By Jim Goetz and Dr. Michael Brandon, DCWe begin the show off by asking our listeners to make sure they subscribe to our podcast either via iTunes or Google Play. The more subscribers we have the more listeners we can dispense the latest research to best understand human health, function and fitness.If you like our show, tell a friend to subscribe and give an honest 5 star review. You can also be a patron and donate to our show so we may reinvest in our efforts for you.Follow Up on Intermittent FastingThis past week we have been receiving countless emails and approached by individuals asking about muscle growth and fasting. Some believe that they feel stronger while fasting for brief durations and this may lead to enhanced muscular development. The results of short term fasting may be near negligible in terms of both subjective and objective muscular development. However, if you have ever seen anyone who is truly starving; they appear emaciated. When one fasts for 16 hours to multiple days at a time, the body acts in many phenomenal physiological ways (as was discussed last week). One of these ways though is to shut off mTOR. This is directly proportional to protein synthesis. If the mTOR pathways are shut down, your body is no longer developing muscle. This is because all your body's resources are focused in efforts to keep your organs functioning. This is the main reason your body will go through autophagy. It is the effort to rid itself of non- essential cells. Afterwards, the body may be strengthened (if done properly and under the direct supervision of an educated healthcare professional). This in a way is a metaphor to "Sharpening the Saw", as described in the book Seven Habits of Highly Successful People by Steven Covey. ​We will cover much more in depth the concept of autophagy in a future podcast.

 

Milk and Osteoporosis Prevention

Next we tackle the concept of osteoporosis prevention. There's typically two things that first come to thought with protecting/reversing brittle bones, and that is increasing calcium stores and adding resistance training. Exercise appears to be the #1 preventative measure for keeping our bones nice and strong. This concept is supported with “Wolf”s Law” which states how when bone is stressed and used with impact like running or being pressured by the extra weight of resistance training, our body lays down more bone to make it thicker, and helping to prevent fractures. 

We then discuss the power, or cautions of calcium supplementation. Studies have repetitively shown that moderate to high does of calcium supplements increase the risk for stroke and myocardial infarction, especially in those predisposed like post menopausal women. This seems to be from the high does of calcium increasing clotting factors and promoting atherothrombic events, like blood clots which can embolize and go through our blood stream and cause a stroke or get stuck in our hearts causing a myocardial infarction.

Another caution with supplements, as Dr. Brandon and The Mad Scientist Jim Goetz, spoke about in week 1's podcast, is we only absorb so much of any given nutrient at a time, and not all forms of a supplement are created equal. For example, calcium carbonate is a common form in supplements and is often found cheaper than calcium citrate, which has over double the bio-availabilty and we absorb much more of it. If you supplement with a higher dose then we can absorb, it just gets push through and we have a little more calcium in our urine that day.

Supplementation is just that, its to supplement what we aren't getting in our diet. To note on that, getting calcium, and all nutrients for that matter via food is by far the best. It is already in the best bio-available form because we evolved to be able to break those down and get the most absorption possible from it. So what is the best sources to eat for calcium? Good Question!

The best sources of calcium appear to be from leafy greens such as turnips, ka