Due to the recent finding of another NFL player testing positive for Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs), I am re-posting an earlier post about muscle metabolism. I think it is sad that these professional athletes are getting such poor advice when it comes to their nutritional supplementation. There is a plethora of healthy, safe and effective natural supplements out there that are not BANNED by the NFL and other professional organizations.  In a world where performance and recovery are absolutely critical, all the more important it is to be able to trust the quality of the supplements and advice you take!

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When we exercise, we are striving to get our bodies in shape which usually translates to creating more muscle tone with the loss of fat.  Let’s look at what happens after working out your muscles because I think this is an important analogy to health and wellness overall.

After working out and stressing your muscles, you expect to have some soreness as your muscles are damaged.  This is the fact of exercising your muscles–you will not be able to build muscle unless you stress the muscle.  The main factors that contribute to muscle damage are:

• Physical stress
• Hormonal stress
• Oxidative stress

Physical stress: this involves the literal stretching and tearing of muscle fibers.  Without this process, you will not get muscle remodeling which is important in order to build strength.

Hormonal stress: due to stress of exercise, cortisol is released as cortisol is our stress hormone.  Cortisol has direct catabolic action upon the muscle which causes further muscle breakdown.

Oxidative stress: this results from free radical production that occurs with muscle stress. These free radicals, in turn, come back and can further contribute directly to muscle break down.

Indeed there needs to be balance here; in order to get your muscles to grow (toned) you need to stress them. But too much stress results in too much muscle damage and not enough muscle remodeling.

The interesting note here is that many elite athletes and professional athletes attempt to manipulate this process through the use of banned substances. Deemed Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs), these range from different types of steroids to stimulants. The goal for the athlete is to manipulate the “stress” process to increase muscle growth and improve recovery times.  This can all be obtained with proper understanding of the physiological and biochemical processes and no athlete needs to rely on any PED when there is so many other natural options.

Our bodies work best when we work with nature and don’t try to manipulate nature.  Also, while we are in the age of designer PEDs, we are also in the age when there are so many powerful and acceptable natural options for helping both grow and rest our muscles.

Let’s look at how these same principles, when applied to health in general, are applicable. Anytime you get sick or don’t feel good, our bodies are not keeping up with stress demands. We need to be cognizant of this so that we can optimally manage this stress and our health.

From an exercise point of view, we try to utilize the following strategies to reduce stress after exercising to improve muscle remodeling and decrease muscle break down:

Physical: REST…if we attempt to exercise our muscles too quickly after a work out, we do not allow for proper down time and therefore, remodeling cannot occur. Also, we want to help with the extra inflammation that has occurred due to the muscle stress (fill in any other type of stress)…..here proteolytic enzymes can be very useful…this includes plant based enzymes such as Amylase, Lipase and others

Hormonal: too much cortisol reflects a poor adaptive response to a stressor–here we need to take strides in stress reduction including stress reducing activities such as reading, meditation, yoga, stretching, as well as taking stress reducing supplements such as B-vitamins, Green Tea, Theanine, GABA, Phosphorlyated Serine.

Oxidative: too much free radical production is bad; to limit and temper this we need adequate antioxidants such as Vitamins C and E, CoQ10, Resveratrol, Alpha Lipoic Acid, Lutein, Quercetin and others.

I think these three components that are significant when applied to the context of muscle damage and repair are useful for the context of really any health stressor. I believe the more we look at our individual health concerns through this lens, the more easily we will be able to make strides towards optimal health and well-being. And so while it is tempting for the elite athlete to reach for the banned hormonal manipulator, know that working with nature and all it’s bounty provides a wealth of health resources waiting at your fingertips.

These are both neat antioxidant compounds.

Lutein is found in tomatoes and has been touted for a long time as helping with vision, prevention of macular degeneration and possibly prevention of prostate disease. Recently, however, a study was conducted in which consumption of tomatoes resulted in a 33% decrease in lymphocyte DNA damage.  At the same time, it was found that blood quantity of lutein levels increased substantially.  Therefore it was concluded that the antioxidant (protective) effects of tomatoes was mediated via Lutein.

This is good news because tomatoes can be eaten in a variety of ways: raw, cooked, on pasta, pizza, etc.  Unfortunately, many people do not tolerate tomatoes well. The jury is still out whether supplementing with Lutein will provide similar benefits to eating tomatoes. My feeling is that supplementing with Lutein does provide antioxidant protection–we don’t know yet, how much Lutein needs to be consumed.

On a different antioxidant note, Astaxanthin (pronounced as-tuh-zan’-thin) is a carotenoid that does not convert to Vitamin A in the human body. Too much Vitamin A is toxic for a human, but astaxanthin is not. However, it is a powerful antioxidant; it is claimed to be 10 times more capable than other carotenoids. However, other sources suggest astaxanthin has slightly lower antioxidant activity than other carotenoids.

The “neat” and emerging data about Astaxanthin is that we likely have not been getting enough of it.  We primarily get Astaxanthin from eating crustaceans, shrimp, krill, trout and salmon. Research shows that due to astaxanthin’s potent antioxidant activity, it may be beneficial in cardiovascular, immune, inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases.  Some sources have demonstrated its potential as an anti-cancer agent. It also crosses the blood-brain barrier, which makes it available to the eye, brain and central nervous system to alleviate oxidative stress that contributes to ocular, and neurodegenerative diseases such as glaucoma and Alzheimer’s.

A recent study revealed that consistently taking 12mg of Astaxanthin daily resulted in fat loss.  This was independent for caloric intake and exercise severity.  This is very new data–if you look at the quantity of Astaxanthin in nutritional supplements, the range is generally closer to 1mg.  It does look very promising for Astaxanthin to be one of the antioxidants we need to watch closely.

Now try saying Lutein and Astaxanthin as fast as you can so you can remember them for down the road….

Good news and bad news. The bad news is that we are seeing a rise in trans-fat accumulation without good explanation. One of the tests we run, a fatty acid profile, examines one’s Omega 3,6,9 levels as well as their trans-fat levels. I have had two patients in the last 2 weeks who both have high trans-fat levels without good explanation.  Meaning, they both eat well and do not incorporate trans-fats into their diets. Yet, their results show otherwise. I spoke with the doctor at the lab who told me that they are seeing a “spike” of high trans-fat levels in patients in the last year or so. Unfortunately, they were not able to give a good source of where these trans-fats were coming from.

The take home point here is this means that we are being exposed to trans-fats from places we do not know and/ or the food we are eating that is labeled “no trans-fats” likely has trans-fat content. Stay tuned as this is an interesting topic and the more I learn, the more I will share. Unfortunately we know that high trans-fat diets increases the risk of cancer, heart attacks and strokes.

The good news (for women, at least). A new study was recently published in which investigators compared oxidative stress biomarkers of both women and women after eating a high fat diet and exercise. They discovered that across the board that women had lower oxidative stress elevations indicating that they tolerated the high fat diet more efficiently then the men did. This is a unique study as this was the first study of it’s kind to compare women to men.

The take home point is that while we need to learn more about why women are more efficient with their antioxidant processes, gender does play a role in the antioxidant scheme of life. And the better one is from an antioxidant perspective, the less chance of getting Alzheimer’s Disease, Cancer and heart disease.

There was a recent article published in a major medical journal that concluded that supplementing with antioxidants (specifically Vitamin C and Vitamin E) may IMPAIR one’s performance while exercising. It seems that the antioxidants toned down the free radical production and this free radical production is supposedly needed by the mitochondria to create more ATP (energy).

This study conflicts mountains of other data that concludes the exact opposite–taking antioxidants improves exercise capacity.  While I think more research needs to be completed to answer this question, two thought come to mind:

1. The dosages of Vitamin C and Vitamin E used in the first study were average–we know that as humans we don’t make Vitamin C so we have to ingest it to get it. But if we did make Vitamin C, it is estimated that we would manufacture about 3000mg per day.  I think the dosage in the study was only 1000mg daily.  So it seems to me where I see most people not taking anywhere near 3000mg/ day, that that Vitamin C dose was way too low to draw conclusions. I can’t stress enough that Vitamin C is the most robust booster of our immune system and that most people need to take much higher dosages than 3000mg/ day. Also, any antioxidant supplementation must be well-rounded and try to include lots of varieties of antioxidants including carotenoids, flavones, cucurmins, tocopherols, etc. So just using Vitamin C and Vitamin E would not cut it by my standards.

2. The effect of the antioxidants is most notable to the RECOVERY of exercise, not necessarilly the capacity of exercise. While closely related, exercise recovery and capacity are two different entities and as such need to be approached differently.  It seems that the free radical production that is induced by the stress of exercise (repeated and forceful muscle contraction) is responsible for much of the inflammation and pain that occurs immediately following exercise. And it is the antioxidants, specifically, that can be used during the recovery phase of exercise to make a huge difference.

I find the use of antioxidants to be an exciting topic–not just for exercise related events, but also for the prevention and treatment for many chronic health conditions including heart disease, diabetes, cancer and neurodegenerative disorders. Certainly more to come…..