| NYT Article on Nutrition for Long Exertions, Hard Training
Posted: 6/4/2008 4:26:26 PM | June 5, 2008
Personal Best
Real Thought for Food for Long Workouts
By GINA KOLATA
DR. MARK TARNOPOLSKY, a muscle physiology researcher at McMaster University in Canada and a physician, knows all about the exhortations by supplement makers and many nutritionists on what to eat and when to eat it for optimal performance.
The idea is that you are supposed to consume carbohydrates and proteins in a magical four-to-one ratio during endurance events like a long run or bike ride, and right after. The belief is that such nutritional diligence will improve your performance and speed your recovery.
Dr. Tarnopolsky, a 45-year-old trail runner and adventure racer, might be expected to seize upon the nutritional advice. (He won the Ontario trail running series in 2004, 2005 and 2006.)
So might his colleague, Stuart Phillips, a 41-year-old associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster who played rugby for Canada’s national team and now plays it for fun. He also runs, lifts weights and studies nutrition and performance.
In fact, neither researcher regularly uses energy drinks or energy bars. They just drink water, and eat real food. Dr. Tarnopolsky drinks fruit juice; Dr. Phillips eats fruit. And neither one feels a need to ingest a special combination of protein and carbohydrates within a short window of time, a few hours after exercising.
There are grains of truth to the nutrition advice, they and other experts say. But, as so often happens in sports, those grains of truth have been expanded into dictums and have formed the basis for an entire industry in “recovery” products.
They line the shelves of specialty sports stores and supermarkets with names like Accelerade drink, Endurox R4 powder, PowerBar Recovery bar.
“It does seem to me that as a group, athletes are particularly gullible,” said Michael Rennie, a physiologist at the University of Nottingham in England who studies muscle metabolism.
The idea that what you eat and when you eat it will make a big difference in your performance and recovery “is wishful thinking,” said Dr. Rennie, a 61-year-old who was a competitive swimmer and also used to play water polo and rugby.
Here is what is known about proteins, carbohydrates and performance.
During exercise, muscles stop the biochemical reactions used to maintain themselves such as replacing and resynthesizing the proteins needed for day to day activities. It’s not that exercise is damaging your muscles; it’s that they halt the maintenance process until exercise is over.
To do this maintenance, muscles must make protein, and to do so they need to absorb amino acids, the constituent parts of proteins, from the blood. Just after exercise, perhaps for a period no longer than a couple of hours, the protein-building processes of muscle cells are especially receptive to amino acids. That means that if you consume protein, your muscles will use it to quickly replenish proteins that were not made during exercise.
But muscles don’t need much protein, researchers say. Twenty grams is as much as a 176-pound man’s muscles can take. Women, who are smaller and have smaller muscles even compared to their body sizes, need less.
Dr. Rennie said that 10 to 15 grams of protein is probably adequate for any adult. And you don’t need a special drink or energy bar to get it. One egg has 6 grams of protein. Two ounces of chicken has more than 12 grams.
Muscles also need to replenish glycogen, their fuel supply, after a long exercise session — two hours of running, for example. For that they need carbohydrates. Muscle cells are especially efficient in absorbing carbohydrates from the blood just after exercise.
Once again, muscles don’t need much; about one gram of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight is plenty, Dr. Tarnopolsky said. He weighs 70 kilograms, or 154 pounds, which means he would need 70 grams of carbohydrates, or say, 27 ounces of fruit juice, he said.
Asker Jeukendrup, a 38-year-old 14-time Ironman-distance finisher who is an exercise physiologist and nutritionist at the University of Birmingham in England said the fastest glycogen replacement takes place in the four hours after exercise. Even so, most athletes need not worry.
“Most athletes will have at least 24 hours to recover,” Dr. Jeukendrup said. “We really are talking about a group of extremely elite sports people who train twice a day.” For them, he said, it can be necessary to rapidly replenish muscle glycogen.
The American College of Sports Medicine, in a position paper written by leading experts, reported that athletes who take a day or two to rest or do less-intense workouts between vigorous sessions can pretty much ignore the carbohydrate-timing advice.
The group wrote that for these athletes, “when sufficient carbohydrate is provided over a 24-hour period, the timing of intake does not appear to affect the amount of glycogen stored.”
For protein, it is not clear what the window is. Some studies concluded it was less than two hours, others said three hours, and some failed to find a window at all.
Dr. Rennie and his colleagues, writing in Annual Reviews of Physiology, concluded that “a possible ‘golden period’ ” for getting amino acids into muscles “remains a speculative, no matter how attractive, the concept.”
Although studies by Dr. Jeukendrup and several others have shown that consuming protein after exercise speeds up muscle protein synthesis, no one has shown that that translates into improved performance. The reason, Dr. Jeukendrup said, is that effects on performance, if they occur, won’t happen immediately. They can take 6 to 10 weeks of training. That makes it very hard to design and carry out studies to see if athletes really do improve if they consume protein after they exercise.
“You’d have to control everything, what they do, how they train, and also their carbohydrate and protein intake,” Dr. Jeukendrup said. “Those studies become almost impossible to do.”
As for the special four-to-one ratio of carbohydrates to protein, that, too, is not well established, researchers said. The idea was that you need both carbohydrates and protein consumed together because carbohydrates not only help muscles restore their glycogen but they also elicit the release of insulin. Insulin, the theory goes, helps muscles absorb amino acids.
Insulin may stimulate muscle protein synthesis in young rodents and in human cells grown in petri dishes, Dr. Rennie said. But studies in people have shown convincingly that insulin is not required for protein synthesis in adult human beings; it is amino acids that drive protein synthesis. As yet no convincing evidence exists that a special carbohydrate-to-protein ratio makes a noticeable difference in muscle protein maintenance after exercise. “There is no magic ratio,” Dr. Jeukendrup said.
The American College of Sports Medicine is equally skeptical. “Adding protein does not appreciably enhance glycogen repletion,” its paper states.
“Some studies suggested that adding proteins to carbohydrates during exercise can enhance performance,” Dr. Tarnopolsky said. “Many other studies suggested it didn’t do any good.”
Even if there are effects of protein and carbohydrates, they are not important to most exercisers, these researchers say. Serious triathletes and elite runners, who work out in the morning and at night, need to eat between training sessions. But people who are running a few miles a few days a week don’t need to worry about replenishing their muscles, Dr. Phillips said.
Dr. Rennie agreed. “If you are a superathlete, hundredths of a second matter,” he said. “But most Joes and Janes are just kidding themselves,” he said.
Some, like Dr. Jeukendrup, say they use a commercial protein-energy drink after training hard, for convenience.
Other researchers take their own nutritional advice. Dr. Tarnopolsky has a huge glass of juice, a bagel and a small piece of meat after a two- or three-hour run. Or he might have two large pieces of toast with butter and jam and a couple of scrambled eggs. But no energy bars, no energy drinks.
Dr. Phillips might have an energy bar during a long workout. But ordinarily he does not worry about getting a special carbohydrate-to-protein mix or timing his nutrition when he exercises. Instead, Dr. Phillips said, he simply eats real food at regular meals.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/health/nutrition/05Best.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
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"muscles don’t need much protein"
"10 to 15 grams of protein is probably adequate for any adult."
( 1 oz is 28 grams )
"most Joes and Janes are just kidding themselves,” 
"simply eats real food at regular meals."
Too damn simple! We Must Complicate! | |
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| NYT Article on Nutrition for Long Exertions, Hard Training
Posted: 6/4/2008 6:17:09 PM | Dr. Tarnopolsky, a 45-year-old trail runner and adventure racer, might be expected to seize upon the nutritional advice. (He won the Ontario trail running series in 2004, 2005 and 2006.)
Wow, so you mean to tell me that a trail runner (here is a link to a picture of a trail runner http://www.oktrailrunning.com/images/paraImage5.jpg ) and a weightlifter put the same stresses and demands upon their muscles?
But muscles don’t need much protein, researchers say. Twenty grams is as much as a 176-pound man’s muscles can take. Women, who are smaller and have smaller muscles even compared to their body sizes, need less.
So if I were a 176 lbs man I could only "take" 20 grams of protein. At a time? If so, what exactly is "a time"? 20 minutes? 2 hours? 34 days? forever and ever?
Although studies by Dr. Jeukendrup and several others have shown that consuming protein after exercise speeds up muscle protein synthesis, no one has shown that that translates into improved performance. The reason, Dr. Jeukendrup said, is that effects on performance, if they occur, won’t happen immediately. They can take 6 to 10 weeks of training.
So what they are basically saying is that their studies weren't even 6 weeks long, what type of respected study is that short term?
Even if there are effects of protein and carbohydrates so apparently they didn't bother to find out
, they are not important to most exercisers, these researchers say. Serious triathletes and elite runners, who work out in the morning and at night, need to eat between training sessions. But people who are running a few miles a few days a week don’t need to worry about replenishing their muscles, Dr. Phillips said.
If you will notice every athlete (and researcher, it seems) in this article is an endurance athlete and under 180lbs which for a grown man is ridiculously small, so no, they wouldn't need as much protein as somebody like me, being as how I like having muscle, not looking like a cancer patient, and performing well at my chosen sport. | |
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| NYT Article on Nutrition for Long Exertions, Hard Training
Posted: 6/4/2008 7:49:31 PM | Dave, if you have studies contradicting the above (not from companies flogging their products), please post. I value your opinions deeply, but they are after all just opinions.
"under 180lbs which for a grown man is ridiculously small".
In some circles, this could be labelled a blanket statement.
Avg American male is a tad under 5'10".
At 180 pounds, that's a BMI of 26 (slightly overweight).
Yes, yes, I know BMI is not accurate, but 5'10", 180 certainly is not "ridiculous" by BMI. It may be way under the "average" American male's weight since, on average, American men are overweight or obese, but not ridiculous.
What weight would you expect for 5'10" that wouldn't be ridiculous?
btw, I heard a rumor that pumping iron seriously make muscles bigger, but also makes brains smaller? What do you think? Any experience in that area? | |
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| NYT Article on Nutrition for Long Exertions, Hard Training
Posted: 6/4/2008 8:18:43 PM | Dave, if you have studies contradicting the above (not from companies flogging their products), please post. I value your opinions deeply, but they are after all just opinions.
Satx, if you have any thoughts or logical reasoning of your own, please post. I value your ( YOUR ) thoughts or logical reasonings deeply. Thus far most of what you are doing is just copying and pasting the opinions and findings of others, but since that seems to be what you want, here you go:
Lifted from pubmed:
Center for Exercise, Nutrition and Preventive Health Research, Department of Health, Human Performance and Recreation, Baylor University, Waco, TX 76798, USA.
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of whey protein supplementation on body composition, muscular strength, muscular endurance, and anaerobic capacity during 10 weeks of resistance training. Thirty-six resistance-trained males (31.0 +/- 8.0 years, 179.1 +/- 8.0 cm, 84.0 +/- 12.9 kg, 17.8 +/- 6.6%) followed a 4 days-per-week split body part resistance training program for 10 weeks. Three groups of supplements were randomly assigned, prior to the beginning of the exercise program, in a double-blind manner to all subjects: 48 g per day (g.d(-1)) carbohydrate placebo (P), 40 g.d(-1) of whey protein + 8 g.d(-1) of casein (WC), or 40 g.d(-1) of whey protein + 3 g.d(-1) branched-chain amino acids + 5 g.d(-1) L-glutamine (WBG). At 0, 5, and 10 weeks, subjects were tested for fasting blood samples, body mass, body composition using dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA), 1 repetition maximum (1RM) bench and leg press, 80% 1RM maximal repetitions to fatigue for bench press and leg press, and 30-second Wingate anaerobic capacity tests. No changes (p > 0.05) were noted in all groups for energy intake, training volume, blood parameters, and anaerobic capacity. WC experienced the greatest increases in DEXA lean mass (P = 0.0 +/- 0.9; WC = 1.9 +/- 0.6; WBG = -0.1 +/- 0.3 kg, p In this study, the combination of whey and casein protein promoted the greatest increases in fat-free mass after 10 weeks of heavy resistance training. Athletes, coaches, and nutritionists can use these findings to increase fat-free mass and to improve body composition during resistance training.
Keep in mind that this isn't 48grams of protein a day, its 48 grams of supplemental whey/casein on top of their normal protein intake.
Now, I asked three simple questions last post. Please answer them as I am about to do for your last question.
Q: What weight would you expect for 5'10" that wouldn't be ridiculous?
A: 200 lbs plus. | |
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| NYT Article on Nutrition for Long Exertions, Hard Training
Posted: 6/4/2008 11:39:31 PM | I'm much more a fan of real-world credentials than academic "achievements".
A MSc in sport science wrote a 100-page report to get their "credentials",
A PhD did research in a laboratory and wrote another huge report to get their "credentials".
People like Charles Poliquin did that, but also have coached over 100 olympians and just as many highly successful professional athletes.
THOSE are credentials, and I will give the opinions and advice of people with a bachelor's or master's degree with a mountain of real-world achievement than those of ivory-tower academics who do so-called "useful reserch" by giving supplements meant for strength training to sedentary couch potatoes riding exercise bikes and then conclude the supplements are useless.
As for the researchers mentioned in this article themselves, being an IronMan "finisher" doesn't say much, sorry to say. Neither does being an "adventure racer".
Just because a person has letters behind their name doesn't mean that they speak nothing but the truth. Many, many of my professors in university had the most stupid, ignorant opinions based on nothing but the opinions of their own education in the 70's and 80's.
Many, many of my sheep-like classmates ate it up and took the word of their professors as gospel truth, without any critical thought whatsoever. It made me sick.
An obese powerlifter teaching "health education 110" class, claiming that strength training cannot help people lose bodyfat, and that calories are the key to hypertrophy, that taking in "extra" protein does nothing for gaining muscle, despite the two dozen studies a person can find on pubmed in five minutes to prove the opposite.
Kinesiology professors teaching us in class that high-protein diets lead to increases in bodyfat, despite that every ACCOMPLISHED coach out there points out that every single study ever done on hypocaloric high-protein diets shows that they are far superior to high-carb/low-calorie and low-fat/low-calorie diets when it comes to both maintaining muscle mass and losing body fat.
When it comes to the "useful advice" of sport science academics, it's best to do your own due diligence and take it with a gigantic grain of salt.
- Christopher93 | |
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