Extra protein boosts muscle with resistance-training, but only slightly

Extra protein from food or supplements does lead to increases in strength and muscle, but not as much as some might hope, researchers write in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. 

Presented as an infographic, the results are based on a review of data from 49 randomized controlled trials in 17 countries and more than 1,800 participants.

The upshot: supplementing protein while doing resistance training can increase strength by about 9 percent and add about a pound of muscle. The effect levels off at a certain point, after which extra protein provides no additional benefit.

“Lots of people take protein supplements with the expectation that they are going to gain lots of muscle because of the protein supplement,” said senior study author Stuart Phillips of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.

“Supplement companies tout huge benefits,” Phillips told Reuters Health by email. “We thought it was time to do some science.”

Phillips and colleagues conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of research published on the topic of protein supplementation and resistance training, looking at how much extra muscle men and women gained, as well as how much stronger they became.

The studies had to be at least 6 weeks long, include resistance training at least twice a week, and one group had to be given a protein supplement that didn’t have other muscle-building ingredients such as creatine or testosterone-enhancing compounds.

Ten of the studies involved people who were experienced in resistance training and 14 studies had exclusively female participants.

The team found that protein supplementation led to an increase in muscle, but not much. In addition, protein supplements were more effective in people who were already lifting weights and less effective in people over age 60.

The analysis didn’t find any differences between types of protein supplements or a distinction between getting protein from food or from supplements.

When Phillips’ team analyzed the relationship between the amount of muscle gained and total amount of dietary protein consumed, they found that gains leveled off at around 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, or about 0.7 grams per pound. That is twice the recommended daily amount in most official nutrition guidelines, they note.

“Going to the gym is where most of the benefits come from,” Phillips said.

Current studies are investigating the key amino acids in protein that aid this muscle-building process, particularly leucine, and especially for adults over age 60 who may have muscle and bone loss known as sarcopenia.

“It’s a big deal to have sufficient enough quantities to stimulate muscle growth,” he added.

Future studies will focus on ways to boost muscle mass and the effect of protein supplementation in older adults, including through everyday foods such as milk and meat.

“Older adults experience age-related physiological changes that affect body weight and body composition,” said Li-Qiang Qin of Soochow University’s School of Public Health in Suzhou, China.

Qin, who wasn’t involved in the current review, has studied the effect of milk protein supplementation among older adults taking part in a resistance training program.

“Milk proteins are excellent sources of all the essential amino acids and may represent an ideal protein source to promote muscle anabolism in older adults undergoing resistance training,” Qin said.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Sharon denies endorsing weight loss pills

MANILA – Actress Sharon Cuneta cried foul on social media after a number of online advertisements for weight loss supplements used her name and image without her consent.

In a series of Facebook posts, Cuneta denied that she endorses weight loss pills, saying she has never used such products.

The mother of actress KC Concepcion went on to say that she has only been on a “doctor-supervised diet.”

She then urged her fans and followers to not believe in these ads which, she noted, also featured other local celebrities.




In an open letter posted on Facebook last year, Cuneta opened up about her problems with weight, noting “the demands of this industry I move around in.”

The actress, who hosted the first season of “The Biggest Loser Pinoy Edition” before leaving ABS-CBN in 2011, said she would like to be fit again.

Last year, actress Ruffa Gutierrez was featured in a series of ads about African diet pills, which turned out to be a hoax.

“Do not believe fake, paid advertisements saying that I lost weight due to African diet pills. It’s a lie!” Gutierrez said in a statement on her official website at the time.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Vitamin C supplements tied to men's kidney stones

NEW YORK - Men who take vitamin C supplements are at higher-than-average risk of developing kidney stones, a new study from Sweden suggests.

The findings don't prove the vitamin itself triggers stones to form. But researchers said that because there are no clear benefits tied to taking high-dose vitamin C, people who have had stones in the past might want to think before taking extra supplements.

"I don't think I would hold this up and say, ‘You shouldn't take vitamin C, and here's the evidence,'" said Dr. Brian Matlaga, a urologist who studies kidney stones at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore.

But, "When you talk to patients, a lot of times you'll find patients are taking non-prescribed medications, like vitamin supplements… and there may not be great evidence that there's an actual health benefit associated with these," he told Reuters Health.

The new finding "suggests that stone formers who take regular vitamin C may actually place themselves at increased risk," said Matlaga, who wasn't involved in the study.

Researchers led by Laura Thomas of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm used data from a large study of middle-aged and elderly Swedish men who answered a series of questions on their diet and lifestyle, then were tracked for an average of 11 years.

The current analysis included 907 of those men who said they took regular vitamin C tablets and more than 22,000 who didn't use any nutritional supplements.

Of the vitamin C users, 3.4% developed kidney stones for the first time during the study, compared to 1.8% of non-supplement users. Men who took vitamin C supplements at least once a day had the highest risk of kidney stones, researchers reported Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

"It has long been suspected that high doses of vitamin C may increase the risk of kidney stones as some of the vitamin C absorbed by the body is excreted in urine as oxalate - one of the key components of kidney stones," Thomas told Reuters Health by email.

Stones are made up of tiny crystals, which can be formed by calcium combining with oxalate. They usually pass on their own, but can cause severe pain in the process. Larger stones occasionally require surgery.

Men are more likely to form stones than women.

‘An important part of a healthy diet'

The findings don't mean people shouldn't get plenty of vitamin C through fruits and vegetables, researchers said. The antioxidant is important for bone and muscle health - and severe deficiency can cause scurvy.

"Vitamin C is an important part of a healthy diet," Thomas said. "Any effect of vitamin C on kidney stone risk is likely to depend both on the dose and on the combination of nutrients with which it is ingested."

Swedish supplements, like those the study participants would have taken, typically contain about 1,000 milligrams (mg) of vitamin C per tablet, she noted. Most vitamin C supplements sold in the US contain either 500 or 1,000 mg.

The US Institute of Medicine recommends 90 mg per day for men - the amount in a small glass of orange juice or a cup of broccoli - and 75 mg for most women.

Matlaga said more research is needed to determine for certain whether reasonable doses of vitamin C may increase the risk of kidney stones. For now, he said people who haven't had kidney stones before shouldn't worry about any related risks tied to the vitamin.

source: abs-cbnnews.com

Could too much calcium be bad for your heart?

NEW YORK - In a new analysis from the National Institutes of Health, men who took calcium tablets were more likely to die of heart disease over more than a decade than those who didn't get extra calcium in supplement form.

"The effect of supplemental or dietary calcium on heart disease has always been a bit of an unanswered story," said Howard Sesso, a preventive medicine researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

"It could be that when you take supplements, maybe you're taking doses that far exceed what you need," he added. But it's still unclear how that might raise cardiovascular risks.

The new findings are based on a study of close to 400,000 middle-aged Americans initiated in 1995 to 1996.

Study volunteers answered questions about their lifestyle, general health and diet, including use of supplements. Researchers then tracked how many of them died, and from what causes, over the next 12 years.

About half of men and more than two-thirds of women said they took calcium supplements or multivitamins containing calcium at the outset.

During the study period, almost 12,000 people - or about 3% - died of cardiovascular disease.

Qian Xiao from the National Cancer Institute and her colleagues found men who took 1,000 milligrams of calcium per day or more were 20% more likely to die of heart-related causes than those who passed on calcium supplements. That was after the researchers took into account men's age, race and weight, as well as other measures of diet and lifestyle.

However, there was no link between calcium supplements and heart disease deaths in women. And calcium from food and beverages wasn't tied to heart problems in men or women, the research team wrote Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

It's possible that calcium build-up in the arteries and veins may affect cardiovascular risks in some people, Xiao wrote in an email to Reuters Health.

No cause-effect link

But Sesso, who wasn't involved in the new study, told Reuters Health he wasn't sure why, biologically, calcium supplements would be linked to a higher risk of heart problems in men but not women.

The findings don't prove a cause-and-effect link between the supplements and heart problems. It's possible there were certain differences between men who did or didn't take extra calcium that the research team couldn't measure.

"Although we observed an increased risk of death from heart disease in men who reported taking supplements containing calcium, we cannot say for sure that it was a result of using those supplements," Xiao said.

According to Sesso, the study won't change the fact that calcium supplements are typically recommended for reasons not related to heart disease - such as to prevent fracture risk in older adults who don't get enough calcium through food.

Eating a balanced diet and keeping a healthy weight are as or more important than any supplement when it comes to cardiovascular health, Sesso said.

"If you have a good diet in the first place, a supplement might not be adding all that much," he said.

source: abs-cbnnews.com

Vitamin D - plus calcium - tied to extra years

Older people who take vitamin D and calcium supplements may live a bit longer than their peers, according to an international review of several studies covering more than 70,000 people.

Researchers writing in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology found that older people who were given the supplements were 9 percent less likely to die over three years than those given placebo pills. Vitamin D alone had no impact on death rates.

A 9 percent dip in death risk over a three year period might sound small, but lead researcher Lars Rejnmark said that effect is "at least as pronounced" as the benefits linked to cholesterol-lowering statins and blood pressure drugs.

"In my view, a 9 percent reduced mortality in the general population of elderly is of major importance," Rejnmark, an associate professor at Aarhus University in Denmark, told Reuters Health by email.

"Except for stopping smoking, there are not many other known interventions that are capable (of) such a reduction in the risk of death."

Rejnmark and his colleagues combined the results from eight clinical trials that involved more than 70,000 older adults, mostly women.

In each trial, people were randomly assigned to take vitamin D or a placebo. Some studies used a combination of vitamin D and calcium.

The doses varied, but most trials used a daily vitamin D dose of 10 to 20 micrograms. In the United States, health officials suggest that most adults get 15 micrograms (or 600 IU) of vitamin D per day, while people older than 70 should aim to get 20 micrograms (or 800 IU).

In trials that used calcium, the dose was 1,000 milligrams per day. In general, women older than 50, and everyone over 70, are told to get 1,200 milligrams of calcium each day.

Vitamin D and calcium are probably best know as bone-builders. Older women often take the supplements to ward off the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis - and some trials have found that the supplement combination can prevent falls and bone fractures in the elderly.

But that probably does not explain the lower death risk in this study. When the researchers factored in hip and spine fractures, they did not account for the dip in death risk.

Another possibility is that supplements curbed people's risk of dying from cancer. Rejnmark said there's some evidence that calcium and vitamin D may lower the odds of colon cancer, but the evidence is not yet "firm".

For now, he said, the findings supported getting the recommended amounts of vitamin D and calcium.

Some members of Rejnmark's team had connections to supplement makers that market vitamin D and calcium products.

source: interaksyon.com

Radiation no reason to load up on supplements, health experts say

The radiation leaking from crippled nuclear power plants in Japan has unleashed fears on this side of the ocean. Despite assurances from experts that the amount of radiation reaching the U.S. is miniscule and harmless, many people here are worried that the fallout could pose a serious health threat.

And if William McBride's inbox is any indication, they're also wondering whether they should protect themselves by taking supplements or changing their diets. "I've been getting emails from friends asking me if they should take this or that," said McBride, professor of radiation oncology at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. "It's all based on a fear of radiation."

McBride's response: Don't bother. There's no evidence, he says, that anything at a health food store or grocery store could really protect you from nuclear fallout. And in some cases, he warns, the remedies could be more dangerous than the radiation.

Many people have decided to hedge their bets against radiation anyway. Stores up and down the West Coast are running low on kelp supplements and other sources of iodine, a nutrient that can protect the thyroid from radiation poisoning. Many people are also hoping to get extra radiation protection from antioxidants, such as vitamin E, vitamin C or selenium, either from supplements or foods.

Health food proponents often repeat a claim — which apparently dates back to a 1980 book by a Japanese physician — that a macrobiotic diet of miso soup, brown rice and seaweed helped many survivors of the Hiroshima bombing avoid radiation sickness.

Cherie Calbom, a self-described celebrity nutritionist and author of "The Juice Lady's Turbo Diet," says she covers her bases by putting a drop of iodine into her morning green smoothie, which includes antioxidant-rich ingredients such as chard, spinach and lemon juice. In a recent blog post, she wrote that iodine and antioxidants could lower the risk of thyroid cancer and other cancers caused by radiation.

"People want to do something," said Calbom, who lives in Seattle. "There's a lot of stuff on the Internet that's scaring them."

McBride says he's all in favor of antioxidant-rich diets and the occasional bit of seaweed. But he sees no reason for anyone in the U.S. — or even Tokyo — to change their diets or take supplements to protect themselves from radiation.

He stressed that the amount of radiation reaching the shores of the U.S. from Japan was trivial compared with all of the natural radiation — from radon and cosmic rays, among other sources — that already surrounds us on a daily basis. "We live in a world that's radioactive," he said. "There's not enough [coming from Japan] to worry about."

Even if the radiation levels intensified, McBride wouldn't recommend nutritional defenses. High doses of iodine — delivered in potassium iodide pills — may be helpful in a nuclear emergency, he said, but it has to be used with care and supervision. "Many people are sensitive to iodine," he said, so taking it during a nonemergency "can do real harm without providing any benefits." The National Institutes of Health reports that people who are sensitive to iodine can suffer from swelling of the lips and face, bleeding and bruising, among other side effects.

Jeffrey Blumberg, professor of nutrition and director of the antioxidants research laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston, agrees that the crisis in Japan is no reason to run to the health food store. In any case, he added, whether people are worried about nuclear fallout or other sources of high-energy radiation, such as X-rays or CT scans, tweaking their diets or their supplement regimens won't make them any safer.

Seaweed soups, kelp supplements and other low-level sources of iodine are generally considered safe, but McBride said they weren't going to pack enough punch to really protect anyone facing dangerous levels of radioactive iodine. A dose of potassium iodide contains about 100 mg of iodine. A capsule of Nature's Way Kelp offers 0.4 mg of iodine, about 250 times less.

Antioxidants do seem to be able to prevent DNA damage caused by radiation, Blumberg said. Radiation triggers the release of free radicals, trouble-making molecules that attack cells throughout the body. Because antioxidants can clean up free radicals, they can theoretically take away some of the sting of radiation.

A small 2009 study of pilots — a group of people who get a fair amount of cosmic radiation on the job — found that those who took antioxidant supplements had less DNA damage than those who didn't. And last week, researchers at the annual Society of Interventional Radiology meeting in Chicago presented a study suggesting that a proprietary antioxidant blend prevented DNA damage caused by CT scans.

But as Blumberg explained, damaged DNA is a fact of life that only rarely leads to cancer or any other disease. Nobody knows, he said, whether slightly reducing the amount of damage by taking antioxidants will make airline pilots or anyone else healthier. "There's no reason for anyone to take antioxidants before a CT scan," he added.

In an article published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 2008, Blumberg and colleagues wrote that high doses of antioxidants could actually harm people receiving radiation therapy for cancer by protecting the tumor along with the healthy tissue.

Antioxidants are healthy and important nutrients, he said — but they aren't the antidote to nuclear fears.

Article Source - http://www.latimes.com