Topic: Diet <--> Muscle Recovery

[Chris Eddington]

I have a question for the nutrition gurus if they have a minute. I've been informed that what you eat/drink post training (particularly if a heavy workout was involved) can have an effect on how well muslces recover afterwards (I'm not thinking growth here, clearly that's an obvious question, I'm thinking more in terms of soreness and duration of soreness). If there's merit in this, I'd love to know the best choices. Thanks for your time!

[TR]

Yes, it's true.

[Sat Santokh]

He asked for choices....

What I found worked best for me: Juice with whey isolate in it and creatine (if you aren't taking creatine whatever it doens't matter), then a large protein shake before bed and plenty of sleep.

Juice: increase insulin levels in blood to help the muscles absorb the nutrients
Whey isolate: gets absorbed extremely fast
shake before bed: with casein in it which is slow digesting and gives you a steady stream of protein throughout the night.  depending on what kind of body you have you might need carbs too if you have a super fast metabolism.

plenty of sleep: hormonal release is done mostly during sleep and waking up too early can cut short this release which is good for repair.  Also there is a hormone called cortisol that spikes around 7 am which causes your body to eat its muscle and it will also make you cranky.  So sleep is a very important part

[Janine]

Nutrition after a workout plays an incredibly important role in muscle recovery, which, by the by, plays a huge role in gaining muscle.  It's all connected.

The most helpful points I've discovered in recovering after a major workout are rehydration, carbs or a heavy protein, and bananas.   

It's incredibly important to protect your muscles and rehydrate properly after a workout. General rule is 16 ox of water for every pound you dropped during the session.   I like to use coconut water when I have it on hand (that's coconut water, not coconut milk)  because it carries a whollop of potassium and electrolytes too.

Carbs and / or protein depend on your diet, but it's important to refuel with something healthy and dense in calories.

Potassium has been shown to help immensely with recovery.  Stock up on bananas. 

That's all I know, and it's been helpful for me so far.  There are some really great resources online about this stuff.  I can't wait to see what people have to share in this thread.

[Chris Salvato]

Juice: increase insulin levels in blood to help the muscles absorb the nutrients

Good recommendation, but, according to my experience/knowledge, the mechanism is a little off...I am sure I will be corrected in some capacity, as well.

Insulin levels are a bit more "controlled" Post-Workout (PWO).  The body does not need insulin since muscles are "ready to absorb". 

What insulin does is signal muscles to tell them "hey muscle cells, bring your sugar carts to the door because we're about to stock up!".  Exercise, coincidentally enough, does the same thing which means insulin levels stay low PWO -- which makes it a great time to eat those high GI carbs we all love like fruit juice.  This is because muscle cells receive the sugar with higher priority than fat cells.

Coincidentally enough, the sugars that are absorbed PWO also signal to the muscle cell saying "Hey guys, we got all the energy we need again -- this is a great time to build" and protein synthesis increases.

Whey isolate: gets absorbed extremely fast

Fast proteins aren't necessarily good, though.  There is more research that needs to be done on that - but a fast protein mostly gets "filtered" by the liver and most of the protein goes to waste.  However, the studies that were done on this were done with people (not necessarily athletes) who were fasted and consumed nothing else but protein. 

I would recommend something that's a mix of a fast and slow protein (casein+whey, for example...like in milk) along with something like sugars (as you did)

shake before bed: with casein in it which is slow digesting and gives you a steady stream of protein throughout the night.  depending on what kind of body you have you might need carbs too if you have a super fast metabolism.

I agree, casein for the win.

However, Sat, none of these dietary advice nuggets will really help with soreness, per say.  Most of it is for optimal recovery in terms of muscle growth.

plenty of sleep: hormonal release is done mostly during sleep and waking up too early can cut short this release which is good for repair.  Also there is a hormone called cortisol that spikes around 7 am which causes your body to eat its muscle and it will also make you cranky.  So sleep is a very important part

Definitely will help soreness, imho....and, personally, I have definitely experienced the differences of high sleep vs. low sleep in terms of soreness...

The most helpful points I've discovered in recovering after a major workout are rehydration, carbs or a heavy protein, and bananas.  

With the exception of protein/carbs PWO, I would agree with this.

Rehydration is key.  When your body is not rehydrated, it leads to soreness, plain and simple.  This does not apply to just PWO, though -- this applies to the whole day, every day.  In addition to hydrating yourself, you should avoid things that will dehydrate you.  Things like alcohol will definitely make you sore.  Don't believe me?  Do the CF WOD Cindy then go on a bender -- you will feel more sore than you ever have before.

---------------------------

My personal recommendations for minimizing soreness have nothing to do with post workout.  They are:
 - Stay Hydrated (as Janine said)
 - Get Plenty of Sleep (as Sat said)
 - Keep your diet, in general, low in "inflammatory foods".  These foods mostly include processed carbs and foods with a high ratio of Omega-6:Omega-3 fatty acids.
 - Keep your diet, in general, high in "anti-inflammatory foods".  These foods mostly meats, fruits and vegetables and foods that have a high ratio of Omega-3:Omega-6 fatty acids. (This is why we always recommend fish oil to athletes!!)  A diet high in fruits and veggies will also make sure you are getting the electrolytes and micronutrients needed to ward off soreness.
 - Avoid dehydration foods like excessive caffeine and alcohol.
 - Massage anything that you think may be a trouble area tomorrow. That is, anything you worked out really hard and know will be sore tomorrow if you don't nip it in the bud.

[Chris Eddington]

I couldn't have asked for a better group of answers. That was definitely enlightening, I'll be monitoring all this in my routine from now on. Big thanks to Sat, Janine and Chris.

[Sat Santokh]

Oh yeah, I don't know what you are doing for your workouts but if you have rest periods inbetween sets or something do active recovery.  Don't just sit there while your resting, try and stretch out whatever you just finished or are about to do.  This will increase blood flow to that area more nutrients etc...

[tombb]

There's a few important points to make on this.
First off, the opening post is not asking about muscle growth, but rather about 'reducing soreness' with post-workout nutrition.  I think this is generally a bad goal because soreness is a fundamental, necessary part of hypertrophy, which is basically the best type of muscle growth you can hope for.  There are other types of muscle adaptation that don't involve much soreness, or very weak gradual muscle growth that might cause soreness below a detectable threshold, but again delayed onset muscle soreness is good thing and not something you should try to interfere with.

Nutrition will not hamper the process of muscle hypertrophy and its associated soreness, aside from maybe severe starvation. A post workout drink can even increase soreness by increasing the amount of muscle growth, but again that's what you want.

If you have soreness two days after your workout and that type of muscle growth was not your intended goal (e.g., maybe you were just trying to work on endurance or strength alone), it's basically too late for that session, just let your muscles grow for that one time and change your next workouts to avoid it in the future.

Having said that, there is also more immediate and short-lived types of soreness caused mostly by metabolic byproducts (and not by myoblasts fusing into your muscle fibers through beneficial inflammation as part of muscle growth), and that can be improved by recharging your muscle glycogen stores, drinking water, vitamins and electrolytes as people mentioned already.


Also, a few points on what people mentioned so far:

Chris.S. (since there are multiple Chris people in the thread), the general discussion of muscles primed for insulin you used is fine, but a few points to correct are that insulin is still raised by postworkout nutrition and it still plays a very important role in guiding nutrients into muscles. As you know insulin-sensitivity is raised after exercise, and that is one of the things that helps muscles respond to insulin properly and absorb nutrition better. The absolute value of insulin is also not important, since the body would adapt to any constant level as a new baseline, it's the relative change (spike) from the postworkout supplement that is important. If you did not respond with insulin to the postworkout supplement, it would be a good sign that you have diabetes

Also, about fast-absorbing proteins, that's exactly what you want right after workout, the liver will not filter them. As fast-absorbing proteins you just get aminoacids circulating and the muscles are able to take them in. Since they are primed for protein synthesis from the carbs and insulin by now, they can make use of these aminoacid before your liver has any chance to try anything funny (physiologically it doesn't have a reason to try and compete with muscles for absorption).
All other times (not right after workout), however, you are much better off with slow-absorbing proteins like caseins, and for that matter with slow-absorbing calories. But not immediately after a workout.


Anyways, in conclusion:
-soreness that lasts only a day after workout: you can possibly reduce it even by eating and being healthy (sleep etc). It's not a programmed part of a healing and recovery mechanism but rather a side effect/byproduct of various metabolic processes.

-soreness peaking 2 days after a workout: it's a -very- good thing, it's a programmed part of muscle growth. You shouldn't try to shorten it and anything healthy for you will probably lengthen it (for example good sleep, nutrition, extra hormones etc all will likely increase it by stimulating more growth).

-For all soreness, you can do things to reduce the symptoms or discomfort, massages, warmups, stretching, hot&cold showers.

[Steven Low]

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

From what I've read muscle soreness has mostly to do with localized inflammation and edema aggravating or 'sensitizing' afferent (sensory) neurons. This is "generally" caused my muscular damage. While muscular damage generally HAS to occur for hypertrophy (not necessarily performance increase), ENOUGH damage to where there is soreness does *not* have to occur for said hypertrophy.

Thus, soreness is not required part of hypertrophy nor is it a part of performance increase.

Soreness is obviously unavoidable when increasing the volume of work, but after the initial soreness when starting exercise or perhaps after a rest break it generally *interferes* with workouts especially EXCESSIVE soreness (longer than 2 days).

Soreness is generally a BAD thing especially for those of us with high frequency working out.

[Chris Salvato]

And onto the debate that I knew would start...

There are other types of muscle adaptation that don't involve much soreness, or very weak gradual muscle growth that might cause soreness below a detectable threshold, but again delayed onset muscle soreness is good thing and not something you should try to interfere with.

Ehhhh soreness isn't necessary for growth.  Never saw anything that said that before in my life.  Personally, I have experienced gross amounts of muscle hypertrophy while going months without being sore.  I don't find any truth to (or evidence to support) the statement that we need to be sore to grow...

If you have soreness two days after your workout and that type of muscle growth was not your intended goal (e.g., maybe you were just trying to work on endurance or strength alone), it's basically too late for that session, just let your muscles grow for that one time and change your next workouts to avoid it in the future.

I am so confused by your statements because, as I said above, soreness is not required for muscle growth *or* performance increases...it is just sometimes a byproduct (especially in the untrained). If you are sore for more than 2 days after your workout you clearly overdid it and need to take a few days off to recover, clearly.

Chris.S. (since there are multiple Chris people in the thread), the general discussion of muscles primed for insulin you used is fine, but a few points to correct are that insulin is still raised by postworkout nutrition and it still plays a very important role in guiding nutrients into muscles. As you know insulin-sensitivity is raised after exercise, and that is one of the things that helps muscles respond to insulin properly and absorb nutrition better. The absolute value of insulin is also not important, since the body would adapt to any constant level as a new baseline, it's the relative change (spike) from the postworkout supplement that is important. If you did not respond with insulin to the postworkout supplement, it would be a good sign that you have diabetes

The benefit of consuming high GI carbs (like sugars and fruit juices) is not the insulin response but the rapid delivery to muscles.  Yes, insulin will increase but that is not the reason.  The absolute level of insulin increase *is* important because it is an important component of staying insulin resistant.  The increase in insulin that happens PWO is much less for the same amount of carb consumed.

Let me restate that insulin DOES rise, but as i said in my post, it is much more controlled.  If I eat 100g of carb outside of the PWO environment I will get an insulin response of X.  When I eat 100g of carb outside of the PWO environment I will get an insulin response that is <X.  That is important.

This is important because it:
- Maintains insulin resistivity
- Increases protein synthesis without increasing deposition to adipose.

Also, about fast-absorbing proteins, that's exactly what you want right after workout, the liver will not filter them.

Not true - this and your following statements puzzle me because its almost as if you know nothing about the hepatic portal (which you clearly must know very much about...)

As fast-absorbing proteins you just get aminoacids circulating and the muscles are able to take them in. Since they are primed for protein synthesis from the carbs and insulin by now, they can make use of these aminoacid before your liver has any chance to try anything funny (physiologically it doesn't have a reason to try and compete with muscles for absorption).

This is the puzzling part. When you digest protein you get amino acids that flow through the hepatic portal into the liver.  The liver sees this huge influx of amino acids and immediately oxidizes the ones that came in too fast.  Your body does not want all these free amino acids floating in the systemic circulation -- its bad news for water regulation, swelling, etc.  With this in mind, the liver starts burning up the extra aminos and uses them to generate ATP before they even hit the main circulation.  Your statements may be true if the liver did not exist.

All other times (not right after workout), however, you are much better off with slow-absorbing proteins like caseins, and for that matter with slow-absorbing calories. But not immediately after a workout.

To further my point, and directly refute these, I will quote the author of The Protein Book, Lyle McDonald:

Almost without exception, whey was suggested as the best protein for after training to get aminos into the bloodstream more quickly.  As noted yesterday, not only is this not true but there is emerging data (discussed in detail in The Protein Book) that fast proteins after training are not the optimal choice for promoting lean body mass gains, slow proteins or a combination of slow and fast proteins appear to be more effective.  I’d refer readers back to my article on Milk: The New Sports Drink? A Review where milk outperformed soy (a fast protein) for promoting lean body mass gains.

As author of this book, he cited over 500 studies focusing on protein.  Fast and slow is the way to go -- that is, if you are fasted.  Fast proteins may be fine if you eat it with carbs/fat -- but there isn't much research on this -- que sera sera.

Anyways, in rebuttal of your second conclusion:

-soreness peaking 2 days after a workout: it's a -very- good thing, it's a programmed part of muscle growth. You shouldn't try to shorten it and anything healthy for you will probably lengthen it (for example good sleep, nutrition, extra hormones etc all will likely increase it by stimulating more growth).

I disagree whole heartedly.  Myself as well as many other athletes go months, if not years, without this level of soreness. This level of soreness is very very common in the untrained but should be avoided.  You can make extremely rapid muscle growth without being sore at all.  IN a personal example, I put on over 20# of lean mass (about 30# total) on SS (very high intensity training 3-4x a week) without being sore more than once or twice in 5 months.

Good Lookin on this one though

[Sat Santokh]

Just a quick question about the Lyle Mcdonald quote.  Isn't it pretty obvious that milk would out perform soy since soy is like some of the worst protein around?  Whey isolate on the BV scale is like 150 or so and soy is like 70.

[Chris Salvato]

Just a quick question about the Lyle Mcdonald quote.  Isn't it pretty obvious that milk would out perform soy since soy is like some of the worst protein around?  Whey isolate on the BV scale is like 150 or so and soy is like 70.

Sat, you may want to read this:
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/nutrition/what-are-good-sources-of-protein-protein-quality.html

Or you can start at the beginning of the 15 part article...
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/nutrition/what-are-good-sources-of-protein-introduction.html

Essentially, all of those BV, PDCAA, and other protein "scoring" methods don't give the whole picture and most of them are downright useless.  Lyle goes into detail about them in that first link i listed..

[tombb]

So much to cover... but again it's not always a bad thing, usually a good way to learn or refine what we know is to discuss things in detail.
This is a very important point too, since it involves the very process through which muscles grow (hypertrophy).

1) On the importance and necessity of muscle soreness I stand by my statement, and I think if you do a bit more research you should end up with the same understanding of this mechanism.
Localized inflammation (and soreness as a symptom of it) is a -fundamental- steps of muscle hypertrophy. Muscle cells in a muscle simply can't split and multiply anymore, they are incapable of doing so since they fused and differentiated into myotubes. The -only- way you can get increased numbers of nuclei etc (very important for both hypertrophy and hyperplasia) is if somehow satellite cells are activated, start producing myoblasts, and these find their way to the site of muscle damage and fuse. That can't happen unless those cells have a way to infiltrate the tissue (hence the very useful swelling as part of inflammation), and find the place where they need to fuse to repair the microtears, and that's done only through macrophage intervention (they get to the site of damage, get rid of spilled cellular debris, and then secrete a gradient of signals to stimulate and guide satellite cells to get there and fuse).
You knock out the immune system (or rather inhibit parts of it), and you stop hypertrophy in whole muscles (you can still make it in single cells by secreting the same signals produced by immune cells and by putting the cells in proximity).
I pointed out several articles on the subject before, fully elucidating and verifying each step, but those needed to be read past the abstract, and access to electronic journal is not free at every university so that might have been an obstacle.
I would strongly recommend reading the whole paper (and even each crucial cellular and molecular experiment referenced if you're interested) and then discussing it more after that, starting at least with

Exercise and the Immune System: Regulation, Integration, and Adaptation:
http://physrev.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/80/3/1055

Satellite cell regulation following myotrauma caused by resistance exercise:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10805959
(ChrisS. send me a PM if you have trouble accessing these from where you are)

So again, inflammation (immune system recruitment) is necessary for muscle growth (hypertrophy from cell proliferation).

2) Touching on the next topic, the insulin response -is- part of the fast absorption.   Also, if you look up at all the studies on this, taking carbs+protein immediately after a workout actually prolongs and improves insulin sensitivity. The insulin increase after a workout is not diminished, it's just the right amount in response to the protein and carb intake. It's important not to reverse what insulin sensitivity means, it's not the sensitivity of your pancreas to sugar (which might lead you to believe insulin response should change), it's the sensitivity of cells to the insulin already produced.
You also don't want to maintain insulin resistivity And on your example of 100g, I am not sure if you actually did the test yourself (if you have a link to an actual study you can PM it to me), but again I think you might be mixing things up, the spike of insulin should be the same based on the signaling involved in insulin production by the pancreatic cells (which again is not directly affected by insulin sensitivity), what might change is how long the sugar remains in the bloodstream, and therefore how long the insulin signal is produced.


3) And finally the 3rd topic (so far hehe), your suggestion that whey proteins would be largely blocked by the liver and metabolized as energy even when you take them after a workout. 
I really don't think so.
If that were true that would certainly be measurable.
But would also presuppose some pretty strange things about liver regulation, like that it has a way to judge the absolute value of incoming aminoacid concentration and doesn't care about the current level of aminoacids already present or absent from circulation or your energy state.
If that were true it shouldn't matter whether you are starving or overfed, whether your bloodstream is already saturated with aminoacids or your body is in great shortage/need of them, and would mean that all the hormonal and signal regulation of hepatic cells is sort of just for show
But as you seem to at least have considered in disclaimer form, it's a matter of the physiological regulation in that particular condition.

Now, we both agree than in normal situations it's always good to have a slow and constant stream of aminoacids (and actually a reasonable mixture of both types). But here you are suggesting that aminoacids released 'too much'/'too quickly' from proteins like whey are actually mostly wasted and used as energy.
This is definitely the point I would contest or ask more evidence on. The fact that the liver can potentially do something in some specific limited situations is different from showing that it actually does in the situation we are discussing, or that you are actually likely to reach a level that is really 'too high' in this situation. Specifically, for your point you would have to demonstrate that this 'too fast' ends up delivering less protein to muscles and in particular after exercise resulting in less protein synthesis and less muscle growth over several weeks of exercise.  But people have clearly demonstrated the opposite, that you do have a short window of much higher protein and carb absorption and utilization, and that in these conditions fast proteins or even pure aminoacids are preferable and superior in terms of synthesis and utilization.  I am actually not sure if they ever compared casein to whey side by side as a post-workout drink but maybe you can look it up (especially if you found it as reference in that book, that would be a start, but I am guessing it might just draw conclusions by analogy and hypotheticals on this particular  point).
Similarly, if someone (let's say that book) claims that aminoacids are used for energy by the liver even when you are well fed and with plenty of carbohydrates and insulin, and that this only happens with fast-absorbed protein like whey, then they must have measured this in some way, and it's just a matter of seeing if the same has ever been observed in any of the normal studies on supplementation immediately after exercise.  I would imagine either people never thought to measure this (seems unlikely, but hey it could be your claim to fame if you tested it and proved it hehe) or you just don't see anything of the sort, and the liver actually has regulation based on the body's needs, as you should expect (e.g., the liver would actually let aminoacids enter the bloodstream until something else signals it that the bloodstream doesn't need more, and not on an absolute instantaneous guess on the part of the liver of the incoming concentration of aminoacids).

Edit: mistyped "debris"

[Chris Salvato]

1) On the importance and necessity of muscle soreness I stand by my statement, and I think if you do a bit more research you should end up with the same understanding of this mechanism.
Localized inflammation (and soreness as a symptom of it) is a -fundamental- steps of muscle hypertrophy. Muscle cells in a muscle simply can't split and multiply anymore, they are incapable of doing so since they fused and differentiated into myotubes. The -only- way you can get increased numbers of nuclei etc (very important for both hypertrophy and hyperplasia) is if somehow satellite cells are activated, start producing myoblasts, and these find their way to the site of muscle damage and fuse. That can't happen unless those cells have a way to infiltrate the tissue (hence the very useful swelling as part of inflammation), and find the place where they need to fuse to repair the microtears, and that's done only through macrophage intervention (they get to the site of damage, get rid of spilled cellular debris, and then secrete a gradient of signals to stimulate and guide satellite cells to get there and fuse).
You knock out the immune system (or rather inhibit parts of it), and you stop hypertrophy in whole muscles (you can still make it in single cells by secreting the same signals produced by immune cells and by putting the cells in proximity).
I pointed out several articles on the subject before, fully elucidating and verifying each step, but those needed to be read past the abstract, and access to electronic journal is not free at every university so that might have been an obstacle.
I would strongly recommend reading the whole paper (and even each crucial cellular and molecular experiment referenced if you're interested) and then discussing it more after that, starting at least with

Exercise and the Immune System: Regulation, Integration, and Adaptation:
http://physrev.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/80/3/1055

Satellite cell regulation following myotrauma caused by resistance exercise:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10805959
(ChrisS. send me a PM if you have trouble accessing these from where you are)

So again, inflammation (immune system recruitment) is necessary for muscle growth (hypertrophy from cell proliferation).

Problem.  Inflammation ≠ Soreness.  Again, several trainees go months without undergoing significant soreness while seeing huge gains in muscle mass.  While inflammation may be necessary, its effects on soreness are still widely unknown and loosely related.  The mechanisms for soreness are still caught in theory that are not verified.

While I do agree that on a physiological level there is a lot of inflammation that occurs (and its effects can be controlled...) there is no reason for this to cause soreness.  The anti-inflammatory suggestions surely do help to alleviate the soreness.

With all the physiology you went through, you still did not touch on one thing which is very important (that no scientist yet understands) -- and that is how pain nerve fibers are brought into the picture.  We are still unsure why there is a propagation of action potentials along these nerves in response to training...it can be totally separated from inflammation or it can be loosely related - i lean towards the latter.

2) Touching on the next topic, the insulin response -is- part of the fast absorption.   Also, if you look up at all the studies on this, taking carbs+protein immediately after a workout actually prolongs and improves insulin sensitivity. The insulin increase after a workout is not diminished, it's just the right amount in response to the protein and carb intake. It's important not to reverse what insulin sensitivity means, it's not the sensitivity of your pancreas to sugar (which might lead you to believe insulin response should change), it's the sensitivity of cells to the insulin already produced.
You also don't want to maintain insulin resistivity And on your example of 100g, I am not sure if you actually did the test yourself (if you have a link to an actual study you can PM it to me), but again I think you might be mixing things up, the spike of insulin should be the same based on the signaling involved in insulin production by the pancreatic cells (which again is not directly affected by insulin sensitivity), what might change is how long the sugar remains in the bloodstream, and therefore how long the insulin signal is produced.

My bad for saying resistivity when I meant sensitivity.  Suppose I was in a rush

That said, it only makes sense to have less insulin - and I am sure if we did a study (maybe i should find a diabetic and use their insulin monitor for a study of my own ) you would see that my 100g example is true.  The reason is because the cells are already looking to absorb.  As blood sugar levels increase, the sugar levels are automatically regulated by the cells and don't require a signaling agent (insulin) to tell the sugar where to go.  Sure, the pancreas will catch wind of all this sugar floating around but it will be taken up so much more quickly by the sugar-hungry hells that it won't have time to respond with as significant of an insulin spike.

I am fairly certain I read something about this on pubmed -- but I am too lazy to look again since I am leaving to go snowboarding in 10 minutes   I would really prefer to do it on myself, anyway.  Any diabetics in CO want to lend me their insulin monitors?!

3) And finally the 3rd topic (so far hehe), your suggestion that whey proteins would be largely blocked by the liver and metabolized as energy even when you take them after a workout. 
I really don't think so.
If that were true that would certainly be measurable.

What you think and what happens are two different things, apparently   I have a graph to illustrate this as well!

This is a graph from the famous Boirie Study that got the whole fast/slow protein thing going.



Leucine Appearance, as you probably know, is an indicator of systemic AA levels.  As you can see, Whey, a fast protein, is absorbed faster than Casein, a slow protein.  This shows that the high spike of whey is immediately blunted by the liver whereas the slow casein proteins are allowed to pass through more efficiently over time since they don't get oxidized due to their speed.

But would also presuppose some pretty strange things about liver regulation, like that it has a way to judge the absolute value of incoming aminoacid concentration and doesn't care about the current level of aminoacids already present or absent from circulation or your energy state.
If that were true it shouldn't matter whether you are starving or overfed, whether your bloodstream is already saturated with aminoacids or your body is in great shortage/need of them, and would mean that all the hormonal and signal regulation of hepatic cells is sort of just for show
But as you seem to at least have considered in disclaimer form, it's a matter of the physiological regulation in that particular condition.

This is why I said we need more data in this area and more data on athletes...sadly no such data exists so we are working with what we know for right now.  Considering Lyle investigated 500 sources, I am going to have to take his side for now and read his book in bitter detail that fast/slow or purely slow is the way to go.

Now, we both agree than in normal situations it's always good to have a slow and constant stream of aminoacids (and actually a reasonable mixture of both types). But here you are suggesting that aminoacids released 'too much'/'too quickly' from proteins like whey are actually mostly wasted and used as energy.
This is definitely the point I would contest or ask more evidence on. The fact that the liver can potentially do something in some specific limited situations is different from showing that it actually does in the situation we are discussing, or that you are actually likely to reach a level that is really 'too high' in this situation. Specifically, for your point you would have to demonstrate that this 'too fast' ends up delivering less protein to muscles and in particular after exercise resulting in less protein synthesis and less muscle growth over several weeks of exercise.  But people have clearly demonstrated the opposite, that you do have a short window of much higher protein and carb absorption and utilization, and that in these conditions fast proteins or even pure aminoacids are preferable and superior in terms of synthesis and utilization.  I am actually not sure if they ever compared casein to whey side by side as a post-workout drink but maybe you can look it up (especially if you found it as reference in that book, that would be a start, but I am guessing it might just draw conclusions by analogy and hypotheticals on this particular  point).
Similarly, if someone (let's say that book) claims that aminoacids are used for energy by the liver even when you are well fed and with plenty of carbohydrates and insulin, and that this only happens with fast-absorbed protein like whey, then they must have measured this in some way, and it's just a matter of seeing if the same has ever been observed in any of the normal studies on supplementation immediately after exercise.  I would imagine either people never thought to measure this (seems unlikely, but hey it could be your claim to fame if you tested it and proved it hehe) or you just don't see anything of the sort, and the liver actually has regulation based on the body's needs, as you should expect (e.g., the liver would actually let aminoacids enter the bloodstream until something else signals it that the bloodstream doesn't need more, and not on an absolute instantaneous guess on the part of the liver of the incoming concentration of aminoacids).

As you said, needs more evidence.  As far as I know, no studies on that exist.  Lyle goes in depth on the Boirie study in his online article series...I think you may want to read it to understand the perspective I gained and perhaps critique his solutions.

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/nutrition/what-are-good-sources-of-protein-introduction.html

[tombb]

Chris(S),
on inflammation causing muscle growth:
how muscle growth requires an inflammatory process is fully understood. You point out that the exact way in which pain receptors are stimulated is not studied, which I think is essentially irrelevant. soreness is a  symptom of a very important state, the inflammation process that causes myoblasts to fuse and muscles to  grow, but the fact that you also have some perception of it as pain is secondary. In general all  inflammation and swelling can cause some discomfort or pain especially when you contract/move. The fact  that people didn't study in detail how the nerve endings exactly are stimulated in this situation is more  of a reflection of the fact that the mechanism for muscle growth is important but not how exactly you are  able to perceive it since it's just a minor inconvenience.
You can have muscle growth through other mechanisms that I would argue are less desirable because they are  less permanent and less effective. You can increase vascularization for example, retain more energy and  water, etc, synthesize more proteins, all without actually increasing the number of nuclei and organelles  (which is much more permanent and also helps produce proteins faster and in higher amounts).
And you might have some limited muscle growth through an inflammatory mechanism that is low enough to be  beyond a detectable level of soreness, which is better than nothing but not optimal.
Now, that's for pure muscle growth. We agree that if you are just going for purely performance factors  like strength or endurance you might want to take muscle growth and soreness out of the picture so you can  train more frequently, but if you accidentally get muscle growth and soreness associated with it that's  still a good thing.

On whey and the boirie study:
I am sure we are looking at the same graph... If you see whey is superior to casein in leucine delivery for the first 180 minutes, and in fact it doesn't start to decrease until after 2 hours, and that is a function not of instantaneous hepatic detection but of feedback from saturation in the bloodstream, which as you know wouldn't even happen as fast after exercise when muscles are continuously absorbing it away from the bloodstream. Also the important window of absorption post-workout is about 2hours as many studies showed. During that period whey is clearly superior to casein.
Also as a side note, the fact that someone has 500 references in his book is good (better than books with no references by all means), but it's not an indicator of validity on a specific claim. It's the specific details of the reference on one particular topic discussed that matter, and as you see even the single one you mentioned doesn't argue in favor of the conclusion you were trying to support here.

On insulin
Insulin will already be produced even as protein is digested, and cell uptake of sugar is much slower when insulin is not present, even if they were 'primed' by exercise. So insulin will still be produced and spike phyisiologically as it should, and help produce a much faster intake of sugars and aminoacids by the muscle cells as a consequence.
Keep in mind cells are primed by exercise to be catabolic and try to break down their stores into energy and produce glucose for the more important rest of the body like brain and organs. Before the supplement they were not trying to scavenge sugar from the bloodstream, they were thinking of how to sacrifice themselves to put glucose back into blood instead. Insulin is one of the key things that switches things around toward anabolism.
Also the monitors for diabetics tend to be glucose monitors, not insulin monitors so that won't work so well, you are better off doing some search on pubmed and you will find all the examples you want on measured insulin in response to protein ingestion, carbs, insulin sensitivity etc.

[Steven Low]

Tombb:

1. Inflammation != soreness.

I think you made your point clear that you want to ignore all anecdotal evidence and rely on your studies. I would agree if the anecdotal evidence was not reproducable.... but it IS reproducable with ANY effective high frequency program.

I am not going to argue this further as I have experienced the results of non-soreness muscle and strength increase. You can choose to believe it or not.


2.

Keep in mind cells are primed by exercise to be catabolic and try to break down their stores into energy and produce glucose for the more important rest of the body like brain and organs. Before the supplement they were not trying to scavenge sugar from the bloodstream, they were thinking of how to sacrifice themselves to put glucose back into blood instead. Insulin is one of the key things that switches things around toward anabolism.

Um, no.

Sympathetic nervous system response leads to flight or flight aka "exercise" which leads to cortisol, epi, norepi, test, gh (gh/test in response to exercise) all of which promote release of fat for B-oxidation + liver glycogenolysis.

This is ALL fuel for the muscles... although the muscle themselves turn catabolic (Ca2+ promotion of proteolytic enzymes is one). BUT the muscles are certainly NOT producing glucose (via glyconeogenesis which is used for other tissues -- LIVER does this especially through lactic acid in Cori cycle) NOR would muscles dump much if ANY glucose back into the bloodstream.

[Chris Salvato]

Chris(S),
on inflammation causing muscle growth

That whole paragraph was just repeating what you already said (and what I already made clear I understand).

You are still ignoring this simple aspect...

Problem.  Inflammation ≠ Soreness.  Again, several trainees go months without undergoing significant soreness while seeing huge gains in muscle mass.  While inflammation may be necessary, its effects on soreness are still widely unknown and loosely related.  The mechanisms for soreness are still caught in theory that are not verified.

Soreness is NOT NOT NOT necessary for inflammation to occur.

On whey and the boirie study:
I am sure we are looking at the same graph... If you see whey is superior to casein in leucine delivery for the first 180 minutes, and in fact it doesn't start to decrease until after 2 hours, and that is a function not of instantaneous hepatic detection but of feedback from saturation in the bloodstream, which as you know wouldn't even happen as fast after exercise when muscles are continuously absorbing it away from the bloodstream. Also the important window of absorption post-workout is about 2hours as many studies showed. During that period whey is clearly superior to casein.

The first 180 minutes, however, is insignificant in the big picture.

Studies also show that these fast proteins, while they do spike a bit higher in the first 180 minutes, do not produce a sustained AA presence in the body.  This is shown in studies that explore fast proteins vs. slow proteins with exercise programs.  That is, studies that put the principles to practice.

The most abundant results are those with a "slower" speed of digestion since the proteins are present in the blood stream longer since less are oxidized by the liver.

Also as a side note, the fact that someone has 500 references in his book is good (better than books with no references by all means), but it's not an indicator of validity on a specific claim. It's the specific details of the reference on one particular topic discussed that matter, and as you see even the single one you mentioned doesn't argue in favor of the conclusion you were trying to support here.

I am standing on the shoulder of a giant who is standing on the shoulders of 500 giants.  I fail to see a problem here.  I understand he has his own biases but did you read the articles I posted?

If I failed to prove his conclusion adequately that is my fault, not the fault of his work.  You need to read his work...maybe even his book...to gain his perspective on the issue.  I would even go so far as to say that its not even my fault since I can't possibly reproduce his 15 page article or 300 page book in a single thread on a message board....

On insulin

I see Steve already touched on this so no need to repeat here.

[tombb]

Steve,
I agree on the muscle cells not producing glucose directly of course (although they contribute to pushing gluconeogenesis in the liver through their state and shuttling of lactate), what I mean is that when your body thinks there is little sugar going around after exercise, muscles make sure they don't compete for it, they switched to catabolic mode and try to avoid using and/or uptaking sugar from the bloodstream since the brain needs the sugar more, and they use alternative energy sources (beta oxidation etc).

So again the point I was making is that insulin is one of the key signals that turn this around by alerting all the necessary systems to switch mode, muscles can quickly switch to anabolic mode and can uptake glucose rapidly without worrying that they are competing with other organs for a scarce resource.

About inflammation!=soreness, in many cases, yes of course, the two can be decoupled. But, in DOMS, if you have a strong enough exercise stimulus causing microtears and initiating a myoblast-induced muscle repair and growth process, inflammation is 100% necessary and involved, always coming before myoblast cell proliferation, and the perceived soreness is just a matter of degree of stimulation, the localized swelling and inflammation will occur always but to varying degrees. It is possible that it is sometimes light enough that it is below a noticeable threshold, but that will also mean that the amount of growth will be lighter too.

Chris,
Similarly, I think you are mixing cause and effect. Soreness is the side effect of inflammation, -not- the cause.
So to put it in your words, soreness is not(x3) necessary for inflammation, inflammation is(x3) necessary for muscle growth (through myoblast fusion).
As I mentioned, you can get some gains in lean mass without that happening, and certainly you can increase strength without hypertrophy, so I am not discounting anecdotal accounts. I think those fall into those categories but again in terms of muscle growth those are not as useful, if you want larger more permanent muscle growth, you want to cause hypertrophy through mechanisms which you will perceive as delayed soreness, the greater the soreness the larger the extent of the growth.
There are countless studies out there including also ones that are more focused on strength regimens rather than hypertrophy ones, but none show any exception to this. If you don't have soreness your gains are either at a much more gradual pace or through very different mechanisms that do not involve fusion of new muscle cells.

On the 180 min, that's the only part that matters! o.O I am really puzzled by your response. That's what we are discussing, what is ideal for that 2-3 hours window of greater absorption and utilization, we already said casein is good for other times, it's just suboptimal/inferior for this specific situation. The correct answer has essentially all studies behind it, including the one that you referenced, which again repeats the same thing that all evidence absolutely agrees on, fast-absorbing protein is best for that 2hrs window post-exercise, while slow-absorbing protein is better for other times since they cause a more sustained release of aminoacids which is desirable in most situations, except of course post-exercise, where fast-absorption is much more desirable.
If you went through and read all 500 studies cited and still believed otherwise, I would say you should read them again and find at least one that has any evidence that backs up your claim. If you can't find a single one, that says much more than what you might think someone else might have meant indirectly by analogy to an unrelated situation in a book.

[Chris Salvato]

I am going to preface this with the fact that NONE of this is on topic and I am not posting in this thread any more since the original question has been answered.

Steve,
I agree on the muscle cells not producing glucose directly of course (although they contribute to pushing gluconeogenesis in the liver through their state and shuttling of lactate), what I mean is that when your body thinks there is little sugar going around after exercise, muscles make sure they don't compete for it, they switched to catabolic mode and try to avoid using and/or uptaking sugar from the bloodstream since the brain needs the sugar more, and they use alternative energy sources (beta oxidation etc).

You're kidding, right?  The muscles take precedence in time of stress.  The brain isn't going to be the part of your body that saves your ass when a lion is bearing down on you. Regional blood flow in the brain is increased and directed differently in times of stress, obviously, but the muscles are what calls for the energy.  Try multiplying 517*3 in your head when you are just completing a high intensity metcon and see how well your brain works, then.

So again the point I was making is that insulin is one of the key signals that turn this around by alerting all the necessary systems to switch mode, muscles can quickly switch to anabolic mode and can uptake glucose rapidly without worrying that they are competing with other organs for a scarce resource.

About inflammation!=soreness, in many cases, yes of course, the two can be decoupled.

You should have ended there.  In exercise, they are decoupled, period.  Increased SYSTEMIC inflammation increases soreness.  High intensity exercise will cause localized inflammation which need not be sore.

Chris,
Similarly, I think you are mixing cause and effect. Soreness is the side effect of inflammation, -not- the cause.

No, I'm not, you just think I am -- thats a big difference.

Soreness is not a cause for inflammation.

Inflammation is not always the cause for soreness.

...if you want larger more permanent muscle growth, you want to cause hypertrophy through mechanisms which you will perceive as delayed soreness, the greater the soreness the larger the extent of the growth.

That's just purely false.  I'm sorry.  There is nothing, anywhere, that proves that you MUST experience DOMS to get muscle growth...especially in trained athletes (aka people who aren't couch potatoes)

On the 180 min, that's the only part that matters!

No, you're missing the big picture.  I am not explaining it again.  Re-read my old post where i say how the evidence says, despite a higher *immediate* Lucine appearance, slower acting proteins that increase AA presence in the body are more effective for strength and muscle mass gains.  Speed of absorption is irrelevant -- its about keeping aminos in there for the long "rebuilding process"

[tombb]

Chris,
No, I am not kidding, are you? If you pass out unconscious your muscles definitely won't help you in any way. Your brain can't work without sugar like your muscles can. After you finished working out, you are not even in a fight or flight situation, you are recovering, and gluconeogenesis is not done for the benefit of muscles, as I explained.  I am not sure why you would ever think otherwise. Again, insulin is important to switch away from this mode when protein and carbs are finally digested, resolving the state of energy shortage and low urgency that drives muscles catabolic and limiting their uptake and use of sugar.

On inflammation, again no idea why you would think otherwise, other than you just didn't read up on it. Again all evidence shows this, inflammation is always coupled to muscle growth from myoblast fusion. Period. Look it up, don't just refuse to read up on scientific evidence and repeat yourself because you want to believe otherwise.  It goes muscle damage -> required inflammation step (perceived as soreness) from macrophage involvement -> satellite cell activation and proliferation -> myoblast migration -> hypertrophy. You can't skip inflammation/soreness. You skip that and the successive steps don't happen, that's it.

If you really want to say that something has been 'proven false', cite an actual relevant study. If you can see  myoblast recruitment and migration while inflammation is blocked, that would be evidence for your conclusion, except that is not the case. There is no known exception in humans or animal studies.

And again, on the 2hr window postworkout, no, I am not missing any big picture, the big picture IS that first two hours. That's it. And casein is not ideal for post-workout while whey is better for that, as ALL evidence shows.
If you want to believe otherwise on any of these topics, just look them up and find at least one single piece of evidence that supports them. Or consider reading up all the studies I already linked you to supporting the conclusions I discussed (including the ones I pointed in the past on the effect of fast protein and carbs immediately postworkout).