I hope you have enjoyed some of the post on my blog.Howver to clean up the site and give it better credibility it will be closing and reopening here at our new bog The Core Matrix.

Hope to see you there.

Let’s face it, the extra pounds you’re carrying around are due to overeating – plain and simple.

Why do you overeat? Here are a few likely reasons:

1. Habit: Whether you realize it or not, you eat in a learned pattern, rather than out of need. You clean your plate because that’s what your mother taught. You eat what is served without stopping to check if you are full. You butter two pieces of toast for breakfast rather than questioning if one piece would do the job.
2. Absentminded: You forget to pay attention when you eat. Mindless munching while watching a movie, snacking while driving, or picking at food while cooking – these absentminded calories really add up.
3. Something Deeper: Sometimes you use food for recreation or to change your mood. These calories may lend you a temporary sense of comfort or pleasure, but ultimately your body suffers from the indulgence.

Here are 3 Steps To Overcome Overeating – read these, and apply them to your life.

Step #1: Pay Attention

Be aware of what and how much you eat. This simple concept will save you from hundreds upon hundreds of calories each week.

To apply this rule, don’t eat while your attention is distracted by another activity. Only put food in your mouth when you are hungry and conscious of it. This means turn off the T.V., get out of your car, and no matter what you do, don’t graze in the kitchen while cooking.

Step #2: Practice Balance

Be aware of the types of food that you eat during each meal, and make sure that it’s balanced. When you eat a balanced diet filled with lean protein, whole grains, lots of veggies, a few daily servings of fruit and limited fat and sweets, your body will be satisfied and you’ll lose the urge to overeat.

This means you shouldn’t always eat carb-based meals, and you also shouldn’t always eat high-fat meals. Make a mental checklist of the food groups that you’ve eaten each day. Did you eat lean protein? Did you have plenty of vegetables? Did you refrain from eating more than one or two primarily carb-based meals? This mental checklist will save you from making food decisions that you’d later regret.

Step #3: Be Tuned In

Your body will always tell you when its hunger has been satisfied – you’ve just gotten so good at ignoring the signs that you barrel through your meal only to feel like you’ve been hit by a ton of bricks once all that food hits your stomach. It’s time to take a deep breath and listen to your body.

An important part of being tuned in is to eat slowly. Once you start to pay attention you’ll notice a point when each bite becomes less and less satisfying. That is your body’s way of letting you know that you’ve had enough and that each continued bite is simply overkill (yes, even if you’re only halfway through that plate of pasta).

By learning how to control your eating habits, you’ll find weight loss to come simply and naturally.

Want to speed up your weight loss, make it permanent, and shape your body at the same time? I’ve got what it takes to get you there! No guess work, no fad diets, and no super long workouts.

Call or email today to learn more about my fitness and fat loss programs that will quickly change your life.

What is high cholesterol?

Do you have a liver? Then you produce cholesterol.

Our liver produces anywhere from 1-2 grams of cholesterol per day. Production can decrease when we eat cholesterol-rich foods and increase when we eat foods without cholesterol.

Cholesterol’s name comes from the Greek words kholē, or bile (since it was first isolated from gallstones), and stereos, or solid, which indicates that it’s part of a class of molecules that are known collectively as sterols. (The term “steroids” comes from this common root.)

Cholesterol is necessary to produce vitamin D, steroid hormones, and bile acids. It’s also a component of cell membranes.

Lipoproteins

Cholesterol is fatty and doesn’t mix well with blood, so it travels in our blood via a protein “wrapper” known as a lipoprotein (the prefix “lipo” is similar to “lipid”, and both come from the Greek lipos, meaning fat).

We often hear about HDL and LDL cholesterol — these actually aren’t “cholesterols” per se but rather the protein “wrappers” that transport the cholesterol.

HDL, aka high-density lipoprotein, aka “good cholesterol”, mops up excess cholesterol and brings it to the liver for disposal.

LDL, aka low-density lipoprotein, aka “bad cholesterol”, also has an important job: it transports cholesterol and fat from the liver to the rest of the body.

LDL’s bad rep occurs because it’s also the main ingredient in vessel plaque. LDL cholesterol seems to be the most problematic when it comes to heart and vessel health, as it’s fragile and susceptible to oxidation. Oxidation is bad news.

Another lipoprotein, called Lp(a), can help restore damaged blood vessels in a healthy body. But some people have too much Lp(a), and it can concentrate at the damaged artery sites, leading to plaque buildup.

 

Why is high cholesterol so important?

There appears to be an association between elevated cholesterol and risk of premature death from cardiovascular disease.

210 mg/dl is the average cholesterol level for those in developed countries. This level predicts a 50% chance of premature death due to atherosclerosis. Bummer.

Going from 200 mg/dl to 260 mg/dl bumps up chance of death by 500%. The Framingham study showed that no one has died of cardiovascular disease while having a cholesterol level below 150 mg/dl.

Just getting blood cholesterol right under 200 mg/dl might not be enough. 35% of heart attacks that occurred in the Framingham study were in those with “normal” cholesterol, between 151 mg/dl and 200 mg/dl.

Some have argued that the association between cholesterol and cardiovascular disease, part of a theory of heart disease known as the lipid hypothesis, is minimal at best.

Still, other experts have stated that maintaining a low cholesterol level (less than 150 mg/dL) can protect us against cardiovascular disease.

“Regularly maintaining a cholesterol level of less than 150 mg/dl makes one practically heart attack proof and insures against further progression of the disease.”
–Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn

“Heart disease is virtually unknown in regions where cholesterol is under 150.”
–Dr. T. Colin Campbell

“Only a cholesterol level below 150 is satisfactory.”
–Dr. Joel Fuhrman

“We’ve never had a heart attack in Framingham in 35 years in anyone who had a cholesterol level under 150…Three-quarters of the people who live on the face of this Earth never have a heart attack. They live in Asia, Africa, and South America, and their cholesterols are all around 150.”
–Dr. William Castelli

“Heart disease is almost non-existent in places where blood cholesterol is very low. If your cholesterol is around 160 mg/dl or less, your risk of heart disease is virtually zero.”
–Dr. Terry Shintani

Gosh, it seems like lower is always better. Not so fast.

Some data indicate that low cholesterol levels are associated with depression and cerebral hemorrhage.

And consider the Greek island of Crete. Not a single heart attack was registered among a half million people during a ten year study period. Yet, the average citizen of Crete has a cholesterol level above 200. This might be due to the protective effect of unprocessed fats (think Mediterranean diet).

While cholesterol seems to play an important role in cardiovascular disease, it’s definitely not the only factor involved.

So what’s the point of cholesterol?

Cholesterol has a number of important metabolic functions, as described above.

A higher cholesterol intake might be associated with greater muscle growth.

Why? Well, cholesterol is the precursor to important anabolic hormones that are related to muscle growth/repair.

Cholesterol is also the basis for other reproductive hormones such as other androgens and estrogens. (Short version: no cholesterol, no sex hormones.)

Cholesterol is an essential component of biological membranes and helps to increase membrane viscosity, which increases the exposure of membrane proteins to compounds coming in from outside the cell.

What you should know about high cholesterol

1 in 3 North Americans has high cholesterol and 200 million prescriptions for cholesterol lowering drugs were written in 2008.

We know that cholesterol levels can be managed by nearly everyone via nutrition and lifestyle modifications, so why do millions use cholesterol lowering drugs? Because it takes work to control cholesterol.

And perhaps because the production and sale of statin drugs is one of the most lucrative pharmaceutical markets. Statin drugs are one of the top two selling drug classes in the US. (The other is drugs to combat gastro-esophageal reflux disease, or GERD.) With the exception of generic lovastatin (about $30/month), depending on the type of statin, consumers can pay $70-150 per month for a prescription… often for life.

(Statins and reflux drugs… kind of makes you think, doesn’t it?)

What type of decrease in LDL can we expect from our diet?

Type of eating style	% decrease in LDL cholesterol
American Heart Association Standard Guidelines	6%
Atkins Style (higher protein and fat)	No significant changes
Lower fat, plant-based, still including dairy and eggs	16%
Mediterranean	No significant changes
Statin drugs	26%
100% plant-based diet, well planned, with nutrient dense foods	33%

Some nutrition/lifestyle data have indicated a 40% drop in LDL over the course of one year. So, if your LDL is 150 mg/dl and you incorporate the recommendations in this article, one year from today, your LDL could be 90 mg/dl.

Take that, statins.

How to control blood cholesterol

Let’s outline what we can do to control blood cholesterol.

#1: Get and stay lean

The eyeball test is sufficient here – if someone looks fat, they are fat.

Gaining bodyfat will likely increase blood cholesterol. If body fat decreases, cholesterol will too.

#2: Eat at least 10 servings of vegetables and fruits each day

There are countless substances in food that have cholesterol lowering properties. Many are found in vegetables and fruits.

If you really want to make a dent in your cholesterol, aim for about 90% of your food intake each day to be from vegetables, fruits, beans, whole grains and nuts/seeds.

#3: Eat at least 1 cup of whole grains each day

Eating whole grain foods is associated with a 15 to 25% reduction in premature death from all causes. In fact, researchers found that those who ate 6 or more servings of whole grains a week had less plaque in their arteries that those who ate whole grains less often. Eating 3 or more serving of whole grains each day means a 30% lower risk of atherosclerotic disease.

We speak only of WHOLE grains; processed carbs will cause your HDL to take a nose dive.

#4: Eat at least 1 cup of legumes each day

Legumes are fiber rich. Fiber binds to cholesterol in the digestive tract. Take that, bile acid sequestrants.

#5: Eat at least 1/3 cup of nuts/seeds each day

Clearly, you’d want raw instead of the sugared/roasted variety. These nutrition powerhouses are seriously cholesterol lowering.

#6: Eat/supplement with omega-3s (algae or fish oils)

Foods and supplements with omega-3 fats have been reported in several large clinical studies to reduce LDL levels.

#7: Exercise at least 5 hours per week

Sweat for at least 5 hours each week. Mix it up between resistance training, conditioning, and flexibility.

This is one of the few ways to boost HDL.

#8: Eat plenty of herbs and spices

This includes ginger, garlic, and curcumin. Ginger can increase circulation and curcumin can block cholesterol uptake in the gut.

Even cocoa can help. Flavonoid rich chocolate can decrease LDL, increase HDL, and reduce platelet stickiness. See All About Chocolate for more.

#9: Limit meat, processed foods, trans fats and dairy

Lots of meat and trans fat seem to be a bad deal for blood cholesterol. Some grass-fed, organic type of meat is fine, but if the factory raised stuff is the foundation of your diet, you may run into cholesterol issues. For trans fat, processed foods and dairy – aim for as little as possible to maximize your cholesterol control.

#10: Drink at least 4 cups of tea each day

Tea can help to lower blood cholesterol, reduce arterial plaque, improve blood vessel function, and decrease lipid oxidation. If you drink coffee or soda, aim for the lower caffeine varieties. Caffeine can increase cholesterol levels by nearly 10%.

Finally, if you don’t drink alcohol, don’t start. If you do, only use it in small amounts, see All About Alcohol for more.

A note on supplements

With all supplements, don’t run out to the vitamin store and fill your pockets. Chat with your doc first and consider what you really need.

• Red rice yeast extract – This stuff actually contains the same ingredient found in statin drugs. This should be taken under your doctor’s supervision – powerful stuff. 600 to 1200 mg twice a day with food.
• Omega-3 oils – Anti-inflammatory and anti-clotting. They can also help to convert small dense LDL particles into larger buoyant versions. That’s a good thing. 1 to 4 grams a day.
• Niacin (vitamin B3) – This can increase HDL while decreasing LDL and Lp(a). Watch out for niacin-induced flushing, which is the result of vasodilatation. Decrease the flushing by taking the niacin with food or a small dose of aspirin. Too much B3 can cause liver stress and toxicity. 500 to 2000 mg daily with food.
• L-carnitine – This stuff can help to control Lp(a). 1 gram twice per day can be helpful.
• Plant sterols/stanols –These are found naturally in many plant foods and can trap dietary cholesterol in the gut, so it’s best to consume them with meals. We get approximately 200-500 mg of sterols and 20-60 mg of stanols in the average diet. Many foods are now being fortified with them (e.g., orange juice, margarine, etc.). 2 grams of sterols/stanols per day might be effective.

A note about dietary cholesterol

Dietary cholesterol has minimal impact on blood cholesterol for most individuals. In general, eggs don’t seem to have a negative effect on blood cholesterol measures. Omega-3 eggs might even have a beneficial effect since they improve key blood proteins and decrease blood glucose.

Summary and recommendations

1. Get and stay lean
2. Eat at least 10 servings of vegetables and fruits each day
3. Eat at least 1 cup of whole grains each day
4. Eat at least 1 cup of legumes each day
5. Eat at least 1/3 cup of nuts/seeds each day
6. Eat/supplement with omega-3’s (algae or fish oils)
7. Exercise at least 5 hours per week
8. Eat plenty of herbs and spices
9. Limit meat, processed foods, trans fats and dairy
10. Drink at least 4 cups of tea each day

Extra credit

If you decrease your LDL cholesterol by 1%, you decrease your chance of cardiovascular death by 2% to 3%.

If you increase your HDL by 1 mg/dl, you decrease your chance of cardiovascular death by 2% to 3%.

In those who eat a plant-based diet, a high potassium/manganese ratio can bump up blood cholesterol. Extremely low levels of sodium can also contribute to an increased LDL.

Some experts claim that nearly all people over the age of 40 who are sedentary and eat a Standard American Diet are found to have a significant amount of atherosclerosis in their coronary arteries.

In 2007:

• More than one million coronary angioplasties were performed in the U.S.
• More than 400,000 coronary bypass operations were performed in the U.S.
• The cost was more than $100 billion

Plant sterols have now been found in atherosclerotic plaques – which might be a bad thing.

A Harvard-led study author reported:

“High triglycerides alone increased the risk of heart attack nearly three-fold. And people with the highest ratio of triglycerides to HDL — the “good” cholesterol — had 16 times the risk of heart attack as those with the lowest ratio of triglycerides to HDL in the study of 340 heart attack patients and 340 of their healthy, same age counterparts. The ratio of triglycerides to HDL was the strongest predictor of a heart attack, even more accurate than the LDL/HDL ratio (Circulation 1997;96:2520-2525).”

Further resources

No More Heart Attacks – Ever

Heart Disease Risk Calculator

References

Eat For Health, Fuhrman J.

The Spectrum, Ornish D.

Riechman SE, et al. Statins and dietary and serum cholesterol are associated with increased lean mass following resistance training. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 2007;62:1164-1171.

Consumers’ Union. The Statin Drugs: Prescription and Price Trends – November 2004 to October 2005. January 2006.

Role of Plant Stanol Esters in Cholesterol Management: Enhancing the Efficacy of Diet and Statin Therapy. Am J Cardiol 2005;96(Supplement):1-54

Reverse Heart Disease Now, Sinatra ST, et al.

Craig WJ. Health effects of vegan diets. Am J Clin Nutr 2009;89:1627S-1633S.

King DE, et al. Adherence to healthy lifestyle habits in US adults, 1988-2006. Am J Med 2009;122:528-534.

Walker C & Reamy BV. Diets for cardiovascular disease prevention: what is the evidence? Am Fam Physician 2009;79:571-578.

Mente A, et al. A systematic review of the evidence supporting a causal link between dietary factors and coronary heart disease. Arch Intern Med 2009;169:659-669.

Fraser GE. Vegetarian diets: what do we know of their effects on common chronic diseases. Am J Clin Nutr 2009;89:1607S-1612S.

Pollan M. In Defense of Food. 2008. Penguin Press.

Jenkins DJA, et al. The effect of a plant-based low-carbohydrate (‘Eco-Atkins’) diet on body weight and blood lipid concentrations in hyperlipidemic subjects. Arch Int Med 2009;169:1046.

Devries SR. What your doctor may not tell you about cholesterol. Warner Wellness. 2007.

Herper M. How many people take cholesterol drugs? 2008. http://www.forbes.com/2008/10/29/cholesterol-pharmacuticals-statins-biz-cx_mh_1030cholesterol.html

Taubes G. Good Calories Bad Calories. 2007. Knopf.

This is a special research review article, because I’m reviewing our own John Berardi’s new article that just came out on Christmas Eve. In addition to the usual review, I’ll be asking John questions throughout the article to get a better idea of his thought process as he developed the study. It’s like being in the lab with Dr. Berardi!

Before we get John involved, I’ll briefly go over why carbohydrates, proteins or any combination thereof would matter to you and for your aerobic recovery.

Bonking

Have you ever heard of “hitting the wall”? “Bonking”? (No not boinking — this is a family friendly blog!) Hitting the wall and bonking are what runners and cyclists, respectively, describe what happens to your body when you run out of glycogen.

Hitting the wall feels like you have completely run out of energy. If you have ever suffered from hypoglycemia, then you have some idea of what this is like. Some people even have hallucinations, dizziness and weakness. It doesn’t feel good, and you’ll definitely have a hard time finishing whatever you are doing. The average weekend warrior running a marathon normally hits the wall around 20 miles (32 km) into the 26 mile (42km) run. Hitting the wall is so much of an issue in rookie marathon runners that running experts suggest that newbies have at least one training run until they hit the wall, in order to be able to handle the feeling during a real race.

Physiologically, “hitting the wall” is similar to what happens when your car runs out of gas. The faster you drive the faster you use the gasoline, which is what happens with glycogen -– the more intense the exercise, the faster you go through glycogen.

Big deal, you say. So, you hit the wall, run out of glycogen… don’t you have fat to use? Yes and no. It turns out that if your exercise intensity is high enough (above about 50% of your max aerobic capacity) fat just can’t be converted fast enough to provide enough energy (ATP) for your muscles to use. If you’re better trained you can use more fat at a given intensity, but you still need glycogen to go as fast as you can.

Glycogen is a polysaccharide (literally, “many sugars”) made up of glucose. Think of a glucose as a Lego block and glycogen the wall you make with the Legos. The average glycogen molecule is made up of around 60,000 Legos, or glucose molecules. Your body stores glycogen primarily in your liver and your muscles.

What happens you run low on gas? You go to the gas station and fill up your car. It’s pretty much the same thing when you run out of glycogen: you need to fill up with carbohydrates. Can you make (re-synthesize) glycogen faster if you take in protein at the same time? Could you pump gas into your car — or glycogen into working muscles — faster?

Research question

This is the kind of question that JB wanted to answer in his study.

Does supplementing with a liquid carbohydrate-protein supplement improve cycling performance compared to carbohydrate alone?

Study citation:

Berardi JM, Noreen EE, Lemon PW. Recovery from a cycling time trial is enhanced with carbohydrate-protein supplementation vs. isoenergetic carbohydrate supplementation. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2008 Dec 24;5(1): 24.

My first question for JB is why he asked this question. It may seem odd, but when you read or hear of studies you should ask yourself: why did they decide to do this? Is this a follow-up of another study? Is this in response to someone else’s study? Is this the first study to address this question?

Question for JB: What drew you to looking at cycling performance and supplementation? You’re known more for your involvement in weight training than endurance exercise. JB: It’s no secret I believe that recreational exercisers should emphasize a mixture of weight training and high intensity interval exercise to get into the best shape of their lives. However, my work with elite athletes does run the gamut from strength and power athletes to endurance athletes and everything in between.In fact, right now, two of our sponsored athletes are Dede Griesbauer, America’s top triathlete, and Chandra Crawford, gold medalist in the 2006 Olympics in the sport of cross country skiing. I’ve also chased through France with the Tour de France on more than one occasion. I’m definitely a cycling fan and that helped with my decision to use a cycling model for this study. There are also many scientific reasons for choosing cycling performance. Indeed, with the right equipment, the cycling model is one of the best for looking at nutrition and performance. For starters, it’s easy to take blood and respiratory samples when a subject is sitting down cycling. Imagine trying to take the same samples while someone is running. Random needle stabs, respiratory head gear bouncing all over the place. Not good. Next, with cycling we can have cyclists race against pre-recorded performances in a “virtual reality” environment. So we have the comfort and accessibility of the lab with the “feel” of real road cycling. Finally, recovery nutrition is partly aimed at carbohydrate replenishment. And in cycling, there’s a simple relationship between glycogen content of the quadriceps and performance. We can measure carb content of the quads with and without different recovery interventions to see just how they impact glycogen and performance. With other activities, especially weight training, the relationship between glycogen in a specific muscle and performance isn’t so clear.

Methods

15 male cyclists came to the lab 3 times, twice for familiarization and once for day-long testing.

Familiarization involved the cyclists biking on a Serotta Size Cycle at either a 5% or a 7% grade (depending on cycling strength) for 60 minutes with the goal of going as far as possible. Since this was a stationary bike,  “as far as possible” was calculated based on the cyclist’s mass, percent grade and how fast the cyclist was going (estimated by the power [in watts] they produced). The cyclists warmed up and cooled down for 5 minutes before the 60-minute ride.

The importance of a “testing” session is pretty obvious, but “familiarization” is probably not at as obvious. Why bother with a familiarization session? Don’t these guys already know how to ride a bike?

In any new situation you have a learning curve. In this case, even though all the participants were cyclists and knew how to cycle, they may have never cycled on this particular type of bike nor in this particular manner. The experimenter can also tweak things at this stage to optimize the future test session. In this case, JB probably did minor adjustments to saddle height and figured out which gradient (5% or 7%) was best for the given cyclist. By having two familiarization sessions JB was able to minimize any effect that the learning curve might have had on the final testing.

Just for reference, the famous Alpe d’Huez, a mountain regularly featured in the Tour de France, has an average gradient of 7.9% and is 13.8 km long. According to CyclingNews, the current record for doing this is held by Marco Pantani, who managed 36 minutes and 50 seconds in 1995.

Research subject cycling in the lab. Notice the headgear recording respiratory samples.

The race simulator program used.

Another reason in this case for a familiarization session is to get a good base for the cyclists’ abilities. JB set a computer pacer during the first familiarization that was based on the cyclists’ speed 2 seconds earlier. But the cyclists didn’t know this. They were told that the pacer was based on their cycling ability and to try to beat it as convincingly as possible. (Scientists are sneaky. Not because we like fooling around with people and messing with their heads, but because we have to make sure the participants are giving it their all in order to make sure that effort doesn’t play a factor anywhere during the experiments.)

In the next familiarization session, the pacer was set to be exactly the same as the first session. The best performance of the two-familiarization sessions was used as the pacer for the morning test session.

Question to JB: Were the familiarization sessions helpful? Would you consider these guys to be in pretty good cardiovascular shape? Why not go with “untrained” individuals? JB: No performance study is any good without familiarization sessions. The learning effects are just too great. The best example is working out a different gym. Usually, during the first session at a brand new gym, I don’t give it my all because of the uncertainty. The bars might be different, the visuals different, the benches different, etc. But after a few sessions, when I’m familiar, I can go for it.In our study, we used only two familiarization sessions because the average performance between session 1 and 2 wasn’t statistically different. If there been a significant difference, we’d have kept bringing the cyclists back until their performance normalized. Then we’d have known they were truly familiarized and ready for some sort of evaluation. Actually, the fact that it only took two familiarization sessions was a testament to the fitness of these participants. Most of them were high level cyclists and triathletes. They already knew cycling well. Many of them have indoor training bikes at home. So they were pretty comfortable coming in and giving ‘er. With untrained individuals, we’d have had a different study on our hands. More familiarization would have been required, motivation levels would have been lower, and our study might not have been at all applicable to the population we were most interested in studying here – competitive cyclists.

Breakfast of champions?

On testing day the cyclists came to the lab in the morning. Two hours before testing, they were given a standardized breakfast: Vector Meal Replacement cereal, Vector cereal bars and skim milk.

Table 1 – Meal nutritional breakdown

	Kcal/kg	g/kg Carbs	g/kg Protein	g/kg Fat
Vector Meal Replacement cereal, Vector cereal bars & skim milk	7	1.2	0.3	0.1

Question for JB: Why Vector?  The breakfast meals were designed to be easy, to provide adequate kcals, and to deliver a “typical” intake of protein, carbs, and fats. We looked at what these individuals normally ate for breakfast and tried to approximate it as best we could.Vector calls their product “meal replacement” instead of cereal or granola bars because they contain whole grains, less sugar than normal, and are spiked with protein. Not whole foods nor organic by any means, but way better than regular sugary cereal. In all, the breakfast was a suitable choice and close enough to their regular intake not to affect the results. In addition, Kelloggs was generous enough to donate all the meal replacement cereal and bars so it was a no-brainer.

Round 1 – One hour of cycling

After a 10 minute warm up, the athletes cycled as far as possible in 60 minutes at either a 5% or 7% grade. This ride was the morning or AM_ex session. During the ride, they were allowed to drink as much water as they wanted, but nothing else. After the ride, they cooled down for 5 minutes.

Intermission: Supplementation and feeding

5 minutes after the cool down, cyclists were given 1 L (4 cups) of post-exercise liquid supplement that contained carbohydrate-only or carbohydrate and protein.

Table 2 – Liquid Supplement Nutritional Breakdown

	Maltodextrin	Glucose	Whey protein hydrolysates	Energy content
Carbohydrate + protein	33%	33%	33%	4.8 kcal/kg bodyweight 0.8g/kg carbs 0.4g/kg protein
Carbohydrate	100%	-	-	4.8 kcal/kg bodyweight 1.2g carbs

Question to JB: Why have them cycle as far as possible versus, say, having them cycle to exhaustion? Cycling to exhaustion doesn’t really mimic sport that well. You see, there aren’t many sports that measure how long someone can run or ride a bike until they drop from fatigue. Instead, most endurance sports measure how long it takes to go a certain distance. Now, we could have chosen to do that in our study.For example, we could have had folks ride a certain number of kilometres and see how fast they did that distance. However, in the sport of cycling, typically many time trials are ridden in 1 hour or less. So we wanted to standardize the time (1 hour) instead of the distance. Either would have worked. And both are better than cycling to exhaustion in terms of real world applicability.

An hour and two hours after the ride the cyclist were given the same 1 L of post-exercise liquid supplement that they received right after the ride. Then four hours after the ride they were given another “breakfast” meal. See figure 1 below for a diagram of the test session.

Figure 1 – A diagram of the test session

Round 2 – Another hour of cycling

The PM_ex, or the afternoon exercise session, was the real test. Until this final exhausting ride, there was no data to show which supplementation was better. All the previous sessions and morning ride had one purpose: to set up and provide comparison for this final ride.

The last ride, PM_ex, was paced from the AM_ex performance. The cyclists were given exactly the same amount of water as they drank in the AM_ex to make sure that hydration levels didn’t affect the results.

Measuring results

Along with measuring distance and power output (in watts), JB collected expired gas (air the cyclists breathed out) and blood during the two test rides. By collecting expired gas –- specifically, a volume of oxygen and a volume of carbon dioxide -– JB could calculate how much carbohydrate and fat the athletes used. He used the blood samples to figure out how much glucose and lactate was in the blood serum.

Expired gas was sampled from 5-15 minutes and 35-45 minutes, but only the last 5 minutes of each sampling was analyzed. Blood was taken at 15 and 45 minutes into the rides. In case you’re wondering how a researcher can take blood from somebody while they’re cycling, let’s just say it takes some forethought. It’s a bad idea to try to jab someone with a needle while they’re riding as fast as they can, so before they started cycling JB put a venous catheter into the crook of the cyclists’ elbow (aka the antecubital region) for easier sampling during the ride.

Question for JB: Why sample expired gas for 10 minutes, but only analyze the last 5 minutes? It has to do with the equipment we used. Air gets trapped in the collecting tubes and the measurement device itself when sitting idle. So the first few minutes of collection actually push that “stale” air out. This ensures that during the actual 5 minute analysis period, you’re analyzing only the expired air of the participant.

Figure 2 – Times of gas collection and blood collection during the two 60-min test rides (AM_ex and PM_ex)

Question to JB: It must have been a really long day. You had each cyclist in the lab for at least 10 hours. How long were you in the lab on your average testing day? On days I’d run only one subject through the protocol, it was about a 13-14 hour day with set-up and wrap-up. After the subjects left, I’d have to treat their blood, freeze part of it, and then take the rest down to another lab for analysis. Some days, however, I’d run 2 subjects and those days would last even longer. No complaints, though. I’d sleep in on days I wasn’t collecting data!

What did JB find out after all those long days in the lab? Did carbohydrates alone do the job? Find out next week in Part 2!