Every month in the print edition of TRAIN magazine (or the PDF version which you can download for free by signing up to our newsletter), we take a look at the latest studies and condense them into small, actionable pieces of information for you, the reader.
The word restriction in a print magazine means that sometimes the studies aren’t expanded on as much as they need to – that’s where our magazine author, digital editor and WBFF Pro athlete, Altug Kop comes in to fill in the blanks.
Details – Nutrition – Issue 46
What we said in the magazine :
Making reparations
You’re smashing training, with your progress the envy of your gym family when you mess up a notoriously low blood supply area like your tendons or ligaments, which makes for painstakingly slow healing.
A paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition may have solved this frustration – adding 15g of vitamin C enriched, hydrolysed collagen to a pre-workout meal doubled levels of collagen synthesising pro-peptide.
Mix 15g of collagen with 30g of whey in your pre or post-workout shake to make up for collagens incomplete protein profile and get back to the house of gains.
The full story :
This was actually an interesting study where the researchers used both humans (8 young, healthy males) and artificially grown ligaments in the lab to complete their study.
The gelatin supplement increased blood levels of amino acids and other markers that are linked to collagen synthesis but this doesn’t necessarily translate to a real-world improvement in healing and stronger ligaments/tendons.
They also tested the lab-grown ligaments and the mechanics of them were all improved which is a very exciting finding.
It’s just not guaranteed to have the same practical application in real life.
It’s easy to get hold of collagen supplements, though and they aren’t prohibitively expensive if you wanted to conduct a short experiment to see for yourself.
What we said in the magazine :
A gut feeling
Your gut is a hot bed of bacteria but inviting more of the friendly kind to the party in your stomach could just be a case of eating more whole grains.
A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition compared identical diets, just changing the grains.
The whole grains group increased their short-chain fatty acid producing bacteria, Lachnospira, considered vital for healthy immune and inflammatory function.
Two cups of whole grains a day from brown rice, pasta or oats will have you befriending these bacteria that’ll lower digestive issues, super charge your immune system and hike up your energy levels you need to train with intensity.
The full story :
The strength of the study is that both groups had macros and calories controlled as well as meals prepared for them.
This is a much more accurate method than asking participants to self-report their diets.
Though, we can never be sure that they weren’t eating things outside of their prescribed diet as this wasn’t a metabolic ward study (basically where participants are under watch 24/7 – prison, essentially.)
The researchers are adamant that the effect is very modest between whole grains and normal grains consumption.
There’s also the debate whether this effect is simply achieved because people consuming whole grains will be getting more fiber in by default. So, is it the fiber in general or whole grains, specifically?
It makes sense to eat whole grains over refined grains where you can, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to use whole grains specifically for improving gut bacteria.
There are more questions than answers in this regard.
What we said in the magazine :
Too Toasty
Like your toast…toasty? Or potatoes, crispy?
You may want to turn the heat down as the Food Standards Agency has just launched a campaign against the carcinogenic compound, acrylamide, which is released at high temperature cooking of starchy carbs.
That doesn’t mean the sweet crunchiness should be avoided – just limiting yourself to one serve per week can raise the protective shield against the big, bad C. Your abs won’t mind either.
The full story :
Acrylamide is a pretty inconclusive area of study.
It came to prominence when it was shown to cause animals cancer who had it in their diet but studies on humans have proven inconclusive.
It’s still good practice to reduce the consumption of them as they tend to come with calorie dense foods like chips, crisps, toast, cakes, biscuits, cereals among others.
