Body Composition and Optimal Health

More than 60 million Americans have some form of cardiovascular disease (CVD), and more than 2,600 people die from CVD each day. Hypertension is found in about 50% of individuals above 55 years. Metabolic syndrome (Syndrome X), characterized by elevated blood glucose insulin responses, is one of the most common conditions seen today and is estimated to be present in about 22% of men and 24% of women.

A central factor in all of these conditions is altered body composition. Adults with altered body compositions are at high risk for developing:

• Cardiovascular disease (CVD)
• High blood pressure
• Dyslipidemias such as high blood cholesterol
• Metabolic syndrome
• Type 2 diabetes

What is Altered Body Composition?

Body composition is a measure of the amount of body mass (weight) that is present as fat, bone, and lean muscle. Altered body composition may occur from increased fat and/or loss of lean muscle, which result in an increase of fat-to-lean body mass. Although the most common form of altered body composition is excess fat, decreased skeletal mass by loss of bone, such as seen with osteoporosis, is also a form of altered body composition.

Body composition can be determined by:

1. Body Mass Index (BMI): BMI is calculated from weight and height or can be obtained from an easy-to-use chart. Individuals with a BMI of 25 to 29.9 are considered overweight, while individuals with a BMI of 30 or greater are considered obese.
2. Waist Circumference or Waste to Hip Ratio (WHR): People who accumulate fat in the abdominal area (apple-shaped body) are at a significantly increased risk for developing diseases as compared to those with fat accumulation primarily in the hips and thighs (pear-shaped body). A waist circumference greater than 35 inches for women or 40 inches for men, or a WHR of 0.8 or greater in women, or 1.0 or greater in men indicates abdominal adiposity.
3. Bioelectric Impedance Analysis (BIA): BIA uses electric signals at different frequencies, which are impeded (slow down) on whether they are moving through the fat or lean muscle mass.

How can I Support Healthy Composition?

An important part of a clinical management program to improve body composition is adequate nutrition to support lean body mass, while appropriately limiting caloric intake. The low-calorie diets commonly used in weight-loss programs may not be beneficial, and such diets may produce side effects of fatigue, dizziness, and weakness, and result in loss of lean muscle mass. Research has shown that clinical programs that include a supplemental meal replacement are more successful for weight loss. Intervention for healthy body composition should always include resistance exercise as well, since increasing muscle mass increases energy needs, helps combat fatigue, and decreases the likelihood that fat mass will return after the program is completed.

Soy Protein, Isoflavones, and Healthy Body Composition
Soy protein is a high-quality protein source that may improve blood pressure and blood lipids. Based on a thorough review of the research literature, the FDA has issued a health claim stating that a daily consumption of 25 grams of soy protein as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol may reduce the risk of CVD. Specific preparations of soy protein have also been shown to promote healthy body composition. For example, a soy-based medical food has been shown to promote lean body mass over a non-soy based meal replacement in a weight management program. And, perimenopausal women fed 40 grams of an isoflavone-containing soy protein daily for 24 weeks showed increases in lean mass, whereas a control group consuming whey protein did not.

Glycemic Index (GI), Fructose and Metabolic Syndrome
The GI assesses blood glucose response to a food, and research documents that people at risk of diabetes should maintain a diet with low GI foods. Recently, a soy-based medical food was shown to have a low GI, suggesting it could be a suitable source of protein and nutrients while maintaining a healthy blood glucose and insulin levels.

The source of sweetener in any food should be a considered as well, and fructose is a low GI, naturally occurring sweetener. Fructose is suggested as preferred sugar source for diabetics since large doses of fructose (50 grams) only modestly raise blood sugar or insulin levels, and small doses show virtually no effect on blood sugar or insulin.

Fiber and BMI
Fiber is known to promote healthy digestion, blood insulin, and blood glucose levels, as well as maintenance of healthy cholesterol levels; and, fiber associated with lower risk of CVD. In the 10-year-long CARDIA Study of more than 2,000 adults, those individuals with the highest intake of fiber had the lowest body weight and WHR, and those with the highest body weight showed higher blood lipids and blood pressure. Fiber intake of 20 -30 grams per day should be considered in the optimal diet for promoting healthy body composition.

Homocysteine, Folate, Vitamin B12 and Optimal Health
Elevated blood homocysteine is associated with aging and obesity, and is an independent risk factor for CVD. Research also shows that it is associated with altered body composition in both adults and children. Folate and Vitamin B-12 are key vitamins that promote reduction of homocysteine levels.

Calcium, Magnesium and Potassium Balance
Early studies suggested restricting sodium may be helpful in older persons, but more recent data-including those from the large, multi-center Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) trial-suggested calcium, potassium, and magnesium are more important in maintaining healthy blood pressure. Low intake of calcium is also associated with higher levels of body fat, and calcium supplementation had been shown to promote healthy body composition and decreased fat retention in clinical trials and animal studies.

Bone Health and Body Composition
Throughout life, skeletal and lean muscle masses are related. Bone density decreases dramatically after the age of 40, so that by 80 years of age, men have lost on an average of 12% and women 25% of bone. Major factors in bone health are adequate intake of bone-support nutrients, and weight-bearing exercises to promote new bone growth.

Calcium supplementation has been shown to slow or even prevent bone loss in older individuals. About half the weight of bone mineral is from phosphorus, and it is important that intake of phosphorus and calcium be in balance. Low magnesium, vitamin D and vitamin K levels are associated with decreased bone mass and increased prevalence of fractures. Supplementation with these nutrients is important in promoting bone density. In addition, research suggests that soy with isoflavones reduces the bone resorption often during and after menopause.

How Many Carbs Do You Need Post-Exercise?

If a bodybuilder asked  "Do I need carbohydrates in my drink, post-exercise?" they would have said, "You probably need some carbohydrates because of the anti-catabolic actions of the insulin spike." If someone were to ask the exact amount of grams, we wouldn't have an answer. As you know, insulin is an anti-catabolic hormone that suppresses protein breakdown.

In contrast, infusion of a low dose of insulin directly into the brachial artery has been reported to achieve the maximal effect on protein breakdown. It’s interesting that diabetics or patients with insulin resistance have increased muscle protein breakdown and increased muscle atrophy, due to the defects in insulin signaling.The increased breakdown of muscle in diabetics is also due to elevated ubiquitin-proteasome pathway (UPP) levels, which create a catabolic scenario.

Carbohydrate supplements reduce muscle protein breakdown, but have no effect on muscle protein synthesis. In fact, even though carbohydrate ingestion reduces muscle tissue breakdown, the net balance of protein kinetics still remains negative. Most bodybuilders recommend incorporating periodichigh-glycemic meals, which spike insulin— especially post-workout. This is not only effective for maintaining an anabolic state, but the insulin spike that results also shuts down the UPP pathway and reduces muscle tissue breakdown.

A recent study  reports that increasing amino acids, or leucine alone, acts with insulin to downregulate muscle protein breakdown and reduce UPP. Thus, the use of l-leucine while dieting seems to be effective for reducing muscle tissue breakdown by reducing UPP. In addition to hormonal stimulators of UPP, resistance exercise also increases UPP, which is a normal adaptation to exercise. For years, bodybuilders have been told to consume a high-glycemic index shake with some added protein/BCAAs after exercise, but a new study will make you ask, do you need a ton of carbs, post-exercise?

How Much Is Enough?

A new study examined both low and high carbohydrate ingestion before resistance exercise to determine how many carbs is enough. The researchers used equivalent amounts of essential amino acids (~20 grams) but differing amounts of carbohydrates (low carbohydrates = 30 grams; high carbohydrates = 90 grams). The male research subjects ingested nutrients one hour after an acute bout of leg-resistance exercise.

30-Gram Rule

The results of the study were quite interesting. Of course, the group that consumed 90 grams of carbohydrates had larger increases in blood glucose levels, but the results in protein synthesis were similar.The researchers concluded that the findings were similar to previous studies, which found that muscle protein synthesis is not enhanced when carbohydrates exceed 30 grams. The researchers did not detect any significant differences in gene expression for markers of muscle catabolism following larger dosages of carbohydrates.7They concluded that the changes in muscle protein synthesis were due to changes in the essential amino acids, while only a moderate dose of carbohydrates (~30 grams) is needed. Furthermore, these changes occur irrespective of the carbohydrate dose or circulating insulin levels.

So when bodybuilders are using post-workout carbohydrate beverages, 30 grams are all you need— and taking more than that does not seem to provide additional benefit in terms of muscle protein breakdown.

The Hidden Secrets to the Clean Bulking

Gaining weight is easy, most of us know that. Sit down and eat pizza, ice cream, and cookies every night for dinner and you’ll be packing on the pounds in no time. But we’re not looking for sloppy weight; we want to do it the right way, the healthiest way possible. There are several techniques I’m going to outline in this article that should put even the hardest of hard gainer down the right path towards adding at least a good ten pounds of lean muscle tissue to his frame this winter.

What’s one thing most hard gainers use religiously? Protein drinks and weight gainers. The reason most of these small guys can’t gain size in the first place is because they are not big eaters. Most little guys have the appetite of an 11 year old girl. Fine, that’s nothing to cry or complain about. Just like a muscle can be trained, so can an appetite – it just takes work. But until you’ve retrained your mind and stomach to crave the chicken and rice like a super heavyweight bodybuilder, there are a few things first I want you to try.

Next time you’re taking scoops of weight gainer or whey protein out of the tub and into your shaker cup or blender, add extra virgin olive oil into the mix. Just 1 tablespoon of the heart healthy oil offers up an extra 170 calories to your shake. If you’re one of those guys that take 3 shakes a day, you’ve now added approximately 500 extra calories to your day that you otherwise never would have known existed. Over the course of a week you’ve now added 3500 additional calories to your diet. Dietetics 101 tells us that 3500 calories is equal to one pound.

Night time eating is next. Whatever you’re used to having as your biggest meal of the day needs to come no more than 30 minutes before bed. This meal needs to have copious amounts of calorically dense macronutrients. A good 8-12 ounce piece of red meat, with pasta, white rice, or potato, and topped off with 2-3 heaping scoops of natural peanut butter are the first things to come to my mind. Now, that’s not to say you can’t still double up and do that same meal for your lunch, dinner, or post workout feast, but you should be mindful and enter it into your meal plan just before bed as well.

And speaking of late night eating, you should consider eating round the clock. Setting the alarm clock and waking up around 3am for food is another great method to increasing overall caloric intake. It has added benefits on top of just more food per day. It will also increase your metabolism by stoking the fire, and therefore making your new weight gains much leaner. If you’re the type who is knocked out cold at night, just prepare a shake to sit next to your bed. If you’re a light sleeper and can get up and heat something up even better. I would recommend a precooked Tupperware meal that you can stick in the microwave. You want to get right back into your REM sleep as quick as possible after eating, so being up for an hour preparing food and eating isn’t the best idea. If you can warm up your food, eat, and be back in bed in less than 20 minutes, you’re on the right track.

The often counterintuitive hidden secret to the clean bulk is doing cardio. One of the most challenging things about being on a diet for easy gainers is that they are forced to do cardio and it makes them extremely hungry when they step off the treadmill. The same rules apply to hard gainers, just with a blunted response. By doing as little as 15 minutes of walking after a workout, you can increase your appetite. Suck down your whey protein isolate immediately after you’re done lifting and then hop right on the treadmill, elliptical, or bike. You don’t even have to go fast; just enough to cool down and let the adrenaline from a hard workout subside. In most cases, this always increases appetite.

Give one or a few of these ideas a try. There’s no excuse to not being able to gain 10 to 15 pounds of new tissue every off season. Most guys can gain double that amount if they’re doing the necessary things to increase their odds. The key is and always will be consistency. If you’re diligent about your eating for 3 days and then slack off for 3 days, you’ll be spinning your wheels all off season. Your diet needs to be 100%, you’re training needs to be 100%, and your rest needs to 100%. There are no shortcuts on either three.

Strength training protects against high blood pressure

If you have high blood pressure, many doctors and patients think you shouldn’t be doing strength training. This is not the case write researchers at the Catholic University of Brasilia in a new research. The researchers say strength training actually has a positive effect on people with high blood pressure.

Exercise can help prevent high blood pressure, and people who already have high blood pressure can reduce it a little by starting to do more exercise. The indications that endurance exercise – for example, 40 minutes of cycling at an intensity of 60 percent VO2max – helps reduce blood pressure are strong.

Less is known about the effects of strength training on blood pressure, although we do know that, during sets with heavy weights, blood pressure can shoot up. For people with vulnerable blood vessels, the temporary peak in blood pressure may be too much, although there are studies that suggest that good breathing technique and the use of blood-pressure lowering medicines such as propranolol can help flatten off the peak.

We also know that blood pressure declines a little in the first hour after a strength-training session, in people with normal blood pressure and in those with raised blood pressure. This would suggest that strength training might have a positive effect on blood pressure.

The researchers wanted to know what the effect of strength training would be on women with high blood pressure who were taking medication for this. Would strength training have a positive effect? Or would the women be better off doing moderately intensive forms of exercise?

To answer this question the researchers got 32 women aged between 60 and 75, all of whom had high blood pressure, to do strength training three times a week for four months [EG].

The women trained the main muscle groups each session, doing ten simple basic exercises: lat-pulldowns, leg-extensions, chest presses, hip abductions, leg curls, leg presses and calf raises. The women performed three sets of each exercise. They started off at 60 % of the weight with which they could just manage 1 rep, and built this up gradually to 80 %.

When the women were not taking medication against high blood pressure, their systolic pressure [pressure during the heart beat] was above 140 mmHg and their diastolic pressure [the pressure between two heart beats] was above 90 mmHg.

The first table below shows that the resting systolic blood pressure in the experimental group decreased by 14.3 mmHg. This was a statistically significant effect.

The second table shows that the diastolic resting blood pressure went down by 3.6 mmHg. The effect was not quite significant.

So women with high blood pressure that is under control can happily do strength training the researchers conclude. They must be sure to gradually increase the weight they work with.

Careful strength training can even help to keep blood pressure under control and may even help lower it. “Chronic reduction of resting blood pressure observed in this study may be translated as a significant protective effect on the volunteers cardiovascular system”, the Brazilians write.

Squat produces more growth hormone and testosterone than leg press

Squats create a stronger anabolic stimulus in the body than equally heavy sets on a leg press machine. Sports scientists from the University of North Texas report on this.  The Texans discovered that bodybuilders synthesise more growth hormone and testosterone after a squat session than after a session on a leg press machine.

Strength training done with bars and dumbbells produces better results than using machines. Training with free weights is also better for physical coordination and stimulates more muscle groups than training with machines does. What’s more, the movements you make with free weights tend to be more natural and therefore injuries are less likely to happen.

Whether training on machines or with free weights also has different physiological effects is not known. That’s why the Texans did an experiment with ten well-trained male strength athletes – average age 25 years – who trained their legs on two occasions: on one occasion doing squats and on another using the leg press. Both times the athletes did 6 sets of 10 reps. For each training session they used weights that were 80 percent of the weight at which they could just manage 1 rep.

Immediately after the session and 15 and 30 minutes later, the researchers observed that the concentration of testosterone and growth hormone in the men’s blood was higher than the previous measurement. But the increase in the two muscle-building hormones was considerably higher after the squat training than after the leg-press training session.

The men found both kinds of training session equally tiring.

When the researchers calculated the amount of effort the men had expended during the two sessions, they discovered why the concentrations of growth hormone and testosterone were higher after the squat session. Although the men used more weight on the leg-press machine their exertion was 42 percent higher during the squat session.

That’s because the men also had to work against their own bodyweight during the squats, and because the range of movement is greater during a squat than when using the leg press.