Detecting insulin resistance

“Insulin resistance” gets thrown around as a bodybuilding term, though it can be an actual disease. One pretty sure symptom is the development of dark, velvety skin patches in the folds of your joints called acanthosis nigricans. It’s actually easier to see if you have dark skin; light-skinned folks don’t have enough melanin for the patches to stand out as well. It can also look like psoriasis or scabs, though this is less common.

Acanthosis nigricans is actually caused by hyperinsulinemia or the state in which your body overproduces insulin in order to trigger a normal insulin response (hence “insulin resistance”). The excess insulin actually binds to insulin-like growth factor receptors in the skin, which cause the skin to grow abnormally.

Responsible research

I’m struggling with reviewing a fairly well-known hypertrophy paper that came out a little while ago. I’m struggling not because of the paper itself but because of the way the paper’s lead writer has presented it (and his work) to the public. The guy’s name is Stuart Phillips, and he’s done a lot of good work. Unfortunately, I feel like his public persona (specifically as expressed via Twitter) is detrimental to the rest of this work. On the internet, he’s prone to hyperbole, 'off the cuff' snark, and at least one winking acknowledgment that misrepresentation is good for getting attention.

As far as the paper goes, Phillips released an abstract describing how low load training to failure was superior to similar training methods in the hypertrophy range. It caught my interest, and I went looking for the full piece. When I found the full article, it was easy to see one of several things that weren’t noted in the abstract (but often are in others’ abstracts)—that the subjects were complete newbies to training. Regardless of how this facet influences the study’s practical aspects (and there are plenty of such aspects in the study in question), it led to a surge of interest in the topic. It also led to writers like me seeking the pre-publication abstract, and even after the full text was released, it gave lazy writers an easy avenue for missing this caveat.

Phillips, as the responsible scientist in this equation, should have been more forthcoming. I haven’t seen any indication of a change in position though. This is despite being called out by folks like Marco Cardinale (on Twitter no less) and Alan Aragon (in his research review). Aragon went so far as to contact Phillips on the very subject, only to have his question dismissed. As it turns out, Phillips simply doesn’t believe that training experience is an important factor in hypertrophy. The theory seems to run contrary to prior research, so his hesitancy to explore it is odd.

I realize that in the big picture, these are small omissions (and by the letter of the law, perhaps not even sins of omission). It looked like he had a lot of grad students involved, and I wonder if that is where some of the impetus for the disquieting parts lies. I guess what’s got me torn is that I admire his work and agree with him on many other items. This divided perspective is seriously complicating my analysis of his paper. Consider this a word of caution for the intellectuals out there—Twitter is equal parts pigpen and screaming match. That’s fine for celebrity gossips, marketing folk, and hacks like me but not so much for people who should be above the fray.

Do you know what’s in your supplements?

Professional athletes are failing drug tests left and right. Some of these folks are legitimate cheaters while others don't have any reason in the world to take some of these banned substances much less be caught with illegal levels during the off-season. What’s the deal?

It may really be unintentional. It turns out that the oft-rumored practice of spiking everyday supplements with unlabeled “hard stuff” is common. It's so common, in fact, that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency is going all out to head this thing off with awareness campaigns and even a specialized website. What are the additives of choice? Stimulants, pro-hormones, and steroids for the most part. Most of the substances are found in thermogenics (read: stimulants) and bulking formulas (read: pro-hormones), so there isn’t much to say to the Average Joe other than elevate your sense of caveat emptor. On the other hand, it’s something to be concerned with if you’re a competitive athlete because folks are obviously getting busted—even a lot of post-cycle supplements feature banned ingredients. Finally, if you don’t give a rip, you can check to make sure the stuff you hope you’re paying for is actually in your supplement. There’s something for everybody!

Raw milk

There’s some potentially nice stuff in raw milk. The key word is “some.” All those special components you see on raw milk screeds sure look good, but they’re in such small quantities that even regular consumption isn’t showing much in the way of distinct health benefits. There could still be specific populations or specific applications that raw milk is perfect for, but as far as it being a panacea for blanket health, it isn't shaping up that way. As long as it’s clean, raw milk is just a nice, normal food.

On the flip-side, before pasteurization came to be in the U.S., as much as 25 percent of all food and water-borne illnesses may have been attributable to the consumption of unsafe milk. Now I’m not saying be afraid of raw milk. The demand for it is low enough to where there probably won’t be as many contamination problems that come with taking safety shortcuts. Right now, it doesn’t seem to be more than 100–200 people getting sick every year in the U.S. While I wouldn’t want to be any of those folks (or especially any of the less lucky few who died), I gotta say it seems fairly low in significance given what I’ve seen anecdotally about its demand. It personally doesn’t seem like a worthwhile risk to me, though I’m sure I do plenty of similar things that would have more rational people shaking their heads at me.

Look after your elbows

I’m dealing with a nerve condition in my arms. Some kind of entrapment or inflammation issue in my elbows has turned both limbs into tingling masses. It’s got a few experienced docs scratching their heads and me likely en route to a respected specialist in nerve pathologies if it doesn’t resolve itself. If the problem came up just when I was lifting, I could deal with it. Unfortunately, it’s affecting everyday stuff from sleeping to typing. I make my money off typing (and voice command typing is worthless), so it’s a pretty big deal, especially since long-term nerve irritation can lead to permanent nerve damage.

My recovery is supposed to be an elitefts™ article, though at this rate I don’t know when I’ll be writing it. When we think about “bad elbows” (and I’m no exception), we tend to think of their extension function via the triceps. What we miss is that our forearm muscles—especially the flexors—surround our vulnerable ulnar nerves. If you beat these muscles up too much, you’ll start getting noodle-armed and feeling like you’re always connected to live wires.

Right now, I can’t do anything involving grip or with closed elbow joints because these movements exacerbate the grind on my nerves. That means no deadlifting, no squatting, no cleans, no pull-ups, no barbell or dumbbell presses, no pull-downs, no curls or arm extensions…basically nothing. All I do now are machines squats, leg curls, and leg extensions. Even static tension from planks or just jogging on a treadmill can set the problem off. I only use machines with weight stacks so I don’t have to load plates. And it sucks. I basically do a few sets to failure and then leave before I get depressed. I call my program stupid HIT or “SHIT” for short. Trust me, it isn't much fun. I’d drown a litter of beagle puppies for some old-school, forearm braced pec decks, pull-over stations, and other hands-free equipment.

Looking back, right before I started having problems, I was coming off a diet, typing too much, had just hit a PR on my deadlift as part of a multi-month process, and was doing lots of overhead barbell presses. All this didn’t cause my problem but made nagging issues (i.e., sore elbows) into full-blown injuries. So learn a lesson that I learned too late—when you deload, deload your grip, too. I’m a skinny, weak guy by nature, and now I can’t train—and this is after a long diet with low volume training. The result isn’t pretty.

Intermittent fasting

Your tiny stomach is the biggest reason why intermittent fasting works. The best aspect of intermittent fasting is that even if you want to splurge and go nuts on pizza night, your stomach’s capacity will be a limiting factor in how much you eat as long as you stay in whatever eating window your program provides and meet your protein requirements. There’s just so much room for food. This is especially true if you have a small, daily window. Now, there’s more to it than that, but all the other little factors aren’t much compared to this core concept—stomach size limits aid your ability to stay dedicated to your diet.

That said, we don’t have much data on prolonged use of intermittent fasting approaches. One thing I’ll be interested in seeing is how the stomach adapts to various models of intermittent fasting over the long haul, especially the daily variations. Research on competitive eaters shows that the body (likely the stomach nerves themselves) seems to lose the ability to feel “full” along with some other odd effects. There’s a ton of logical leaps required to get from intermittent fasting to competitive eating but not so many that I won’t keep an eye on people’s results over time.

Force production

Sport researchers keep concluding that nontraditional exercises provide more force production than traditional lifts. I’m starting to think that “force production” is threatening to become the new “functional training,” where folks are pursuing odd data points to the detriment of sensible training.

The biggest conceptual problem with focusing on unstable unilateral training is that in the situations it seeks to aid—almost all involving running—the movement is actually pretty stable. If it weren’t, sports would just be gaggles of folks stumbling around like drunks. Unstable training can be useful as part of a balanced training program, a novel stimulus, an intervention for a potential pathology, or treatment for an injury, but until we start playing sports on wobble boards and waterbeds, overdosing on unstable lifts is the opposite of functional by any definition.

I don’t think a similar situation involving high force lifts and exercises would manifest itself within the consumer circle (as unstable training did). Instead, I could see coaches adopting a spread of restrictive or ultra-light exercises that do a great job of spiking ground reaction forces or peak velocities but do so in movement patterns foreign to the athlete’s on-field activities. And this assumes that there’s a 1:1 correlation to improving the measures in the gym and improving on-field performance. It certainly makes sense in theory, but the athletic performance and human adaption are complex topics that aren’t helped much by combining simple ideas and unwavering math.