… or a more closer look on the other side of  the coin

Isn’t it amazing how science and its view on the body changes over the years, decades and centuries. Just to give you some examples: Neurones and nerve tissue were considered to be without any potential for regeneration, the muscle cell was coined as a cell without abilities to multiply and adapt, and adipose tissue still has got this negative flavor of being a burden (aesthetic view) and health hazard (medicinal view) only. Fashion on the one hand and medicine on the other hand stand for these extreme positions.
And now the breaking news: Adipose tissue is an endocrine and immunologically highly active organ. Some of you may know already that the adipocytes are producing and secreting a broad spectrum of soluble mediators that engaged in the regulation of appetite and weight. But what may be brand new to all of us who are not specifically involved in this topic of research, may be the fact that adipose tissue connects the immune system with metabolism, an interesting aspect for athletes by the way, who in many ways got a quite hysterical attitude towards fat. Fat is still seen as an inactive mass of cells that we need as energy supply in austere times only.

And now science comes in, and everything should be different? Yes, it is. More and more scientists realize, that  the body is one functional unit, and so, fat is an integral part of it. Very recent scientific data suggest that adipose tissue secretes a wide variety of hormones and proteins that regulate whole body homeostasis (balance) involving nearly all organs and cells. Scientists discovered molecular pathways that connect the adipose tissue with the immune system, and vice versa. they found out, that so many active molecules that have been assigned to the immune system only are secreted by adipocytes too. Nice to observe for me that step by step scientists who themselves erected the walls within the body are tearing them down themselves realizing that the borders they were defining are artificial, not applicable and suitable to explain the phenomenon body. Now walls have been destroyed between the nervous system and the immune system the process has expanded to the adipose tissue. Maybe fat is getting more positive attention soon.

I am not talking about obesity in this article. I want create awareness and address to those who want to be lean and perform on top level. To talk about the disease-inducing aspects of obesity is of course very important and has to do with the interdependency between body fat and immune system as well. Obesity is pushing the body into an inflammatory condition with a sincere consequence for the vessels and the body’s metabolic situation (diabetes-2 etc.). But now back to physiology, and details on pathophysiology another time.

Adipose tissue is directly connected with innate immunity, it is involved in all inflammatory and healing processes.
Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I ran over the pages of “Trends in Immunology” which I have a subscription of since many many years. It is definitely a journal of scientific reputation, and gives me a good possibility to follow the drifts in upfront immunology. Long before I got involved with biestmilch in 2000 I am interested in the big unsolved health topics of today. In the current issue I found an interesting article* about the consequences of a modern lifestyle. Since the break-down of the East block we have many people with migration background in Europe, and this allows scientists to study the epidemiology of chronic diseases and their association with environmental differences on a much larger scale than before.

By now it is  general knowledge that chronic diseases like allergic disorders, chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, type 1 diabetes experience an unprecedented emergence in high income regions, while in parallel there is a decline of infectious diseases like hepatitis A, pneumonia, tuberculosis, malaria, dysentery or helminth infestations, all illnesses that constitute still a profound threat in developing countries.

These observations are so obvious to us but they are far beyond of being understood by science in all details and not mention to be solved. It was first noticed in the 1960s that an astounding increase in asthma, type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis accompanied by rising incidences of hay fever and atopy occurred. Studies give evidence that individuals having multiple or older siblings, or having stayed in daycare are more likely to be protected against asthma and atopy. The same applies to people who grew up in farms. The proximity to livestock  and the exposure to non-pasteurized milk seem to protect against asthma, allergic rhinitis, and inflammatory bowel disease, but not against typ1 diabetes or rheumtoid arthritis. All these observations led to the hygiene hypothesis as a dominant explanatory model and to the immune system to be seen as a regulation system among immunologists since the late 1980s, not so among physicians and those affected. In this field still the immune system is still considered as a defensive system only, and hygiene is a major approach to prevention.

New scientific data prove this view to be so wrong, and not only wrong, but harmful. Read the rest of this entry »

Endurance sports are very trendy and, so is triathlon for example. But how do we all who are busy all day long achieve the training volumes of 12 to 14 hours per week, a minimum that is assumed necessary to race a long distance triathlon race or a marathon? There are different approaches to what is considered efficient training. Some of the elite athletes are convinced that long training cycles are necessary to get into good form, while others favor qualitatively high-intensity training sessions. The proof of concept is still missing, because there are athletes in either group who are successful, as there are those who are not.

In my opinion, here we stumble into the same troubles as everywhere, if we want to define one rule for everybody. I know athletes who train comparatively very little and achieve a lot. Whether this is a concept for everyone is not known, I myself. I doubt it. But there are studies on the way supporting high-intensity interval training. I have digged one that indicates that high-intensity interval training may compensate up to certain extent for long training session of low intensity around 65% V02 max.

It is an exciting perspective reading that 2.5 hours sprint units at ca 90% Vo2 max per week compared to 10.5 hours low-intensity running may be as efficient in outcome. Read the rest of this entry »

Another day of painting our athletes passed by… as time goes by bodies take shape. But there lies still a tough day of work ahead of us, the job is much more time consuming as expected. Hopefully we have some return on investment …