[MikeMartial]

And by carbohydrates, I mean potentially harmful and really misundestood. Chris over at Conditioning Research just posted a really thought-provoking post:

Anti-Oxidants: More Harm Than Good?

One of the studies he cites:

Moderate exercise is an antioxidant: Upregulation of antioxidant genes by training.
Gomez-Cabrera MC, Domenech E, Viña J.

Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Valencia, Blasco Ibañez, 15, 46010 Valencia, Spain.

Exercise causes oxidative stress only when exhaustive. Strenuous exercise causes oxidation of glutathione, release of cytosolic enzymes, and other signs of cell damage. However, there is increasing evidence that reactive oxygen species (ROS) not only are toxic but also play an important role in cell signaling and in the regulation of gene expression. Xanthine oxidase is involved in the generation of superoxide associated with exhaustive exercise. Allopurinol (an inhibitor of this enzyme) prevents muscle damage after exhaustive exercise, but also modifies cell signaling pathways associated with both moderate and exhaustive exercise in rats and humans. In gastrocnemius muscle from rats, exercise caused an activation of MAP kinases. This in turn activated the NF-kappaB pathway and consequently the expression of important enzymes associated with defense against ROS (superoxide dismutase) and adaptation to exercise (eNOS and iNOS). All these changes were abolished when ROS production was prevented by allopurinol. Thus ROS act as signals in exercise because decreasing their formation prevents activation of important signaling pathways that cause useful adaptations in cells. Because these signals result in an upregulation of powerful antioxidant enzymes, exercise itself can be considered an antioxidant. We have found that interfering with free radical ****bolism with antioxidants may hamper useful adaptations to training.

Berardi has eluded to this in the past, and Rjkd12 has always been a huge proponent of the fact that exercise-induced oxidated stress was in fact good for us. Smart cats, those fellas.

[Forsaken]

And people wonder why the public is confused on health.


Even I don't understand the shit.

[Forsaken]

And apparently I'm supposed to eat 10 pounds of red meat and 24 eggs a day.

[theNuge]

Originally Posted by Forsaken

And apparently I'm supposed to eat 10 pounds of red meat and 24 eggs a day.

LMAO!

I'm right there with you my friend. All of the sudden I've been worried about the carbs I'm taking in from vegetables after reading what solkanar has to say .

[MikeMartial]

Originally Posted by Forsaken

And people wonder why the public is confused on health.

Even I don't understand the shit.

Totally understandable. I mean, understandable that you don't understand. See? Even that doesn't make any fucking sense.

Mike's Version of Cole's Notes on this Stuff:

People have been told for years that anti-oxidants are good for them; they scavenge free-radicals, highly reactive unpaired electrons that cause cellular damage. How do we fix this? Well, in addition to eating tons of fruit and veggies, we supplement with stuff like vitamin C, vitamin E, green tea extract, red wine, dark chocolate, grind up acai berries and snort them, etc etc. The more anti-oxidants, the merrier. The higher or ORAC, the bigger the hard on.

But it's not so. Some oxidative stress is bad, some is good. In this case, oxidative stress induced by exercise up-regulates adaptive mechanisms. In this case it's completely true: What does not kill us makes us stronger.

A blown-out-of-proportion example:

Johnny goes to the track and does 10 sets of 400m sprint intervals. His twin idiot, Billy, does the same workout. After the fact, Billy takes a shwackload of vitamin E and vitamin C to combat "exercise induced oxidative damage", and to help him recover for the next workout. But lo and behold, he's actually suppressing his own body's adaptation to the stress.

So what do we do? Stop taking all anti-oxidants? Quit eating fruit? Take more? Take less? Spaz out? Well, I still take anti-oxidants. I take E, C, I eat dark chocolate, I drink red wine. What I don't do is take any supplemental anti-oxidants PWO. I like to think of it as "micronutrient timing".

Now tell me that's not totally clear as mud.

[theNuge]

Originally Posted by MikeMartial

Johnny goes to the track and does 10 sets of 400m sprint intervals. His twin idiot, Billy, does the same workout. After the fact, Billy takes a shwackload of vitamin E and vitamin C to combat "exercise induced oxidative damage", and to help him recover for the next workout. But lo and behold, he's actually suppressing his own body's adaptation to the stress.

That seems pretty intuitive that you should load up on the vitamin C after a workout like that. At least it seems intuitive to me. Hell, if I drank a crapload of orange juice or ate a lot of oranges and what not it would make me feel like crap. And aren't bodily "feelings" a way of telling us what's good and what's not good for us?

Please go easy on me with that comment and question since I didn't feel very smart typing it .

[MikeMartial]

Originally Posted by theNuge

That seems pretty intuitive that you should load up on the vitamin C after a workout like that. At least it seems intuitive to me. Hell, if I drank a crapload of orange juice or ate a lot of oranges and what not it would make me feel like crap. And aren't bodily "feelings" a way of telling us what's good and what's not good for us?

There's not a very clear-cut answer no matter how you look at it. There's proponents of using vitamin C before and after training to suppress cortisol production; in theory, the practice has merit. But is the vitamin C we get from a pill the same as the vitamin C from an orange? Is there essential, unidentified compounds that interact with the vitamin C in that orange that we just aren't getting in pill form? Probably. Does it make a difference? I don't know.

The human body is an amazing piece of work; it's the only "machine" that gets better the harder it's pushed. When we start throwing modern science into it in an attempt to make it more efficient, even in good faith, we don't always succeed. Ask anyone around here: I'm far from a tree hugger. But sometimes it's best to let Mother nature deal with maintaining balance.

[XTrainer]

Fantastic thread, Mike. This is THE issue at the forefront of my overly nutrition-centric mind right now. In fact, if I were to see Berardi at the local grocery store (hey, I can dream...) I would ask him about this topic.

There's are two issues here: How much oxidative stress is good, and assuming we do want to avoid most oxidative stress, does "overdosing" (using the term loosely) on antioxidants actually lead to a harmfully pro-oxidative environment?

While the mainstream media has (over?)hyped antioxidants for years, there is certainly a healthy caution among lots of the "real" experts, Berardi included. In his review of supplemental Vit. C, he mentions not taking too much at one time because it can become pro-oxidative itself. I should note that Berardi has never made fear of pro-oxidation a HUGE component of his nutritional strategies (I don't want to mischaracterize his positions, which seemed moderate and could very well have shifted somewhat).

Anyway, I question whether there really is something to fear here. Anecdotally, we all know people (probably a lot of ourselves) who have stopped getting those little cold and flu viruses that go around after taking what basically amount to "megadoses" of antioxidants (500mg-1000mg Vit. C tablets probably being the most common). And what about super-high ORAC supplements like greens powders, fruit powders, and heck, cocoa powder? Could these substances actually be "fighting for the bad guys?" It's a fascinating issue.

[erco]

In about 1 month, I'm gonna cut out all fruit in my diet for 3 months to see both the body comp and energy effects this will have. This just gives me more motivation.

[XTrainer]

^Not to sidetrack this thread, but personally, I think fruit is overrated as far as "advanced" nutrition is concerned. I say "advanced" because I don't want to scare people away from fruit: It's still infinitely better than any processed crap. Having said that, if you aren't eating any junk and are eating loads of veggies, veggies can probably provide all the micronutrients and fiber you need, and fruit is basically micronutrients, fiber, and sugar, right? So all the fruit is doing is giving you more sugar, which you probably don't need.