protein…” So it appears that the benefits of following the low-carb regimen are not exclusive to gun-totin’, America-lovin’ carnivores - just those who choose to reduce intake of grains, sugars, and starches.

While the Mediterranean diet resulted in more favorable LDL levels than the low-carb diet (”a collective ‘So what?’ washed over the crowd…”), the low-carb diet killed in just about everything else: higher HDL, lower TG, and better TC:HDL ratio. Additionally, both the Mediterranean and low-carb approaches resulted in a drop in C-reactive protein, indicating lower levels of inflammation.

Sadly (for the AHA, at least), the low-fat group fared worst overall: Least fat loss, highest LDL (isn’t a low-fat diet supposed to decrease this? Hmmm…), highest TG, least change in C-reactive protein, and an increase in blood glucose for diabetics. Yet this is the type of diet recommended by the AHA for diabetics. Yikes.

Of course, the punchline: While the Mediterranean diet was pretty close to specs, at two years (the end of the study) the low-carb diet had degenerated to 40% of calories from carbs (definitely not low-carb) and the low-fat diet had degenerated to 30% of calories from fat (definitely not low-fat). So that explains the lackluster amounts of fat loss. And yet, while proponents of low-fat will argue that their diet didn’t perform as planned because it wasn’t correctly represented, the low-carb diet seemed to defy this limitation (what’s scary is it would’ve done even better were it actually followed to the letter).

The bottom line: Even a little reduction in carbohydrate consumption (or a short period eating in a strict low-carb fashion) can provide some real health and fat loss benefits.  And that low-carb doesn’t have to mean eggs and bacon for breakfast, steak and salad for lunch, and salmon and tomato for dinner (although that sounds mighty tasty to me).

Thanks to Chris from Conditioning Research for this article:

Surprise - Cholesterol May Actually Pose Benefits, Study Shows.

Yes, indeed; surprise, surprise. 

Chris has already done a very thorough write-up of the study’s results; let’s reference his comments and explore this topic a bit deeper:

1) “The team studied 55 men and women, ages 60-69, who were healthy non-smokers and were able to perform exercise testing and training.

Three days a week for 12 weeks, participants performed several exercises, including stretching, stationary bike riding and vigorous weight lifting. All participants consumed similar meals.

At the conclusion of the study, the researchers found that there was a significant association of dietary cholesterol and change in strength. In general, those with higher cholesterol intake also had the highest muscle strength gain.”

Case pretty much closed right there. Now, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that higher dietary cholesterol should result in greater muscle gain - being that cholesterol is a precursor to steroid hormones (one particular hormone, testosterone, immediately springs to mind), it should play a vital role in the rebuilding of muscle tissue.  This aspect of cholesterol is well known and has been studied before (by Dr. Riechman, no less).

2) Here is a shining example as to why you should read the entire text of a study as opposed to just the abstract:

“Serum cholesterol and the serum cholesterol lowering agent statin were also independently associated with greater increases in lean mass.”

Which reads “those who took statins had increased muscle mass from resistance training.”  But is this really so?

“Riechman said that subjects who were taking cholesterol-lowering drugs while participating in the study showed lower muscle gain totals than those who were not.”

Until I get my hands on a copy of the full study, I won’t be able to say for sure.  But since Dr. Riechman conducted the study, we’ll have to take his word for it.  So which is it: more (as the abstract says) or less?  The full text will reveal all…

3) Lastly, this from the abstract:

“Dietary cholesterol was not associated with serum cholesterol…”

shows how pervasive the low-fat doctrine has become in academic circles (at least, among researchers who study nutrition and human health).  This point shouldn’t be a revelation, as study after study (particularly the major ones, like Framingham) show that there’s no connection between the cholesterol you eat and the cholesterol that shows up in your blood work.  But what’s the first thing your doctor will tell you if your cholesterol level tests high?

After “I want to put you on Lipitor”, I mean.

He will likely tell you to stay from foods that are fatty and contain a lot of cholesterol.  Anyone else see the mental disconnect here?

In short, don’t shy away from the cholesterol.  No, it won’t drive your bloodwork numbers through the roof, and yes, it is essential to your health.

(Image Credit: Julielohre.com)

It’s been a longstanding tradition (well, longstanding from a bodybuilder’s perspective, anyway) that each individual muscle group has to be blitzed, bombed, and blasted in order to get the most out of it. In other words, there’s no way for you to really work a given muscle group unless you devote an entire training day to it. And there’s no other muscle group where this effect is seen moreso than abdominals.

Everyone loves training abdominals. Even people who downright hate exercise love to train abs. The reason, of course, being that we’re all walking around with The Bodybuilder’s Creed firmly entrenched in our heads: If I burn the heck out of a muscle, I will literally etch out the muscle shape I desire, and torch off the fat that obscures it.

Ah, if that were only true.

Here is the unbiased Truth about abdominal muscles: They become visible when the overlying fat covering them disappears (as in, you diet sufficiently to lose the required body fat), and they are best worked heavy and hard, not for countless reps of mere bodyweight.

Here’s a Corollary to the Truth: You don’t even need to work the abs directly for significant muscular stimulation.

Go ahead, read that again. Yes, you read correctly - you don’t need to work the abs directly to get a six-pack; what’s important is that you carry sufficiently low bodyfat levels and that the ab muscles get worked somehow. As in, say, supporting a heavy load in a full-body exercise, like the squat or deadlift; or in supporting and stabilizing the rest of the body as it strains against a load, as in chinups or pulldowns.

You don’t have to take it on faith. Here’s a study that states just that (and I quote):

The results of the present study indicate that the use of moderately high (80% 1RM) intensity resistance while performing dynamic exercises, such as the squat and deadlift, can provide greater dorsal trunk activation than similar exercises without external resistance or calisthenic-style instability activities. (emphasis added)

Translated into English: Lifting heavy things works the core plenty. Plenty.

So, you may ask: Why work the abs at all? Is it merely superfluous? All for show (and naught)?

Here are some valid reasons to perform specific, targeted work for the trunk muscles:

1. Teaching or learning muscular activation (”talking” to the muscle).

Hard as it may be to believe, there are individuals in this world who don’t communicate well with their muscles. Not in the sense of whispering, “Grow…grow…grow…” to their biceps, but in identifying and contracting specific muscles. Want to know if you’re one of them?

Here’s a test: Take a gallon of milk and lift it over your head. What muscles did you use? What areas did you feel working? Did you sway around back and forth? If your answer to any of these questions is, “Gee, I don’t know”, then you may be a candidate!

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this, by the way. If your exercise form is good, you can chug right along and get decent results from your efforts. But learning how to effectively contract, feel, and activate specific muscles in a movement will definitely improve both your performance and your results.

2. Correcting a weak link.

Keep failing on that deadlift and don’t know why? Do your abs fatigue before your arms or back when you do pullups? You, my friend, may be in serious need of some abdominal specialization work. If you find that proportionally your abdominals are not as strong as the rest of your body or you prematurely fatigue on exercises due to ab weakness, then doing specific ab work not only a great idea, it’s mandatory.

3. Additional strength needed in a sports/performance related context.
(Also implied: 3b. To prevent injury.)

Does your sport/avocation require unusually high levels of ab strength?

Hint: If your chosen sport is jiujitsu, golf, or tennis, the answer is yes.

Specific abdominal work is also useful in order to improve athletes’ abdominal force output (i.e., increase ab strength) and to protect athletes against injury.

Yes, even amateur ones, like you and me.

So there you have it. In summary:

• Most casual exercisers don’t need direct ab work and are better off spending that time learning to work hard on the exercises that do matter (and deliver results): squats, chins, deadlift, presses, etc.
• To see your abs, attain and sustain low body fat levels.
• Working the abs directly is warranted if you’re looking to teach someone how to communicate with their abs, to correct biomechanical “weak links” in exercises, and if you need specific abdominal strength to perform at high levels or prevent injury.

What’s more important - theory or practice?

Just because it “works on paper”, does it “work?” And just because “it works”, does it “work?”

Just what the heck am I talking about?

I’m referring to the so-called Diet Debate on CNN’s The Larry King Show that Gary Taubes, Mehmet Oz, Jillian Michaels, and Andrew Weil engaged in. It was funny enough to watch on the sheer merits of the participants interactions, but one particularly compelling moment arose when Jillian Michaels and Gary Taubes butted heads:

(from the CNN transcript):

“MICHAELS: Gary, if you can show me — Gary, if you can show me one person you have taken 100 pounds off, then maybe we can apply your theory…You are a scientist. You appreciate the fact that science must be applied for a theory to be proven true. Your theory falls short when applied practically because I’ve applied it.“

She’s wrong, by the way. First off, it’s not “Taubes’ theory” - if she actually read the book she’d have seen that it was a review and commentary of all the major dietary studies of the past 70 years or so; all of the research had been done by folks much smarter than her or Taubes. Secondly, his so-called theory (that exercising to lose weight fails), far from falling short, seems to pan out far more often than not (I’m sure all of you know someone - maybe it’s you - that failed to lose any appreciable body fat through exercise, particularly exercising by itself).

All that aside: What’s more important - theory or practice?

The answer: Both. Without science, there’s no intelligent practice - just a lot of random groping in the dark for answers without much rhyme or reason. And in order for a theory to hold true, it has to be demonstrable in real-world situations (as well as exhibiting repeatability in scientific studies). By actively testing theories (through rigorous studies) and applying them, we can come to new, better solutions to our problems. Conversely, if a theory doesn’t bring about real-world results, it should be discarded as faulty.

What’s arguably more important than observing the results of our experiments and applications of theory is how we interpret those results. Witness the second part of the exchange between Taubes and Michaels:

“TAUBES: I’m not a diet doctor here. I’m just trying to say…If you look at the actual evidence when people do clinical trials. Again, she changed a lot of things. She’s changed her diet. She changed the way she ate. She exercised. All of those things might have had an effect.“ (Emphasis mine)

This is why you can’t solely rely on “real-world applications” - you can’t discern the impact any one factor has on results! Is your result an effect of the intervention, or was it something else? This is why performing studies that attempt to isolate single variables is so important. By determining which variables have the greatest impact on results, it prevents us from doing applying things that at best, don’t help us towards our goals, and at worst, detract from our results.

Who knows, if Jillian Michaels implements Gary Taubes’ so-called theories, she might experience even greater success with her clientle.

Just picked this one up on the wire:

Beer After Sport is “Good For The Body.”

Now, your first inclination should be to think, “Hey, didn’t Eugene write a blog post about how the media distorts and misrepresents scientific findings and how we should be reading the studies themselves?”

Indeed I did.

After the initial shock and horror of this so-called “study’s” findings wears off, let’s think about the situation critically for a second:

If we’re dealing with post-exercise recovery, then our priorities are rehydration, glycogen refueling, and protein delivery. With those parameters in mind, let’s take a look at the nutritional profile of beer and see how well it fulfills those requirements.

We can see from the charts that beer (per can) contains 327 grams of water (or roughly 11 oz). Okay, not great for rehydration, since you need to replenish all water used up in the activity, but at least we’re off to a decent start.

Beer also delivers 50.6 Calories (or about 13 grams) from carbohydrates, which works in our favor, since carbohydrates after a workout help to replenish glycogen stores in our muscles and liver. Check.

Lastly, what kind of of protein punch does beer deliver? Well, the analysis shows that a paltry 1.5 grams of protein is all we get from our can of beer. Far short of optimal, but it definitely more than water (which, of course, contains no protein whatsoever).

Based on our analysis, is it any wonder that beer beat out water in a rehydration test? More protein, carbohydrates for fast transport, and electrolytes (sodium, potassium, magnesium, etc.) to boot! In fact, based on the analysis, our old friend beer is looking more and more like a more “conventional” thirst quencher (except it contains much less sugar and more protein!).

Except, of course, for one tiny little detail: the ALCOHOL - which delivers the majority of the calories, distrupts recovery via elimination by the liver, creates a net dehydration effect, and impairs cognitive ability.

Oopsie. Nearly forgot that bit.

This is exactly the type of “cherry-picking of the truth” approach that major media and news outlets (not to mention researchers and health professionals) engage in - and shouldn’t. This kind of so-called research is precisely why books like Gary Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Caloriesis so important (it’s a great read, BTW. I intend to devote a blog post to it in a day or two when I’m done reading it).

The moral is clear: Read with a critical mind. It’s your own health and performance, after all.