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Definition: "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance "
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23.01.2011 |
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Trained muscles stronger and harder from fasting every other day
You won’t be surprised to learn that mice get faster and stronger if they run for 20 minutes 5 days a week on a treadmill. But that the combination of this training schedule and fasting every other day makes the muscles even stronger and faster may just cause you to raise your eyebrows. We found this in a study that researchers at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide-CSIC published in PLoS One.
Half of the mice ate on alternate days for the first 18 weeks of the experiment [EOD]. A control group ate every day [AL]. The EOD mice didn’t lose any weight – apparently on the days they were allowed to eat the mice ate more.
After the 18 weeks were up, half of each group of mice trained for a period of 6 weeks, without any change to the feeding regimens [T]. So there were four groups of test animals: AL, ALT, EOD and EODT.
At the end of the 24 weeks the muscles of the mice in the EODT group had become stronger than the muscles of the other animals. During an exhaustion test the EODT mice also ran for longer and covered a greater distance.
The fat burning – beta-oxidation – was higher in the muscle cells of the EODT mice. After intensive physical exertion the researchers also found fewer signs of muscle damage in the EODT animals: they had less creatine kinase in their blood and fewer damaged fatty acids [MDA] in their muscle cell membranes.
The EODT animals had more mitochondria in their muscles. That made the conversion of nutrients into energy easier, so the mice were stronger and tired less quickly.
The researchers suspect that their animal study might be relevant to humans as well. "The combination of the reduction of calorie intake and the practice of aerobic exercise would also increase physical performance in humans and then, improve their quality of life", they write. The Spanish make no claims as to whether athletes perform better if they raise their caloric intake on one day and lower it on the next.
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