#1 Program To Increase Growth - Click Here

What's the latest scoop on nutrition? What is the latest research on supplements for gaining size, reducing bodyfat, or improving health? How do the writers in the bodybuilding magazines find the information they later use to write an article, formulate a hypothesis, or come to an opinion regarding a certain supplement or food?

For me it usually starts with an afternoon spent at the Boston University medical library or the Harvard University medical library looking at journals, trying not to drool on them if I fall asleep. The last time I fell asleep I woke up to some dweeb in a white lab coat looking down at me who said "can I read that journal or do you want to drool on it some more?" Talk about embarrassing. Anyway, Friday afternoon is my favorite day to hang out at one of these medical libraries and do some research. I sit in a chair with a stack of journals (keeping my cell phone close by in case I have to call for an emergency pizza) and look for something to hit my noggin with information I can make an article out of. Some times I find a bunch of research that is interesting and potentially useful to bodybuilders, but each article in each journal is not at all related to the other and so I can't do much with the information. Generally I just file the information for future use. However, this time I decided, "what if I take a stack of this interesting - though unrelated - research and put it together as a single article?" Sort of like my Intake Update column in MuscleMag International but a little longer. Below is a brief description, with my own brand of sarcasm...err commentary, of some research I think has potential applications to bodybuilders.

Vitamins: Study #1: "Modulation of insulin-like growth factor-1: A specific role for vitamin B1 (thiamine)." This study was published in the journal Nutritional Biochemistry (1996, 7:207-213) , one of my favorite journals. Thiamine (A.K.A vitamin B1) is a water soluble vitamin in the vitamin B family. As with all the B vitamins, thiamine is particularly important for energy production in the body and serves as a co-factor for certain enzymes involved with intermediate metabolism which are directly involved with converting glucose to energy. As with many vitamins and other essential nutrients, it is well known that a deficiency in thiamine impairs growth, and animals fed thiamine deficient diets do not grow nearly as well as animals fed thiamine sufficient diets. No big news here. However, based on some of their previous research, these researchers surmised that thiamine may be a specific modulator of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). For six weeks they fed two groups of rats the same number of calories and other nutrients except one group was deprived of the vitamin thiamine. As expected, the rats who did not get the thiamine did not grow well compared to the rats who ate adequate thiamine. After six weeks of no thiamine, IGF-1 was reduced by 40%, GH was suppressed dramatically, insulin was suppressed by 30%, and the muscle wasting hormone cortisol was 95% higher than the group of rats who got the thiamine. These were some seriously catabolic rats! The researchers concluded: "these findings suggest the the regulation of IGF-1 and IGFBPs (insulin-like growth factor binding proteins) are uniquely modulated during thiamine deficiency, and that this modulation is distinctly different from any other model of nutrient deprivation and fasting, where the regulation of IGF-1 or its binding proteins is highly dependent on either energy availability, substrate delivery or the prevailing hormonal milieu." The ability of thiamine as an important modulator of IGF was independent ofcaloric intake, and this is an important point.

So what's the take home here? If you eat a decent diet and take a good multi vitamin, getting enough thiamine is not a problem. And no, I don't think eating extra thiamine would raise IGF, though it wont stop some unscrupulous supplement company from taking the findings of this study out of context and claiming thiamine raises IGF (Anyone remember boron?). The main point here is (1) our knowledge of how all the micro and macro nutrients work and interact is still quite crude. To think otherwise would be both ignorant and arrogant. (2) that a single micro nutrient deficiency could totally screw up the entire IGF-1, GH, and insulin production axis, is yet more proof of the importance of proper nutrient supplementation for maximum growth.

#1 Program To Jump Higher - Click Here