L-Leucine
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.
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.
If food is the ultimate
anabolic drug, we've just pimped it out and made it a whole lot better.
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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