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You can decrease the
breakdown of muscle tissue both during and after exercise and thus
provide potent anti-catabolic effects in several ways. (For
bodybuilders, anticatabolic really means much the same as protein
sparing, since that involves decreased muscle breakdown.) A lot of
substances and methods decrease muscle breakdown and have anticatabolic
effects; for example, taking in adequate carbohydrates is known to have
a protein-sparing effect.
Although the concept
of anticatabolism is simple, you may not understand what mediates the
anticatabolic response. Some people use the term anticatabolic
interchangeably with the term antiglucocorticoid. This can lead to
misconceptions, even though in many cases an anticatabolic effect may be
mediated by decreasing the effect of glucocorticoids on muscle tissue.
You should consider other factors and influences, however, when a
certain substance or regimen produces an overall anticatabolic effect.
In addition, the
popular notion of cortisol being solely a catabolic hormone isn't
accurate. Too much cortisol can certainly be a problem, but cortisol is
a necessary hormone, and in athletes, plays a role in decreasing muscle
stiffness and inflammation. Without normal and even somewhat elevated cortisol levels, we couldn't even exercise properly - so it wouldn't
matter what training, diet, drug and nutritional supplement regimes we
followed. In fact, short cycles of synthetic cortisol like drugs are
used in some sports to enhance both strength and endurance.
Yet chronically
elevated cortisol levels have a catabolic effect on muscle and decrease
the effect of anabolic hormones. Decreasing or attenuating the rise in
cortisol seen after exercise can give you an added anabolic boost by
decreasing muscle tissue breakdown and increasing amino-acid influx and
utilization by muscle cells. But why all the fuss about decreasing
muscle breakdown? Aren't we interested in increasing protein synthesis
and thus building up muscle? Yes and no. Decreasing muscle breakdown can
be just as important as increasing protein synthesis. It all depends on
how the two processes divvy up the protein shares and affect the overall
protein balance.
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