The Official Aminogen Blog

Time Crunch: Making the Most of Your Workout Minutes

The New York Times asked physiologists what they considered to be the single best exercise. It's a question a lot of people would like answered- especially those of us who struggle to fit a workout into our too-busy days, and want to get the most out of any precious moments we can set aside for exercise.

Swimming, walking, H.I.T., running up stairs, the burpee and the squat were all on the list. In addition to providing a decent workout, these activities were considered practical because they could be done in a reasonable amount of time and weren't too difficult to stick with.

 

 

One element of a good exercise all of these experts mentioned-

- building muscle strength.

 

 

It's not about how many hours of aerobics you can squeeze in, or how many calories you can burn (people tend to compensate by eating more after aerobic and endurance exercise, anyway). 

Building and maintaining muscle should factor into any exercise you can find the time to do. Muscle is just too vital for our overall health. And age-related muscle loss, called sarcopenia, is something we are all up against.  It begins as early as age 30.

The article quotes McMaster University Professor of Kinesiology Dr. Stuart Phillips, who proposed the squat for single best exercise.

 

“Each of us is experiencing sarcopenia right this minute,” he said. “We just don’t realize it." Endurance exercise, he added, unlike resistance training, does little to slow the condition.

 

The experts also pointed out that most of the benefits of exercise result from the first 30 minutes of your workout, so if you can find a half-hour somewhere in your day, go ahead and do something good for your muscles!

Aminogen, Casein and Whey: What You Should Know If You Want to Build Muscle

The authors of this study, from the May issue of American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, begin by pointing out "diminished muscle protein synthetic response" to food intake can contribute to age-related muscle loss.

In other words, as we get older, protein's anabolic effect on our muscles becomes blunted. Our bodies are less adept at converting the protein we eat into lean muscle mass. For example, we know that as we age we produce fewer endogenous digestive enzymes to properly digest protein. Age also seems to decrease our ability to convert dietary amino acids into functional peptides that can perform metabolic tasks.

 

Ok, so we're all getting older, blah, blah, blah... Any good news here?

 

Yes. The kind of protein we eat can make a difference, too. This is good because this is something we have more control over.

The authors here are looking at protein source, rather than our poorly performing digestive systems, for answers. They point out that differences between protein sources, such as digestion absorption kinetics, amino acid composition, or some combination thereof, can affect how much muscle protein synthesis ensues.  

So in this study, whey and casein, two common protein sources with two very different absorption rates (casein tends to be slower) were given to a group of 48 males with a mean (that's mathmatical, not tempermental) age of 78.

The group was divided three ways, recieving either 20 grams of whey, 20 grams of casein, or 20 grams of casein hydrolysate. Proteins were tagged with a phenylanine tracer so that absorption and amino acid kinetics could be accurately observed.

 

How did things turn out?

 

Whey protein outperformed the rest when it came to speed and peak of absorption. And whey protein demonstrated the best postprandial mixed muscle protein fractional synthetic rates - aka muscle building.

 

Bonus: whey protein is naturally higher in leucine, which simultaneously promotes fat loss and support lean muscle growth.

 

The authors conclude:

"Whey protein stimulates postprandial muscle protein accretion more effectively than do casein and casein hydrolysate in older men. This effect is attributed to a combination of whey's faster digestion and absorption kinetics and higher leucine content."

Whey protein was the clear winner when it comes to muscle synthesis in older men.

 

Wait. Read that conclusion again.

 

The authors attribute the superior muscle protein synthesis of whey protein to two factors:

1. Whey's faster digestion and absorption kinetics

2. Higher leucine content

 

Sound familiar? 

 

Aminogen was shown in a published clinical study to:

1. Triple the rate of whey protein absorption

2. Increase levels of branched-chain amino acids like leucine by 250 percent

Ah, interesting.

 

By the way, a friendly reminder not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. While whey may be where it's at for fast muscle synthesis, casein actually has remarkable properties of its own. It moves more slowly through the digestive tract and therefore can be ideal when you want a steady (steadier) influx of amino acids, like overnight. Casein glycomacropeptides promote healthy gastrointestinal bacteria and may support immune and cardiovascular health as well.

The takeaway here is to know your goals when selecting your protein source. And when that includes building and maintaining lean muscle, whey protein has been shown to produce more immediate muscle protein synthesis. Given that the published clinical on Aminogen shows an increased absorption rate (triple!) and increased amino acid levels over whey protein alone, you might do well to keep the patented enzyme in mind as well!

Extra Credit:

Better Results: Whey Protein or Free Form Amino Acids?

Five Ways to Lose Muscle Fast

If You Have Muscles, Or Know Someone Who Does

The BBC has a 30 minute report on muscle loss that you don't want to miss. It includes interviews with several of the foremost researchers on the subject, which you may also be familiar with as sarcopenia. So pull a chair up next to your computer speakers and get comfortable, your muscles will thank you for it.

 

[BTW-I couldn't track down a transcript of this broadcast, but if you are unable to access this program from your computer, this older BBC article provides some of the same information, minus the most recent research. The bottom of this page also provides links to the researchers mentioned in the audio program.]

 

One of the featured scientists, Professor of Clinical Physiology, Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences at the Univerisity of Nottingham Medical School Mike Rennie, said he was surprised by one of the conclusions from recent research:

 

Loss of lean muscle (lean muscle is crucial for good health ) is primarily a problem of inadequate protein synthesis.

 

Why is this surprising? 

 

How Muscle Is Made

Because muscle is constantly being regenerated through a process of tearing down and rebuilding of tissue.  Muscles are broken down by the body to harvest amino acids, which are then used, in part, to rebuild these muscles. 

The amino acids from muscle may also be used to build hormones, neurotransmitters and other tissues.  They perform a host of other functions within the body. When amino acids are adequately supplied through the diet, the carefully balanced give-and-take of protein supports the healthy functioning of all of these systems, as well as the maintenance of muscle. 

Exercise can cause muscle tissue breakdown, but this breakdown then signals the body to rebuild muscle and store more amino acids there, resulting in muscle growth.

 

How Muscle Is Lost

Both aging and illness can make it difficult for the body to maintain this process; muscles grow weaker and smaller as they are depleted of amino acids.  Rebuilding muscle tissue slows or stops as the body becomes overwhelmed by the demand.

Exactly how this happens is still a hot research topic - getting hotter, in fact, as the US population ages, because loss of muscle mass affects the immune system, bone health, the ability to fight off and recover from major illness, and can lead to injury and disability.

Scientists simply don't have all of the answers yet. But what they have learned is that it's not so much the breakdown of muscle (sometimes called catabolism) that's the problem.  It's when this breakdown is not followed by rebuilding (anabolism).

 

Headed for a Breakdown

Muscle breakdown in and of itself is not the problem, scientists like Rennie and others have concluded, because this breakdown is normal part of muscle regeneration.

For example, as I mentioned earlier, exercise actually induces muscle breakdown. Findings published in the 2004 Journal of Nutrition even show that exercise specifically induces the breakdown of the branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) in muscle.

When everything is functioning properly, this then triggers repair and rebuilding of muscle.  If this doesn't happen, however, muscle is lost. 

Over time, this can add up to some serious lean muscle loss, up to one pound each year, and 80 percent over a lifetime.

 

Why Do You Build Me Up, Buttercup

Branched chain amino acids, it turns out, are really important for muscle building. After exercise, these amino acids have been shown to activate key enzymes that stimulate protein synthesis.

 

The authors of the 2004 Journal of Nutrition study on exercise-induced BCAA catabolism concluded that "....that the BCAA requirement [may be]increased by exercise. BCAA supplementation before and after exercise has beneficial effects for decreasing exercise-induced muscle damage and promoting muscle-protein synthesis."

 

So muscle breakdown during exercise can teach us something about how muscles deteriorate, and what may protect them. 

But what about age-related muscle loss? Does it happen the same way? Can BCAAs  - or anything else, for that matter - help preserve muscle, the way they do after exercise? (pssst...they help when taken before exercise, too, but that's for another post.)

 

 

BCAAs and Age-Related Muscle Loss

For one thing, we know that the BCAAs leucine and isoleucine are known to help preserve lean muscle. Moreover, scientists have recently found that BCAAs leucine, isoleucine and valine increased the lifespan of mice by 12 percent, and improved age-related muscle deficits and mitrochondrial biogenisis (think energy) too.

Their study, "Branched-chain amino acid supplementation promotes survival and supports cardiac and skeletal muscle mitochondrial biogenesis in middle-aged mice," is published in Cellular Metabolism. (quiz: what kind of car does a middle-age mouse drive?)

But older adults may have difficulty taking in adequate BCAAs, since they may have difficulty chewing, produce fewer endogenous digestive enzymes and may be less inclined to choose protein foods. In fact, between 15 and 38 percent of adult men and 27 to 41 percent of adult women may not be getting the RDA for protein on a daily basis. Unfortunately, we know that protein intake is directly correlated to how much lean mass is lost with age.

This does mean though, that older adults can take help support their own muscle health by making sure their diet contains enough quality protein.  Remember, changes to the diet should never be made without consulting a physician.

  

 

Exercise and Aging Muscle

The other good news is that resistance exercise seems to do a good job of maintaining and building muscle, even with age. In fact, Rennie calls the growth response of older adults' muscles to weight bearing exercise "a much bigger response than expected."

While older muscles may respond to exercise more slowly- and perhaps less efficiently- than younger muscles do, they do respond. 

 

 Many say muscle wasting is more a disease of inactivity rather than of age. 

It may be a combination of both.  Scientists are still sorting out the roles of hormones, diet, activity and genes in this puzzle. But the role of exercise is undeniable.

Take a look at this MRI of an 70 year old woman's quadriceps, before and after resistance training, from this study in the Journal of Applied Physiology. Her muscle increased in size by 32 percent over 8 - 12 weeks of daily resistance exercise. Improvements in muscle strength, not just size, were also seen.

Organizations like the National Strength and Conditioning Association provide guidelines for weight-bearing exercise for seniors, but this should only be done under the supervision of a physician or health care provider.

And so, to summarize what we now know about preserving and building lean muscle, the two factors that can make a difference are:

1. Eating and absorbing adequate amounts of high quality protein

2. Stimulating muscles with resistance exercise

Both of these steps should only be done with the guidance of a physician, of course. But science is showing that they may go a long way when it comes to supporting healthy lean muscle.

 

Increasing Need for Sarcopenia Solutions

Sarcopenia was named by the CDC as one of the top five health risks for older adults over a decade ago.  And yet awareness of the condition has been slow-growing, until now.

 

Boom!

Enter the baby boomers.This generation is 40 million strong, and expected to live longer than any previous generation.  Many have watched their parents age, become frail, or lose their independence due to a chronic disease or broken hip. Boomers are looking for ways to help aging parents and safeguard their own healthy futures.

Their needs, and ongoing research into the physiological mechanisms behind sarcopenia, have finally driven the issue of age-related muscle loss into the spotlight. It couldn't be more timely.

Muscle loss can begin as young as age 30, when men and women can lose much as a half-pound of muscle each year.  And for every half-pound of lean muscle lost, most are gaining twice as much fat.  This can make muscle loss an insidious process because this additional fat means that the lost lean tissue may not register on the scale. A person's weight may not change drastically even when their ratio of muscle to fat does. (See a New York Times illustration of what this looks like).

Research shows that after age 50, this process significantly accelerates. A 20 to 40 percent loss of lean muscle mass is possible by the time a person has reached 70.

Most baby boomers have already turned 65 as of this year.

 

So why is this muscle loss such a big deal?

Turns out that our muscles do more than just help us move. Our muscles are an integral part of a healthy immune system and metabolism. Lack of lean muscle is even associated with higher mortality rates in men.

Muscles secrete hormones that fight inflammation. They play an important role in the immune system, and serve as a reserve of amino acids needed for tissue repair during illness and injury. Lack of muscle is a known risk factor for those debilitating hip fractures we so want to avoid. A lack of healthy lean muscle can also affect insulin functioning and mineral metabolism, and therefore influences several chronic diseases.

 

In fact, inadequate muscle mass can impact:

Immune response

Chronic diseases such as diabetes and osteoporosis

Survival rates from critical illness such as cardiovascular disease and cancer

Ability to recover from injury and surgery.

 

Given the importance of lean muscle mass, older adults need solutions for muscle health now.

The logical place to begin is by understanding why muscle loss happens in the first place.

 

Motor Neurons

One obvious culprit is lack of use.  Take a look at a neuromuscular junction, the place in the body where muscle fibers connect with the nerve cells that stimulate them.  Moving muscles - walking, gardening, running the elliptical, aka exercise-  gets these nerves firing (a good thing).  This, in turn, signals more nutrients to be sent into the muscle, and encourages muscle cells to make repairs and reproduce. 

When all is quiet on the western front -  aka sitting on the couch watching House marathons - aka inactivity- this process slows dramatically. Atrophy occurs.  A classic case of use it or lose it.

...Easy enough to remedy if you are forty and can schedule some exercise into your day.  Not so easy as you get older, deal with injuries and disabilities, or struggle with painful diseases like osteoarthritis. And making things even more difficult - even when older adults can exercise, it seems that the motor nerve endings weaken and fray, their ability to relay messages to muscle fibers decreases considerably.

 

Molecular Changes

Other contributors to the problem of muscle loss include hormonal and molecular changes that occur with age.  Hormone levels may decrease.  Hormone receptors and uptake of hormones may be diminished, which can alter metabolic processes such as insulin sensitivity and fat distribution.  Expression of microRNA in skeletal muscle (a topic I will explore further in an upcoming post) slows and becomes disregulated. MicroRNA helps to instruct muscle cells on how to grow and function, so when it goes awry, the growth cycle of muscle cells, and consequently protein synthesis, can be affected.

 

Dietary Protein

Finally, scientists have shown that dietary protein plays a role in lean muscle maintenance.

 

Many older adults do not take in Recommended Daily Allowance for protein - between 15 and 38 percent of adult men and 27 to 41 percent of adult women, according to an analysis reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

 

What's more, not all of the protein older adults do get is necessarily utilized by the body. Protein can only be absorbed by the body for a certain amount of time after ingestion. And as we age our bodies produce fewer digestive enzymes, making it more difficult to break down and absorb protein. The undigested protein can create uncomfortable gastrointestinal symptoms like gas, bloating, and constipation, and people may decrease the protein in their diet in order to avoid this discomfort.

The body also becomes less efficient at using the amino acids it does get from protein.  Since these amino acids are important in such a wide range of physiological functions, from building hormones and neurotransmitters to tissue repair and immune response, the lack of protein can have far-reaching consequences.

 

 Solutions

As the population ages, scientists are looking for ways to combat sarcopenic muscle loss on all three of these fronts.

Physical activity is thought to improve and help preserve motor neuron function, although the ability of some older adults to remain active may be limited, as discussed above. Generally speaking, exercise (under the supervision of a health care provider) is encouraged,  and shown to be beneficial at almost every age.

Researchers are working on ways to affect change through hormonal, molecular and genetic pathways, although it may be a long time before this research translates into available treatments. (Interesting to note, however, is the discovery that one way genes may be turned on, off, or modified, is through good old-fashioned diet and exercise!)

Improving dietary protein intake and utilization is one part of the solution that is practical and obtainable for many people. Simply becoming aware of protein intake, choosing quality digestible proteins, and addressing digestion issues with a health care provider may all be important steps that can make a difference.

Nutraceuticals Spotlight: Aminogen and Sarcopenia Applications

Whether you're worried about losing lean muscle, or you're formulating a new product for same, you don't want to miss this new Nutraceuticals World article.   I'm excited to see a great publication like NW covering this issue!

 

Here's a quote:

"Adequate protein intake is essential for muscle mass maintenance, however, upwards of 40% of Americans, age 70 and older, do not consume enough quality protein. “The body produces fewer endogenous digestive enzymes as we age, meaning that our ability to break down traditional sources of protein (from meat and fish) and absorb amino acids may be compromised,” explained Triarco’s Dr. Anderson. “Nitrogen retention, which is a measure of how much protein is conserved during digestion, can therefore also be affected. Additionally, poor digestion of protein can cause uncomfortable symptoms such gas, bloating and constipation, which can discourage older consumers from getting all of the protein they need.

...Much of what makes Aminogen a great addition to a bodybuilding whey protein…is what also makes Aminogen ideal for older adults wanting to maintain their lean muscle mass,” he said. “Plus, Aminogen’s ability to triple the rate of protein absorption and reduce symptoms of incomplete protein digestion make it ideal for tablet and capsule applications that older adults can take with their regular meals and snacks, in addition to their whey protein."

Weekend Reading: Why Doctors Are Paying More Attention to Sarcopenia (And Bears)

Losing muscle mass as you age can affect your immune system and increase your chances of injury and chronic disease. 

This week the New York Times reports that doctors are beginning to pay more attention to age-related muscle loss, called sarcopenia.

One interesting question brought up in the article: why do people suffer from muscle loss (brought on by age, inactivity, etc.) while some animals do not?

Bears in hibernation, for instance, do not eat and hardly move - and yet do not suffer from sarcopenia.

Scientist have learned that this is due, in part, to their dramatically slower metabolism during winter, shivering, which produces some muscle movement, and other protective metabolic mechanisms that slow the breakdown of muscle protein).

In fact, some researchers are now looking at how bears preserve muscle in order to help humans do the same.

In the meantime, for more on muscle mass for humans, read these past posts. Learn how Aminogen and protein nutrition factor in when it comes to maintaining your lean muscle.

Think Protein Supplements Are Only for the Fitness Elite?

You don't have to live at the gym in order to benefit from a good protein supplement.

In fact, research tells us that protein intake can be just as important if you DO NOT exercise regularly, under conditions like these:

1. Inactivity

Researchers concluded in a review published last year in Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care that patients suffering from systemic inflammation and inactivity due to illness may require more protein to maintain amino acid stores and moderate immune functions.

 

 2. Dieting

In this study, when subjects restricted their caloric intake (eating 80% of estimated energy requirements), skeletal muscle synthesis slowed down.

Remember, when you are trying to lose weight, you are really trying to lose FAT, not lean muscle!

3. Aging

This brief article from industry magazine Food Product Design is just one of many discussions about aging and muscle loss, otherwise known as sarcopenia, in nutrition circles.

Read more about protein benefits we've discussed in the passed: healthy immune response, healthy aging, bone health, cardiovascular health... 

 As always, consult your physician before making any changes in diet or exercise.

 

 

How's Your Diet Going?

Japanese researchers have discovered that adding the amino acid isoleucine to a high fat diet in mice reduced weight gain by 6% and fat accumulation by 49%.

In their study, published in the Journal of Nutrition's January issue, researchers fed mice a diet consisting of 45% fat.  Mice that were also given drinking water containing 2.5% isoleucine while on the hight fat diet not only gained far less weight, but had improved insulin sensitivity and lowered skeletal muscle triglyceride levels.

Now, we already know that protein is important for weight loss through several other mechanisms.

Protein keeps you feeling fuller, longer, so you tend to eat less.  It also reduces levels of the appetite-driving hormone ghrelin much longer that fat or carbohydrates do.  Adequate protein intake may also help protect from muscle loss such as sarcopenia.

What this study tells us is there is yet ANOTHER way that protein may help us lose weight. And the news is even better for Aminogen fans, because Aminogen was shown in a published clinical study to significantly increase the levels of isoleucine absorbed from protein.

Fountain of Youth? How Exercise Affects Telomere Length

An article from Time magazine this week explores how exercise improves both physical and cognitive health as we age. The author reports on one study that found that female subjects, age 65-75, significantly improved their walking speed (an indicator of overall health) and executive functioning (memory, organization, etc.) after one year of weekly resistance training.

In this particular study, the same improvements were not seen in women who performed only toning and balance exercises when compared to the resistance training group.

However, other forms of exercise have been shown to improve different measures of health.  This New York Times article describes how when active and sedentary groups of older adults are compared, the active adults show marked improvement in something called telomere length. 

Telomeres are the end-caps of DNA strands (picture them as the ends of a fiber-optic wire). Each time cells reproduce, these ends get a little bit shorter.  Therefore, scientists can use them to measure aging in the body.

Researchers found that while telomeres in older adults were still shortened when compared to younger subjects, the telomers of the more active older adults remained much longer than those of adults who did not exercise.  In older runners, for example, loss of telomere length was reduced by as much as 75%

Exercise has been shown in previous studies to modify the expression of genes, in effect making exercisers physiologically  'younger.' And we know that resistance exercise in particular plays an important role in reducing the risk of sarcopenia.

Check out the American College of Sports Medicine for guidelines on exercise for older adults.

 

Going Lean

... requires resistance exercise and a healthy protein intake, especially as we age.

Lean muscle mass plays an important but often-overlooked role in our health , and it's never too soon to start taking care of it.

 

For a Good Cause

Each year between the ages of 30 and 60 the average person can expect to lose one-half a pound of muscle, a process known as sarcopenia.  At the same time, the average person will also gain one pound of fat.

As the years go by, this shift in body composition really adds up. At some point between the ages of 50 and 75, an average person may have lost some 25 percent of their lean muscle mass. 

Sarcopenia can affect our immune systems, our risk of injuries and our ability to recover from them. It can also play a role in chronic conditions like diabetes and osteoporosis.

As we age it's important to resist this physiological entropy by maintaining and building our reserves of lean muscle and fighting off the fat.

Reduce, Re-use, Recycle

 

Losing lean muscle can slow fat burning and muscle protein synthesis, therefore leading to further lean muscle loss. 

Lean muscle affects our metabolism in at least three ways:

 

Reduce 

Lean muscle is the largest location in the body where lipid oxidation, or fat burning, takes place.  Scientist think that less muscle can result in a diminished capacity to get rid of fat.

Re-use  

Muscle tissue is also the primary depository for glucose disposal. Once they fill to maximum capacity - around 250 grams of glucose for an average person - glucose then must be stored in the liver and in fat cells.  Exercise uses the glucose stored in muscles and in doing so helps to promote healthy glucose metabolism.  This is important in the preventing or minimizing chronic conditions like diabetes, macular degeneration, and perhaps even Alzheimer's.

Recycle

Recent research confirms that blood plasma levels of essential amino acids help to regulate protein synthesis. Low levels of these amino acids result in lower rates of muscle protein synthesis. What's more, the body needs amino acids for a number of important jobs in addition to muscle building. If there are not enough amino acids available in the blood,  it will break down lean muscle and use amino acids stored there for these other functions.

 

You Can Make a Difference

Scientists believe that our slowing metabolism and decreased ability to oxidize fat is a result of the typical decrease in lean body mass, rather than simply a function of age.

In order to prevent lean muscle mass as we age, experts recommend resistance exercise coupled with sufficient, quality protein intake. 

In fact, in his report for the U.S. Dairy Export Council on sarcopenia and whey protein, Dr. Paul J. Cribb states:

"An individual's habitual protein intake may prove to be one of the more important variables that influence the size of human muscle mass since recent work has confirmed that the concentration of EAA [essential amino acids] in the blood (plasma) regulate protein synthesis rates within muscle."