by RJ Elsing
"RJ," said the e-mail from the Chief, "I have a special assignment for you. I want you to write a column that caters specifically to the interests of one self-absorbed Testosterone reader, RIPP3DTROLL69."
"He's 16 years old, a little over six feet tall, and 136 pounds, with the social and grammatical skills of a six-year-old Rottweiler afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome. His physique has been forged through weeks (almost three months, actually) of heavy bench and curl workouts using sand-filled, plastic-weights in his mother's basement, fueled with a steady diet of Twinkies, Mountain Dew, and the occasional protein shake.
RIPP3DTROLL69, this column is for you. Or not.
"Despite his horrific grammar, inexperience, and total lack of results, this member can lift more than anyone else on the forums, and knows everything there is to know about weightlifting, supplements, drugs, women, sex, and life in general. Gear the column to his individual tastes and onlyinclude stuff he personally finds interesting.
"For God's sake, don't include something he already knows or thinks he knows. Be careful! Even if the studies you choose haven't been officially published he might know this information, so you're wasting his time and insulting his psychic abilities. If you can, give him special powers so he can fly and make the act of reading the column magically add five hundred pounds to his bench, give him 32" biceps, and make his legs get bigger without doing squats.
"Oh, and if you include any pictures of women, make sure they are his ideal woman, just begging to be ravished from behind by a pizza-faced punk with has no job and hasn't accomplished anything in life aside from a 36-hour PS3 marathon andgetting his driver's license on the third try."
TC never actually sent me this e-mail, but I was half-expecting him to after my last Discoveries column. It seems, in my most humble of opinions, that the bulk of the readership just doesn't get it. "This doesn't apply to me," they say. "I'm not old, I'm not diabetic, I'm not a rat, I don't have a vagina that's atrophying." Look, there aren't any readers out there to whom all of this information is directly applicable.
Okay, maybe there are one or two old, diabetic rats with atrophying vaginas who read this, but that's not the point. The point is, you should be thinking how these studies do apply to you, the people in your life, or the people you want in your life.
It may come as news to you, but scientists conduct studies on rats and certain populations in hopes of finding information that can be useful to everyone. Cross-pollination of knowledge and ideas yields interesting results. Steroids and baseball, chocolate and peanut butter, silicone and breasts.
Do you think the inventor of silicone realized that someday his invention would result in an abundance of women with large firm breasts? Probably not, but someone else saw the work on silicone, saw a market for large breasts, and the rest is history.
Maybe all you get out of it is a laugh, a laugh which tips the scales just enough to allow your body to kill off germs that would have kept you out of the gym for a week.
During that week, instead of being home sick, you're at the gym. You're in a panic trying to think of a way to break the ice with the perfect ten in the squat rack. Instead of staring at your shoes, you take what you learn here, walk up to her between sets, help her change the weights, and causally ask, "Do you know the best time of year to obtain quality boar semen?"
She's dying to know about boar semen.
"No," she'll reply, but as she flips her lustrous hair over her shoulder and exposes a pair of large, silicone-enhanced breasts straining mightily to free themselves from a sweaty sports-bra, she'll be curious. She'll be intrigued both by your boldness and the fact that your education appears as broad and well rounded as the trophies on her chest.
No one has ever approached her before on the particulars of boar semen. She'll want to know the answer. She knows she can't get that answer from anyone else in the gym but you. "What other things might he know?" she wonders. Thanks to what you thought was nonessential information, you're in like Flynn. So sit back, enjoy, and figure out how to use this stuff.
So without further adieu, this month's Discoveries:
Cancer is no laughing matter, but laughter can effect gene expression related to immune function and up-regulate the natural killer cells responsible for destroying cancer cells, infected cells, and germs.(1)
This woman attempts homeostasis.
Drinking skim milk after lifting weights is better than drinking soy milk when it comes to promoting a positive protein balance.(3) When it comes to promoting testicular function, there's little difference between drinking soy milk and repeatedly slamming your nutsack in the refrigerator door.
The typical American diet high in salt and low in potassium creates an acidic environment which your body attempts to balance by pulling calcium from bones and muscle, weakening both.(3) This is roughly the same scenario that would occur if you were bitten by a giant spider.
Looking both ways before crossing a street is more effective than looking one way, and performing aerobics plus weight training is more effective than just aerobics or just weight training for controlling blood sugar.(4) Suspended pushups work your abs better, but also increase intervertebral joint loading, so use caution if you have low-back issues.(5)
Trust your back, not your dog.
Older adults using creatine and CLA enhance the beneficial effects of resistance training: more muscle, less fat.(6)
The original Ms. O: Rachel at 52.
It also means less chance of needing the help of family members and caregivers to wipe your butt.
Consuming protein and creatine around the time of your workout may be more beneficial than consuming it at other times during the day due to the increased transport of amino acids and creatine into skeletal muscle that comes with increased blood flow.(7) When it comes to coaxing the body to repair nerve damage, endurance exercise beats out resistance training and remaining sedentary, at least in rats.(8) Be sure to tell all your rat friends!
Does the increased body mass resulting from creatine use interfere with aerobic endurance in athletes who need to run? No, it does not.(9)
Increased body mass doesn't necessarily slow you down.
Using a shake containing creatine, protein, and carbohydrates induces greater muscle hypertrophy than protein and carbs alone. This is true whether you look at lean body mass in general, or specifically at cross sectional area and contractile protein content of muscle.(10) Creatine, while excellent in many regards, falls short as a treatment for schizophrenia.(11) And by the way, if you have schizophrenia, remember that you only need a five gram dose for yourself, not five grams for each of the voices in your head.
Only five grams needed.
The DHA in fish oil may reduce insulin resistance by increasing circulating levels of adiponectin, the hormone regulating a number of metabolic processes including metabolism of fats and sugar circulating in the blood.(12) The mechanisms by which fish oil reduces triglycerides (TG, the term for three fatty acids conspiring with a glycerol molecule in an attempt to cause heart disease) include reduced TG synthesis, increased LPL activities, and quicker blood-clearance of TG-rich particles.(13)
There's nothing sexier than a woman who wants to get your triglycerides down.
Fish oil also makes people less hostile, though the precise mechanisms are yet to be discovered.(14) Fish oil rich in DHA has been shown to reduce heart rate at rest and during moderate exercise, as well as improving outcomes in overweight adults with established cardiovascular disease. (15)
While you might never guess it, having a doctor, lawyer, speleologist, garbage collector (or anyone for that matter) stick a needle up your butt to remove cells from the prostate can be painful and have a negative impact on erectile function.(16)
Believe it or not, it hurts when you stick this into your prostate.
Naughty adolescent girls who "did it all" and engaged in oral, anal, and vaginal intercourse are more likely to take part in a constellation of sexually risky behaviors that can increase the likelihood of sexually transmitted infections.(17)
In the market for quality boar semen? The best stuff comes in autumn and winter.(18) Forty percent of women have sexual complaints, the most common being decreased desire. Testosterone improves this condition in women. Estrogen decreases pain related to vulvovaginal atrophy.(19) One-third of the variation in women's orgasmic frequency is inherited. Next time you're having dinner with her parents and are struggling for interesting topics of conversation, throw this study out there.(20)
Don't forget to thank her folks.
There's a link between the ability to achieve vaginal orgasm and less frequent use of immature psychological defense mechanisms.(21) That means that chicks who don't hold their breath 'til they turn blue are likely to come like a locomotive. The primary cause of death from breast cancer is the spread of cancer cells from the breast to the rest of the body. Resveratrol significantly inhibits this process.(22)
Resveratrol: may reduce the likelihood of death from breast cancer.
Here's hoping you found something in this article to please you, RIPP3DTROLL69.
1 Biomed Res. 2008 Dec;28(6):281-5
2 Am J Clin Nutr.2007 Aug;86(2):373-81
3 J Nutr.2008 Feb;138(2):419S-422S
4 Evid Based Nurs.2008 Apr;11(2):48
5 Hum Mov Sci.2008 Mar 23 [Epub ahead of print]
6 Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2008 Feb;33(1):213-27
7 Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2008 Feb;33(1):184-90
8 Neurorehabil Neural Repair. 2008 Mar 8 [Epub ahead of print]
9 Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2007 Dec;32(6):1052-7
10 Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2007 Nov;39(11):1960-8
11 J Clin Psychiatry. 2007 Jun;68(6):881-4
12 Metab Syndr Relat Disord. 2007 Dec;5(4):315-22.
13 Clin Nutr.2008 Mar 22 [Epub ahead of print]
14 Prog Lipid Res.2008 Mar 4 [Epub ahead of print]
15 Br J Nutr. 2008 Mar 13;1-7 [Epub ahead of print]
16 Urology.2008 Mar 25 [Epub ahead of print]
17 AIDS Behav.2008 Mar 28 [Epub ahead of print]
18 Anim Reprod Sci.2008 Feb 16 [Epub ahead of print]
19 Am Fam Physician. 2008 Mar 1;77(5):635-42
20 Attach Hum Dev. 2008 Mar;10(1):1-10.
21 J Sex Med.2008 Mar 4 [Epub ahead of print]
22 Mol Nutr Food Res. 2008 Apr 8 [Epub ahead of print]
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