Subject: Muscle Types and Sex Differences Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1993 04:04:13 GMT I think that the best way to handle the several different threads on protein that I have interjected myself into is to review what muscle does and how it is formed. This discussion is intended to provide information that will help anyone interested in fitness, not just the bodybuilders. I'm going to break it down into discret sections and I'll start with the differences between men and women and the different muscle types. Muscle cells are just like fat cells, their number is pretty well fixed by the age of 20. If you were unfortunate enough to be obese as a child, you will have a larger number of fat cells than normal and you will have a hard time controlling your weight as an adult. Fat cell number and size is simply related to your calorie intake(too much in relation to need and you store the excess as fat). Put too much fat away when young and your body forms more fat cells once the ones you got get full. As an adult, you just supersaturate your fat cells and induce insulin resistant diabetes. But some adults do seem to be able to make more fat cells when the ones that they have get full, but this is rare. Muscle cell number is affected by exercise level while young and the anabolic steroids(testosterone). Women have less muscle mass than men because their anabolic steroid levels are lower than a man's(women do have anabolic steroids and they even have small amounts of testosterone). At puberty, women start producing large amounts of estrogen on a regular basis and this limits their muscle growth and stimulates fat cell formation(women have an average fat content of 20% by body weight while the average for men is 15% by body weight). The anabolic steroids are hormones that go into a cell's nucleus(target cell) and then bind to the DNA to get the cell to make specific proteins. In muscle cells, these proteins are actin and myosin. Prior to about 20 years of age, the action of testoserone in a male is to make his muscle cells form more actin and myosin(to form the muscle fibers) and it also stimulates muscle cell division to give the male more muscle cells than the female. Until puberty, there really isn't much of a differrence between fat and muscle content in boys and girls. Since anabolic steroids are fat soluble, they can be stored in fat and it takes the body a very long time to clear them. They slowly leak out of fat cells into the blood so a steroid user can test positive 6-8 months after stopping the injection of steroids. There have been attempts to develop water soluble steroids so the body can clear them faster after their use but I don't know how well they work. The action of anabolic steroids in muscle development then is to stimulate muscle protein synthesis in muscle cells. To work, more amino acids must be available to be put into muscle to sustain this increased muscle protein synthesis. With steroids, the muscle does not have to be worked as hard to get it to synthesize large amounts of muscle protein. There is even the possibility that steroid use in an adult can get the body to make more muscle cells once the ones already there become full of actin and myosin muscle fibers(but like calorie excess and new fat cell formation in an adult, this is probably rare if it does happen). Muscle is made up of two very different types of fibers, these are slow twitch and fast twitch fibers. The amount of each seems to be set by genetics. Which type of fiber predominates in your muscles pretty much locks you into specific sports(if you want to excel). Endurance events like long distance running and cross country sking require slow-twitch fibers. The elite in these sports have between 65 and 80% slow twitch fibers in their muscle cells. Sprint runners need the fast twitch fibers to excel and the top sprint runners will have around 55% fast-twitch fibers in their muscle cells. For the average person, the balance between fast and slow twitch is about 50/50. So good genes are more important for endurance events than for short distance events since the world class sprinters don't really have that many more fast-twitch fibers than the average person. There are also race differences, with blacks having more fast-twitch fibers than caucasians. For bodybuilding and weight lifting, you want fast-twitch fibers because these fibers can grow in size while the slow-twitch fibers do not increase in size very much when the muscle is pushed to the limit. For middle distance running, swimming, basketball, soccer, hockey, etc., a good balance between fast-twitch and slow-twitch fibers is needed for good performance. The slow-twitch fibers are very dependant upon oxygen(aerobic metaboilsm) while the fast-twitch fibers use mostly stored energy to do their thing(very quick response) but their recovery requires oxygen and glucose. Slow-twitch fibers use oxygen and glucose constantly. If you lifted weights as a youth, you probably ended up with more muscle cells as an adult and this would give you an advantage in building muscle bulk as an adult because you now have more muscle cells to fill with muscle protein. This is one reason why the Russians and the other Communist countries started their weight lifters on weight training at a very young age. The problem with doing this is that the muscle and bone are still growing and if the training is not done very carefully, permanent damage can occur. I believe that the general quideline used in the U.S. is not to start weight training until a boy is 14 years old(please correct me if I am wrong). With very specific and chronic exercise training, it may be possible to slightly change the fiber type in your muscles. Exercise routines that involve very short, strenous, muscle contraction may increase the amount of fast-twitch fibers in the muscle while aerobic exercise(long duration but less muscle stress) may increase the amount of slow-twitch fiber in the muscle being used this way. This comes from animal research but work with humans(because muscle biopsies are required) is very limited and not to positive so far. Next, how the body builds muscle in response to exercise, the growth hormone connection. Marty B. Subject: Growth Hormone and Muscle Development Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1993 05:04:37 GMT As indicated in my last post on muscle development, men have an advantage over women because of testosterone and other anabolic steroids. For a man, his best chance at "natural" muscle development will occur when his testoserone levels peak around 16-18 years of age. After this peak, testosterone levels gradually start to fall. Without a doubt, the anabolic steroids have the biggest impact on muscle development. But all these "natural" muscle builders do is prime the muscle cells to synthesize actin and myosin, growth hormone is needed to push all twenty amino acids into muscle so that the "primed" muscle cells can crank out lots of actin and myosin. For a women, growth hormone will be her major means of building muscle mass naturally. When the arginine growth hormone induction test is run on females, a much better response is seen than what is seen in a male. Women also tend to have slightly higher growth hormone levels in their blood than males(normal range of 0-5ng/ml). Growth hormone has a number of roles in the body. The one that people think of most often is of course growth. During periods of growth(birth to about 20 years of age) much more growth hormone is produced by the pituitary gland in the brain. Most tissues in the body respond to the action of growth hormone(cellular division). But through a process that is still not completely understood, tissues stop responding to growth hormone and growth stops. Once this happens, the major role of growth hormone is protection of muscle mass. This may be why women show a better growth hormone response to arginine induction(they have less muscle mass than men and have to be more careful about protecting it). Once growth stops, the only tissues in the body that show a response to physiologic levels of growth hormone are muscle and adipose tissue. In muscle, the main action is to protect muscle against depletion during starvation. In adipose tissue, growth hormone promotes fat breakdown. After 3-4 days without eating, the pituitary starts to produce significant amounts of growth hormone to slow down the loss of muscle protein. If this didn't happen, you would become too weak(no muscles) to get food pretty quickly. The body makes a shift to fat as the major source of energy and growth hormone is responsible for this shift. Some muscle protein is still broken down to provide the brain with glucose but the much higher rate of fatty acid oxidation leads to ketone body formation which the brain also uses for energy. The signal for this change is a drop in blood glucose levels below 60mg/100ml(hypoglycemia). The hypothalamus has glucose sensing cells that get the pituitary to release growth hormone. In muscle, growth hormone acts to promote the uptake of all 20 different amino acids. This increased uptake can be used to build actin and myosin muscle fibers. But during starvation, there will still be a net loss of muscle protein, growth hormone only slows this loss down. Now lets go to the normal eating cycle. As pointed out earlier, each day 300 grams of muscle protein is broken down and then resynthesized. Muscle protein is broken down to provide glucose between meals. Muscle then should be rebuilt when you eat. About 60-90 minutes after you eat, your blood glucose level will peak and the pancreas injects insulin into your blood to clear the glucose. Both muscle and adipose tissue have insulin receptors and glucose is pumped into both tissues(liver also takes up glucose but it doesn't need insulin to do it). In muscle the glucose goes to glycogen to replace the muscle glycogen that was used since the last meal. In adipose tissue, the glucose is converted to fat. Slightly after the glucose peak, amino acids from the protein you ate also peak in blood. In muscle, insulin also acts to pump amino acids into the muscle cells. But insulin is only able to pump in about half of the 20 different amino acids needed for muscle protein synthesis. Most of the amino acids that insulin pumps into muscle get burned for fuel, they are not used to rebuild the muscle protein that was torn down since your last meal. While at rest in the fed state, muscle burns fatty acids and amino acids as fuel so that it can stick all the glucose that it gets into glycogen. Growth hormone is the only hormone that can pump all twenty amino acids into muscle and then get the muscle to use these amino acids to rebuild actin and myosin. The body will only hold onto amino acids 3-4 hours after the amino acid peak occurs in blood. This is the window of opportunity to rebuild muscle. If you can get more amino acids pumped back into the muscle than were lost since you last ate, the muscle will tend to burn the extra amino acids unless you have been able to convince it that it needs thicker muscle fibers(you have made the muscle go to the edge of it's physical contraction capability since you last ate). The signal for growth hormone to do it's thing after you eat isn't understood very well. What we do know indicates that it has something to do with the concentration of amino acids in blood. Two amino acids that insulin does not pump into muscle are arginine and tryptophan. The meal that is very high in carbs with little protein will make you want to fall asleep because of the selective elevation of tryptophan in your blood(increased uptake by brain and more serotonin formed). We think that arginine is primarily responsible for the growth hormone response after a meal. This would explain the very high rate of growth hormone release from the pituitary during the pituitary function test(IV or oral high dose arginine). To see this effect you need a good insulin response(to clear the blood of a lot of the other amino acids besides arginine) and the protein consumed needs to have a pretty good amount of arginine in it. The other response after eating a meal that had both carbs and protein in it that could prompt growth hormone release from the pituitary is the "rebound effect". Here we are dealing with an overshoot of insulin(insulin pumps too much glucose out of the blood and your blood glucose drops below 60mg/100ml). What is necessary for this response is fat cells that are quite happy to take up glucose(they aren't too full). Having a lower than normal about of body fat will help assure that you can get this effect(this is basically the same event that occurs during starvation except that the blood glucose level does not stay low very long). The brain will not be affected unless the blood glucose level drops below 40mg/100ml. If it goes below 20mg/100ml, you go into a coma(insulin overdose in a diabetic). This will not happen to a normal individual, all you do is drop the blood glucose low enough to tell the hypothalamus to get the pituitary to release growth hormone to finish off the assimulation process(get all of the remaining amino acids from your meal into muscle). This insulin response is part of the reason why a 20 to 1 ratio of carbs to protein is suggested to help get your muscle to properly assimulate dietary protein. The quicker you clear glucose from the blood, the faster your growth hormone response and if the timing is right, a significant amount of the amino acids that insulin pumped into muscle to be burned will not be burned but will be used to form muscle instead. Again, if the muscle has been taught that it needs thicker muscle fibers, it will tend to use more of these amino acids for actin and mysoin formation instead of burning them. With this kind of scheme, people with a high body fat content will not form as much muscle as people with normal(15%) or lower body fat content. Now, if you have been following this discussion of growth hormone action you may be wondering what happens to adipose tissue when growth hormone is release (does it cause fat breakdown?). The answer is no, it doesn't. The action of growth hormone on fat breakdown in adipose tissue is indirect(it increases the level of adenyl cyclase in the plasma membrane of fat cells). If epinephrine(during exercise) or glucagon(during starvation) is stimulating fat breakdown(by activating adenyl cyclase), you get much more fat breakdown occuring due to growth hormone priming the fatty acid pump so to speak. Without growth hormone pumping all twenty amino acids into muscle, you don't get a very good clearance of amino acids from the blood into muscle. But you still get some. There are five separate amino acid transport systems to move amino acids into all cells in the body and muscle has them just like every other tissue. If you had a very high protein meal and didn't have enough carbs to get a strong insulin response, your muscle will still get amino acids to rebuild itself, it just has to compete with all the other tissues in your body. You have 3-4 hours to do this(upto about 6 hours after you ate your last meal. By delaying the amino acid peak in blood so that it comes after the glucose peak, you give muscle an advantage over the other tissues in the body because with a good glucose clearance rate, growth hormone kicks in and pushes amino acids into muscle before the other tissues can take too many of them out of the blood. This doesn't cause a problem for the other tissues because muscle is the only tissue that losses it's protein between meals. The other tissues burn most of their amino acids as fuel if they get them. This is quite different from what occurs during an infection which I'll discuss in a future post. Since the diet of man has been so variable(carbs were not always present in good amounts in each meal) the body developed a back up system to make sure that muscle got rebuilt before you had to face another day. As indicated previously, most of your growth hormone is produced at night when you sleep. The body apparently developed this scheme is make sure that muscle would get at least one good shot at animo acids from food. As long as you don't fall asleep more than 5 hours after your last meal, the growth hormone that is produced almost immediately after falling asleep will push the amino acids from your evening meal into your muscle. With good timing, you can maximize this effect(eat a late dinner). But again, you must remember that the human body is a real ecologist(it does not use or waste what has no real use for). If you haven't told your muscles that they may need to have thicker muscle fibers, all growth hormone will do is make sure that the muscle gets back it's 300 grams of protein that were broken down during the day to maintain a steady blood glucose level for the brain. The extra amino acids are then burned as fuel as you sleep. The optimum time to push amino acids into muscle is identical to that used in the carbo loading technique for endurance atheletes, within several hours after strenuous exercise or weight training of the muscle or muscles. The closer you can come to the end of the muscle stress, the better. The only exception would be where muscle damage had occured(overworked the muscle causing extensive muscle fiber damage). A muscle with extensive fiber damage is not going to be too receptive to carbo loading or amino acid loading. It's first priority is healing and the healing process doesn't involve a lot of glycogen storage or actin and mysoin synthesis. The muscle has to be rested for a period of time and as it heals it will attempt to rebuild it's muscle fiber structure back to the point that it was before the damage occured. You are then ready again to try to prod it into building up it's muscle fiber(primarily the fast-twitch fibers). With a very high protein intake (150-300grams per day), you will not be able to maximally use all the dietary amino acids for muscle formation. But through the law of mass action, you will end up getting more amino acids into your muscle than someone consuming 100 grams of protein per day unless that person knew how his body used growth hormone to push his 100 grams of protein into his muscles. If he does, he will outperform you. After reading this discussion of growth hormone, you might think that a high protein meal right before bed is the best way to go, especially if you do it right after a good workout. It would be if you could get yourself to fall asleep. High protein meals tend to make people more alert and it is often very hard to fall asleep, especially if you have just worked out and you are still responding to the epinephrine produced during your workout. I would suggest a high carb meal as your last meal with maybe 25-30 grams of protein(the GNC recommendation). The tryptophan effect of this meal will help you get to sleep much easier, you also get a good insulin response(some growth hormone release) and then the coup de gra, the night time dose of growth hormone to make sure that your muscles get most of the dietary amino acids. Next time, why tryptophan, tyrosine and arginine were recommeded to raise growth hormone levels and increase muscle formation. Between then and now, think about what you just learned about grwoth hormone and try to think why these amino acids were recommended in helping muscle buildup fast- twitch fibers. As Ivan has indicated, supplementation with these three amino acids spread like wild fire through gyms in many countries but a lack of results and the tryptophan deaths have limited their use in today's gyms. It seems that most bodybuilders are now waiting for the synthetic human growth hormone to become more easily available. When it does, refer back to this post to see when it should be used. But I'll warn you now that while it may have fewer side effects than anabolic sterroids, it can still mess you up pretty bad if you don't know what dose to use. The bones in the body still have growth centers that will respond to growth hormone if the level in blood gets too high. If you were to take 35 grams of arginine on a regular basis to really boost your growth hormone levels, you would end up with deformed joints. You would want just enough growth hormone to push your amino acids into muscle but not enough to stimulate the growth centers in bone(this is done in adults at levels that don't normally exceed 5ng/ml). The doubling and tripling of growth hormone production that I have referred to was changes of normal levels of 2-3ng/ml to 4-9ng/ml). When we were young, our blood level of growth hormone ranged from 0-10ng/ml). The supplements were intended to try to turn back the hands of time(fountain of youth?). You do not need to have much growth hormone present in blood to get a good muscle response(pump those amino acids in). Remember, if you are a man, you still have a decent amount of anabolic steroids in your body that are priming your muscle cells. All you really have to do is get those amino acids in. Marty B. Subject: Amino Acid Supplements and Muscles Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1993 00:46:39 GMT Amino acid supplements. The three amino acids that I've mentioned previously leaked out of the Communist block. But the secret behind their use was not shared. In this post I'll tell you why I think that they were used and what they actually do to build muscle mass. I'll start with tyrosine because it has the longest history of use to improve physical performance. Long before the Roman gladiators, man was experimenting on ways to increase strength. After all, the man function of man was to provide sperm for reproduction, protect the female from harm(fight off preditators) and kill animals for food. These last two required the use of his muscles and the stronger he was, the better he was at these last two roles. Certain herbs and foods(according to folklore) improve strength. I've never really tried to understand this area because of it's complexity and the lack of modern knowledge about some of these ancient rituals. The Roman gladiator ate only certain foods and herbs before competing(I never really bothered to try to find out what specifically was used). I suspect that these were foods that are high in tyrosine. The Roman gladiator was a lot like the modern bodybuilder, he tired everything to improve his performance(wouldn't you if death was the result of poor performance?). One ritual that evolved that I do understand is blood drinking. The gladiator would often have several rounds of combat scheduled for the days events. After the first kill, the gladiator got to drink the blood of the killed animal(or in some cases his human oppenent). During a fight, your body will produce large amounts of adrenaline and your blood level of tyrosine will be very high. Both of these can be absorbed directly from the stomach(just like alcohol). Have you ever wondered how an average size man can lift a very heavy object off his son or someone else who means a lot to him? We see and hear about these feats of superhuman strength periodically. The secret is epinephrine(adrenaline). With enough adrenaline in your body, you almost become superman. But what has always intrigued me about these events is the lack of muscle damage. Here we have average men with average muscles lifting huge weights(which they can not lift at a later date) but they do it without tearing their muscles and they didn't even warm up first! The secret to muscle protection is growth hormone. The Russinas learned that one really good way to bulk up was to protect the muscle during strenuous weight lifting. By giving their weight lifters tyrosine before competition or a workout, they could protect the muscle from damage which would set their weight training program back weeks or even months. Epinephrine has a direct action on the hypothalamus to get the pituitary to release growth hormone to protect the muscle when it was being used against great weight resistence. This did not build muscle mass, but by allowing greater increases in weight over what would normally be used, more muscle fiber was pushed beyond it's normal physiologic endurance, but without extensive muscle fiber damage. This probably gave them a more rapid weight gain. If you do decide to use tyrosine, don't try to over-extend yourself. Without knowing what you are doing, you can still damage your muscle with improper weight selection of technique. The amino acid supplements were apparently the last part of the Russian effort to improve both the bulk an[Dd strength of their weight lifters. They had already cut back on protein intake and were using high carb diets(for the reasons already discussed) along with the steroids. Amino acid supplementation was apparently used to fine-tuned their weight training program. I got interested in the Russians because I grew up at a time when they dominated the weight lifting sport. I can still remember watching the olympics every four years and marveling over the size and strength of their weight lifters. I can even remember the U.S. commentators wondering how they got their weight lifters so big and strong. The Western competition was way behind(as we were in the space race). The Russins guarded their sports medicine secrets just like they guarded their military secrets. But as communist atheletes and western atheletes got a chance to interact, a few secrets started leaking out. The first was the anabolic steroids. The amino acids supplements also got out, but what wasn't transfered was the knowledge base that got the Russians to try them in the first place. Same thing with the 20 to 1 carb to protein ratio. A western athelete, upon hearing of a high carb diet for muscle bulking would say, no way man, that isn't going to work. They bought the steroids and they initially bought the amino acid supplements but then dropped the supplements becasue they didn't seem to work. Steroids worked so they stayed in gyms. The supplements worked because the Russians wanted to find a way to get better muscle development with less protein in the diet. Giving tyrosine before a workout, let them step up the weight being lifted faster without tearing muscles. Heck, man has been doing this same thing probably since the time we were living in caves(herbs and special foods). The gladiators really brought it to a science by drinking blood to get both tyrosine and adrenaline before having to kill another animal or a human. Now lets go on to arginine. Why take it in the morning as soon as you get out of bed? Well, we have seen that the growth hormone level in blood peaks at about 5ng/ml in an adult and about 10ng/ml in a child who is still growing about 30 minutes after falling asleep(11pm if you go to bed at 10pm and fall asleep within 15-20 min.). Most of you know that your greatest risk of having a heart attack is between 8 and 10am in the morning. Ever wonder why? Well this is when you get your cortisol peak. The real enemy of muscle is cortisol(glucocorticoids). Remember starvation? The signal to start really tearing down skeletal muscle is cortisol release from the adrenals. After about 3-4 days of this the body says stop, this can't continue and growth hormone is produced almost continuiously to offset the action of cortisol on muscle. But remember that the growth hormone doesn't stop muscle breakdown during starvation, it only slows it down. The adrenals also sense blood glucose levels and when they go below 60mg/100ml and stay there, cortisol kicks in. Because the very high rate of amino acid breakdown raises blood glucose levels, the production of growth hormone stops(slightly different set points for growth hormone release and cortisol release). After 3-4 days, the pituitary is signaled that it's time to protect muscle from the ravages of cortisol action. After going all night without eating, your liver glycogen is gone and you get cortisol produced. This is often called the stress hormone. It does stress your body(hence the higher incidence of heart attacks early in the morning). You don't produce cortisol when you have to fight a lion (remember you producse adrenaline and growth hormone). After the fight, if you start worrying about having to fight another lion, then you produce cortisol. Worrying about loosing your job has the same action(more cortisol). Since the signal to produce cortisol is either mental or low blood glucose(stays low) why not get up and eat carbs right away to shut down the morning cortisol injection as well as keeping a positive mental attitude? I'm sure that the Russians tried this and found that it didn't work. Here's why. Remember that blood glucose will not peak until 60-90 min after a meal. You would have to get up real early every day to stop the cortisol injection that occurs between 8 and 10am. The real timing is based on when you had your last meal the night before(remember, cortisol goes up when liver glycogen is gone). I'm sure that the Russians found that the best way to stop the cortisol effect on tearing down muscle that you had built up while you slept was to simply get an injection of growth hormone(arginine supplementation) right after you woke up and then quickly(after about 30 minutes to let the arginine have it's effect) eat your breakfeast to boost the glucose levels in blood and shut down the cortisol production. The next question about arginine supplementation would be could you time it to coincide with the natural growth hormone production that occurs after a meal that's high in carbs? Again, I'm sure that the Russians tried this and found that it couldn't be done(this will the same problem with giviing yourself a grwoth hormone injection). The glucose and amino acids peaks are different for different people(different metabolism), they are also affected by exercise and the content of the food eaten. The quickest glucose response will be seen in foods with a high glycemic index. The longest glucose response(time after eating to getting your glucose peak) comes with high fat meals, high protein meals or high fiber meals. All three types of meals make the food stay in the stomach longer(so does exercise right after a meal). You can never be sure when your natural growth hormone peak would occur and if you try an injection or arginine supplement to push more amino acids into your muscles and the timing isn't right you get no effect or you may even decrease the amount of amino acid going into your muscle. So the Russians went with what they knew would work, arginine in the morning to keep some of the muscle that you formed at night from being torn down by cortisol. The last amino acid is tryptophan. I've never really believed that tryptophan would boost growth hormone production although that's what I said in an earlier post. Remember that these Russian tricks for muscle growth were leaked to the west by atheletes who really had no idea(many didn't even know the doses that they were being given) how the stuff worked. One of them, after making a friend with a western weight lifter, probably told his friend what the Russians were going(in general terms). These secrets were kept just like military secrets and even today no Russian scientist has ever published anything on the sports medicine program in Russian or the other communist countries. Let me tell you how I think that the Russians used tryptophan to build muscle mass. There have been several good sleep studies done to prove that tryptophan supplement(at night before bed on an empty stomach)does induce sleep. The minimum dose found to have this effect was 1 gram and increasing the dose didn't help that much. But because of metabolic differences, some people needed upto 3 grams to fall asleep. So 1-3 grams of tryptophan will make you fall asleep at night. Will it boost your growth hormone production? No, as Ivan said. Just about every study conducted showed that tryptophan did not raise the amount of growth hormone that you produce each night. So why did the Russians use it. Again, I'm going to guess. I think that their training program involved several small high carb(20 to 1 ratio with protein) meals right after workouts and then one big meal at night. This evening meal probably contained a lot of protein and they used the tryptophan to make the weight lifters go to sleep so that they could then push all those amino acids into their muscle. When the news about tryptophan killing people broke, I was devastated. Not only had I told my students how to use it, I had used it myself and had even given it to my wife who suffers from insomnia. All my advice on amino supplementation was been to take 1-3 grams and no more. I got the 1-3 grams from the tryptophan studies and knowing what I do about stomach absorption and protein metabolism, I figured that 1-3 grams of tyrosine and 1-3 grams of arginine would work as I have just described to boost growth hormone prodcution but the boost would not be out of the normal physiologic range(0-10ng/ml). We never got the specifics of Russian anabolic steroid use, amino acid supplementation and diet(high carbs after workouts, high protein at night?). With the changes that are occuring over there now, one of their sports medicine people may publish something about what they did to get those weight lifters so big. Since I've taken tryptophan, I've followed the publications on the "incident" of tryptophan toxicity pretty closely. One thing that was learned early on is that most people who got sick or died were taking 10 or more grams of tryptophan per day according to the U.S.Centers for Disease Control(CDC). Then the big news broke that it appeared to be a contaminant. "Characterization of 'peak E' a novel amino acid associated with exposure of tryptophan from a single manufacturer" JAMA 264:213-17(1990). People had been taking tryptophan supplements for over 30 years before the deaths occured and many of these people were taking more than 10 grams per day. What seems to have happened is that the Japanese genetically altered bacteria to produce only L-tryptophan(bacteria normally produce both the D and L forms of the amino acids). We can use only the L-form and taking a mix of D and L forms was found to give very poor results in sleep induction so a very long extraction process had to be used to get pure L-tryptohan from bacteria. By altering the bacteria to produce only L-tryptophan, this Japanese company cornered the matket on cheap tryptophan. But something else(peak E) got produced by these new bacteria that caused an increase in human eosinophils which then attacked various tissues in the body causing an autoimmune-like disease. Liver was a primary target and most of the people who died, died of liver failure. This Japanese firm is now out of business and most countries(except the U.S.) have allowed the sale of the ""old" tryptophan supplements that have been used safely for over 30 years. Now that you understand why(in my opinion) the Russians used these supplements, you are of course free to do whatever you want. I will tell you that I was tempted to use them on my son who is 15 and plays football. I decided against it. As much as I know about nutrition and these supplements, I still did not feel good enough about using them on my son. I have taken tryptophan and probably will again if it comes back to the U.S. market because it was the only thing to cure my wife's insomina and it also helped me fall asleep faster. We are both back to the old way of a carb meal before bedtime. If human growth hormone does become available, I would not recommend it's use. I have never really considered 1-3 grams of an amino acid to pose a real threat to human health. Those that got sick after taking tryptophan were usually high dose(over 10grams) chronic users. I have real reservations about human growth hormone because the Russians did not apparently use it eventhough it was available from human cadavers. They seem to have chosen the amino acid supplementation route. It will probably be very hard to get the right dose and timing to have any real effect on muscle development. You have enough natural anabolic steroid in testosterone to help you build good size muscles naturally. With proper training, diet and maybe amino acid supplementation, why fool around with steroids and growth hormone? My next series of topics was going to be on the nutritional needs of endurance atheletes and those of you that are just interested in better overall performacne from your muscles. But a m.f. netter just e-mailed some material produced by Sears, Ph.D. which says that endurance atheletes are better off on high fat diets and keeping their carb/protein ratio at 4. This advice was apparently in a recent issue of Bicycle magazine and I want to see what Dr. Sears has to say before I talk about carbs and iron for muscle performance and endurance. Ron and Ivan, I interjected myself into your posts on the very long debate about vegans and meat eaters being able to build muscle mass. I think that I have answered most of your questions but I know that I skipped some. In my long iron debate with Ted Altar, I found that the best way to handle it (for me) was to read Ted's objections to what I had said and then try to address them in a separate post rather than use line by line rebuttals. This also follows my style in the classroom. I also think that it is easier for newsgroup readers to follow a debate this way. If you have questions about my original posts that I have not answered, please feel free to post them or cut out my text here and put in rebuttals. Ivan, I understand your sharp retort about amino acid supplements. You were apparently hurt by tryptophan and if I were in your shoes and someone on the net suggested taking tryptophan to build muscles, I'd jump on them too. I try to provide information on what are, in some cases, very complicated nutritional questions. How people use this information is up to them. I've tried very hard to make sure that I don't suggest anything on the net that could hurt people, and I've followed the same principle in my human nutrition class. But to be honest with you, the tryptophan incident really shook me up. I felt a little better when I learned that it was high dose use that caused the most problem, but there were probably some people who only took 3 grams per day and had toxicity but none of these people died( according to the CDC). If you are not a competitive body builder who is trying to win fame and fortune, why mess around with any of the tricks at all. Go with good training and diet. Marty B. Subject: Nutrition and Fitness Textbook Date: 13 Apr 93 22:17:00 GMT I've gotten several requests(through e-mail) for a good book that covers diet and exercise. I have one to recommend that should help eveybody in this group understand better how their diet affects their physical performane(endurance or muscle bulking). Here it is: Introduction to Nutrition, Exercise and Health Frank Katch, Ph.D. Professor Department of Exercise Science University of Massachusetts William McArdle, Ph.D. Professor Department of Health and Physical Education Queens College Publisher: Lea and Febiger 4th edition 1993 Box 3024 200 Chester Field Parkway Malvern, Pa 19355-9725 (215) 251-2230 Customer Service 800 number: 1-800-638-0672 Cost: $39.95 This is by far the best nutrition book for people interested in general fitness that I have ever come across in all my reading of different nutrition textbooks. I don't make any money off the sale of the book(too bad, darn it anyway!). :-) It has a chapter devoted to building muscle size and strenght(chapter 18) geared more to bodybuilders and it also has a chapter devoted to general conditioning with sections on both aerobic workouts and anaerobic workouts geared for other types of atheletes(Chapter 19). It also has a chapter(20) devoted solely to exercise and diet for cardiovascular health for the people who aren't really interested in improving their performance in a specific sport but simply want to get some cardiovascular tone. It starts with a good discussion of the role of nutrients in the body and then moves into how the muscle and adipose tissues in the body use energy and then gets into general schemes for weight control. But it's the last three chapters which really set this book apart from the others that I've seen. Happy reading. Marty B. Subject: Ironman Mag Protein Recommendation Date: 14 Apr 93 18:49:45 GMT Before I start my synopsis of Ironman's discussion of protein I want to post this table which I presented in Rec. Food. Veg. as part of a discusion on breast feeding infants and children. This table points out the difference between protein requirements in a growing child and an adult. You can see that there are big differences. > Adult Young child(infant) > mg/kg mg/kg > > > Histidine 0 28 > Arginine 0 24 > Isoleucine 10 70 > Leucine 14 161 > Lysine 12 103 > Methionine 13 58 > and cystine > Phenylalanine 14 125 > and tyrosine > Threonine 7 87 > Tryptophan 4 17 > Valine 10 93 > > Total 84 766 The protein requirement for a young child is 2.2grams per kg of body weight (766 mg of the essential amino acids) and for an adult man its 0.8 grams per kg of body weight(84mg of the essential amino acids). Many bodybuilders actually exceed the protein intake of young children thinking that it will help them build muscle. As you will see, no bodybuilder will ever need the kind of protein intake that is needed in a child(2.2gm/kg). Ironman agrees with the 0.8grams per kg body weight figure. Remember, that protein intake recommendations are only set to make sure that you get the essential amino acids. With egg white protein you would not need 0.8grams of dietary protein per kg body weight because of the high protein quality of egg white protein. If your protein was coming from peanuts, you would need more than 0.8 grams per kg of body weight. Egg White Protein PER - 4.0 Beef Protein Per - 2.30 Soy Protein Per - 2.32 Peanut Protein Per - 1.65 Guess what the "gold standard" is for setting the 0.8grams of protein per kg of body weight in the adult male to get the 84mg of the essential amino acids? Beef. Any surprises there folks? So, for normal adults that are not trying to bulk up, less than 0.8grams of protein per kg body weight(56 grams for a 70kg adult male) can be consumed if the protein has a higher PER score than beef(milk, fish, eggs). If the major protein in your diet has a lower PER score than beef, quess what? You will need more than the 0.8 grams per kg body weight(this is stuff like oats, rice, nuts and seeds, etc.). But for someone that uses soy protein as the focal point of their diet they are as good as the beef people without all the cholesterol and saturated fat. Does this make sense to everybody that's trying to follow this protein debate? Now lets get into the three big issues that Ironman addresses. 1. Do bodybuilders need to eat large amounts of protein to build muscle? 2. Can amino acids stimulate growth hormone sufficiently to promote an anabolic effect? 3. Are certain amino acids, or proteins, dangerous when consumed in large amounts? If you are tired of this protein debate and want to bail out now, here's the answers that Ironman gives to these questions. 1 - No, 2 - Yes, and 3 - Yes. If you want to find out more about protein and muscle building, keep reading. Women do not loose muscle protein when they work out(urea and radioactive amino acid tracer studies). Since women weigh less than men, the 0.8 grams of protein per kg of body weight still applies to them and based on these very detailed studies, they don't need any additonal protein to build muscles. The intro discussed the 0.8 gram per kg recommendation and pointed out that this is really an excess over normal requirements to provide for a wide margin of safety and that even in women bodybuilders, this recommendation was more than adequate. How about men? Well as you might guess, they just had to be different to make things interesting. During workouts, men do loose a lot of muscle protein(average a 30% increase in urea production and muscle protein tunrover using radioactive amino acid tracers). This extra protein loss is so extensive that men do need more than 0.8 grams of protein per kg of body weight if they do want to gain muscle mass. But have you every heard of metabolic diversity? Here is the range of protein needed in professional bodybuilders(0.9 grams upto 1.6 grams per kg of total body weight). This was only needed during the weight gain phase, once plateau was reached, most professional bodybuilders did better(strength wise) when they cut the protein back to around 0.9 grams per kg body weight. In other words, once you reach your genetic max, you will perform better if you cut the protein back. Can amino acid supplements promote growth hormone production? Yes they can. What effect do they have? They eliminate most of the muscle protein loss that occurs during a workout and greatly decrease the need for extra dietary protein. Why don't women loose some of their muscle when they work out? Because they have more growth hormone than men(it's just not fair, darn it anyway). It's bad enough that women have that darn estrogen to protect them from heart disease and now we find out that they got more growth hormone to protect their muscles when they work out. What's a guy to do anyway? Last question in Ironman about protein. Yes, both amino acid supplements and very high protein diets can hurt you. Their recommendation is to skip the growth hormone producers(unless you really know what you are doing) and keep the protein intake at 12-15% of total calories. If you can't gain muscle mass on this kind of protein intake, you may have a genetic requirement for more protein than what the average bodybuilder would need. Another factor is the stage of your training. If you are just starting out, you will need more protein. But as you reach plateau, your protein intake should be cut back(0.8 to 1.0 grams per kg of body weight). Muscle is just like fat cells, once you have reached the genetic max for protein in muscle cells or fat in adipose cells no additional amount of protein or carbohydrate will get these cells to become bigger. Dr. Lemon at Kent State recommends that during the growth phase, protein intake be kept in the 1.5 to 2.0 grams per kg body weight range but even with this kind of protein intake, Dr. Lemon says that your protein intake as a percent of total calories should still be kept in the 12 to 15% range. This advice is for the natural bodybuilders. Using steroids and/or growth hormone stimulators decreases your protein requirement for muscle development(this is probably why the Russians cut back on their protein intake once they started using their little tricks). When Janet Wilson first asked me in rec. food. veg. how much protein a bodybuilder would need I estimated 2-3 times the RDA (1.6 to 2.4 grams per kg of total body weight if he wanted to gain muscle mass). That was shooting from the hip, but by golly, I wasn't off by much. Happy muscle building. Marty B. Subject: Fat, Can You Get Rid Of It? Date: 15 Apr 93 21:01:43 GMT Let's get a fat thread going. Everybody is tired of protein. Craig Pugsley can be thanked for getting me to jump into this area with both feet. Let's start at the beginning. If your Mother gave you breast milk, you started life on a high fat, low protein diet. If you got formula, you started life on a high carb, low fat diet. But the fat in formulas is mostly saturated long chain fatty acids. Fat content in formula has to be kept low because the immature pancreas and liver don't let you digest fat very well. Then why was your Mother loading you up with fat and cholesterol(the cholesterol conc. in human milk is among the highest for the mammals). Was she trying to kill you? No, she gave you fat as medium chain triglycerides(MCT). These are broken down very well in the infants gut, but more importantly, they are not stored in adipose tissue as fat. Most people think that glucose is the cause of lots of body fat, it can be but the best way to get lots of body fat is to eat a high fat diet that has the long chain fatty acids. Glucose goes primarily to liver and muscle after a meal but almost all of the fat goes to adipose tissue(unless the fat is medium chain triglycerides). The infant kidney isn't well developed at birth so protein has to be kept low. Infants don't exercise much to burn off their muscle glycogen so if the major source of calories in human milk was lactose(milk sugar) the bady would get real fat, real fast(formula babies do have more body fat than breast feed babies). If normal triglycerides were in human milk, not only would they be hard to digest, but like the glucose, most would go into adipose tissue. The medium chain fatty acids in human milk can not be put into adipose, they can only be burned to produce energy in every tissue in your body, except the brain. That's how nature intend us to start life. Now lets look at the adult. An average 70kg man will have 20% of his total body weight in protein, half of which is muscle protein. Muscle is a sponge for dietary glucose(unlike adipose tissue). For this average size man, his skeletal muscle will have 1,400 calories of glucose, stored as muscle glycogen. His liver will have another 350 calories of glycogen. Guess what happens if you sit on your butt between meals? A good portion of your dietary glucose goes to fat. But now what would happen if you worked out between meals and used up most of those 1,400 calories of muscle glycogen(about 1 hour of very strenuous exercise). Guess where most of the dietary glucose goes now? Did you guess muscle? Good, you are getting the idea of the role of exercise in preventing fat formation, something everybody wants to do. Regardless of how much you exercise, almost all the fat in your meals will go to adipose tissue(unless you are using medium chain triglycerides). By the way, the average person(male or female) will have about 160,000 calories stored as fat. One more question before we move on and discuss how to get the fat out of adipose tissue once we put it there, when is the best time to work out if you want to loose body fat? Did you guess right before you eat? Very good! If this wasn't your guess, go back and read this paragrapgh again. How do you get fat out of adipose tissue(mind control, right? - positive thinking will make it flow like hot butter?). Wrong. The release of fatty acid from adipose tissue is very tightly regulated. Here are your major players. 1. First string - Epinephrine, glucagon, ACTH and norepinephrine. All these bind to fat cell repectors and raise the level of cyclic AMP in fat cells which is the signal for massive fat breakdown. The more cyclic AMP, the more fat that gets broken down. 2. Second string - Growth hormone, thyroxine and cortisol. All of these change gene expression in fat cells to get them to make more adenyl cyclase(the enzyme that is used to form cyclic AMP). When any of these three hormones "primes" fat cells(makes them form more adenyl cyclase), you get more fat broken down(more cyclic AMP) for the same amount of stimulation(conc. of epinephrine, or the other stimulators of fat breakdown, in blood). 3. Third string - Theophylline(tea) and caffeine(coffee). Both of these chemicals inhibit phosphodiesterase in fat cells(this is the enzyme that breaks down cyclic AMP). Inhibit this enzyme and you get more cyclic AMP in fat cells(guess what this does?). 4. The bad guys - Insulin and nicotinic acid. Both of these inhibit fat breakdown. Nicotinic acid by stimulating phosphodiesterase and insulin by binding to a receptor on the fat cell plasma membrane and opening a calcium channel which floods the cell with calcium. The calcium then stimulates phosphodiesterase. If you exercise right after a meal and insulin is still in your blood, guess what happens? I hope that you guessed no fat loss. Now that you got the fat(fatty acids) out of adipose tissue, how do you burn them? If you don't burn them, they will go right back in(via the liver). Brain never, ever burns fatty acids so you can count it out. Red blood cells can't burn fatty acids either. But every other tissue in your body will. Kidney and lung burn them exclusively. How about muscle? At rest, it also burns a lot of fatty acid(when insulin is present after a meal, it also burns the branched chain amino acids) but as soon as you start to use it, it switchs immediately to glucose(from its glycogen storage pool). Beth Mazur was right, you burn a higher percentage of fatty acids at a lower heart rate because this means that you are not really working your muscles that hard and they are not burning a lot of glucose. Any muscle not being worked is still burning fatty acids as are the lungs and kidney. Us scientist types can tell how much fat your body is buring by hooking you up to CO2 and O2 monitors. The ratio of CO2 to O2 is called the respiratory quotient and it tells us what kind of fuel your body is burning. At rest, the respiratory quotient will be around 0.82 if you are normal. Here is the respiratory quotient for the three different fuels that your body can burn. 1. Carbohydrate - RQ of 1 2. Protein - RQ of 0.8 3. Fat - RQ of 0.7 The harder you workout, the higher your RQ(the more glucose your body burns in relation to fatty acid). But this is really only a ratio, at very heavy workouts(high heart rate) you burn more total fat than at lower workout levels. Remember, if you want to keep a lot of the glucose in your next meal from going into adipose tissue, make sure that your muscles don't have much glycogen in them(work them pretty hard). Swimming has been found to be one of the best exercises for fat reduction and control because it gets all of the muscles in your body working to burn glucose. Aerobics with a lot of arm movement are also good. Taking caffeine and ephedrine before a workout will raise your blood levels of fatty acids but these chemicals do not help you burn these fatty acids. It's really too bad that muscle doesn't start burning a lot of fatty acids until it's glycogen is gone. Sears, Ph.D. says that his company has a product that gets muscle to burn medium chain fatty acids to spare the glycogen for the finish stretch in endurance events. I'm still trying to get a handle on his claims and once I do, I'll post a discussion of what the endurance athelete can do(diet wise) to improve his/her performance. Beth Mazur's advice to avoid alcohol and keep your fat intake low is very good advise. Your liver converts almost all of the alcohol to triglycerides(fat) which it then ships out(in VLDL) to adipose tissue for storage as fat. You already know where the dietary fat is headed. People with hypothyroidism(low thyroxine) have a lot of fat and are often obese. Cushing's syndrome(hypercortisolism) is real interesting. Like low thyroid function, it too is a cause of obesity but the fat is found almost exclusively in the face and abdomen(areas of the body that have insulin resistent fat cells). Cortisol should promote fat breakdown(and it does) but it is very selective in that it only acts on the insulin responsive fat cells in the body. This uneven action causes fat loss from some areas of the body with extensive acculumation in other areas. By promoting extensive muscle protein breakdown, cortisol also acts to convert the muscle in your body to fat. We don't know yet how important growth hormone is in obesity. But if the 20% of people over the age of 65 with impaired growth hormone response to L-DOPA had this problem all their life, we may have a large segment of the human population with endocrine obesity, especially since obese people have a shorter life-expectency and don't reach the age of 65 as often as nonobese people. Marty B. Subject: Re: Q.s for Marty B. Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1993 21:18:48 GMT In article <1993Apr29.095843.6190@maths.tcd.ie>, cheers@maths.tcd.ie (David Naughton) writes: > Marty, > you answered one of my posts (sorry for not replying) on eating after > doing weights. i said 400 cals of carbs 15-30 mins after weights, and then > your protein an hour after that (high carb-high protein meal). > now you said 20:1 ratio of carbs:protein for GH response. what i wanna > ask is about glcogen: your body is most open to glycogen replenishment up > to 2 hrs after training, after that it tapers off ( i read 60% of glcogen is > recovered within this timespan if you eat enough carbs).( it takes 24 hrs after some exercise , 48 hrs in other, depending on intensity). now i agree with the > 20:1 ratio first ,but you said in your GH post that the best time for aa 's > to get into muscle is 3-4 hrs later. doesn't leave much for glycogen replenishing, or does it. > could you straighten out this mess for me please, as it is important to > me as i train nearly every day sometimes. > much obliged, > > David. I'm not sure when I'll get to the muscle metabolism post. I'm trying to clean up my reputation on Sci. Med. right now. I need to get a vitamin A and infection post organized then I'm going to hit muscle metabolism. Muscle is going to be most receptive to taking up glucose right after you work it. If you work it for at least 75 minutes, you will normally get it to use up all of it's glycogen. Muscle and adipose tissue are the two main insulin responsive tissues in the body. Each wants the glucose from your meal. If you have a normal adipose tissue content(without too many fat cells), your fat tissue isn't really going to be that interested in glucose (low insulin receptor numbers on the fat cell plasma membrane). This insulin receptor concentration in adipose tissue and skeletal muscle is not regulated short-term(the changes occur long-term, they are not affected by a single workout). What you want to do is condition your body to think that glycogen in muscle is going to be a real problem so muscle starts to produce more insulin receptors and keeps the fat tissue from getting much glucose. This would also let you fill up the glycogen reserve in muscle very quickly. If you don't use this little trick(which endurance atheletes use to carbo load their muscles), then the muscle glycogen may not get fully replaced until several eating rounds occur(24 hours). Remember that the longer it takes you to get all the glycogen back into your muscle, the more glucose from your food ends up going into fat(not really what you want). This means working out every day to deplete your muscle glycogen and then quickly(within 2-3 hours) giving it back its glycogen. That's easy enough, now what about protein? Well insulin puts about half the amino acids in blood into muscle(along with glucose) and most of these amino acids get burned(muscle will not burn any of it's glucose unless it doesn't have amino acids or fatty acids to burn while it's refilling it's glycogen reserve). You need to get a good enough insulin response to clear some of these amino acids from blood so that a selective arginine increase occurs(arginine is not pumped into muscle by insulin). This rise in blood arginine(in comparison to the other amino acids) is the signal for growth hormone release which pushes all twenty amino acids into the muscle where they can be burned or used to form muscle fibers. As long as insulin is still acting, arginine will stay elevated in blood and you will get growth hormone released from the pituitary. Thie slow, small release of growth hormone can last for upto 2- 3 hours. You would never want to separate your carb intake from your amino acid intake if you wanted to build muscle mass. If you eat right after a workout, glucose will peak in your blood 60-90 minutes later(within your glycogen window of opportunity). For amino acids, there really isn't such a well defined window of opportunity. Unless you know how your body is using amino acids to build protein, most people don't really get their best muscle fiber growth until they go to bed at night which could be a long time after they worked out. Remember, you produce most of your growth hormone at night while you sleep. If your post workout meal had protein and carbs, the amino acids actually start to rise in blood very shortly after the food goes into your stomach (about 10% of the amino acids in protein are actually absorrbed directly from the stomach). Pepsin in the stomach starts protein digestion. It gets finished in the small intestine but protein digestion takes a lot longer than carbohydrate digestion. You start to see amino acids in blood well before glucose shows up and they are still being absorbed from the gut well after the glucose peak is gone(good thing too because this makes sure that when growth hormone gets kicked in, there are still plenty of amino acids that are being absorbed from the gut). It's not unusual for high protein meals to see amino acids still being absorbed from the gut 6 hours after the meal was eaten. But remember, to get a really good push of amino acids into skeletal muscle, you want to use growth hormone(you need a good insulin response if you are trying to do this naturally, the 20 to 1 carb to protein calorie ratio seems to give the best "natural "response). If you are more into brute force, mass action will get amino acids into muscle for a long period of time, upto 6 hours after your meal(and maybe longer if we are talking about 30% protein meals). But without growth hormone acting on the muscle, you are going to waste(burn) a lot of those nice juicy amino acids. Marty B. From: banschbach@vms.ocom.okstate.edu Subject: Glycemic Index Date: 6 May 93 19:30:39 GMT Here's the Glycemic Index Table. White spaghetti with just tomato paste and no meat balls or meat chuncks has been the traditional food for carboloading in endurance atheletes. Glucose(100 grams, 400 Calories) is given the value of 100. 100 grams of glucose is dissolved in 300ml of water and then drunk on an empty stomach. An IV line is inserted into the volunteer and a heparin lock is used to draw blood at fixed intervals to measure the blood glucose rise. The total area under the pure glucose blood peak is then given the value of 100. 300ml of water is then used to get people to eat each food on the list below and the blood glucose peak is measured and compared to pure glucose. For each of the following foods, 100 grams of glucose(or it's equivalent such as fructose or galactose) was provided by consuming the food in sufficient quantity to give this amount(100grams) of total glucose(not all of which is going to be absorbed, unlike the glucose solution). The average human stomach will hold 500 grams of food if it's not stretched. This is about 500 ml of water. If you want to stretch it, you can easliy get 1 liter of water in and some people can get even more food(water) into their stomach. But once the stomach gets 500 grams in it, the stretch response starts to tell your brain that it's time to stop eating. Some people will ignore the signal and eat until it hurts. Some of the foods that I'm going to give you(carrots for example) did require some stomach stretching to get 400 Calories of carb in along with the 300ml of water. That iceman that was found in the glacier in Europe showed us that the size of the human stomach hasn't changed over the last 4,000 years. That man was a little over 4 feet tall. A Civil War soldier who was 30 years old and 5'8" tall weighed an average of 147lbs(military physical records). The vietnam soldier who was 30(rare), 5'8" tall weighed an average of 165lbs(military induction records). The human stomach has not grown, the caloric density (glycemic index) of the food that we eat has gone up(primarily due to the practice of refining grains to produce flour) and a higher fat diet than people living in the 1800's in the U.S. Plus activity has decreased and we now live in well-heated and air-conditioned houses and office buildings. GLYCEMIC INDEX TABLE Buckwheat (51) Broad beans(79) Apples(39) White Bread(69) Frozen Peas(51) Bananas(62) Whole Wheat Bread(72) Beets(64) Oranges(40) Millet(71) Carrots(92) Orange juice(46) Pastry(59) Parsnips(25) Raisins(64) Brown rice(66) Instant potatoes(80) Fructose(20) White rice(72) Baked potatoe(70) Maltose(105) Whole meal spaghetti(42)Sweet potatoe(48) Sucrose(59) White spaghetti(50) Swede(72) Ice cream(36) Sponge Cake(46) Yam(51) Skim milk(32) All-bran cereal(52) Baked beans(40) Whole milk(34) Cornflakes(80) Butter beans(36) Yogurt(36) Meusli(66) Haricot beans(31) Fish fingers(38) Porridge oats(49) Kidney beans(29) Honey(87) Shredded wheat(67) Soy beans(15) Lucozade(95) Wheatabix(75) Blackeyed Peas(33) Mars bar(68) Cornmeal biscuit(59) Chick peas(36) Peanuts(13) Oatmeal biscuit(54) Marrowfat peas(47) Potato chips(51) Rich tea(55) Lentils(29) Sausage(28) Ryvita(69) Tomato soup(38) The general wisdom was that the high glycemic foods(70 or above) should be avoided by Type I daibetics(no insulin production) so that they could better control their blood glucose levels. With the home glucose testing, dieticians quickly learned that all this fear over the high glycemic foods was not founded as far a Type I diabetes was concerned. Potatoes could be eaten without a very dangerous spike in their blood glucose level as long as something else was also eaten(preferably a high fiber food). This realization lead to the concept of food combining(some of which I buy, but most of which I don't think makes any sense). We also found that the amount of protein(soy beans) and fat(ice cream and sausage) in the stomach contents had a very big effect on glucose absorption from the food eaten. Maltose(like that found in beer) actually has a higher glycemic index than pure glucose(ever heard of a beer belly?). While carrots appear to be bad, the carbohydrate content of a carrot is so low that you have to eat an awful lot to get 100 grams of glucose. Sucrose wasn't that bad because it contains equal amounts of glucose and fructose. Glucose is pumped(via active sodium driven transport) into human intestinal muscoal cells but fructose is not(only about a 30% absorption). In addition, very little fructose is coverted to glucose in the liver. Milk sugar(glucose and galactose which is found in lactose) is actually much worse than sucrose if it's taken by itself. Both glucose and galactose are pumped into human intestinal mucosal cells and the liver converts more galactose to glucose than it does fructose. Skim milk wasn't as bad as sucrose because the protein in milk decreases glucose and galactose absorption. Fat also decreases glucose absorption as does dietary fiber. So cornflakes with milk isn't really going to be as bad as it looks(can you imagine eating cornflakes dry?) They do get some water to wash the food down but it's restricted to the amount that is used to dissolve the glucose to try to keep everything constant. If you want to push glucose into muscle, instant potatoes, baked potatoes and white rice are all better than spaghetti. These foods, when concumed with little protein or fat will give you a very fast and high blood glucose peak. I'f you have not been working your muscles regularily to make them want to take up glucose, this effect is going to be *real* bad because a good amount of the glucose will be taken up by adipose tissue and converted to fat. The high glycemic index of the American diet(grains have had the fiber removed) is believed by some nutritionists(including myself) to be mainly responsible for Type II diabetes in Americans. If you couple this high glycemic diet(little water-soluble fiber present to slow glucose absorption) with a sedendary lifestyle(don't work your muscle between meals to remove glycogen) you really set yourself up for middleage obesity and Type II diabetes. Marty B. From: crmcdona@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Craig McDonald) Subject: Re: Carbohydrate timing Date: 28 Jul 93 21:43:30 GMT In article <1993Jul17.061916.22035@parc.xerox.com> coombs@parc.xerox.com writes: >In article mazur@bluefin.camb.inmet.com (Beth Mazur) writes: > >>definitely worthwhile to eat during the carb window (1-2hrs after >>your workout). This should help to keep your glycogen stores up for >>the next workout. > >Could you expand on this a little bit? I can reason it out, but I >would prefer to hear an explanation. (I will also look for the >magazine.) In part, since my next workout may not be until the next >day, it doesn't seem that I would need to store glycogen so soon. >Also, why a window? > >>Once you've starting working out, you may want to take in additional >>carbs. This is where your liquid carbs (juices and sports drinks) are >>best suited. Again, you really only need these if you are going to >>be working out long enough and hard enough that you might deplete your >>glycogen and/or your blood glucose to the point where your performance >>will suffer. > >More complications! I feel as though I need something beyond Bailey. >Anyway, I am training kung fu 3-4 hours. I was estimating that 1/2 >hour was continuous aerobic, but now that I have picked up the pace, I >suspect that I have several periods of aerobic as well as some >anaerobic. (Breath test doesn't work because the breath control is >part of the exercise. I suppose that as long as I can control it, I am >aerobic and not anaerobic, although there are different levels of >control.) > >Does my performance tail off? Yes, after two hours, my muscles are >beat, and I have to bring the pace way down. After a short rest, I can >perform well enough for class. > >Does this make me a candidate for sports drinks? I had rejected them >as inferior to water for maintaining hydration. On the other hand, I >am not getting any water during this workout on some days, and that may >account for some of the fatigue. (No water, no bathroom---part of the >MA discipline, but on this coast I can drink whatever.) > >Speaking of windows, what is the optimal time for prehydration? I find >that I have to stop drinking water at least 1 1/2 hours before my >workout so that I do not have to urinate. Perhaps I am drinking too >much water ahead of time. Perhaps the coffee aggravates the need. I >also find that I feel a minor need to urinate at first, but it goes >away as I train. > >Thanks for any info. --Jim > >Headers may be wrong. Reply to coombs@parc.xerox.com There has been some research done with muscle glycogen replacement, that is very exciting. It has some very practical implications for athletes running in multiple races during the course of a day or two (conference meets), and also for much more rapid recovery from hard workouts throughout the season. As a result, athletes can work harder, with less fatique building up over the duration of the season. My neighbor, who is a nutritionist here at IU, gave me this information. The theory is that after a race or workout the muscle glycogen will not be returned to its normal level for *48* hours (probably why we do an easy day after a hard day). However, by putting carbohydrates into the system as soon as possible (must be within 15 minutes, and the ***sooner*** the better) after the run or workout, near normal levels of muscle glycogen can be achieved in a very short period of time. The replacement takes place rapidly, because the blood flow is still directed to the working muscles for a short time after the run or workout, and the muscles will uptake the glycogen very readily at that time. So as a part of the cool down, immediately after crossing the finish line, or the last interval/repeat, athletes should start sipping/chugging a drink containing carbohydrate. The dose found optimal was .7 gram per kilogram (2.2 lbs) of body weight. I looked at a Juicy Juice Box (ideal for carrying while doing cooldown, they have a small opening at top) it contained 33 g of carbohydrate. So 33 divided by .7, times 2.2, yields about 103 lbs. So one box would be okay for about 100 lb person, 2 boxes for 200 lb person, or fraction there of, easy to figure it out. You may be able to put together something of less volume, with other sources of carbohydrate commercially available. Obviously, stay away from drinks with caffeine, since it is a diuretic. Repeat 2 hours later. Also during workouts of more than 30 minutes, a drink would be appropriate with carbohydrate, but only around .2 g per kilogram of body weight every 20 minutes. Some of the sports drinks are now coming out with carbohydrate and slight carbonation. Carbonation seems to speed the absorption of the fluid in the gut. Hope this answers some of the specifics. Craig McD crmcdona@indiana.edu From: mgk2r@Virginia.EDU (Michael G. Kurilla) Subject: Re: Q: how to avoid muscle catabolism? Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 17:17:00 GMT chuongj@ecf.toronto.edu writes: > In article , > A.J.Stein wrote: > > I almost hate asking, but... > > > > There've been several recent posts which offhandedly imply or that doing > >"hard" cardio work (where one's heart rate is at or above 80% of Max) will > >result in catabolism, or muscle loss. I'm not well-read enough to know if > >this is true, but I've heard similar things from a BB friend who lurks on > >the weights list. This is going to occur when the muscle's store of glycogen is depleted (or close to being depleted). The amount of time neecessary for this depends on the intensity of the workout and the glycogen load of the muscle. This is why marathoners carb load prior to a race. At 100% max (that is aerobic max, not the maximum intensity you can put out), you can go probably 6 - 15 minutes before exhausting glycogen supplies. After that you will begin to breakdown muscle because fat matabolism cannot keep up with that intensity. Catabolizing muscle does two things for you, 1) it provides branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) which feed directly into the same pathway that sugars are burned, and 2) alanine is generated which goes to the liver and gets recycled into glucose because as muscle glycogen goes down, the muscle sucks more sugar out of the blood. > > > > I'm admittedly skeptical -- my own personal experience seems to directly > >contradict this. So, here are a bunch of questions: Is this true to any > >degree? If so, is there some threshold at which it begins? (I.E, if one > >exercises at 60% or 70% of Max heart rate, is it avoided significantly?) > >Does it matter whether one lifts weights as well? Is it something to be > >worried about, especially if one is *not* a bodybuilder? > > There is no magical formula except that the lower in intensity you work, the longer you can go because the fat burning is conserving glycogen (that is reduces the rate of carb burning). At 30% max intensity, you can go for over 4 hours before depletion which is probably longer that any of us can allot. > > All info or pointers to references appreciated. > >-- > >Alan J.Stein MIT/Lincoln Laboratory alans@LL.mit.edu > > There will definately be a lot of response from both sides of the fence > I should think, on this issue. > > As a bodybuilder myself I believe it to be true. However, belief is not > sufficient enough for an arguement. I have read it to increase the chances > of muscle catabolism, but don't want to quote all the sources. If somebody > whishes to spend the time, then please do. > > If somebody disagrees with the statement 'aerobics is probably the most > efficient method of removing bodyfat, but increases the likelyhood of muscle > catabolism' I would like to ask them some questions. > It can be if done under the right (wrong?) conditions. > 1) How do bodybuilders drop upto 50 lbs 7 weeks out from a show. Don't > bother mentioning fat or water. They don't have that much fat to lose and > that much water loss would kill them. > Why would BB want to drop 50 lbs if it isn't fat or water? All you have left are muscle (that they want to keep), bone (can't be lost over that timespan), and internal organs. > 2) Why do atheletes who participate in what are known to be highly > aerobic activities (example: triathalon, marathons etc) very low in bodyfat > as well as in muscle mass? > Low in bodyfat does not mean low in energy reserves. Marathoners are low in muscle mass because they don't need large muscles. When you run, you are lifting your leg weight and that's it. Skinny legs have less weight and take less energy and strength to lift. Marathoners want to do it for a long time which has nothing to do with muscle mass and more to do with the muscle fiber type and aerobic capacity. At 5% bodyfat (rather low) and weight, 120 lbs, that gives you 2.4 lbs of fat. At 3500 cal per pound of fat, that gives you 8400 cal. Inefficient runners and joggers burn 100 cal per mile (the good ones burn less per mile) and therefor could go 84 miles before depleting fat stores. The average fellow will start with about 1800 cal of glycogen and carb loaded runners can probably double that, so the energy reserves are in vast excess over the energy expended even during a triathalon. Elite marathoners need the carb because they are running at an intensity that does cause them to burn carb alot. The training improves the fat burning in order to preserve the glycogen because that you can exhaust that during the course of a race. Runners who have a kick at the end of a race are those with carbs leftover near the end and then have the ability to increase their max intensity. The runers who hit the wall are those who exhausted their glycogen and now get by on fat and protein burning. > 3) After doing enough aerobics so that one's bodyfat percentages becomes low > enough so that no more fat cells can be burned (the point where only the > size of the fat cells vary), what does the body burn for fuel? (This may > be seen in the case of marathoners or long distance runners again). > For practical reasons (time) you can't ever get to this. When the glycogen is exhausted, you burn protein by catabolizing muscle. > To engage in aerobic activity while trying to maintain muscle mass or trying > to increase muscle mass, one needs to tread a very, very fine line or else > he/she will fail at gaining mass. > No really, make sure that you keep yourself tanked up with carbs. Replace carbs right after a workout (when uptake is fast and efficient) with fruit juices. Eat plenty of complex carbs like grains, cereals, pasta, etc. to always keep muscles as fully loaded as possible. Excess carbs are not really converted to fat very efficiently. We have a fair excess capacity to store carbs. Simple sugars promote weight gain not because they get converted into fat, but rather because one of the actions of insulin is to shut down fat breakdown. Your body just burns the sugar for energy instead of fat it normally wants to do. Any fat intake at the same time then gets deposited in fat stores. In the form of complex carbs, it's actually hard to eat alot. Just make sure that the carb you load up on is fat free. The stimulus for protein breakdown is low glycogen. That's how your body senses starvation, your glycogen stors are exhausted. If you keep your fat intake low, you can eat alot of calories in the form of carbohydrate, preserve your muscle mass and still lose weight without feeling hungry at all. > Jim > > Mike K From: af084@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Neil Redding) Subject: Re: Intensity (new questions) Date: Thu, 30 Dec 1993 13:48:38 GMT In a previous article, blair@med.uvm.edu (Blair Robertson) says: >It would be great if someone in this thread could do a search on this stuff, >'cause so far there are absolutely no facts at all with this fat >burning info. IMHO the best point made so far is that >you will burn more fat at 60% MHR when you are unfit 'cause you will be able >to exercise longer. >I have not seen anyone post a single reference for the fact that at higher >heart rates one starts to burn glycogen again. This physiologically just does >not ring true. > >Early in aerobic exercise ATP comes from glycogen (i.e glucose) >Then as time goes by, as is similar in fasting, the body turns to other >stores, in order to maintain a basal blood glucose level that can be >used by the brain (it can't use fatty acids). The other sources are >fat (transported from fat stores to travel to muscle as fatty acids (FA's), >and >broken down by Beta oxidation to yield about (if I remember right 4x the >amount of ATP as glucose does). The other source is protein in a >last ditch attempt, (some of you may remember the clown that said >at very high HR's the body starts to use muscle protein!). So on extended >exercise you use up the glycogen stores, then you call on the FA's to >replace them. Unless you go anaerobic and produce lactic acid (about 2 ATP's) >you will continue to burn fat. It just does not seem logical that the body >switches back and forth between FA's and glycogen, this would endanger >glucose levels in the brain. >OK may be I am missing some vital piece of evidence that has been published >in a refereed medical/ex phys journal...... >Blair > Check out é]"The Lore of Running" 3rd ed. by Tim Noakes, Ch. 3, "Energy Metabolism During Exercise". Noakes discusses this issue and provides references to scientific literature. Since there has been a lot of uninformed speculation on this subject in this thread I will summarize some of his main points. See the book for the relevant citations. Exercise Intensity ------------------ As theintensity of exercise increases, the contribution of carbos increases. Above 95% VO2max only carbos are burned. It is believed that the slow rate of transport of fatty acids into cells limits the rates at which fats can nû be converted into energy. Note that the body does not "switch" between carbos and fat. It is the proportion that changes. Exercise Duration ----------------- As the duration of exercise increases at any exercise intensity, fat becomes an increasingly important energy source. In one study where athletes exercised at 30% VO2Max for 4 hours, fat provided 35% at the beginning ofthe period but 62% after 4 hours. In another study at 65% VO2Max, fat provided 39% at the start but 67% after 2 hours. Athletes Fitness ---------------- As an athlete becomes fitter through regular training, he will use more fat and less carbo during a workout of fixed intensity. This is due to an increase in the concentration of enzymes associated with fatty acid metabolism in the mitochondria. Noakes provides many references to the scientific literature in his book to support the above statements. -- Neil Redding 31 Renfrew Ave, Ottawa, Ontario From: Lyle McDonald Subject: Protein.intake.part4 Date: Sat, 11 Jun 94 12:04:29 -0500 Ok, let's get to the nitty gritty of protein intake and athletes. For the sake of completeness, I will quote the RDA for protein which is 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight (1). This works out to .36 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight. So for a 150 pound person, this would be 54 grams of protein. Yeah, sure this is enough for someone exercising vigorously. For all practical purposes, let's just ignore the RDA since it surely doesn't apply to anyone who does more than sit around all day. First, let me talk about protein requirements (what you must take in to maintain positive nitrogen balance). The minimum necessary is not necessarily the optimal amount but that gets into other issues that I will address later. Keeping in mind the difficulties in assessing true protein needs, I would like to look at some of the nitrogen balance studies which have been performed. (2) First I will address strength athletes (bodybuilders, etc...) Various studies have been done which have found protein requirements to be anywhere from 250% of the RDA (2g/kg/day) in Polish weightlifters to 112% (.9g/ kg/day) of the RDA for experienced bodybuilders if energy intake is adequate. Other studies found that anywhere from 162% to 200% (1.3 to 1.6g/kg.day) resulted in positive nitrogen balance. For some reason, studies on beginning weight trainers indicate greater protein needs (up to 2.0 g/kg/day to maintain positive nitrogen balance) than for experienced weight trainers. It may be that long term weight training leads to an increase in the body's utilization of protein. These studies bring another question up which is: is the minimum amount to maintain positive nitrogen balance the optimal amount for increases in muscle mass. Other studies have addressed this as well as is possible. One study found that nitrogen retention was greater at 350% RDA (2.8g/kg) versus 175% RDA (1.4g/kg). In this study, the higher protein group experienced greater gains in lean body mass. Several other studies support this idea. Ultimately the question is this. If some nitrogen retention is good (i.e. positive nitrogen balance), is more nitrogen balance better?? This has not been answered conclusively but seems to be supported by the above studies. So what about endurance athletes? Well, remember when I made the blasphemous statement a while back that endurance athletes need more protein (at least relatively), than bodybuilders. Well, here's why. During weight training, only glucose is used for energy needs. Due to the high intensity nature of weight-training, fat and protein cannot be utilized for energy production. Protein requirements are increased in weightlifters presumably for tissue rebuilding. Well, during endurance exercise, this is not true and protein can provide 5-10% of total energy needs during exercise. Put this on top of the protein needed for daily use and tissue repair from exercise and you end up with higher protein needs (at least when you're talking about the minimum to maintain nitrogen balance). A hard training cyclist or runner may burn 600-1200 calories (or much more for elite athletes) per hour. If we assume even 5% of this to come from protein we have 30-60 calories from protein which is 8-15 grams per hour at the low end. If 10% of energy needs come from protein, hourly protein usage may be 16-30 grams. When you multiply that by 2-5 hours per day training, you get significantly increased protein needs. Body builders and other strength athletes will still take in more protein on an absolute scale (since they weigh quite a bit more than endurance athletes), but I contend that endurance athletes require more on a pound per pound basis. For both types of athletes, a good baseline reccomendation is probably is 2.0 grams of protein per kg of bodyweight per day. This works out to about 1 gram per pound of bodyight per day. While this may over- estimate protein needs, better to over-estimate than under-estimate and compromise progress. For most athletes, this actually works out to about 15-20% of total calories from protein assuming that adequate calories are being taken in to support exercise. If fewer calories than needed are eaten, protein needs will go up. Oh, yeah, for the record, the reference study (2) states that "there is no published evidence that strength athletes have increased incidence of renal (kidney) disease." So, excess protein does not cause kidney stones or other kidney problems unless there is a pre-existing problem. Next time, what athletes really do take in and a brief discussion of "optimal" protein needs vs. "minimum" protein needs. Lyle References: 1. "Contemporary Nutrition: Issues and Insights" 2. Lemon et al. "Protein intake and athletic performance" ------------------------------ From: jbm@owquitit.estd.wvu.edu Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 Subject: Re: What causes a muscle to contract On 8/21/96 at 12:01 -0400, Tim Yang wrote about RE: What causes muscle to contract? > > > Anyway we got to talking about lifting and my friend was talking about > > >how he's > > > really back into lifting now and he's so much stronger because he's >able to > > > quiet his mind down and concentrate on contracting his muscles so >much harder > > > than he was ever able to before. His assertion is that it's the thought > > >process > > > that creates the chemical reaction to make a muscle contract. > > > > -Tim On 08/21/96 at 11:37 -0500, Brad Maust wrote: > > Muscle contraction follows the sliding filament theory, where voluntary > > (somatic) or involuntary (autonomic) stimulation starts the "cascading" > > action of muscular movement beginning with the generation of action > > potentials and ending with the release of Ca+ from the sarcoplasmic > > reticulum > > and the subsequent binding to troponin, removing its inhibitory influence > > over the contractile proteins actin and myosin. Though physiologists > > speculate that an area of the brain that links motivation (via the limbic > > system) with higher centers (the cerebral cortex) and certain tropic organ > > axes (hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal glands) may be responsible for > > ultra-short duration, transient increases in maximal strength (e.g. lady > > lifting car off her son, etc.), a transcendental influence on muscle > > contraction is largely a myth, bordering on something similar to > > telekinesis. > > This, of course, has yet to be demonstrated... On 08/22/96 Tim Yang wrote: > ok, i think my question still remains unanswered. let's disregard the > lady lifting the car off her son and any references to telekinesis. what > i wanted an opinion on was what mechanism initiates the message in the > brain for the muscle to contract and what governs the strength of that > contraction. i assume that there is a feedback mechanism in place where > nervous system tells the brains that an object is heavy or light and the > brain releases chemicals to cause a contraction accordingly. > > if this mechanism is fully understood and can be measured can we then > develop techniques to increase its strength or duration either > psychologically (meditation or visualization) or chemically ( some sort > of supplement, maybe testoterone is the answer to this part). > > i guess part of what i was thinking about is how much of the process is > happening locally in the muscle and how much is happening in the brain. > > thanks for the feedback and by the way what is nrcce? i sit part of the > dept of energy? Tim, I forwarded the question to one of my colleagues, a Ph.D. to be in Exercise Physiology. He may get on the list, but he is very busy. Here is his reply: -- Without going into an extensive exercise phsiology lecture, I will attempt to answer Mr. Yang's questions regarding muscular contraction and brain interaction. Here goes: 1) What is the mechanism in the brain that initiates muscular contraction? Muscular contraction with regard to strength is not directly controlled by the brain. Neural components are the main facilitators and controllers of strength. Muscle fiber size, muscle fiber type, biomechanics and anthropometrics (body dimensions) also play a part in the amount of strength muscles can generate. Disinhibition of protective muscular mechanisms (i.e. muscle spindles and golgi tendon organs) that control length and load also augment muscular strength. Complicated and volitional movements usually involve some part of the brain - the more intricate and complicated the movement, the more brain involvement. With specific regard to motor control, the cerebellum plays an important role in skeletal muscle function, predominately with learned movement patterns. The brainstem, specifically the reticular formation, allows one to focus on specific sensory inputs and influences arousal and wakefulness. For example, this area of the brain permits a baseball pitcher to focus on the strike zone rather than the taunts of fans and opposing players; or a weightlifter to block out distractive thoughts and focus on the fundamentals of his lift. The extent of involvement of other areas of the brain with regard to strength are NOT well understood. The coordination of the limbic system (responsible for motivation) and the cerebral cortex (higher centers that influence intellect and motor control) may play an important role in the performance of incredible feats of strength. Anthropologists and physiologists theorize that some combination of brain function relating to our primal ability to survive may contribute to the amazing strength endeavors certain individuals are capable of... Note: a theory of motor command generation (the cerebellorubral circuit) involving an "open-loop feed-forward" control does exist, but this pertains mostly to intricate coordinated movements of limbs and extremities, such as the arms and hands in the execution of the golf swing. 2) What governs the strength of muscular contraction? Strength depends upon neural and non-neural factors. Progressive resistance training causes the nervous system to more fully activate important muscles required in specific movements and to better coordinate their actions. These predominant neural changes result in the ability to exert more force. Specifically, these neural components include: # of motor units recruited; motor unit firing frequency (transmission speed), firing synchronization (sport skill), whole muscle contraction timing, and the degree of inhibition (more inhibition of protective mechanisms, more force generation). The non-neural components include: fiber type contracted (genetic), biomechanics and anthropometrics (genetic) and hypertrophy (muscle size). 3) What is the mechanism in the nervous system that tells the brain an object is heavy? The way the body responds to "heaviness" falls under the umbrella of Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS). This theory proposes a series of phases that describes the body's ability to adapt to stress and results in the individual making various biochemical, physiological, psychological, structural and mechanical adjustments that will improve performance - in this case, an increase in strength. Others have described this phenomenon as an adjustment in homeostasis ("body balance") where all systems adapt to the continuous demands placed upon it. Needless to say, the "mechanisms" governing the perception of "heaviness" are poorly understood and, therefore, impossible to quantify. The balance between the physical, physiological, hormonal and biochemical factors that govern strength remains a mystery yet to be solved. As far as the contribution of estrogen or estrogenic substances to food: Plant sterols are not capable of generating a hormonal response in humans because we lack the enzymes to convert them into active form - be they estrogenic or androgenic. Carbohydrates, such as pasta, DO NOT contain hormones. Hormones may be found in certain animal products, like fat (known to contain peripheral estrogen). However, even when ingested, these biochemicals are all exposed to the acid hydrolysis of the gastrointestinal tract and therefore, largely INACTIVATED. Tell your roommate not to be so gullable and believe everything he hears or reads, especially from unsubstanti ated sources... Otherwise tell him the sky is falling and advise him to go out and purchase an umbrella... -- Brad Maust jbm@owquitit.nrcce.wvu.edu http://owquitit.nrcce.wvu.edu