Although nowhere nearly as robustly (or obviously) as muscles, bones also develop in response to exercise. Because this effect is largely hidden from view, however, most athletes are not aware of its importance to athletic performance. In truth, bones must increase in strength in parallel to muscle mass in order to support the higher levels of mechanical stress being placed upon them by stronger, larger muscles. As we will learn today both these processes are reliant on creatine…
In my last post (see Creatine builds strong bones… part 1) I made the case that creatine supplementation, by way of maximizing muscular force generation, promotes bone formation (osteogenesis). Although muscular activity surely contributes to the bone formation observed with creatine, this cannot be the entire story. Situations have been described where creatine treatment promotes osteogenesis outside the animal. That is, creatine supplementation, in the absence of mechanical stimulation imposed by skeletal muscle, also appears to promote bone formation.
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Posted in Elderly | Tagged bone, cartilage, chondrocytes, creatine monohydrate, Elderly, exercise, mechanical stimulation, muscle, osteoblast, osteoclasts, osteogenesis |
Most athletes are trying to take greater advantage of the fact that muscle develops in response to physical exercise. One important way to optimize the anabolics of exercise is through the application of smart nutritional strategies, the reason, I suppose, that many of you are reading this blog today.
We Are The Product of Mechano-sensitive Developmental Programs
Muscle, however, is not the only tissue of our body that develops in response to physical (aka “mechanical”) stimulation. In fact, over 80% of our entire body mass arises from tissues whose developmental programs are regulated be mechanical stimulation. Such “mechanosensitive” tissues include not only skeletal muscle, the most obvious example, but also tendons, cartilage (as that which cushions the contacts between bones in our joints) and bones, to name the most notable. Of these common examples, skeletal muscle is the most predominant in mere proportion of total body mass as well as the most sensitive to mechanical input.
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Posted in Elderly | Tagged bone, catabolism, creatine, creatine monohydrate, development, Elderly, mechanosensitive, muscle, osteogenesis, osteoporosis, sarcopenia |
It is often heard that muscle is built while resting, not in the gym, but what does this really mean? In brief, this statement extrapolates from the fact that the anabolic response to exercise is largely postponed until after exercise has already taken place and requires some time to take full effect.
Damage Control - Allow Enough Time to Rebuild
Intense exercise causes some muscle damage. These areas of micro-damage are an obligatory prerequisite for muscle growth. That is, muscle repair and growth depends on preexisting muscle damage caused by exercise. Given sufficient recovery time and appropriate nutrition the amount of new muscle tissue produced may then exceed the previous level and your muscles will increase in overall size. In essence, this is the biochemical basis for bodybuilding - that is, if all goes well. If, on the other hand, sufficient time is not allowed for muscles to fully recover, or if nutrition does not supply the needed amounts of substrates to support new muscle synthesis, then the growth phase will be blunted. Excessive exercise furthermore, will destroy already damaged muscle before it has a chance to rebuild; we then enter a state of negative muscle growth (net muscle loss), a condition known as Overtraining Syndrome. In essence, building muscle is a tradeoff between resting too little, which destroys overexerted muscle, and resting too much rest, which does not stimulate muscles sufficiently to provoke functional adaptation.
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Posted in Muscle Growth | Tagged anabolism, atrogene, catabolic, cortisol, creatine, growth hormone, IGF-1, insulin, insulin-like growth factor 1, muscle groups, overtraining syndrome, recovery, stress, testosterone |
Three conditions must be met in order to establish the best metabolic conditions for muscle anabolism: 1) an exercise stimulus is required to incite muscle’s biosynthetic machinery into action; 2) proper nutrition is needed to provide the proper substrates for growth and; 3) adequate rest is required so that muscle’s biosynthetic machinery can work at optimal efficiency.
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Several key growth factors and hormones control muscle development. Of these, testosterone and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) are extremely important.
Testosterone & IGF-1 Stimulate Muscle Growth
Testosterone is a steroid hormone that triggers the reading of genes coding for proteins essential for muscle development. By mechanistic contrast, IGF-1 promotes the physical elaboration of these proteins once their genes have been read. Hence, the participation of both these myogenic (muscle generating) agents is needed for optimal muscle development. Read More »
Posted in Muscle Growth | Tagged anterior pituitary, creatine, creatine facts, creatine side effects, Disuse atrophy, GH, growth hormone, IGF-1, insulin-like growth factor 1, LH, Luteinizing hormone, muscular dystrophy, testosterone |
