|
- Fun Fact Friday -
Hi all,
I hope you've had a great week and are glad that it's Friday.
Here's your Fun Fact Friday to end the week with some extra pizazz. Enjoy!
Please leave a review here if you enjoy reading this newsletter.
You can find a list of all my previous newsletters here.
Fun fact 1
For those who often tend to get cold feet, a ginger foot bath might be just the thing for you.
Foot baths with ginger were shown to be more effective at increasing body temps than warm water alone (R).
Fun fact 2
Thyroid function is essential for strength production since fT3 positively correlates with handgrip strength (R). This is likely because thyroid hormone greatly enhances DHT production, which is involved with force production.
"Higher FT3 concentration within normal range was correlated to muscle mass and muscle function in elderly subjects." (R)
It's a common misconception that people think that thyroid hormones promote muscle mass loss, but it's actually essential for retaining muscle mass. Very high doses of T3 can promote muscle mass loss, which is frequently seen in people with hyperthyroidism or bodybuilders abusing T3.
Handgrip strength is also one of the best markers for overall health at old age, so be sure to keep your thyroid optimized as you age.
Fun fact 3
Dioscorea esculenta, also known as lesser yam (which is a good source of diosgenin), can significantly improve insulin sensitivity, and this effect is blocked by a 5AR inhibitor (R). This study found that 2g Dioscorea esculenta per day (at around 20mg diosgenin) can enhance muscle growth and strength in athletes and was very effective at increasing DHEA, testosterone, and DHT (R).
Fun fact 4
L-Theanine (2.5 mg/kg) and caffeine (2.0 mg/kg) works for ADHD (R).
This is mainly because caffeine enhances glucose oxidation and theanine lowers serotonin, both of which are dysregulated in mental disorders, such as ADHD.
Fun fact 5
Sugar is thought to lead to weight gain (although there are many animal studies showing that it doesn't), whereas natural sugars, such as honey or fruit, don't (R, R, R). These studies found that the animals eating honey didn't gain any weight despite eating much more than the non-honey groups, whereas the sugar group gained the most weight.
"Weight gains were comparable for rats fed honey and a sugar free diet although food intake was significantly higher in honey-fed rats." (R)
Fun fact 6
Being in a low energy state enhances fear accusation (feeling fearful and associating certain scenarios with fear (e.g. PTSH)) and enhancing your energy levels reduces fear. For example, when your blood sugar is low and stress hormones high, then everything can be triggering and traumatic, but when energy production is good, it's easy not to be fearful or intimidated. In a low-energy state, a previous bad experience can make you feel depressed and shameful, but in a good energy state, that same memory is like water gliding off of a duck's back. It doesn't bother you at all.
These studies show that methylene blue, by enhancing energy production, can be useful against fear and even be helpful for PTSD (R, R).
Body temperature and health
Body temperature is crucial for proper health. Even if your body temp declines by 1 degree, you can suffer from less energy, less creativity, anxiety, depressive behaviors, ADHD, etc.
If you maximize your body (including brain) temperature, you can experience dramatic improvements in health and mental function.
Higher body temps improve sleep quality, enhance IQ, improve explosiveness and strength, enhance mitochondrial function, etc.
This study said, and I quote: "natural behavioral activation is consistently coupled with increases in brain temperature." (R)
My favorite way to increase body and brain temps is by eating a big bolus of carbs and having some coffee and aspirin with it. And the cool thing about caffeine is that "the central nervous system does not seem to develop a great tolerance to the effects of caffeine" (R).
One of the reasons I like coffee/caffeine so much is that it enhances glucose oxidation in the brain and boosts CO2 production and retention, which helps with tissue oxygenation (R). Better glucose oxidation = better brain development + intelligence.
If you get jittery from caffeine, just couple it with some aspirin and theanine.
Additional benefits of theanine include the reduction of serotonin.
"Following the administration of theanine, the brain tryptophan content significantly increased or tended to increase, but the contents of serotonin and 5-hydroxyindole acetic acid (5HIAA) decreased." (R)
Theacrine (instead of theanine) is also a good option, as it restores glucose oxidation, reduces serotonin and increases dopamine in the stressed brain.
If you feel out of breath from carbs, add in vitamin B1 and Pyrucet (from IdealabsDC) to prevent the glucose from going to lactate.
Metabolism concept
When you just start to use a certain supplement, you might experience benefits in certain aspects of your health, but experience a decline in other areas of your health. For example, if your sexual function is impaired, chances are that many other aspects of your health are also impaired, e.g. sleep, mood, cognition, humor, grip strength, recovery ability, euphoria, etc.
This indicates that you have to fix the underlying metabolic problem so that everything else can be restored. You can't only focus on sexual function without focusing on the underlying metabolic problem, cellular function, and energy production.
Another example, if you have gut issues and you produce and absorb more endotoxins, chances are that you'll have vascular and neurological oxidative stress and inflammation as a result. Thus every aspect of your health suffers. Now you use a supplement such as methylene blue, which protects against the harms of endotoxins and restores energy production. You start to feel great mentally, but your sexual function declines decrease methylene blue inhibits eNOS and nNOS as well.
But oxidative stress actually uncouples eNOS so that it doesn't produce nitric oxide, but rather more superoxide (a free radical). So if you're health is bad, your eNOS will be suboptimal. Now if you use MB, your eNOS is actually lower initially but since MB lowers oxidative stress, that will recouple eNOS and in the long run, you'll have better circulation and sexual function than before.
This is the whole concept of the Alpha Energy Course, where I share the most important information in a step-by-step fashion on how to remove metabolic blocks and how to restore the metabolism so that every aspect of your health can improve as a result. The body works as a whole and no system is isolated from another.
The whole Alpha Energy Course is soon to be released.
New article & podcast released this week
If you enjoy reading my articles and find them informative, please don't forget to share this content with others so that they can benefit from the information as well.
Quote I like
“Anyone who has ever made anything of importance was disciplined.”
- Andrew Hendrixson
That's it for today. Hope you all have a great weekend!
- Hansius
P.S. If you would like to give me some feedback e.g. what you found interesting, or give any suggestions, maybe of things that you think I might find interesting; let me know by replying to this email.
|
