Excess Arachidonic Acid is damagingthe inflammation and Joint
- Thread starter John Smeton
- Start date
John Smeton
Legend
You can't say this for sure without any substantial data to back this up
Thats true breaking it down into bits Deer; however I think safety has been established using certain protocols i.e. not using it for too long..etc
DeerDeer
Registered User
It's not a study, just an invited commentary that discusses several smaller studies. The bottom line is that we ahve some data...but not much. Guarded conclusions can be made.
Several points that were not mentioned...
"However, without seeing the data on platelet fatty acid composition in this study it is not possible to assess this further. Furthermore, no arachidonic acid-derived eicosanoids such as prostaglandin- I2 and thromboxane-A2 are reported here and so it is not possible to properly assess the functional impact of the supplement."
"Furthermore, there is no information on the impact of increased arachidonic acid supply in disease. It is possible that inflammatory processes that already exist within an individual could be exacerbated by providing exogenous arachidonic acid."
"However, the discovery of novel anti-inflammatory mediators produced from arachidonic acid25 and the identification of hitherto unknown anti-inflammatory
actions of mediators previously considered to be proinflammatory in nature26 indicate first, the complexity of this system and, second, that predicting the effect that increased arachidonic acid supply might have is difficult."
"...it is important to keep in mind that, just because there is little biological impact of an increase in arachidonic acid intake or status11 – 20, there may still be significant benefit from a decrease in its intake or status."
nelix
Well-known member
Long term study? It's a food product. This debate is crazy, of all the weird untested things we put in our bodies, this is the one people pick on?
As far as I am concerned AA is as safe as Protein and fish oil. Humans consume these items constantly, that is the long term study, this is a true supplement, unlike some of the other weird plants and chemicals we consume which have never been consumed outside of the last 10 years!
As far as I am concerned AA is as safe as Protein and fish oil. Humans consume these items constantly, that is the long term study, this is a true supplement, unlike some of the other weird plants and chemicals we consume which have never been consumed outside of the last 10 years!
John Smeton
Legend
Yes its a lot safer than synthetic chemicals. Human health is in its beginning stages the more we learn the better
DeerDeer
Registered User
What part of the pathway did you not understand? It is not appropriate by any means to blindly accept a new supplement. It would be ignorant to do so - sadly it happens all to often by uninformed consumers.
No one is picking on anything. This is educational and knowledgeable individuals CARE about what they put into their bodies. Claims are made and debated. We are presenting all fo the data we have at hand.
Comparing AA to protein and fish oil is absolutely rediculous! Fish oil has been studied several thousand more times on indiviuals than AA supplementation. Don't get me started on protein. Lordamercy!
nelix
Well-known member
Claims are made to be debated, and here I am debating
The comparison makes sense, comparing food items to other food items... I just think all this attention is misdirected, there are a great many strange plants that I think are much less studied than a fatty acid that is part of our diet...
pudzian2
Banned
i think it is important to consider his last statement. AA hasn't been studied nearly as much in its anabolic inflammatory actions. whereas omega-3's found in fish oils are anti-inflammatory. we tend to think of inflammatory things as bad. Yes we eat AA in foods, we also get omega-3's from foods. That is not to say we get SUPER HUGE quantities of each from dietary sources esp after cooking. so the debate is important. just because humans get some AA in their foods here and there- there haven't been long term studies on the intentional supplementation with upwards of 1g per day for 50-100 days...doing this several times and seeing what (if anything) it could lead to besides its obvious muscle building potential.
DeerDeer
Registered User
Excellent point!
nelix
Well-known member
I agree the debate is important.
I am not suggesting people supplement AA past what they need... But people who exercise use more AA than people who don't, and we are often on low fat diets... I see this as one of the only true supplements (like protein, fibre and EFA's).
There's a few AA studies that are positive.... The FDA says its GRASS... People are freaking out because it causes inflammation... Is it causing it or is it helping your body signal inflammation it is supposed to have? (real questions, I have no idea)
I am not suggesting people supplement AA past what they need... But people who exercise use more AA than people who don't, and we are often on low fat diets... I see this as one of the only true supplements (like protein, fibre and EFA's).
There's a few AA studies that are positive.... The FDA says its GRASS... People are freaking out because it causes inflammation... Is it causing it or is it helping your body signal inflammation it is supposed to have? (real questions, I have no idea)
pudzian2
Banned
good points. i hope someone who knows will answer. I'd like to know as well. I do agree that it could be useful on a low fat diet. OF course using wiht a diet rich in steak and eggs etc may not be healthy but i will say again that i think this debate is worthwhile.
ImJ2x
Well-known member
I believe "a diet rich in steak and eggs" is actually the preferred diet when using AA. Isn't it?
jjohn
Registered User
Yep! Indeed!
ReaperX
Well-known member
Same here.
tamiller866
New member
Before we even concern ourselves with safety of a product, it would make sense to have some evidence that the product works.
I've yet to see any evidence that dietary AA supplementation either builds muscle or cuts fat (in adult humans).
If a product is proven to work, then it becomes an individual decision whether the anabolic benefits out are worth any possible side effects.
Why are we putting the cart before the horse with AA? The only double blind human study (Baylor, sponsored by MN) to evaluate whether AA supplementation combined with a high protein diet and resistance training resulted in no benefit versus placebo.
FrankJ
Member
Thats some funny sh1t man!
pudzian2
Banned
i agree. but in their defense and from a business perspective the time and money to invest in such research is usually not available in this industry. it would be nice if they did what they did to generate cash (e.g designer gear) and then spend some time and money on researching alternatives. agreed.
ReaperX
Well-known member
I can understand from a business standpoint why they do it, it brings in a lot of money, and I mean a lot.
I'd rather have alternatives to safer supplements vs. designers that can also prove effective as well.
Actually to be honest with you, I've pretty much tried everything on the market that I've wanted to up until this point with an exception of a few supplements. I've tried a decent amount, but by no means a lot actually. Some things that are still within the radar:
-Furzadrol by Axis Labs (maybe)
-X-Factor (again, this time dosing it properly)
-Molecular Nutrition's new cell volumizer (whenever it comes out)
-Anabolic Xtreme's new creatine (whenever it comes out)
-Gaspari Nutrition's Plasma Jet
Everything else I've either tried, or deemed junk, IRO (In Reaper's Opinion).
Other than that nothing really is entertaining out on the market that would even remotely entice me to try otherwise else.
pudzian2
Banned
i have tried alot of things (not really also, but still) over my years of training. Mostly junk you can buy at GNC and Vitamin shoppe. Creatines, NO boosters, Test boosters. Things work when you need them and know how to use them. for instance: creatine does what its supposed to. but now what most companies claim. NO boosters may help certain people blah blah. test boosters may have a noticeable effect on those with low test etc...but all in all- if i had the few hundred bucks i spent on that junk now, I could put it to much better use.
really just goes to show knowledge is power
nelix
Well-known member
jjohn
Registered User
We're coming up with a new volumizer. I won't say an exact date of release, because it has been delaied a few times lol
w_llewellyn
New member
This is an overly critical summary of the study, which did show statistically significant gains in peak anaerobic power, reduced catabolic/inflammatory IL-6, and statistically strong trends for increased average anaerobic power, anaerobic endurance, and bench press strength.. and this was all shown in spite of using small groups, which make statistical significance more difficult to reach.
I'll also remind you that every measure of strength, performance, and body mass (including total and DEXA lean mass) was higher in the AA group. Statistical significance can be a b1tch in small short studies like this, and unless the mathematics support AA was the cause with greater than 95% confidence (done by examining individual responses as well as between groups), it isn't going to be reported in the final paper.
For example, the mathematics supported AA as the cause for all the strong trends with 80%+ confidence.. This means that there was only a 7-20% chance (mathematically) each set of greater gains in the AA group was a random finding. Very strong by most standards, but not strong enough for a final paper..
AA works for the vast majority of people that try it, especially if they are very trained and making slow progress. People that use it know it, and this is just one small step in the long road to scientific validation.. There are not a large body of supplements even attempting this now, as most companies put their money in marketing new ingredients instead of scientific research on them.
Note that I am not faulting others for not funding such studies, as indeed this is a long arduous road to try and follow.
tamiller866
New member
It "works" in that people are gaining weight, but they are just getting fat:
Silent Killer: The Link between Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes Dr. Barry Sears
CBN.com ? Obesity is one of the biggest generators of silent inflammation. Since nearly two-thirds of Americans are now overweight, this means that the epidemic of silent inflammation is also out of control. By the same token, our diabetes epidemic has grown by 33 percent in the last decade. It should come as no surprise that all three epidemics have worsened in recent years. All three are intricately connected with a condition known as insulin resistance.
Insulin resistance occurs when your cells become less responsive to the actions of insulin, forcing your pancreas to continuously produce more insulin to drive glucose into cells. This excess insulin (produced as that response to insulin resistance) also increases the storage of body fat. So the real question behind our current obesity epidemic is what actually causes insulin resistance?
No one knows for sure, but there is a growing opinion that the molecular cause of insulin resistance may originate in the endothelial cells. Endothelial cells form a very thin barrier that separates the bloodstream from your organs. If this barrier is not working very well, you have a condition called endothelial dysfunction, which means among other things that insulin can no longer easily pass from the bloodstream through the endothelial barrier to interact with its receptors on the cell surface. It?s only when insulin interacts with these receptors that the cell can take up glucose from the bloodstream. Any difficulty insulin has in getting to its receptors will keep blood glucose levels elevated. The body responds by pumping out still more insulin, now creating a condition known as hyperinsulinemia.
Obesity from a Different View
What if the epidemic rise in obesity in the last twenty years was not primarily due to the usual suspects (fast food, TV, junk food), but fueled by increased silent inflammation, which increases insulin resistance? This means that unless you reduce the underlying silent inflammation, any other approach to reduce obesity may be doomed to failure. This also means that simply restricting calories will not be enough to turn back our current obesity epidemic.
I believe that obesity starts with excess arachidonic acid (AA). You can increase arachidonic acid in the bloodstream either directly by eating too much of it (it?s particularly high in fatty red meats and egg yolks) or indirectly by consuming too many high glycemic-load carbohydrates, which increase insulin production, which in turn promotes increased AA production. Either way, the body goes to great lengths to take any excess AA out of the circulation and store it away in your fat depots in an effort to keep inflammation under control.
Here is where the trouble starts, because fat cells aren?t simply inert balls of lard sitting on our stomach, thighs, and hips. These cells are very active glands that can secrete out large amount of inflammation mediators if they?re given the right stimulus. As your fat cells become filled with more AA, it causes an overproduction of pro-inflammatory eicosanoids in the adipose (fatty) tissue.
Eicosanoids play an integral role in your health. Just ask the Nobel Prize committee, which awarded the 1982 prize in medicine for the discovery of eicosanoids. They are also the most powerful hormones, since they affect the synthesis of virtually every other hormone in your body. In a sense, you can think of eicosanoids as ?super-hormones? capable of bringing great health benefits (?good? eicosanoids), or great harm (?bad? eicosanoids), depending on which one a cell produces.
Now you can probably guess what happens. These ?bad? eicosanoids induce the formation of new inflammatory mediators that spew forth from fat cells into the surrounding circulation--and generate systemic silent inflammation.
Now before you start cursing all your fat, I want to emphasize that all fat is not created equal. Some types of fat are far more harmful than others. It depends on their metabolic activity. Subcutaneous fat--the fat that collects on your hips, thighs, and buttocks and makes you look like a pear--isn?t that harmful. It may not look too good, but at least it won?t kill you, because your body is in no rush to mobilize the AA out of these fat cells. That?s why this type of fat is considered metabolically inactive. It is primarily a storage depot.
On the other hand, visceral fat can be a killer. This kind of fat collects around the abdominal organs, such as the liver, kidneys, and gallbladder and makes you look like an apple.
How do I spot visceral fat?
You may think that the easiest way to see if you have visceral fat is to look at yourself in a mirror. But this may be deceptive, because visceral fat is often found with in close contact with subcutaneous fat in the abdominal region. The real indication of the amount of your abdominal fat that is actually visceral fat is measured by either your TG/HDL ratio or your fasting insulin levels.
Visceral fat is very metabolically active and causes the constant release of stored AA into the bloodstream. This is the last place you want excess AA, since it?s then taken up by every one of your sixty trillion cells, making each one more likely to generate more pro-inflammatory eicosanoids, and therefore more silent inflammation throughout the body.
Visceral fat is even more insidious because it also continually releases other inflammatory mediators in addition to stored AA. Two of the worst are the pro-inflammatory cytokines, tumor necrosis factor (TNF), and interleukin-6 (IL-6). TNF is implicated in creating even more insulin resistance, whereas IL-6 triggers the liver to synthesize C-reactive protein (CRP), which can stimulate your white blood cells to begin to mount an inflammatory response to a potential infection (even though there isn?t one). About a third of the CRP circulating in your blood came directly from visceral fat cells. These pro-inflammatory cytokines are produced in your visceral fat as a response the increased pro-inflammatory eicosanoid production caused by increased AA levels.
This means the fatter you are (really, the more visceral fat you have), the more silent inflammation you generate. This is the smoking gun that links obesity with increased rates of heart disease, cancer, or Alzheimer?s. Anything that increases silent inflammation is going to be bad for your future.
The Diabetes Connection
Diabetes used to be a very rare disease, but times have changed. Over the last twenty years, it has become an epidemic. Okay, let me clarify this. Type 2 (adult-onset) diabetes has become an epidemic, while type 1 (juvenile) diabetes still remains relatively rare. Type 1 diabetes is caused by a condition in which the pancreas completely shuts down and fails to produce any insulin, causing blood sugar levels to spiral upward out of control. The more common type 2 (90 percent of all diabetics have this version) occurs when the patient develops long-term insulin resistance. As I mentioned above, insulin resistance causes the pancreas to secrete more insulin (hyperinsulinemia) in an effort to reduce blood glucose levels. Eventually the pancreas (really the beta cells in the pancreas) just get tired and stop producing enough excess insulin. This is called beta-cell burnout. The result is that without enough insulin becoming secreted by the pancreas, blood glucose levels begin to raise to dangerous levels. The danger comes from two factors; (a) excess glucose in the blood produces free radicals (oxidative stress), and (b) excess glucose is neurotoxic to the brain. Hyperinsulinemia usually precedes the development of type 2 diabetes by about eight years, but they both come from increased insulin resistance. Starting to see the connection?
Obviously, not everyone who is has insulin resistance becomes a type 2 diabetic. However, enough do--there are an estimated 16 million Americans afflicted with type 2 diabetes. This devastating disease puts a person at a 2 to 4 times greater risk of dying from heart disease and also increases the likelihood of kidney failure, blindness, impotence, and amputation. Because of these expensive complications, type 2 diabetes is the most expensive of all chronic diseases, costing approximately $132 billion per year. As our obesity epidemic increases, so will the epidemic of type 2 diabetes. That?s very bad news for the health care industry.
The good news is that taking Ultra Refined high-dose fish oil to reduce silent inflammation (the molecular cause of insulin resistance) and following the Zone Diet will help reduce hyperinsulinemia (the consequence of insulin resistance) and begin to reverse type 2 diabetes in just six weeks.
w_llewellyn
New member
DEXA lean mass is a measure of lean mass, not fat lass.
I am not going to bother addressing in detail a very long article of Barry Sears, which may or may not be relevant to the health of a sedentary inactive population commonly plagued by insulin resistance and systemic low grade inflammation. We are supplementing AA here, and using it in a very different context. I invite you to research it sometime. Most of the posters around here can definitely help you out.
Then again, you appear to be the same guy that is advocating the consumption of nearly 3,000mg of cholesterol per day (12+ eggs) as a money-saving alternative to taking X-Factor on bodybuilding.com. I have my doubts you are approaching this subject with the right frame of mind, but could be wrong. We'll see.
I am not going to bother addressing in detail a very long article of Barry Sears, which may or may not be relevant to the health of a sedentary inactive population commonly plagued by insulin resistance and systemic low grade inflammation. We are supplementing AA here, and using it in a very different context. I invite you to research it sometime. Most of the posters around here can definitely help you out.
Then again, you appear to be the same guy that is advocating the consumption of nearly 3,000mg of cholesterol per day (12+ eggs) as a money-saving alternative to taking X-Factor on bodybuilding.com. I have my doubts you are approaching this subject with the right frame of mind, but could be wrong. We'll see.
w_llewellyn
New member
BTW - Very quickly, the study at Baylor University showed a statistically significant reduction in IL-6 levels with X-Factor use, not an increase. This contradicts one of the key points to the argument you posted against dietary AA (which again, may be valid for a sedentary inactive population commonly plagued by insulin resistance and systemic low grade inflammation.)
MESSPLAY
Active member
I don't think this supports much at all. Why is AA the cause of fat deposition when he explains that it is because of the high glycemic-load carbs and fatty foods that your body increases insulin production...
Is there a list of sources connected with this paper?
John Smeton
Legend
There is a Guy from Nimbus Nutrition i forget his name. He has a thread on it and was cutting and getting results. He has been training ten plus years. I might try it on a cut. Two bottles
tater27
New member
i go to one of the better funded suny schools in new york and my premed stoner buddy actually was part of a school study with AA and brought the results to my attention upon mentioning this gettin marketed as a new massbuilder. bottomline was the study showed that friggin lab rats recievin AA were noticeably more musclular and overall larger; but mri scans of said rodents showed 'dramatic inflammation' of the joints. im not a doc and this wasnt even a human study but im jus layin out what i know, im leaving it up to you for interpretation. sry for not being more detailed, htis was in 08 and thats all i remember, askin me for further info is like tryin to bleed a stone. sry fellas