Sigma Nutrition Radio

Links: Go to episode page Receive Danny's free emails Subscribe to Sigma Nutrition Premium About This Episode: Nick Gant is Director of the Exercise Neurometabolism Laboratory at the University of Auckland. His group uses interdisciplinary approaches from the nutritional sciences and neurosciences to investigate the role of nutrition in brain health and performance. Nick is particularly interested in foods and supplements that prevent brain fatigue and improve physical and cognitive function. His research is currently funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand, the Health Research Council of New Zealand, and several industrial partnerships. He partners with clinicians and dieticians within the NZ Centre for Brain Research and provides scientific and educational support for elite athletes, government and military organisations In This Episode We Discuss: Understanding fatigue Hypoxia-induced decrements in cognitive performance Role of caffeine and stimulants in "rescuing" performance in high-fatigue/high-stress states Creatine for cognitive function and brain health Potential for creatine mitigating traumatic brain injury (TBI) Can ketones aid in mitigating traumatic brain injury? Thoughts on cognitive impact of nicotine CHO mouth rinsing: proposed mechanism of action

Links: Go to episode page Receive Danny's free emails Subscribe to Sigma Nutrition Premium About This Episode: Kate has both undergraduate and graduate degrees in Psychology and spent time as a psychology professor at a college and university level. She currently is a health & nutrition coach, working for Precision Nutrition, where she has coached over 1,000 people. Now she coaches fitness professionals on how to be better coaches. In This Episode We Discuss: --> Using an understanding of human psychology to improve coaching outcomes --> How we go about rationalizing our behaviour. --> How coaches can develop empathy --> Fitting the diet to your lifestyle: how much leeway/flexible does one give? --> The best skills a coach can teach themself --> Resilience --> Proactive and reactive coping strategies

Links: Go to episode page Receive Danny's free emails Subscribe to Sigma Nutrition Premium About This Episode: Bryan Chung is a plastic/hand surgeon and PhD research designer. He is a methodologist who improves people's relationship with science. In This Episode We Discuss: --> Bryan's advice column for people who have "relationship problems with Science" --> If things merely confirm what you are already doing, why you should filter it out --> How to determine what is practically meaningful from a study --> The importance of establishing what the research question is --> How to deal with the daunting nature of statistics in research --> Why you're already good enough to start engaging with research

Links: Go to episode page Receive Danny's free emails Subscribe to Sigma Nutrition Premium About This Episode: Professor Barbora de Courten, MD PhD FRACP MPH is a Professor at Monash University, Australia. She is a National Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow and a specialist physician with a PhD in epidemiology, extensive training in clinical trials (NIH) and a Master of Public Health (Monash University). She has expertise across the translational research continuum from epidemiology, human mechanistic studies to clinical trials and public health interventions through to practice. She is passionate about research into holistic approaches to prevention and treatment of chronic diseases by promoting health through safe, low-cost and easily scalable interventions with the potential to have an immediate public health impact to prevent and treat chronic diseases. She believes this will impact not only health of individuals but also be beneficial to our society and environment we live in. Her vision is to establish new strategies for prevention and management of chronic diseases, specifically obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Her goal is that her research findings will ultimately translate into treatment guidelines, reduced diabetes and cardiovascular morbidity and mortality and reduced healthcare costs. In This Episode We Discuss: --> Mechanisms by which certain behaviours (inactivity, poor diet, smoking, etc.) increase chronic disease risk: inflammation, oxidative stress and advanced glycation (AGE formation). --> What is carnosine? --> How might carnosine supplementation reduce risk? --> Dosage and timing used in trials to date --> Prof. de Courten's trial showing improvements in insulin sensitivity and an oral glucose tolerance test --> As beta-alanine works by increasing muscle carnosine concentration, could it be useful for the health?

Links: Go to episode page Receive Danny's free emails Subscribe to Sigma Nutrition Premium About This Episode: Prof. Hawley is Director of the Mary MacKillop Institute for Health at Australian Catholic Universtiy in Melbourne, Australia. He has published over 220 scientific manuscripts, written over 100 articles for technical journals and has authored numerous book chapters for exercise biochemistry and sports medicine texts. He is an Associate Editor for Diabetologia and currently sits on the Editorial Boards of many international journals. He is a frequently invited speaker at both National and International scientific meetings. John's primary research focus includes the interaction of exercise and diet on the regulation of fat and carbohydrate metabolism, particularly within skeletal muscle, the molecular basis of exercise training adaptation and the cellular bases underlying exercise-induced improvements in insulin action. In This Episode We Discuss: --> Current work being done by Prof. Hawley's lab on circadian metabolomics Defining the human metabolome and circadian metabolomics --> Comparative analysis of the circadian metabolome in the serum versus peripheral tissues (i.e., skeletal muscle) --> Impact of high-fat or high-carb diet on the daily variation in metabolites --> How dietary intake is a strong zeitgeber for peripheral clocks --> Tissue-specificity of the human circadian metabolome --> Time-restricted feeding in animal models and in humans

Links: Go to episode page Receive Danny's free emails Subscribe to Sigma Nutrition Premium About This Episode: Alex is currently completing a PhD at the University of Brighton in the UK, investigating the implications of RNA sequencing in the detection of anabolic steroid use and the harnessing of the molecular mechanisms of "muscle memory". He is currently conducting research aiming to address a hypothesis that suggests that the myonuclei obtained via strength training and anabolic steroid usage are retained and therefore provide long term advantages to steroid users. In This Episode We Discuss: --> The mechanism of hypertrophy via myonuclei accumulation --> Defining "muscle memory" in relation to myonuclei --> Animal models that show myonuclei don't dissappear after atrophy --> Anabolic steroids activate the stem cells in muscle (satellite cells) resulting in a donation of their nuclei into muscle fibres --> How drug testing works --> How you prove someone has taken exogenous testosterone via T:E ratios --> The Athlete Biological Passport --> Thoughts on the recent Jon Jones case --> Next generation "omic" technologies such as transcriptomics could enhance the testing protocols

Links: Go to episode page Receive Danny's free emails Subscribe to Sigma Nutrition Premium About This Episode: Lyndon is Head of Education at JPS Health & Fitness in Melbourne, Australia.He has a Bachelor of Applied Science in Exercise and Sport Science and is completing a Masters in High Performance Sport Science. He is also a qualified strength and conditioning coach and has coached many athletes over the past number of years. Jacob is the founder and director of JPS Health & Fitness in Melbourne, Australia. Having worked in the industry for close to a decade, Jacob's wealth of knowledge coupled with his experience in the trenches has led him to become one of Melbourne's most sought out trainers. His role has extended fate beyond working with his beloved clients, to now mentoring aspiring personal trainers, holding workshops and seminars, and writing for the nations personal training governing body, Physical Activity Australia.

Links: Go to episode page Receive Danny's free emails Subscribe to Sigma Nutrition Premium About This Episode: Throughout recent years, Luke Leaman has become a prominent figure in the health and fitness industry. With a mantra of "Health Over Everything," his teachings, research, and knowledge boldly reflect that. Luke has spent the last 9 years educating coaches, trainers, and health professionals around the world on biochemistry and physiology, with a large focus on the application of this knowledge. Earlier on in his career, Luke sought out the best in their fields to internship with, learn from, and work alongside. Luke has mentored under world-renowned Strength Coach Charles Poliquin, as well as Dr James Lavalle formally of the Lavalle Metabolic Institute, and author of Cracking the Metabolic Code. Over the years, Luke has focused his learning and education on the stress response in relation to fat gain, metabolic disruption, and performance. Through his knowledge, he has been able to help hundreds of clients get back to peak health when all hope had previously been lost. In September 2015 he began his mission with Muscle Nerds. His focus is to bring health back to the health and fitness industry, to help mould critically thinking, educated coaches, and to do so in a positive, encouraging, and enthusiastic manner.

Links: Go to episode page Receive Danny's free emails Subscribe to Sigma Nutrition Premium About This Episode: Fiona is an Advanced Accredited Practising Dietitian (AdvAPD) and university lecturer in nutrition and dietetics. Her academic research areas are dietetic private practice benchmarking, interprofessional learning and HAES (Health At Every Size) integration into dietetics. Fiona has close to a decade of academic work under her belt and has been employed by Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Central Queensland University (CQU) and the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC). She will soon complete a PhD focusing on the clinical application of weight neutral approaches to weight concern in dietetics and it's adoption into practice. Fiona's mission is to empower health professionals to adopt weight neutral practice by providing support and training in how and why to do so. In This Episode We Discuss Defining Health At Every Size (HAES) Weight neutral program vs. weight loss program Benefits of non-diet approaches Long-term data on dieting Can obese patients still improve their health even if there is no weight loss? Problems with basing health status on bodyweight and/or BMI Striking the balance of knowing weight loss is beneficial with the potential that focusing solely on weight change can be contraindicated Intuituve eating

Links: Go to episode page Receive Danny's free emails Subscribe to Sigma Nutrition Premium About This Episode: Marty is an engineer by trade but his passion is for researching and writing about nutrition topics over at his site optimisingnutrition.com. There he has created a framework for eating for health, which focuses on the intersection between energy density and nutrient density. He promotes maximizing micronutrient density of the diet, regardless of your dietary approach or goal.