HOW TO BUILD MUSCLE
There are a number of
supplements used by weight trainers in an attempt to increase either strength
or mass gains. Although the CKD is probably not the optimal mass gaining diet,
many individuals choose to use these supplements to maintain strength and
muscle mass while dieting and they are discussed here.
Glutamine
Glutamine is one of the most
popular supplements on the market right now. Glutamine is typically
considered a non-essential amino acid (AA) since it can be made within the
body. However, in times of high stress, it may become essential .
Glutamine is
involved in maintaining the immune system
and low glutamine levels have been linked to overtraining in endurance
athletes . Weight training is a form of stress and, although not directly
studied, glutamine supplements have been suggested to help deal with the
stress of training.
A majority of glutamine
research has focused on its effect in critically ill individuals and burn
patients. It is a major mistake to extrapolate from pathologically ill patients
to healthy, weight training athletes although many authors in the field of
nutrition have made that mistake.
Outside of its effects on
immune system function, oral glutamine has also been shown to elevate
growth hormone levels in the bloodstream, which may be useful for fat loss .
The primary problem with oral glutamine supplementation is that glutamine
is a major metabolic fuel for the small intestine. As well, high doses of
glutamine tend to be absorbed by the kidney with the end result being that
little of the glutamine ingested actually gets into the muscles .
A possible solution is to take
glutamine in small doses throughout the day. Doses of 2 grams may not
activate absorption by the kidney and it should be possible to keep
blood glutamine levels high by taking it in this fashion. However, a
little known effect of glutamine is that it inhibits ketogenesis in the liver .
Many individuals have found
that glutamine supplementation prevents them from establishing ketosis.
However others have not found this to be the case and, as with many supplements, experimentation is the key. Glutamine probably has its
greatest potential during the carb-up period of the CKD.
Creatine Monohydrate
If there is a single sports
supplement that has been shown to work under a variety of conditions, it
is creatine. Recall from chapter 19 that creatine phosphate (CP) is used to
provide short term energy for exercise lasting approximately 20-30
seconds. Numerous studies have shown that supplementing with creatine
monohydrate can increase muscular stores of CP and enhance high
intensity exercise performance (for recent reviews of the effects of
creatine .
Improvements are primarily
seen in short duration, high-intensity activity such as sprint performance
as well as weight lifting . However, creatine has not consistently been shown
to improve longer events, which rely on other energy systems. The
improvements range from the ability to maintain a higher performance level
prior to fatigue, the ability to perform more
repetitions with a given
weight, and some studies suggest that creatine supplementation
may increase maximal strength (1 repetition maximum). Additionally,
creatine typically causes a large initial weight gain of 5
or more pounds, although the majority of this weight is water.
Whether long-term creatine
supplementation causes significantly greater gains in lean body mass is
still under research.
Creatine is typically loaded
first to saturate muscular stores. Although the optimal dosage can vary,
most studies suggest consuming 20 grams of creatine
in divided doses (typically 5 grams four times a day) for 5
days to saturate muscular stores. An alternate method is to take small (3
grams) daily doses of creatine, which results in similar loading over a period
of a month .
Some individuals find that
high doses of creatine cause stomach upset, and lower doses may make
loading possible while avoiding this problem. Although maintenance doses
have been suggested, there is some debate as to whether or not this is
truly necessary . As long as red meat is an integral part of the diet, as it will
most likely be on any form of ketogenic diet, muscular CP stores will stay elevated
for long periods of time.
One concern regarding creatine
and the ketogenic diet is that research suggests that creatine is absorbed
most efficiently if it is taken with a high glycemic index carbohydrate .
Thus the low-carbohydrate
nature of the ketogenic diet raises the question of whether
creatine supplementation is useful. What should be
remembered is that the early creatine studies used coffee or tea, without
carbohydrates, and creatine uptake was still fairly high. Simply
more creatine is absorbed if it is taken with a carbohydrate.
There are several strategies
to get around this problem. The first is to load creatine before starting
a ketogenic diet, so that it can be taken with a high glycemic carbohydrate.
Once loaded, the high intake of meat on a ketogenic diet should maintain
muscular stores. Additionally, creatine uptake is higher following
exercise so that a maintenance dose could be taken immediately after
training. Finally, many individuals have had success taking high dose of creatine (10-20 grams) during
the carb-load of the CKD. As well, creatine could be taken around workouts
on a TKD.
Creatine has no known effects
on ketosis, nor would it be expected to affect the establishment or
maintenance of ketosis.
Other mass gaining supplements
Weight trainers and
bodybuilders are bombarded daily with advertisements for new supplements
purported to increase strength and mass. As a general rule, there is little
human data to suggest that these substances offer a significant advantage
in terms of strength or mass gains.
Along with this,
individuals constantly want to know if a given supplement will work on
a ketogenic diet, or how it will affect ketosis. In all of these cases,
there is simply no data available, and individuals will have to
experiment to find what does and does not affect the diet.
