Week 7 of Changing to a youthful phenotype with broccoli sprouts

To follow up Week 6 of Changing an inflammatory phenotype with broccoli sprouts:

1. I changed this week’s title as a result of reading A rejuvenation therapy and sulforaphane study. It wasn’t about sulforaphane, but its clinical findings had commonalities with this broccoli sprouts effort. It’s become my blog’s most popular post, read by people in 50+ countries.

A close second is An environmental signaling paradigm of aging. The current study’s lead laboratory researcher presented his view five years ago on where aging evidence was pointing.

Part 2 of Rejuvenation therapy and sulforaphane better curated this study’s innovative epigenetic clock results. There are no sulforaphane clinical trials that also use epigenetic clocks.

What effects may broccoli sprout compounds have on human aging? With this new human-rat relative biological age clock, researchers can get reliable answers from rat studies, with human clinical trials needed only to confirm those findings!

2. This week I found out that exercising control over my charges to protect them from disease was counterproductive. I exposed them to harm, destroyed their community, and stunted their growth by forcing them to distance from each other for their own good.

Am I a politician, an unelected bureaucrat, or some other form of busybody? No. I admit my mistakes right away, I apologize, then I immediately try to do better.

A proper context:

In Week 2 I switched from sprouting trays with 1/16″ high ridges in the bottom to Russian-doll bowls. That solved a problem of excess moisture, with which broccoli sprouts don’t do well but bacteria do.
In Week 3 I rotated in the next larger sized bowl to replace the smallest bowl. My thought was that Day 3 broccoli sprouts were too crowded to dry in the smallest bowl.
At the end of Week 5 I doubled my starting amount of broccoli seeds from one to two tablespoons. To accommodate that increase, I again rotated in the next larger size bowl.

Starting in Week 6, I had uneven batch yields. The two larger bowls yielded noticeably fewer sprouts than did batches in the two smaller bowls.

What did bowl size have to do with yield?

Nothing, it was me. Turned out I’d neglected Plant Care 101 instructions to provide adequate moisture.

After rinsing, straining, and wicking out excess moisture with a paper towel twice daily, I then spread out seeds and sprouts to prevent problems with excess moisture. Broccoli seeds and sprouts in the two larger bowls were more separated than in the two smaller bowls.

All of which led to moisture levels that were inadequate for broccoli seeds and sprouts. All batches sprouted less well than their potential yield. The larger the bowl, the more my behavior adversely affected the batch.

Here’s what Day 2 and Day 3 yields were with my previous practices. Batch volume of Day 2 in the smaller bowl was larger than Day 3!

I changed practices to group broccoli seeds and sprouts together at a step where I used to spread them out. Here’s the same bowl with my current practice, but at Day 2. It’s a larger volume than the previous practice’s Day 2:

I’ll guess that batch yield volumes have improved by 75%. I increased distilled water from 100 ml to 175 ml before microwaving since 100 ml no longer completely immersed increased Day 3 broccoli sprout volume. My 1000W full power microwave time concomitantly increased from 45 seconds to 65 seconds to achieve 58°C.

Better-developed batches also taste better. I still mix in mustard and eat Day 3 broccoli sprouts with other food.

3. My sulforaphane intake has probably decreased with current practices. 3-day-old broccoli sprouts have the optimal yields study said:

“Although germination reduces SF [sulforaphane] yield to some extent, it is beneficial to formation and accumulation of total phenol and flavonoids, ensuring health properties of sprouts. SF contents in sprouts were 46% – 97% of seeds, whereas TP [total phenolic] and TF [total flavonoid] contents in sprouts were 1.12 – 3.58 times higher than seeds among [broccoli] varieties.”

I’m not concerned about less sulforaphane with a two tablespoons starting amount of broccoli seeds. Even a one tablespoon starting amount yields 60 g of broccoli sprouts, twice that of Effects of long-term consumption of broccoli sprouts on inflammatory markers in overweight subjects. See our discussion in Understanding a clinical trial’s broccoli sprout amount.

4. Another week of no inflammatory problems after four-to-six-mile-long beach walks. I’m not pushing myself, just walking often, and working out my upper body every fourth day.

I emphasize eccentric motions in upper body workouts. I haven’t curated the below 2019 papers although they’re informative:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6543991/ “Effect of Flywheel Resistance Training on Balance Performance in Older Adults. A Randomized Controlled Trial”
https://www.mdpi.com/2411-5142/4/3/61/htm “Eccentric Overload Flywheel Training in Older Adults”

I don’t expect recovery times from workouts to shorten. What’s an appropriate exercise recovery time? found with 26.5 ± 6.5 year-old male subjects that even three days wasn’t enough time for biceps brachii to fully recover from eccentric exercise.

5. During Friday’s walk I accidentally startled a large turkey hen who was on the ground, and she flew up on a fence. Can you see her moments before she hopped down?