Intel's "Haswell" processor under scrutiny: A lot of hype has surrounded Intel's newest processor, the Haswell, since Intel's vice president of its Mobile Client Platform division Navin Shenoy told VentureBeat that "it's the complete reinvention of the computer as we know it." Intel's executive VP of sales and marketing Tom Kilroy tried to brand the processor as Intel's "largest generational leap ever" in his opening keynote speech at Computex.
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The potential health benefits of probiotics are the focus of a great deal of scientific research. This section focuses on research on the use of probiotics to prevent or treat seven health conditions: atopic dermatitis, pediatric acute infectious diarrhea, antibiotic-associated diarrhea, inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, hypercholesterolemia, and obesity.
A meta-analysis of 30 RCTs with 1,624 participants (mostly adults aged 18 years or older) demonstrated that those treated with probiotics for 3 to 12 weeks had 7.8 mg/dL lower total cholesterol and 7.3 mg/dL lower LDL cholesterol concentrations than those treated with placebo [54]. In subgroup analyses, the benefits of probiotics were slightly greater in studies that lasted 8 weeks or longer and in participants who had baseline cholesterol levels higher than 240 mg/dL. Among the strains included in more than three studies, Lactobacillus acidophilus, a mixture of Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium lactis, and Lactobacillus plantarum were associated with significant reductions in total and LDL cholesterol concentrations, but Lactobacillus helveticus and Enterococcus faecium were not. In a smaller meta-analysis of 11 RCTs in 602 adults with normal or high cholesterol levels, those treated with probiotics for 2 to 10 weeks had 6.6 mg/dL lower total cholesterol and 8.5 mg/dL lower LDL cholesterol levels than those treated with placebo, but the probiotic treatment had no significant effects on HDL cholesterol levels [55]. The effects were most pronounced with consumption of probiotics for more than 4 weeks by participants with hypercholesterolemia and those aged 45 or older. In both meta-analyses, participants included both healthy adults and adults with hypercholesterolemia, CVD, diabetes, or obesity.
Conversely, substantial evidence indicates that creatine supplementation is capable of augmenting the hypertrophic response to resistance training in young adults [117], which is extended to older adults, as confirmed by three systematic reviews and meta-analyses [19, 118, 119]. The fact that creatine is more effective when combined with a training stimulus suggests that the main mechanistic action of creatine is its ability to enhance training volume and/or intensity, which may influence muscle protein kinetics, growth factors, satellite cells, inflammation and/or oxidative stress [9, 10, 19], ultimately resulting in greater skeletal muscle adaptations.
Although creatine supplementation has been theorized to primarily benefit athletes involved in high-intensity intermittent resistance/power type activities, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that creatine supplementation may also provide beneficial effects for other activities. For example, creatine supplementation with carbohydrate [123] or carbohydrate and protein [124] has been reported to promote greater muscle glycogen storage than carbohydrate supplementation alone. Since glycogen replenishment is important for promoting recovery and preventing overtraining during intensified training periods [2, 125], creatine supplementation may help athletes who deplete large amounts of glycogen during training and/or performance (i.e., sporting events) to maintain optimal glycogen levels. Second, there is evidence that creatine supplementation may reduce muscle damage and/or enhance recovery from intense exercise. For example, Cooke and colleagues [126] reported that creatine supplementation during recovery from exercise-induced muscle damage promoted less muscle enzyme efflux and better maintenance of isokinetic muscle performance. Moreover, there is evidence that individuals supplementing their diet with creatine experienced less muscle damage, inflammation, and muscle soreness in response to running 30-km [127] as well as during 4-weeks of intensified training [70]. Consequently, creatine supplementation may help athletes recover from intense exercise and/or tolerate intensified periods of training to a greater degree. Third, there is evidence that athletes who supplement with creatine during training experience fewer musculoskeletal injuries, accelerated recovery time from injury [78, 128] and less muscle atrophy after immobilization [129, 130]. Whether this is due to a greater resistance to injury and/or ability to recover from injury remains unclear. Fourth, creatine supplementation (with or without glycerol) has been reported to help athletes hyper-hydrate and thereby enhance tolerance to exercise in the heat [28, 37, 131,132,133,134,135,136,137,138,139,140,141,142,143,144,145]. Therefore, creatine supplementation may reduce the risk of heat related-illness when athletes train and/or compete in hot and humid environments [72, 146]. Finally, there is evidence from animal models that creatine supplementation is neuroprotective [147,148,149] and can reduce the severity of spinal cord injury [150, 151], cerebral ischemia [152,153,154,155], and concussion/traumatic brain injury [2, 7, 12, 22, 32, 33, 156]. This evidence was so compelling that the International Society of Sports Nutrition recommended that athletes engaged in sports that have a potential for concussion and/or spinal cord injury take creatine for its neuroprotective effects [2]. Thus, there are a number of reasons beyond the ergogenic benefit that all types of athletes may benefit. 2ff7e9595c
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