The MOST Important Factors in Building Muscle–Beyond Dietary Protein

many times we have this idea that we just need to increase more protein to build our muscles because after all muscles are made out of protein right but then when a lot of people do this it doesn't always work so in fact there's actually a paradox involved here some people that eat more protein might even suffer from an individual amino acid deficiency so whether you're trying to prevent muscle loss as you're getting older that's called sarcopenia or whether you're trying to increase more muscle I want to talk about some other factors that are not related directly to protein consumption even though you do need sufficient protein consumption to build muscles but more than that you need sufficient amount of amino acids now when you look up the minimum amount of protein you need there's a lot of inflicting information out there but the general consensus is you need a 0.8 grams per kilogram of lean body weight not your overall weight so let's say for example you weigh like 400 pounds and you have a lot of extra fat it doesn't mean you should start massively increasing your protein you should calculate that based on your lean body mass so 0.8 grams per kilogram of lean body mass is kind of like on the low end that's like the minimum amount and that on average could be around 50 grams of protein per day now when I say protein I'm talking about the protein in your food for example if you take a steak and you have like a hundred grams of steak right the weight of it that only has roughly about 26 grams of protein in that 100 gram steak so it's the protein in the food not the actual weight of the food now a moderate amount of protein could be between like 1.2 and 1.7 grams per kilogram of lean body weight and then when we get into higher protein that that's roughly about like two grams uh per kilogram of lean body weight and a lot of weight lifters will do that amount and even a lot more too so but I'm not going to get into whether you should do that or not do that I'm just kind of giving you some ideas on the ranges of how much protein you should have but I want to really focus on these other factors that influence the production of muscle protein itself now in a couple points I want to even touch on is your body doesn't normally store a lot of protein as like a reserve okay so it doesn't store that so if you eat too much protein it'll just convert the excess into glucose bodybuilders sometimes like that because sometimes they want to increase insulin effects okay from glucose because insulin is anabolic and they want to build their muscle mass and if they're fortunate enough not to have insulin resistance and maybe they're immune to it whatever versus the rest of us that have insulin resistance that may work for them but for the majority of the population when they start increasing more sugar glucose or even glucose from protein and thereby increasing more insulin the body tends to now create insulin resistance so it's kind of a catch-22 here you're trying to increase more insulin but the more you try to do it the more you're creating insulin resistance to the point where now you have a deficiency of insulin okay that's what insulin resistance is so how does that affect your muscles well guess what you need insulin to absorb amino acids so the more insulin resistance you have the less ability you're going to be able to use these proteins for your own muscles so that's barrier number one insulin resistance how is that created by eating too many carbs and it could be also created by consuming too much protein too so on the flip side if we want to correct insulin resistance we want to get in a low carb diet we want to not eat as frequently and this is the other point I want to bring up about protein so many people have this idea that they have to be constantly eating protein when they're working out before or after or even during having these protein powders and these shakes in these bars but in fact that's going to actually rebound on the person many times because it's going to act as a snack it's going to increase insulin but create more insulin resistance and it's really not needed for many reasons but definitely insulin resistance is one reason the other factor involved with building muscles is growth hormone um and there are some things that you want to know about growth hormone how do you first trigger growth hormone well you can trigger it by intense exercise so if you're trying to build muscle with just eating protein and not exercising it's not going to work exercise is the most potent activator of muscle synthesis especially intense exercise as well as the volume of exercise too so it's not just doing a short little intense workout it's really increasing the volume and the load on the muscles doing like resistance type exercise but exercise will stimulate growth hormone okay and it also stimulates testosterone too both necessary for building muscle now another thing that you can do to increase growth hormone is fasting right fasting and not snacking so frequently so fasting can increase growth hormone and if you're trying to build muscle I would just do intermittent fasting okay get them in a fasting not eat so frequently eat two meals a day I think that would be a lot better than three meals a day now with intermittent fasting your hunger will go down so you just want to make sure that you have enough calories too because especially if you have a fast metabolism growth hormone also can be inhibited by high blood glucose levels that's why I like the low carb I like intermittent fasting and a good exercise plan as well as a good amount of recovery from sleep all of those factors can help increase growth hormone now as far as testosterone goes there's several things you need to be aware of the zinc deficiency can create a low testosterone so zinc can definitely increase your testosterone now where do you get zinc from red meat shellfish Seafood way more than plant type foods how do you create a zinc deficiency by eating too many refined carbs too much sugar going through stress the other thing that can inhibit testosterone is having too much estrogen okay now where does that come from well mainly comes from like a lot of the soy protein isolate Foods soy milk can do it you also increase estrogen when you drink beer okay yeah and also assume alcohol now another way to create a problem with amino acids is to consume foods low in certain amino acids like plant-based proteins whether you're a vegetarian or a vegan or consuming a lot of plant-based protein which are considered clean proteins many times are low in certain amino acids and one amino acid that I want to bring up is leucine leucine is a potent stimulus of the production of muscle so mostly going to see low leucine Foods in plant-based foods but you're not going to see this in animal Meats things like that so it's the type of protein that's important too eggs meat fish Dairy all very very important now another factor is stress stress produces cortisol cortisol is very catabolic that's the opposite of antibiotic so it tends to break things down if you're under chronic stress that can wear your muscles down Big Time primarily it starts out in the thigh muscle the quadricep and then it goes after the glutamus Maximus and it can convert some of that that protein into sugar which then is converted to fat around your midsection okay so that's just another factor to be aware of another factor is the microbiome microbiome is indefinitely involved in helping you make amino acids and other factors in helping you make protein in general and so if someone had a lot of antibiotics many times they start having all sorts of problems with their muscles building muscles and maintaining uh muscles so consuming more Probiotic foods like fermented foods like sauerkraut things like that that are very very good now the other thing that I I've run into with people is that they just don't have enough stomach acid to break down the protein to then turn into muscle so they never have this uh fully broke down protein product into the amino acids so hydrochloric acid is very very important especially as we age the stomach acid goes down so you need to start to support that so you get the full breakdown of amino acids so butane hydrochloride is a really good thing to start taking with your meals to enhance the amino acids into the muscle how do you know if you have a problem or deficiency of hydrochloric acid well one way is indigestion or acid reflux or gerd if you have that you should watch the link down below now also enzymes enzymes mainly from the pancreas and even from the small intestine can be a factor if you don't have enough enzymes you're not going to be able to break down certain foods that then can turn into these pure amino acids so a couple things with the pancreas you could have a like bile sludge that can build up that can create pancreatitis so that's the problem with the bile and the way that you probably have that is you get a lot of bloating or you have referred pain to your left or right shoulder I put a link down below if you have that or you have some type of malabsorption in your small intestine or your large intestine where there's inflammation or past gut problems that have been really hindering your ability to absorb protein in which case you might need to take an amino acid supplement and then the other factor I want to bring up is when you eat protein right you have to realize that the ideal protein for your body to absorb um would be in its natural form with fat versus lean protein okay the leaner a protein is the harder it is to digest and the more problems it can create there's some interesting data on that in relationship to people eating just you know very very lean protein and no fat and what that does to your bodies there's a there's a lot of problems with that so I recommend always consume the fat that normally comes with that protein if possible or if you're eating chicken have the skin on it or fish try to have the skin on it that's much better and this also includes like so many people are doing this refined protein by having protein powders all the time I mean a little bit of that is okay but if you're just relying exclusively on protein powders it's not the ideal scene to build healthy muscles especially since they put all this maltodection and this corn syrup in there and all sorts of crap but in this video I just wanted to go beyond the SE dietary protein and give you some other factors especially if you're trying to build muscle or prevent the loss of muscle as you age now since I brought up growth hormone it's a really important topic and if you haven't seen my video on growth hormone you should probably check that out I put it up right here

Channel: Dr. Eric Berg DC

Views: 698,190

Keywords: important factors in building muscle, building muscle, muscle, muscle building, protein, dietary protein, how to build muscle, how to gain muscle, muscle growth, gain muscle, muscle building tips, build muscle fast, muscle mass, build muscle, muscles, muscle building diet, how muscles grow, build muscle mass, protein sources, foods high in protein, high protein, how to build muscle fast, dr berg on building muscle, dr eric berg, eric berg, dr berg, berg, muscles dr berg

Id: sXm0YPPg9-I

Length: 11min 34sec (694 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 07 2023