Starving For Insulin
Insulin is one of the body’s most anabolic muscle-building hormones. More specifically, it’s a hormone released by the pancreas in response to nutrient availability. A meal high in carbohydrates, protein, or both causes a rise in circulating insulin. This is what you need for muscle building.
Insulin acts on its target cells to increase uptake and storage of key muscle-building nutrients. Insulin increases nutrient transporters to shuttle glucose and Amino Acids into the muscle cell, while preventing the catabolism of those nutrients stored as carbohydrates, protein, or fat.
As such, an increase in insulin levels creates an optimal anabolic environment favorable to muscle growth. Manipulating this natural metabolic response is all the more critical immediately after your exercise program.
Providing your muscles with protein and carbohydrates just before a workout prevents muscle protein from being used for energy. But the post-workout period is even more important when it comes to maximizing muscle growth.
Intensely trained muscles are starving for nutrients to fuel muscle protein synthesis, otherwise known as muscle hypertrophy or growth, particularly in the form of amino acids from protein and glucose from simple carbohydrates.
In addition, adding leucine, a highly anabolic branched-chain amino acid, to your post-workout carbohydrate and protein meal results in a significant increase in the plasma insulin response, resulting in an increase in protein synthesis and thus lean body mass. Furthermore, other compounds, such as alpha lipoic acid (ALA), taurine, and D-pinitol also potentiate insulin’s action on the muscle cell. So a post-workout formula that also includes these potent nutrients will help build even more muscle.
