According to
popular belief, protein is simple. You need just a good dollop of any
complete protein every day to provide all the proteins necessary for
optimum muscle growth. After all, locker rooms are awash with burger and
bacon wrappers, and Mickey D is an official supplier to the Olympics.
They must know their stuff, right. Wrong ! If you swallow this hogwash
or the food behind it, don’t bother to read any further. You’ll be fine.
But you will never achieve your athletic potential.
The
recent science of protein is a complex story. I will attempt to tell it
in a few simple words. After 20 years of cooperative research by
thousands of scientists worldwide, the human DNA was finally decoded in
2003. By then, however, the same scientists realized that DNA is not the
key to life. DNA is simply a code book for making proteins, locked up
forever in your chromosomes. It does nothing by itself. Each one of your
millions of different DNA codes is released only in response to a
precise signal from your environment. In unraveling these signals,
biological science is up to its neck in the vast mysteries of protein
(1).
Begun in 2005, the Proteome Project has confirmed that
every working unit in the human body is a protein. We know now that you
are made of about 350,000 different proteins. And all of them are made
from the proteins you eat (1).They form your complete structure. Your
foundations and pillars, beams and rafters, floors and ceilings, the
engines of your organs, muscles, and brain, are all made of proteins.
Our
body proteins are far more complex than we ever imagined. The enzymes
that operate every movement you make are all proteins. The longest known
protein, for example, is an enzyme called titin. The DNA code for titin
is 33,000 nucleotides long. It controls the last bit of contraction of
muscles. So titin is crucial for athletes.
For titin
to work properly, each of its 33,000 nucleotides has to be exactly
right, and in exactly the right place in the code. Whether your body
makes titin correctly depends on the raw materials you provide. Those
materials are the proteins you eat. First, they have to provide the
right environmental stimulus to trigger DNA to release the titin code.
Then, they provide all the materials the body can use to make the
titian.
Athletes of 150-200 pounds, in top shape, have
a bit over a pound of titin in their bodies. Do not believe all the
obsolete commercial blather about animal proteins being complete, and
providing everything required to make it, and all your other bodily
proteins. I will state the science plainly. I have documented it many
times before (2,3). Most proteins in North America today are too
inferior in quality to support top athletic performance.
The
vast bulk of so-called “complete proteins” in North America, that is,
feedlot beef, battery poultry and eggs, farmed fish, and GMO soy beans,
have been progressively degraded. They no longer contain ideal amino
acid ratios, nor ideal amounts of dipeptides and tripeptides (pairs and
triplets of amino acids linked by sulfur bonds) for the body to make
titin, or thousands of other proteins involved in building muscle,
strength, and power.
Worse, anyone who gets their
proteins from processed meats, chilidogs, burgers, bacon, sausages, ham,
spam, or meat from a can, has been conditioned to be dumb, dumb, dumber
about their nutrition. Eat chilidogs for protein and you will run with
chilidog legs, and think with a chilidog brain. Eat even one chilidog
and the inferior protein is built into your muscles and brain for the
next six months.
Quality of dietary protein is THE big
problem for every one of the 350,000 proteins your body has to make. All
other essential nutrients you eat, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and
minerals, simply oil the gears, seal the pistons, and provide the body’s
fuel to support its protein structure and function (2,3). Contrary to
obsolete beliefs that protein is simple, these recent discoveries make
it far and away the most complex nutrient in your diet.
For
both power and endurance athletes, the quality, type, amount, and
timing of protein nutrition, and its integration with training,
determine performance. These processes determine recovery of damaged
muscle fibers, growth of new muscle cells, production of
energy-producing muscle mitochondria, development of muscle capillaries
that deliver oxygen and nutrients, and manufacture of the thousands of
enzymes that govern muscle contraction.
Unless you
optimize all these processes, you will never properly activate your DNA,
nor build the protein structure required to achieve your athletic
potential. Just like your cell phone, you do not have to know how
protein works. But, if you want to be a successful athlete, you sure as
hell better know where to get top quality protein, and how to use it.
Here, in a nutshell, is the latest science.
You Are Controlled by Light
For
400 million years the creatures from which we sprang, evolved to the
tune of light. We have the same circadian system today built into our
brain. Many folk associate the circadian rhythm merely with sleep/wake
cycles. On the contrary, we know now that it controls every aspect of
our biology lifelong (4-6). By sensing light, it programs thousands of
bodily functions to the 24-hour revolution of the Earth. It also
programs when, how often, and how much protein we should eat.
To
be in synchrony with the circadian system, optimum training stresses
the body just enough each day, and provides just the right protein
nutrition, to yield what is called the ADAPTIVE STIMULUS. This stimulus
is used that night by the sleep recovery system, to repair and remodel
muscle proteins, mitochondria, blood vessels, and enzymes.
To
effect recovery from an optimum Adaptive Stimulus, and to reset the
circadian cycle each day, the recovery system requires a minimum of 7.5
hours sleep each night. Most athletes, especially college athletes, do
not get it.
Performance is devastated by reduced sleep
(7). Peak power in cycling is significantly reduced (8). Knee extension
strength bombs in trained athletes (9). Strength in leg press, bench
press, and dead lift is much reduced (10). Endurance performance also
bombs, as does sprinting speed (11,12). You have to get your sleep right
first to reset the circadian system each night. Only then can you get
your protein and training to work.
Here is a recent
example. Researchers at Stanford U led by Dr Cheri Mah recently tested
the Cardinals basketball team. The players recorded average sleep of
only 6.5 hours per night. The men volunteered to increase their sleep to
8.5 hours per night for seven weeks. No other changes were made to
their nutrition or training. They were tested before and after the seven
weeks on the 282-foot sprint drill, free throws, and three-point
shooting.
Results were tremendous. By the end of the
extra-sleep period, players had improved their sprint drill by 0.7
seconds. Every single player on the team was quicker than before the
study began. They improved their free throws by 11.4 percent and their
three-point shooting by 13.7 percent. These are massive improvements in
seven weeks. Simply increasing their sleep provided the right amount of
recovery time for the circadian rhythm to respond fully to the Adaptive
Stimulus provided by their nutrition and training.
But
sleep alone is insufficient. EACH DAY you also have to provide an
Adaptive Stimulus from a combination of training, and correct protein
nutrition, at the right amounts, right times of day, and right
frequency. Without an Adaptive Stimulus, remodeling and growth of the
muscular system do not occur that night, and the opportunity for
adaptation is lost.
The lost day cannot be made up by
doubling training tomorrow. All the make-up strategies, such as doubling
training next day or adding a bit to training for a few days to make up
the loss, inevitably over-stress the system. Then the sleep recovery
and growth system that night cannot complete the job. So the next day’s
training is begun with an already inflamed and damaged system, and must
be cut back to avoid further damage.
Of course, some
adaptation occurs with almost any training and almost any protein, even
chilidogs and intermittent training, say for an hour, 3 days a week.
These gains in muscle and performance have misled many trainers and
athletes to believe that what they are doing is optimum. We have had
several thousands of these athletes switch to our program through the
Colgan Institute, and it is not unusual for them to make gains in
performance in one year that are 400% better than they achieved the year
before.
Here is how we do it.
In
Part 2 of this series I will cover the type, frequency, and timing of
protein nutrition and its integration with training to produce optimum
performance. To join our winning team go to
www.drmichaelcolgan.com
1.
Wang K, Huang C, Nice E. Recent advances in proteomics: towards the
human proteome.Biomed Chromatogr. 2014 Jun;28(6):848-57. doi:
10.1002/bmc.3157. Review.
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3. Colgan M. The Anti-inflammatory Athlete. Sound Concepts, Grand Fork UT, 2012.
4. Pierpaoli W, et al, (eds). The Aging Clock. New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1994.
5. Erren TC, et al. Light, timing of biological rhythms and chronodisruption in man. Naturwissenschaften, 2003;90:485-494.
6.
Dawson KA. Temporal organization of the brain: Neurocognitive
mechanisms and clinical applications. Brain Cogn, 2004;54:75-94.
7.
Dattilo M, et al. Sleep and muscle recovery: endocrinological and
molecular basis for a new and promising hypothesis. Med Hypotheses.
2011;77(2):220–2.
8. Souissi N, Sesboue B, Gauthier A, et al. Effects
of one night’s sleep deprivation on anaerobic performance the following
day. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2003;89(3–4):359–66.
9. 20. Bulbulian R,
Heaney JH, Leake CN, et al. The effect of sleep deprivation and exercise
load on isokinetic leg strength and endurance. Eur J Appl Physiol.
1996;73:273–7.
10. Blumert PA, et al. The acute effects of
twenty-four hours of sleep loss on the performance of national caliber
male collegiate weightlifters. J Strength Cond Res. 2007;21(4):1146–54.
11.
Oliver SJ, Costa RJ, Laing SJ, et al. One night of sleep deprivation
decreases treadmill endurance performance. Eur J Appl Physiol.
2009;107(2):155–61.
12. Skein M, Duffield R, Edge J, et al.
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