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L-Leucine
Anabolic Food Additive
This is sooo
cool.
For weeks, Tim Patterson and I have
been pimping out our food.
And no, I'm not talking about putting
crushed-velour seats, naked-woman hood ornaments, fuzzy
dice, and a sound system with absolutely no treble on our
bowls of oatmeal.
I'm talking about doing something to our food that unleashes
all its anabolic might. I'm talking about doing something
to our food that increases its anabolic potential by 70
percent! I'm talking about doing something to our food that
makes bad food good and good food great!
We either sprinkle one scoop of snow-white,
tasteless powder onto our meal, or mix one scoop in a glass
of water and drink it down before we eat.
Add a scoop to a hot fudge sundae
and you've turned a bad meal into a semi-legitimate bodybuilding
meal.
Add a scoop to one of those Chunky
soups the NFL players endorse and you've turned the soup
into the muscle building meal it pretends to be.
Add a scoop to a protein drink and
you can practically hear the "bricks" of muscle
being slapped on.
And it's all so simple. It's so simple
it's beautiful. It's so simple it might even be hard to
believe, but the research is bulletproof.
It's something we started to slowly
realize a couple of years ago. Whenever we studied the effects
of protein, it seemed that one specific amino acid, one
specific branched-chain amino acid, was almost entirely
responsible for muscle protein synthesis.
That means that no matter how little
or how much protein you ingested, its muscle-building effects
(or lack thereof) were almost entirely controlled by the
amount of one specific amino acid you had in your bloodstream.
And the name of that specific amino
acid?
Leucine.
Regardless, we didn't act on our suspicions because there
wasn't enough real-world research on animals or humans to
verify it. That, however, has changed in the last couple
of years.
It seems clear now that Leucine stimulates
protein synthesis and translation initiation and is likely
the major amino acid responsible for the anabolic effects
of a meal.(1)(2)
"At this
point, it seems clear that most of the effects of amino
acids on protein synthesis are mediated by Leucine."
— Martha
Stipanuk, PhD, Cornell University
Just adding a few grams of Leucine
to a meal, high protein or not-so-high protein, increases
muscle protein synthesis by 50-70 percent in humans (3)(4)
and increases protein turnover by over 500 percent!(5)
Apparently, orally administered Leucine
stimulates muscle-protein synthesis by itself, independent
of the insulin surge you get from a meal. However, it does
seem that the role of insulin is permissive in that some
rise in insulin is necessary to allow Leucine to do its
work. (6)
The message is that Leucine is best
used with a meal, rather than taken in-between meals by
itself.
Additionally, adding Leucine to a
100% carbohydrate meal isn't the best idea, either. It seems
the effects of Leucine are rate-limited if other amino acids
aren't present.(6) That means that Leucine, while anabolic
all on its own, won't do its best work unless there are
at least some other amino acids present.
In short, a protein meal is good,
but adding Leucine to it makes it much, much better.
Furthermore, it seems the change in
Leucine concentration in the blood may be more important
than the actual amount of Leucine in the blood, so you don't
want to take Leucine non-stop.(1) It's better to take a
scoop of it (about 5 grams) with a meal, let blood levels
drop, and then take another scoop about 4 hours later.
"Supplemental
Leucine allows for the muscle to achieve maximum protein
synthesis and anabolic recovery."
— Layne
Norton and Donald Layman, University of Illinois
So here's what we did. We acquired
the purest, most highly regarded L-Leucine in the world
from the Ajinomoto Corporation in Japan (this is the stuff
hospitals use in IV drips) and we packaged in 450-gram containers.
(That's 90 servings.)
Just add one 5-gram scoop to water,
a protein shake, your workout drink, or just sprinkle it
over your food. Just don't exceed four scoops (20 grams)
per day.
L-Leucine is simple, it's economical,
and by increasing the anabolic quality of food by 70%, it's
oh-so effective.
If food is the ultimate anabolic drug,
we've just pimped it out and made it a whole lot better.
Supplement
Facts Recommended
Use
1. Norton LE and
Layman DK. Leucine regulates translation initiation of protein
synthesis in skeletal muscle after exercise. J Nutr. 2006;
136(2):533S-537S.
2. Stipanuk, Martha
H. Leucine and protein synthesis: mTOR and beyond. Nutrition
Reviews. 2007;Mar;Vol. 65, No. 3:122-9.
3. Padden-Jones D,
et al. Amino acid ingestion improves muscle protein synthesis
in the young and elderly. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab.
2004 Mar;286(3):E321-8.
4. Tipton, KD, et
al. Postexercise net protein synthesis in human muscle from
orally administered amino acids. Am J Physiol. 1999 Apr;276(4
Pt 1):E628-34.
5. Rasmussen BB,
Phillips SM. Contractile and nutritional regulation of human
muscle growth. Exerc Sport Sci Rev. 2003 Jul;31(3):127-31.
6. Rieu, Isabelle.
Leucine supplementation improves muscle protein synthesis
in elderly men independently of hyperaminoacidaemia. J.
Physiol. 2006;575;305-15.
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