littleguy-
I found this on the web and it jives with what I know:
"How does natural secretion of Growth Hormone and Insulin affect your ability to build muscle? Can you change your routine and nutrition to take maximum advantage of your body’s release of these powerful anabolic hormones. Read on and discover a few secrets you should practice to ensure an optimum anabolic state.
As we all know men have an advantage over women because of naturally occurring testosterone and other anabolic steroids. For a man, his best chance at "natural" muscle development will occur when his testosterone levels peak around 16-18 years of age. After this peak, testosterone levels gradually start to fall. Without a doubt, the anabolic steroids have the biggest impact on muscle development. But all these "natural" muscle builders do is prime the muscle cells to synthesize actin and myosin. Growth Hormone is needed to push all twenty amino acids into muscle so that the "primed" muscle cells can crank out lots of actin and myosin.
For a women, Growth Hormone will be her major means of building muscle mass naturally. When the arginine growth hormone induction test is run on females, a much better response is seen than what is seen in a male. Women also tend to have slightly higher growth hormone levels in their blood than males (normal range of 0-5ng/ml).
Growth hormone has a number of roles in the body. The one that people think of most often is of course growth. During periods of growth (birth to about 20 years of age) much more growth hormone is produced by the pituitary gland in the brain. Most tissues in the body respond to the action of growth hormone (cellular division). But through a process that is still not completely understood, tissues stop responding to growth hormone by about 20 years and growth stops.
Once growth stops, the only tissues in the body that show a response to physiologic levels of growth hormone are muscle and adipose (fat) tissue. In muscle, the main action is to protect muscle against depletion during starvation. In adipose tissue, growth hormone promotes fat breakdown. After 3-4 days without eating, the pituitary starts to produce significant amounts of growth hormone to slow down the loss of muscle protein. If this didn't happen, you would become too weak (no muscles) to get food pretty quickly. The body makes a shift to fat as the major source of energy and growth hormone is responsible for this shift. Some muscle protein is still broken down to provide the brain with glucose but the much higher rate of fatty acid oxidation leads to ketone body formation which the brain also uses for energy.
On average, your body breaks down and resynthesizes about 300 grams of muscle protein each day. For a hard training bodybuilder this can be as high as 400 grams. Muscle protein is broken down to provide glucose between meals and as a result of heavy training. Muscle then should be rebuilt when you eat. About 60-90 minutes after you eat, your blood glucose level will peak and the pancreas injects insulin into your blood to clear the glucose. Both muscle and adipose tissue have insulin receptors and glucose is pumped into both tissues (liver also takes up glucose but it doesn't need insulin to do it).
In muscle the glucose goes to glycogen to replace the muscle glycogen that was used since the last meal. In adipose tissue, the glucose is converted to fat. Slightly after the glucose peak, amino acids from the protein you ate also peak in blood. In muscle, insulin also acts to pump amino acids into the muscle cells. But insulin is only able to pump in about half of the 20 different amino acids needed for muscle protein synthesis. Growth hormone is needed to help pump all twenty amino acids into muscle and then get the muscle to use these amino acids to rebuild actin and myosin.
The body will only hold onto amino acids 3-4 hours after the amino acid peak occurs in blood. This is the window of opportunity to rebuild muscle. If you can get more amino acids pumped back into the muscle than were lost since you last ate, the muscle will tend to burn the extra amino acids unless you have been able to convince it that it needs thicker muscle fibers (you have made the muscle go to the edge of it's physical contraction capability since you last ate). The signal for growth hormone to do it's thing after you eat isn't understood very well. What we do know indicates that it has something to do with the concentration of amino acids in blood.
Without growth hormone pumping all twenty amino acids into muscle, you don't get a very good clearance of amino acids from the blood into muscle. But you still get some. There are five separate amino acid transport systems to move amino acids into all cells in the body and muscle has them just like every other tissue. If you had a very high protein meal and didn't have enough carbs to get a strong insulin response, your muscle will still get amino acids to rebuild itself, it just has to compete with all the other tissues in your body. You have 3-4 hours to do this. By delaying the amino acid peak in blood so that it comes after the glucose peak, you give muscle an advantage over the other tissues in the body because with a good glucose clearance rate, growth hormone kicks in and pushes amino acids into muscle before the other tissues can take too many of them out of the blood. This doesn't cause a problem for the other tissues because muscle is the only tissue that losses it's protein between meals. The other tissues burn most of their amino acids as fuel if they get them. The optimum time to push amino acids into muscle is identical to that used in the carbo loading technique for endurance athletes, within several hours after strenuous exercise or weight training of the muscle or muscles. The closer you can come to the end of the muscle stress, the better.
So in practice, what does this mean to the average hard training bodybuilder? Essentially, you need to train with a high level of intensity. Intense training boosts natural secretion of Growth Hormone as well as Testosterone. You must then follow your training with a high protein, high carb meal containing high glycemic sugars. This meal should be taken as soon a practical after training (within 1 – 4 hours max.) The base level of Growth Hormone from training coupled with released insulin has the effect of pumping amino acids from digested protein into your trained muscle – creating a strong anabolic effect.
What else can you do to maximise natural anabolic response? As we now know, most of your growth hormone is produced at night when you sleep. With good timing, you can maximize this effect. By eating a late meal, 30 minutes before retiring, that is relatively high in protein, you can use that extra Growth Hormone to again pump aminos into you muscle while you sleep. But remember if you haven't told your muscles that they may need to have thicker muscle fibers by training intensely, all growth hormone will do is make sure that the muscle gets back it's 300 grams of protein that were broken down during the day to maintain a steady blood glucose level for the brain. The extra amino acids are then burned as fuel as you sleep. Another tip, if you have trouble sleeping after having a high protein meal, add extra carbs to the meal to help induce sleep.
With a very high protein intake (150-300grams per day), you will not be able to maximally use all the dietary amino acids for muscle formation. But through the law of mass action, you will end up getting more amino acids into your muscle than someone consuming 100 grams of protein per day unless that person knew how his body used growth hormone to push his 100 grams of protein into his muscles. If he does, he will outperform you. So ensure you make the best use of naturally occurring Growth Hormone and Insulin – Take a high protein, high carb supplement within 4 hours of training, and take a similar high protein, high carb meal before bed to induce a natural anabolic state."
IMO-Train hard and consume a high protein meal with some carbs, but not a ton, then take a nap. Naps are like free hits of GH. Your body needs rest anyway and a quick shake and some supps combined with a nap are key. I workout a lot after work so I finish up with just enough time to eat relax and then hit the sack. I am usually primed and ready to go the next day. On weekends or days off I eat, workout, eat, and nap.
Be weary of taking in too much. Insulin is a great mediator and part of its role is to store energy for later usage. It will deliver glucose to your muscles, but it will take the excess and turn it into fat cells. Eating smaller meals all day regulates your insulin levels and prevents spikes. When your insulin spikes you take in lots of food (fuel) and some of it is bound to get stored as fat. Time your workouts to fall between to small meals. If you are attentive to your carb, protein, and overall caloric needs you can make some real gains. Figuring out exactly what to eat and when will be the trick, but consult with a dietician or ask around and you'll get the answers you need.
FHG
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