Information is Beautiful just put out a great tool, Snake Oil? The Scientific Evidence for Health Supplements. Here’s a little more about it.

Eric Cressey set out to make the case for fish oil supplementation (here's part II) by citing reams of studies pointing to its many benefits. You can click through for the details, but here's the list of things it might help with:

Cardiovascular Health / Atherosclerosis / Hyperlipidemia / Hypertension; Hypertension; Cardiac Arrhythmias; Inflammatory Diseases of Joints and Connective Tissues; Osteoporosis; Kidney Disease/Renal Failure; Prostate Cancer; Colon Cancer; Breast Cancer; Skin Cancer; Crohn's Disease; Ulcerative Colitis; Asthma; Cystic Fibrosis; Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD); Sickle Cell Anemia; Menstrual Symptoms; Vision/Eye problems (glaucoma); Multiple Sclerosis; Prenatal and postpartum support; Psoriasis; Photosensitivity; Diabetes/Insulin Resistance; Resting Metabolic Rate; Body Composition Regulation and Leptin; Psychological Disorders; The Response to Stress; Migraine Headaches; Epilepsy; Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS); Fibromyaglia; Cirrhosis;

A couple notes from his closing thoughts:

If you aren't taking fish oil, you're an idiot. Seriously. Okay, I'll leave you with a bit more practical wisdom instead. The typical fish oil capsule you'll encounter is 1000 mg fish oil; we, however, are more concerned with the EPA and DHA content of that 1000 mg. In most cases, you'll find 180 mg EPA and 120 mg DHA per capsule. A good rule of thumb (especially based on the results of the clinical trials) is to consume 3-6 g combined EPA and DHA per day; at this capsule size, you'd need 10-20 capsules per day. For this reason, liquid fish oil is a great alternative.

If you're set on capsules these might be good, but I can't vouch for them myself. Seems like they pack more of a EPA/DHA wallop than the smaller capsules Eric mentions though. He also says:

Finally, be patient! Read the finer details of all of the studies that I've outlined and you'll realize that the majority of them were at least 6-8 weeks in duration (usually longer). Your body needs time to make good use of these healthy raw materials, so count on a few months before you see noticeable results if you have one of the aforementioned conditions. For the rest of you, you probably won't notice much, but I guarantee that you'll be healthier in the long run.

Interesting.

Three interesting recent pieces at T-Nation over the past couple weeks or so...

• Periodization Nuts and Bolts. A taste:

  Western periodization yielded what any new training approach, particularly one with weights on non-weight trained subjects, will yield: big initial progress. This progress in the weightroom led to some wise observations (such as high volume builds connective tissue as well as muscle), but also to some very wrong conclusions amongst coaches. For example, very quickly, "hypertrophy" became three sets of 8-12. "Strength" became 5 sets of 5, and "power" became 3 sets of 3. Finally, "peaking" became 3 sets of 1-2 reps. Again, while any kind of training is better than nothing, Western or linear periodization isn't optimal for the needs of high level athletes, targets one area of strength at a time and then ignores it for the rest of the season or cycle, has no back-offs built in, and doesn't address the individual weaknesses of individual athletes.

• Interesting Art DeVany Interview transcript. Be sure to check the comments for John Berardi's input as well.
• Finally, Beta Alanine sounds like a promising supplement (although the extent of my supplement dabbling begins and ends with a creatine experiment, so I'm hardly an expert).

Sorry, bit of a link backlog:

• I'm kinda late with this one, but another big holiday is right around the corner. De Vany on holiday binging:

  And, in case you say "I will binge just this one day," note that the high insulin spike from a meal full of stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and other starches and simple carbs will amount to a massive assault on your insulin sensitivity. The footprint of that meal will be there for a long time. You will be curiously vulnerable to carb temptations for some time after because your sensitivity is diminished and your circulating insulin will remain elevated.

• Two via Straight to the Bar (who I'm poaching from with regularity these days): Joachim Bartoll's weblog (I read the fish oil post first, and immediately decided it was worth adding to my aggregator) and this BBC story on desk jockey posture. Maybe my programming slouch isn't such a bad thing!

I revised and significantly expanded one of my old posts on creatine references and my personal experience.

If you are considering creatine supplementation, I'm thinking these three articles, taken together, cover just about everything you need to know to make an informed decision:

• Sportscience Creatine Review
• Creatine and Endurance Athletes
• Creatine: is it really safe for long-term use?

I adopted the low-dose approach described in the second article and ran with it for around a month:

However, bear in mind that the water-retention-related gain in weight is primarily a function of the high creatine-loading doses (20 to 30 grams per day) used both in many research studies and by many athletes. In a very recent study, a lower loading dose (6g of creatine per day) produced only a one-pound gain in weight ('Why Your Creatine Consumption Is Costing You Too Much,' Running Research News, vol. 14(7), pp. 1-4, 1998).

And in fact researchers are finding that lower loading doses can be as effective as the big, 20-gram per day intakes at building up muscle creatine-phosphate concentrations, provided that the lower doses are taken over a little bit more time. Basically, the new research is revealing that six one-half gram doses of creatine per day (for a total of three grams daily) over the course of about 30 days will build muscle-creatine concentrations to a level comparable to that achieved with the whopping 20-gram ingestions. Very importantly, these three-gram per day intakes appear to be associated with very little water retention and weight gain.

Thus, it appears that creatine monohydrate can be a performance-boosting (and legal) supplement for endurance runners. The best way to take it is to simply sprinkle about a half-gram of the stuff on some food (and then of course eat the creatine and comestible) six times per day. Little creatine will be lost in the urine and faeces, creating a very economical intake pattern, little weight will be gained, and the resulting heightened intramuscular creatine-phosphate concentration should have a direct, positive impact on the quality of your high-intensity training sessions. Since intensity is the most potent producer of running fitness, your creatine-boosted sessions should eventually lead to some very nice PBs.

As advertised, no weight gain, which was nice. Everything else about that approach is so gradual it's impossible to say how much benefit I reaped, if any. Could I train harder? Maybe. Some of the burpee challenges seemed a bit easier on some days, but such things are highly variable under any circumstances. I'll probably run a couple more 2-month long cycles (using the same dosage strategy) over the coming year and see how it feels. I doubt I'd take it long-term, as I'd hate to run the risk of hampering my body's ability to produce creatine naturally, as suggested in the "long term risks" article.