interesting ALA article

[perfectbeast2001]

ALA: Anabolic Fat Loss?
by David Barr

What would you do if I told you there was a drug that could improve your health, help you lose fat, increase your muscle growth, and enhance your post-exercise recovery? You'd be excited, right?
Now what if I told you that this drug was readily available, perfectly legal to buy, and was relatively affordable? Well, I can already hear some of you screaming:
"Oh my gawd, Dave, gimmie that drug!"
Of course, those are the people who are new to the lifting game, but even the very experienced might get their interests piqued. What really seals the deal, and ultimately yields millions of dollars in profit, is the fact that there's scientific evidence to support some of these claims. From these cutting edge data, theories are formed and applied, and this is exactly how glutamine became so popular.
In an age where effective supplements are on the verge of being banned, people are desperate to find the "next big thing." And this drug, Alpha Lipoic Acid or ALA, may be just that.
[IMG]http://www.*************/img/photos/06-055-diet/image001.png[/IMG]With its extremely powerful antioxidant ability, a potential to increase "insulin sensitivity" (backed up with plenty of science) and muscle growth, ALA will likely be the hottest supplement of the next decade. In fact, I believe that this pseudo-drug (yup, it's pretty much a drug) may have a larger impact on our society than almost any other supplement to date.

Miracle Drug?
So why is this stuff so good? Well, theories aside, it's been repeatedly shown that ALA can prevent or cause improvement in numerous health problems. Benefits include: preventing diabetes (15), assisting with blood flow and blood triglyceride levels (which limits atherosclerosis) (10), limiting hypertension (16), exhibiting powerful antioxidant activity (12), protecting nerve cells (13), and decreasing several risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease (the number-one killer in the Western world (17). Of course, these studies are largely done on animal populations, so expect to hear a lot more about this in the future.
Despite these powerful effects and their potential influence on society, I'm sure the kids are getting anxious to hear what's really important: ALA's effects on performance and body composition.

Lipoic Acid: The Theories
It's generally shown that ALA improves body composition in diabetic animals by enhancing insulin sensitivity. This makes sense because lowering blood sugar will result in a lower insulin level, which means reduced fat storage. This is a great way for us to get shredded like never before!
Not only that, but ALA can theoretically improve recovery and muscle growth, also through its insulin sensitivity effect. I mean, if you have more glucose in your muscle, then you'll have more glycogen. And greater insulin sensitivity means greater protein synthesis, muscle repair, and muscle growth.
Finally, the antioxidant activity of ALA will help mop up those free radicals that would otherwise delay recovery.

Order Now!
Now that you know everything there is to know about ALA and have seen all of the wonderful research supporting it, just head on over to my website and order your ALA for just $49.95!
Go on, I'll wait.
I take all major credit cards.
Still waiting...
Um, you're not ordering yet, are you?
Shouldn't you have run off by now and purchased boatloads of this wonder supplement? Oh, I see, you want more. You're a little savvier than the typical consumer who buys products just because an article has a scientific reference behind it.
[IMG]http://www.*************/img/photos/06-055-diet/image003.png[/IMG]Good. Because you're really missing the most important part of the ALA story, and this is the only place you're going to hear it.

Enter Objectivity and Reason: Anti-oxidant or Pro-oxidant?
Although we've established that ALA is a very powerful antioxidant, it may actually be toopowerful for us to use without damaging our cells. In fact, the one exercise study performed using ALA showed that the supplement induced oxidative damage (14).
That's right, ALA actually caused the damage it's supposed to clean up! Backing up for one second, it's important to know that the researchers used more ALA than we'd normally take, which could certainly be the cause of the unfortunate results.
So why even bother with this information? The reasons are twofold:
1) Because this is the only exercise study I know of involving ALA.
2) This is only the second exercise study in which I've seen pro-oxidative damage, and both involve the same mechanism of antioxidant action.
To elaborate on the latter point, we know that there are dozens of different cellular activities occurring at once, leading to numerous potential mechanisms of oxidative damage; the corollary to this being that we have different types of antioxidants, working in different "areas" of the cell.
What's disturbing is that both exercise studies showing the use of antioxidants causing oxidative damage involved the same type of supplement action. The research with resistance training and humans used vitamin C and N-Acetyl Cysteine (3), while the rodent running study used ALA – the latter of which are both involved in cellular thiol status and are known as extremely powerful antioxidants.
To review the important commonality: both studies used exercise, both used powerful thiol reduction supplements, and both induced oxidative damage.
I'm not suggesting that antioxidants are inherently harmful, or even that this particular type of antioxidant is harmful, but rather that we need to be fully aware of what we're putting into our bodies. We all jumped onto the antioxidant bandwagon headfirst (myself included), but as evidence emerges, we're realizing that there's far more to the story than originally thought.
Bottom line: We don't know enough about these powerful antioxidants to suggest their use ad libitum.

Insulin Sensitivity?
As we continue on our bumpy ride, an important point needs to be made about the commonly used term "insulin sensitivity." The idea of ALA improving insulin sensitivity may not be entirely accurate because this drug stimulates the insulin receptor and its subsequent signaling proteins independent of insulin (4).
In other words, with regard to signaling, ALA is basically "insulin in a pill." To be fair, the majority of this work was done in fat cells, so this may not be representative to each insulin-sensitive tissue. It may be more accurate to say that, so far, ALA is like "fat-specific insulin for glucose uptake."
[IMG]http://www.*************/img/photos/06-055-diet/image005.png[/IMG]
ALA and Fat Loss
Along with improving insulin sensitivity, the main marketing angle of ALA is fat loss. This makes sense because ALA increases glucose uptake into cells, which keeps blood sugar at a moderate level and prevents a big insulin spike.
This is important because as we know insulin is our body's main storage hormone and is responsible for both storing and preventing the burning of body fat. So the theory concludes that we keep insulin low with ALA and therefore reduce fat storage.
Based on what you've just read, do you see the critical flaw with this angle? The reality is that ALA has insulin-like effects, particularly with regard to glucose uptake and adipose tissue.
A ray of hope for fat loss lies with a study looking at the effects of ALA on fat cell growth (5). When immature fat cells were bathed in a solution of ALA (pretty much like every other ALA study we have), they resisted the signal from insulin to increase fat storage and mature into adult fat cells. This is very interesting because ALA has such a powerful insulin-like signal with regard to glucose uptake, but it may not apply to fat storage.
Although the last study is spammed by companies trying to show that ALA causes fat loss, it's really only preliminary work (unless you yourself are an immature fat cell sitting in a Petri dish). In fact, only a couple of animal studies have been done using healthy subjects and ALA.
In contrast to the last bit of research, work by a Japanese researcher (9) examined the combination of ALA and the asthma/fat loss drug, clenbuterol . What's really exciting about clen is that it exerts a nutrient partitioning effect in animals (but not humans), whereby it paradoxically stimulates muscle growth and induces fat loss.
[IMG]http://www.*************/img/photos/06-055-diet/image008.png[/IMG]What you may not find so exciting are the results. It seems that a high dose of ALA shuts down the fat burning effects of the powerful fat loss drug. This means that despite having a tremendous stimulus for fat loss, ALA blocked any such response.
If we have to find a bright side, ALA didn't seem to cause additional fat gain; it just turned off fat loss. Remember that this is a healthy animal study and is therefore far more applicable than the majority of available ALA research.

Creatine and ALA Revisited
With all of the pro-ALA propaganda, you may still be excited by its "scientifically proven" ability to enhance creatine uptake (1). Well, looking more closely at the single over-hyped study, ALA may not be the definitive super-transporter it's made out to be. In fact, there are a few things that we need to examine before reaching any conclusions.
1. First of all, ALA enhanced creatine uptake in untrained people who didn't even train for the study. You have to wonder how this would've changed had they actually worked out.
2. The carbohydrate used to enhance insulin and subsequent transport was sucrose, not glucose or maltodextrin. Clearly, table sugar isn't an ideal carbohydrate source, but this should be a minor point.
Of criticalimportance, however, is that the dose of sucrose was a mere 25g (given four times per day), which wouldn't be enough to facilitate creatine transport. In other words, the ALA group was pretty much being compared to a control that didn't even ingest carbs with their creatine. We all know that fast carbs enhance creatine transport, so we have to question the validity of this new info.
3. Also of great interest is the fact that these subjects were on the supplement for only a week, and considering the lack of carbohydrate ingestion, they may not have reached full saturation of muscle creatine. Stated differently, we don't know if ALA can have an effect on maximal creatine levels, or if ALA just helps us reach our maximal levels more quickly.
4. Finally, despite the differences in muscle creatine content, there were no significant differences in the bodyweight of the subjects. This is likely due to statistical analysis and therefore isn't all that important, but should still remain in the back of your mind.
Mini-Summary: The subjects didn't train (bad), were given negligible carbs to increase creatine transport (very bad), didn't have a statistically different bodyweight from controls, and after all of that, ALA may only increase the speed at which creatine is transported, not the overall amount.
Of course, each scientific study can only give so much information, and it's said that the best of those ultimately yield more questions than answers. Despite the flaw with the sucrose intake, the study was moderately well performed, and its results should remain as an interesting bit of trivia on which we await more information.
[IMG]http://www.*************/img/photos/06-055-diet/image009.png[/IMG]
Muscle Growth IV: A New Hope
Another frontier on which ALA is marketed pertains to its involvement in muscle hypertrophy. After all, with the ability to act like insulin in fat and muscle, surely ALA will enhance muscle growth.
Well, maybe not.
You see, one way in which ALA stimulates glucose uptake is to signal the muscle that it's low on energy. When the muscle senses this, it only makes sense that it tries to increase the amount of glucose (i.e. "energy") it brings in. While this works well for glucose, it may actually have an inhibitory effect on muscle growth.
Our bodies are bent on survival, which usually means preserving energy levels at all costs. Without energy, we die (duh). So if our cells sense that we're low on energy, the last thing it wants to do is create more metabolically active tissue (muscle). Don't forget that muscle not only takes a lot of energy to synthesize, but also to maintain, which is why it requires so much food to cause hypertrophy.
Getting back to how ALA works, it increases levels of the protein called AMPK, which is known to increase in times of reduced cellular energy. AMPK is even believed to inhibit muscle protein synthesis (2), which is basically our growth, repair, and recovery. Interestingly, the diabetic drug Metformin also works through elevating AMPK (11), and the similarities to ALA should be noted (along with the term "drug").
To make matters worse, a recent study showed that ALA inhibits the activity of an enzyme necessary for muscle growth (8). It remains to be seen whether this occurs in muscle tissue, and what impact this will have on hypertrophy.
Despite the theories about ALA inhibiting hypertrophy, the same animal study discussed earlier gives us good news (9). The high dose of ALA used in this study neither inhibited muscle growth on its own, nor inhibited the effect of clenbuterol on increasing growth. I guess a lack of inhibition isn't really good news, but it's at least neutral.
Although the preliminary data suggest that ALA has an Anabolic Index of zero (because it hasn't been shown to have a positive or negative effect so far), I expect this number to change, for better or worse, in the future.

More On Recovery
A second suggestion for the use of ALA-related recovery pertains to glycogen resynthesis. This is because we know that exercise depletes our muscle glycogen (which is essentially stored energy), and it's the repletion of this glycogen that's part of our "recovery." Of course, the theory makes perfect sense because ALA enhances glucose uptake, so it should follow that more glycogen is made/stored from this glucose.
Sadly, the available data show that ALA actually seems to inhibit glycogen resynthesis rather than enhance it (6). Initially, this inhibitory action may be surprising, but if we think back to the fact that ALA seems to trick the body into believing that it has an energy shortage, then an inhibition of any kind of synthesis makes sense. After all, why would the body try to store energy when it's in desperate need of using it?
For those of you not keeping track, that's strike three for ALA.

3 Frequently Asked Questions
Question #1: Your [sic] wrong, I know lipoic acid works!
A: That's not a question and you're an idiot. This article isn't about demonstrating that ALA "doesn't work." Rather, it's an objective review, meaning that it's an unbiased look to see what we really know about this supplement – the conclusions of which are that the data do not warrant ALA use at this time, and they certainly don't support the hype and one-sided garbage spewed by those who sell it.
This doesn't mean that ALA can't improve health or body composition; it simply means that, right now, it appears as though it's just as likely to hinder your goals as help them.
Of course, if your criterion for "working" is a reduction in blood sugar, then yes, ALA causes increased glucose uptake into fat and muscle. Finally, if you've truly noticed weight loss with ALA supplementation, you're potentially diabetic and should see your doctor immediately.
Question #2: I'm a type II diabetic. How much ALA should I be using?
A: It's probably illegal for anyone but an MD to give drug advice about a medical condition, so I'd never give such information. I can say, however, that if I were a type II diabetic (not Type I), I'd begin with 100mg of ALA and see how it affected my blood sugar. Depending on how I felt, I'd gradually increase to a dose of 5mg/lb bodyweight, with a maximum of 1200mg/day in divided doses.
Again, I must state that this isn't medical information or even a suggestion. As always, see your doctor about this kind of thing (even though he'll have never even heard of ALA).
Question #3: I don't care what you say, I know ALA gets me ripped and swole, and girls like me now.
A: Ah, you again. We need to be realistic about what we can actually notice from supplement (or even drug) usage. If you've added or lost a pound in a couple of months after beginning use of a supplement, there's just no way to say that it was the supplement that caused the change. It's quite possibly the result of any of a million lifestyle alterations that are beyond our control.
[IMG]http://www.*************/img/photos/06-055-diet/image011.png[/IMG]It's sad that people want to believe industry hype so badly that they dismiss anything contrary to their desire, even when it's objective. Then again, if all you're reading is marketing, then you've never been exposed to objectivity and may not understand the concept.

Conclusions
Hopefully this objective article has provided a well-rounded view of ALA, in direct contrast to the gross misinformation and propaganda typically provided by industry ad copy. Although the research on ALA and health disorders is incredibly exciting, it remains in its infancy when the attempt is made to apply this science to a healthy or athletic population.
The potential for ALA to inhibit fat loss, muscle growth, glycogen storage, and cause oxidative damage, is too great for most people to reasonably use it at this time. Until more data emerge, it's unfortunate that no solid judgment may yet be made on the potential for ALA in healthy groups. Now, there are always those who are willing to experiment on themselves, but we must understand the minimal weight that their subjective and biased feedback holds.
One way or another, ALA is here to stay, and I think we're ultimately better off for it. But consider dogma destroyed.

About the Author
David Barr is a strength coach and scientist with research specialty in nutrition and its impact on performance and body composition. In addition to his work for NASA at the Johnson Space Center, David's research career has involved everything from the cellular basis of muscle breakdown to work on critically ill catabolic patients. He holds certifications with the NSCA as well as USA Track and Field, and can be contacted through his website: www.RaiseTheBarr.net.
Note: Special thanks to Nathan "Ari Gold" Devey.

[ianchov]

Good to know, perfectbeast

Thanks

[K.Biz]

great post beast. so whos gonna be the guinea pig and try this ALA?

[perfectbeast2001]

I have been using ALA for the last two years. I have now stopped.

[K.Biz]

I have been using ALA for the last two years. I have now stopped.

how were ur results?

[Property of Steroid.com]

Dave's a buddy of mine. He's really great at smashing accepted nutritional dogma...check out his thoughts on glutamine.

Dude is wicked smart...even worked for NASA...which is odd, since he's Canadian...

[GrowingMuscle]

Wow, I have read so much good stuff about ALA on this board, like "supplement of the year" and crap like that...

Just goes to show ya, we should not put chemicals in our body just because it is all hyped up. At least there is solid data on steroids .

Thanks for the great read mate!

[perfectbeast2001]

how were ur results?

Well I did not really see any results from it. Now I have dropped it I do not miss it.

[JROKK26]

PB, I've read that their are benefits of using ALA while on an oral 17aa cycle for liver function? Should we now question this too?? What's your opinion??? I'll try to find the article I read, but many post and vets on these boards also recommend it.

[Property of Steroid.com]

PB, I've read that their are benefits of using ALA while on an oral 17aa cycle for liver function? Should we now question this too?? What's your opinion??? I'll try to find the article I read, but many post and vets on these boards also recommend it.

Advertising.

The reason it was popular on the boards is that a certain company which sells ALA advertises on several decent sized websites (but were just removed from Elite as a sponsor) and was promoting it heavily.

[JohnboyF]

I heard ALA is not as effective as Rala becuase rala comes with a isomer...

here is the link..
Alpha Lipoic Acid

By: Clarityandfocus


Alpha lipoic acid is a coin with two sides. As an antioxidant, it inhibits reactions promoted by oxygen or peroxides that destroy or corrupt cells. When taken as a supplement, alpha lipoic acid (ALA) increases the production of gluthathione which helps dissolve toxic substances in the liver by neutralizing free radicals produced in our bodies and protecting cells.

ALA's natural form can be found in tiny amounts in many protein rich foods, such as meats and spinach. It is also produced in small amounts within the human body. Manufacturers find it convenient and profitable to keep you uninformed of the risks in taking synthesized forms of this important neutraceutical. The result is your wasted money and compromised health.

During attempts to produce the natural form of ALA, 50% of the effort results in a form of ALA that is an inferior yet symmetrical copy of the natural form. The symmetrical by product not only is inferior in effect, but compromises the effects of the natural form of ALA.

Your body is designed in such a way that it can usually make more efficient use of the natural isomer of a molecule than it can with that molecule's synthetic look-alike. Alpha-tocopherol (Vitamin E) is a great example milligram for milligram. The d-form of the molecule is much better utilized and retained by the body than is the dl-mixture.

Still, in the case of dl-alpha-tocopherol, there's nothing particularly dangerous about having those extra, synthetic isomers in your supplement, they're just weaker, less effective imitations of the original.


Good Isomers, Bad Isomers


In other cases, however, putting the wrong isomer into your body can actually harm you. An example that's becoming well known is trans-fatty acids. Most health-conscious people know something about trans-fats, but few people understand what they are or why they're dangerous.

Found in large quantities in most margarines, but also sprinkled throughout the processed food universe, synthetic trans-fatty acids are really just unnatural isomers of natural polyunsaturated fats. When you expose the natural "cis-" isomer of a polyunsaturated fat to a great deal of heat and pressure (as is done in the partial hydrogenation of vegetable oils), you can literally twist its structure, rearranging the molecule's orientation in space. Thus the synthetic trans-isomer is created. (4)


Trans fatty acids are silent killers in the human body.


Many important molecules required for life exist in two forms. These two forms are non-superimposable mirror images of each other, i.e.: they are related like our left and right hands. Hence this property is called chirality, from the Greek word for hand. The two forms are called enantiomers (from the Greek word for opposite) or optical isomers, because they rotate plane-polarized light either to the right or to the left.

Whether or not a molecule or crystal is chiral is determined by its symmetry. A molecule is achiral (non-chiral) if and only if it has an axis of improper rotation, that is, an n-fold rotation (rotation by 360�/n) followed by a reflection in the plane perpendicular to this axis maps the molecule on to itself. Thus a molecule is chiral if and only if it lacks such an axis.

Because chiral molecules lack this type of symmetry, they are called dissymmetric. They are not necessarily asymmetric (i.e. without symmetry), because they can have other types of symmetry. However, all amino acids (except glycine) and many sugars are indeed asymmetric as well as dissymmetric.

Nearly all biological polymers must be homochiral (all its component monomers having the same handedness). Another term used is "optically pure" or "100 % optically active" to function. All amino acids in proteins are 'left-handed', while all sugars in DNA, RNA and in the metabolic pathways are 'right-handed'.

A 50/50 mixture of left- and right-handed forms is called a racemate or racemic mixture. Racemic polypeptides could not form the specific shapes required for enzymes because they would have the side chains sticking out randomly.

Also, a wrong-handed amino acid disrupts the stabilizing helix in proteins. DNA could not be stabilized in a helix if even a single wrong-handed monomer were present, so it could not form long chains. This means it could not store much information, so it could not support life.


Problems With Some Commercially Available ALA Supplements


Commercially produced "alpha lipoic acid" is no different. When producing ALA in a laboratory, the S- form of ALA is a waste of money and time. Your body spits it out like a fish does a hook and it comprises 50% of the mixture sold as alpha lipoic acid on the market. In the past, the R+ version was only available in small quantities for research by scientists. (1)

The S- form that is taking up 50% of your supplement is not just a weaker version of the real thing, like the alpha-tocopherol dl- product.

In fact, the S- form of ALA is its negative counterpart. When he reported his findings about the opposing effects of the two forms of lipoic acid on the energy-producing powers of mitochondrial particles, Dr. Guido Zimmer stated that the S- form of ALA, which is present as about 50%, needs to be eliminated. (2)

The differences between the two forms of ALA can completely alter the effects of the sugars in your body. When looking at the differences between the R+ and S- forms of lipoic acid in terms of their effects on the body's metabolism of blood sugar, their protective antioxidant activities or effects on mitochondria and the preliminary evidence of their effects on the aging process itself, Dr. Zimmer and other lipoic acid researchers found that there are cases where the S- is merely less effective than the R+ or just totally ineffective.

As you dig into the lipoic acid story, you'll also see many cases in which the S- actually counteracts the benefits of R+ alpha lipoic acid! (3) In laboratory animals, the R+ entainomer caused a 34% increase in glucose uptake by skeletal muscle cells in response to insulin while those fed the S- entainomer had no improvement in blood glucose disposal. (9)


The Positive Effects Of R+ ALA


As a weight training athlete, even if you are very insulin sensitive by nature, R+ ALA will enable your skeletal muscle bellies to hold more nutrients such as glycogen and amino acids.

To function properly, cells need a steady fuel supply. Blood sugar/muscle glycogen is the primary fuel for most cells in the body. The body produces the hormone insulin precisely in order to help get energy to the cells that need it such as skeletal muscle. Insulin is like a "key" that turns on the glucose transport "ignition" (insulin receptor) which is located on the surface of the cell.

When the "key" (insulin) activates the "ignition" (the insulin receptor), it turns on the engines of the "tanker trucks" (GLUcose Transporters, or GLUTs) that do the work of hauling glucose (blood sugar) out of the bloodstream and into cells.


Blood Sugar & Insulin!


Lately I've received a whole bunch of questions about the benefits and drawbacks of insulin, so why not straighten out the issue, once and for all? Learn the straight forward facts on insulin!
[ Click here to learn more. ]




So to get bodily cells the energy they need, and to keep blood sugar from building up to dangerously high levels, insulin must tell bodily cells (skeletal muscle) to absorb blood sugar. In healthy individuals, the cells will obey the signal and mobilize the GLUT transporters.


Importance Of Insulin Sensitivity


Unfortunately, our fast paced lifestyles and highly-processed food diets cause most of us to consume more calories and particularly, more carbohydrates than our bodies can handle.

After years of being told by insulin to take in more glucose than they can use, eventually the receptors stop responding properly to insulin's signal. They become desensitized. (6) This is the beginning of insulin resistance.



Big Fat Bastards & Insulin!

Ask any of the elite who has become truly massive beasts which anabolic substance has had the most profound effect upon their physique and the answer from the largest mammals will unanimously be insulin.

[ Learn More ]



Insulin resistance itself is a potential killer. One of insulin's functions is to control the release of free fatty acids from bodily tissues into the bloodstream. When the body doesn't respond properly to insulin, plasma levels of free fatty acids rise higher. (7)

High levels of free fatty acids keep blood vessels constricted by interfering with the action of nitric oxide, the molecule that helps your blood vessels to relax. (8) As a result, high blood levels of free fatty acids cause insulin resistant people to have high blood pressure.

Insulin sensitivity appears to be a crucial factor in achieving what we all desire: a very favorable body composition resulting in an aesthetically pleasing shape.

For strength training athletes, it is key in the sense that it promotes and facilitates the uptake of vital, precious nutrients from the bloodstream to repair damaged muscle fibers.

Also, it makes insulin's job a lot easier and this promotes a very wide array of health benefits for anyone. It is the antithesis of insulin resistance. When blood glucose remains high, the pancreas responds in frustration by pumping out even more insulin in an attempt to compensate for the resistance. This works for awhile, although the process becomes less and less efficient with time. After a meal, a "yo yo" effect takes place.

Regarding weight training athletes in particular, the skeletal muscles may not obey insulin and uptake the nutrients they desperately need to grow.

In response, insulin is overproduced AGAIN and forces blood sugar to drop too low. When that happens, the liver starts over producing glucose to get blood sugar levels back up. Then, the pancreas overcompensates by overproducing more insulin due to high sugar levels, AGAIN. This results in high fasting blood sugar and insulin levels 24/7, even in a fasted state due to the aforementioned process.


The Problem - Insulin Resistance


What happens to these nutrients without a home? They remain in the bloodstream for prolonged periods of time. They wind up in places they do not belong. This causes huge problems over time.

The most glaring is the accumulation of body fat in the visceral region for men and the hips and buttocks for the ladies. This occurs because glucose, fats and other nutrients are refusing to be cleared from the bloodstream. Of the liver, skeletal muscle and adipose cells, the fat cells are the last to become resistant. They become the dumping ground for excess blood fats (triglycerides) and glucose.



Carmen Garcia is 'finally able to accept one of her best "assets".' (pics)


High levels of triglycerides in the bloodstream for prolonged periods results in the accumulation of arterial plaque. Insulin resistance facilitates the oxidation of LDL and VLDL (the bad kind) cholesterol. This sets the stage for atherosclerosis. (5) The narrowing of the inside of arterial walls surrounding the heart due to the buildup sticky, fatty atherosclerotic plaque flourishes in the insulin resistant, hyperglycemic human body.

So, you have here a situation where incoming calories are primarily stored as bodyfat. Energy demands placed on the body derive the necessary calories to be burned for fuel mainly from skeletal muscle (stored glycogen and amino acids). The reason for the latter is the fact that fat cannot be used for fuel in the presence of high blood insulin levels, whether in the fed or fasting state.

Does this sound like a bodybuilder's nightmare? You bet it does.


Solutions To The Problem


The good news is there are solutions. What I've tried to focus on in this article is one supplement which can help throw this problem in reverse, combined with a positive change in eating habits and exercise.

The second point I've tried to accomplish is to uncover the truth about commercially sold "alpha lipoic acid" supplements. We need to choose the ALA supplement with care to be sure that we are not counteracting the benefit from the natural entainomer we need to build a better body for our health and well being...

Note: Regarding insulin sensitivity, I have found two publications to be profoundly accurate in content for the hardcore bodybuilder. I regularly read and reread "Chemical Muscle Enhancement" and "Building The Perfect Beast" by Author L Rea.

Every time I re-read one of his books or articles, I discover a fresh nugget of truth which brings some form of new progress. His cutting edge approach to what works in the real world has changed my life and improved my health. I highly recommend his work and products.

Clarity



References Cited


Dr. Ryan Streeper and colleagues, in The American Journal of Physiology and Dr. Bruce Ames, in Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence:

Dr. Guido Zimmer and colleagues, in Methods in Enzymoogy:

Ibid

Valenzuela A, Morgado N. Trans fatty acid isomers in human health and in the food industry. Biol Res. 1999;32(4):273-87.

Hu FB, Stampfer MJ, Manson JE, Rimm E, Colditz GA, Rosner BA, Hennekens CH, Willett WC. Dietary fat intake and the risk of coronary heart disease in women. N Engl J Med. 1997 Nov 20;337(21):1491-9.

Packer L, Tritschler HJ. Antioxidant properties and clinical applications of alpha-lipoic acid and dihidrolipoic acid. In Cadenas E, Packer L. Handbook of Antioxidants. New York: Marcel Dekker, 1996: 545-91.

Kwiterovich PO Jr. The metabolic pathways of high-density lipoprotein, low-density lipoprotein, and triglycerides: a current review. Am J Cardiol. 2000 Dec 21;86(12A):5L-10L.

Egan BM, Greene EL, Goodfriend TL. Nonesterified fatty acids in blood pressure control and cardiovascular complications. Curr Hypertens Rep. 2001 Apr;3(2):107-16.

Streeper RS, Henriksen EJ, Jacob S, Hokama JY, Fogt DL, Tritschler HJ. Differential effects of lipoic acid stereoisomers on glucose metabolism in insulin-resistant skeletal muscle. Am J Physiol. 1997 Jul;273(1 Pt 1):E185-91.
Other References


Yip J, Facchini FS, Reaven GM. Resistance to insulin-mediated glucose disposal as a predictor of cardiovascular disease. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 1998 Aug;83(8):2773-6.

Cotton, F.A. and Wilkinson, G., 1980. Advanced Inorganic Chemistry: a Comprehensive Text, 4th Ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc, NY, p. 47.

Morrison, R.T. and Boyd, R.N., 1987. Organic Chemistry, 5th ed. Allyn & Bacon Inc. p.150.

Cotton, F.A. and Wilkinson, G., 1980. Advanced Inorganic Chemistry: a Comprehensive Text, 4th Ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc, NY, p. 47.
Clarityandfocus