🫛 How much animal and plant protein to eat to build muscles?

From a sustainability perspective, plant-based foods are proposed to be better than animal-based foods.

However, when it comes to muscle building and maintenance, plant-based foods are often considered inferior to animal based foods.

Recent evidence backs up this up, highlighting that plant-based proteins (soya or wheat are the most studied plant proteins) stimulate a lower anabolic response, resulting in less muscle growth when compared with several animal-based proteins.

The lower anabolic properties of plant-based protein could be due to a combination of the following:

• Lower digestibility

• Greater use of essential amino acids (which are already in lower concentration!) by the organs of the abdominal cavity after nutrient absorption. This reduce the amount of essential amino acids reaching the muscles

• Low leucine content, which is a significant driver of muscle building

If you follow a plant-based, there are some strategies to counteract some of the limitations listed above. These include:

• Fortification of plant-based protein sources with essential amino acids (mainly methionine, lysine, leucine). This can be done by supplementing plant-based dishes with branched chain amino acids (BCAA) powders, such as in a smoothie

• Greater portions of plant-based foods, although this comes with greater calories

• Combine different plant-based foods so to get a good spectrum of all the essential amino acids

🥊 Punchline

If your goal is to build muscles, animal proteins have the better hand. If you follow a plant-based diet, you can still stimulate muscle growth through diet, but would need careful planning.

🥱 How to maximise exercise recovery? Does the time of protein consumption matter?

The role of nutrition in modulating post exercise recovery still remain a grey area. Most recommendations are based on clinical experience.

An interesting study assessed the effect of protein ingestion immediately before sleep on exercise recovery after resistance training session in the evening.

After having a post exercise meal of 20g of protein and 60g of carbs, the subjects either got a casein enriched drink or a drink without proteins 30 mins before sleep.

For context, casein is a major protein found in milk and constitute 80% of the protein in cow’s milk.

Muscle biopsy and blood analysis revealed that:

• Casein was effectively digested and absorbed resulting in a rapid rise in blood amino acid levels, which were sustained throughout the night

• Casein consumption results in 22% greater muscle protein synthesis compared to the control group

It is not surprising to see given that casein is a slowly digested protein and so maintaining high levels of blood amino acid is more likely to stimulate muscle growth.

What’s not as surprising is that having protein stimulate more muscle growth versus having no protein. A better study would have been comparing the effect of casein versus whey protein.

🥊 Punchline

This was the first study to show that casein consumption immediately before sleep can help stimulate muscle protein synthesis during postexercise overnight recovery. An interesting follow-up study would be to compare the effect of casein versus whey protein when consumed before bedtime.

🥛 Can probiotic help enhance muscle strength in older adults?

Probiotics are defined as “live microorganisms that confer a health benefit on [humans] by improving or restoring the gut microbiota, when consumed in adequate amounts”

A recent review of 22 research trials involving 1,028 participants found that:

• Probiotic supplementation significantly improved muscle strength compared to control (aka sugar pill)

• But had no significant effect on muscle mass

However, the research trials also had lots of limitations:

• Most studies were conducted in Asian populations – the results may not be representable of all ethnic populations

• Most research duration was short-term – so the long-term effects of probiotic supplementation on muscle strength and mass remain unclear

• If strength improved, but muscle mass didn’t, what’s the functional relevance of using probiotics supplements

• The variability of probiotics present in supplements is huge. Most studies used bacteria strains from the Lactobacillus (e.g., L. casei, L. acidophilus) and Bifidobacterium (e.g., B. longum, B. breve) family. Some studies instead use multi-strain formulations or fermented products like yoghurt – This makes it difficult to pinpoint the most effective probiotic for muscle strength improvement.
  

🥊 Punchline

Probiotics may offer benefits for muscle strength in older adults. However, given the limitations, it’s more likely that improving overall gut health can offer benefit beyond muscle strength alone in older adults.