KEEPING MUSCLE

  Building, Keeping and Using Muscle Mass

Those who want to boost health, muscle growth and performance are looking to enhance workouts and training with dietary options that can make them perform better- run a little faster, play basketball a little longer to build muscle more quickly.

Americans – whether as weekend softball players, daily exercisers or professional athletes – are looking for products that can take their workouts to the next level. During a mini-symposium in 1999 about sports performance – the results of which were reported in a 1999 issue of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise – researchers from the Australian Institute of Sport found that even a small enhancement in sports performance "would still make a difference to the medal tally of a country like United States." 1 The study’s authors hypothesized that a performance enhancement of even .3 percent would make a huge difference in outcomes, especially since the best athletes in the world have performances that differ only 2 percent to 3 percent from one another.

Basic Training About Muscles

Optimum performance most often comes down to muscle performance. In particular, it comes down to the workings of skeletal muscle, which makes up 40 percent of the body and moves the bones of the body. Building muscle while paring down fat mass accomplishes various purposes, including adding lean bulk to a frame or giving two extra feet to a jump shot.

Skeletal muscle is attached at two places along the bone: its origin and where it tapers down to the tendon. Thousands of cylindrical muscle fibers run from origin to tendon, and each fiber is a multi-nucleated cell. Muscle fibers are 1 to 40 microns long and 10 to 100 microns in diameter; comparatively, a strand of hair is 100 microns in diameter while a body cell is approximately 10 microns in diameter. The fibers are bound together by connective tissue that also harbors blood vessels and nerves.

Purportedly, the number of muscle fibers is fixed early in life, a similar fate mirrored by fat cells. "There’s a long-standing debate regarding one’s ability to make more muscle cells versus making the existing muscle cells bigger." "That’s the hyperplasia [an abnormal increase in cells] versus hypertrophy [an enlargement in tissue not cause by cells increasing] dance. There’s evidence to support both, but I believe there’s more that points to humans having a predetermined number of cells."

Because muscle fiber contains only enough ATP (adenosine triphosphate, the immediate source of cellular energy used in muscle contraction and enzymatic metabolism) to have a few muscle "twitches"- short, single contractions – there are three muscle properties that keep ATP levels high for muscle building: creatine phosphate (creatine), glycolysis (sugar) and cellular respiration (oxygen). Reportedly, stores of creatine in muscle fiber are naturally 10 times more than those of ATP, allowing for muscle to subsist on relatively small reservoirs of ATP.

Skeletal muscle fibers contain 1 percent glycogen, which the muscle can break down by glycolsis into two molecules of ATP for every pair of lactic acid molecules produced. However, a build-up of lactic acid in muscles may change the pH enough to inhibit enzyme activity. Consequently, oxygen needs to be taken in to convert lactate into carbon dioxide and water.

Cellular respiration in the mitochondria helps meet ATP needs when muscle is being used during prolonged activity. It also helps the body resynthesize glycogen from lactic acid produced during glycolosis.

Many of today’s performance-enhancing supplements have shown great strides in muscle performance. Whether it is antioxidants and amino acids for post-exercise repair or creatine and glutamine for muscle-building, the weekend warrior, aerobic queen or Olympian-in-training have a supplement with their name on it.

Amino Acids

When Joe Weider had a monopoly on fitness magazines and sports products in the 80’s, "amino acids" was the catchphrase used by enthusiasts wanting to gain muscle and lose fat. However, the science behind products containing these compounds is still inconclusive.

Amino acids are know as the building blocks by which protein can be manufactured by the body. More than 300 amino acids exist, but only 20 of those make up protein.

Amino acids are the building blocks of our body," Delivering them alongside a highly bioavailable protein such as collagen, amino acids can help a person build lean muscle mass and shed fat.

There are also eight essential amino acids: isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenlalanine, threonine, tryptophan and valine. They are essential because the body cannot manufacture them.

"For the most part, these eight amino acids are basically all your body needs to function correctly," wrote Vince Andrich, author of Sports Supplement Review (Mile High Publishing, 2002). He added that for optimum muscle building, three conditionally essential amino acids should also be consumed: arginine, glutamine and taurine. The body creates these compounds by itself, "but the demand for them is greatly increased after exercise, and oftentimes your body simply cannot meet this demand," Andrich wrote.

Arginine, or L-arginine in supplement form, is synthesized from glutamic acid and absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract. While much research has been conducted on arginine and heart health, not as much has been done in terms of fitness. In a 1989 study, subjects in a five-week strength-training program supplemented with 2 gms of L-arginine and 1 gm of L-ornithine, another amino acid.  Those taking the arginine-ornithine combination scored significantly higher in total strength and lean body mass compared to the placebo group. This combo also appeared to quell muscle tissue breakdown. I would recommend these two amino acids for those looking for hardness and lean body.

Glutamine, or L-glutamine, is the most abundant amino acid found in blood and plays a large part in moving nitrogen throughout the body. Glutamine is synthesized by the enzyme L-glutamine synthetase, found in skeletal muscle. Exhaustive exercise can lower the plasma level of the amino acid, glutamine, which is an important fuel for some cells of the immune system and may have specific immunostimulatory effects.  During exercise, intracellular glutamine levels can drop as much as 50 percent, and plasma concentrations can dip 30 percent.

Glutamine dosages range from 2,000 mg to 8,000 mg daily. I recommend glutamine to all athletics. Caution: Taking too much glutamine, which is absorbed in the intestinal tract, may lead to diarrhea in some people

Branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) are also known as stress amino acids, which are needed during times of physical stress such as exercise and weight lifting. Isoleucine, leucine and valine are active forms of BCAAs, and are absorbed from the intestinal tract. "The BCAAs have a role in the prevention of muscle loss and in the increase of muscle mass.

Interestingly, in blood that was collected after an Olympic triathlon and 30-k run, those who had been supplemented with BCAAs had higher levels of glutamine and a higher immune response than the unsupplemented groups.  In other stressful conditions, such as during a 21 day trek at a mean altitude of 3,255 ft., BCAA supplementation (leucine, Isoleucine and Valine) helped to synthesize muscle tissue. Those in the placebo group experienced muscle tissue loss due to catabolism, which uses up more energy. I recommend 1,000 to 4,000 mg daily.

Amino acids may well deserve the hype that surrounds them. Exercise has been linked to amino acid oxidation, which may reduce body mass if high amino acid intake is not maintains.  Amino acid supplementation is especially important since researchers have found that these ammonia-base compounds are prevalent in both type 1 and type 11 fibers.  researchers have also found that exercise additive effect on muscle protein synthesis.  It is important to note that essential amino acids - those not made by the body - along with carbohydrates effectively stimulate muscle-building when taken before rather than after exercise.

In research conducted at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., researchers found the availability of energy for post-exercise muscle repair.  In particular, L-leucine and L-phenylalanine resulted in an increased uptake of essential amino acids.

Amino acids do not always need to be taken in free form in order to experience their benefits. An alternative to taking amino acids in supplement form is taking an enzyme to help better utilize the naturally occurring amino acids in meat, eggs and other protein-rich foods. Wayne, N.J.-based Triarco Industries created Aminogen ® a patented enzyme system that releases free-form amino acids from protein containing foods. According to the company, this system has the ability to release more amino acids from protein than the digestive system alone - up to 42 percent more. According to Kathy McLeod, marketing and manager at Triarco, "Athletes need to ensure their protein intake is not being utilized by the body."

 Other Ingredients Promoting Fating without Muscle Wasting

Carnitine

Carnitine, or L-carnitine is similar to the nonessential amino acid carnatine, and it is synthesized from the amino acids lysine and methionine. According to Switzerland-based Lonza Group, L-carnitine is a vitamin-like nutrient related to the B vitamins. It is essential fro energy production and fat metabolism. It produces energy from the body's fat stores, while delaying the onset of fatigue and enhancing muscle recovery.