When it comes to building tons of muscle, too often, tons of fat accompany it. This is why it is considered by many that it is impossible to do both at the same time, although you do have more control than you think. A lot of that control involves the powerful hormone insulin, who can make or break a physique, depending on what you do.
Without a doubt, insulin could be considered the key that dictates muscle growth, and speed of recuperation, along with nutrient uptake. But in that same breath, however, is insulin’s “darker” side, the one that makes it incredibly easy for you to get fat.
See, insulin is a powerful storage hormone, one that is recruited when we eat foods, primarily carbohydrate heavy ones.
Depending on the exact timing of insulin release (such as upon eating in the morning, or after your workout, just a random snack in the middle of the day), the excess carbohydrates may be shuttled to different locations. For example, upon waking in the morning, and after a workout, glycogen levels are lower than normal, allowing insulin to shuttle sugar into the liver and muscle cells, and be stored as more glycogen.
However, glycogen stores are not infinite, and are filled relatively fast; begging the question “what happens to excess sugar?” They are then sent to fat cells, who have a much greater capacity for storage, and ta-da! Are converted to fat.
See how simple it is for sugar to promote fat gain?
Luckily, by taking advantage of glucose portioning agents, safe and effective supplements, you can temper the speed by which insulin gets to work, reducing the possibility of rapid muscle, liver or fat cell saturation. As mentioned, glycogen stores as small, and filled quickly. It’s like loading gasoline into a full tank; instead of just “wasting” the excess gas, fill it little by little, so that more is effectively used!
Give The Following Supplements a Shot To Up Your Glucose Partitioning Game:
Gymnema Sylvestre
This is an ancient Ayurvedic herb, which has been used for centuries by locals of India. It was observed as far back as the 6th century B.C to have an effect that causes reduction of sugar taste in the mouth and was given the name “sugar destroyer” by natives. Gymnema Sylvestre works in a few interesting ways, whose benefits extend beyond athletes looking for lean gains, to even people with diabetes. Take for instance:
Chromium
This micronutrient is only necessary in small amounts but must be consumed as the body cannot manufacture its own. Many people are deficiency in this nutrient, especially if you consume a high carb diet, as its excretion in urine is promoted. Regardless, chromium is believed to have numerous benefits on blood glucose chemistry, affecting how it is metabolized, to stored and more.
Most interestingly, however, is the ability of chromium to improve glucose sensitivity- which can significantly enhance your muscle building process while staying relatively lean. The less insulin you require to do the job of glucose uptake, the faster you can return to a state of fat burning. Chromium can serve as a major adjuvant to diabetic or overweight individuals.
Bitter Melon
Also known as bitter gourd, or Karela, this bitter fruit has been used for centuries in India for its blood sugar reducing effects. However, this melon does much more than that. It is also an insulin mimetic, meaning that it can display effects similar to insulin without its presence. It also improves the sensitivity of insulin itself, probably explaining why blood sugar levels improve following consumption.
Furthermore, studies have demonstrated findings that bitter melon can improve carbohydrate uptake by muscle cells, while simultaneously improving the rate of fat loss and preventing storage of subsequent fat.
These properties make bitter melon a mandatory add on when trying to gain muscle and stay lean at the same time.
Berberine
Berberine is a unique supplement, which acts in ways that may at first seem counter-intuitive. For example, consider the fact that Berberine is inhibitor of a kinase that promotes muscle growth, known as mTOR. It activates AMPK on the other hand, which is responsible for more survival type reflexes, including uptake of glucose in anticipation of starvation, but also an anti-aging effect. On the flip side, Berberine promotes weight loss, prevents the liver from making its own glucose (a process known as gluconeogenesis) and initiates a pseudo- low carb environment.
Banaba Leaf Extract
Banaba leaf extract possesses insulin-mimetic effects, improving uptake of carbohydrates to be stored as glycogen, and not fat. An extract known as corsolic acid is also being studied for its anti-obesity properties as well, making it ideal for anyone looking to improve their physique.
Alpha Lipoic Acid
A well-known fat based antioxidant, ALA has been shown to increase insulin sensitivity up to 57% in type 2 diabetics. Though people with diabetes have much weaker insulin sensitivities, the effect should translate well in non-diabetics as well, albeit using a dose of 50-100mg (compared with 600mg dose in the study).
Cinnamon
This tasty spice has numerous benefits when it comes to improving muscle growth without the heavy load of fat burden. Cinnamon does this by various mechanisms, including:
Conclusion
While these supplements independently can bring about a transformation of your physique, using them in combination can make an exponential difference. Consider trying a supplement such as our RPG that contain many of these ingredients and take your body to the next level!
]]>Now we bring RedCon1’s new product RPG into the equation as a positive partitioning agent. As previously stated, we can store those calories that we ingest from food in multiple compartments and although basic thermodynamics is of the utmost importance, adding in a glucose disposal agent is going to help in the process of improving overall body composition as those calories are stored in muscle cells instead of fat. But are all glucose disposal agents equal? The simple answer is no. Even further than our own biological differences in how we react to ingesting certain foods, the composition of these agents makes a massive difference (and this is actually what caught my attention first on RPG.) There are various compounds that promote the disposal of glucose. Some of those being chromium, gymnema sylvestre, bitter melon, cinammon, berberine, ALA, and banaba leaf….all of which are included within RPG (as well as paradoxine.) Being that those are my top choices for implementation of any good glucose disposal agent, I was beyond excited to see them all included in one product! I have written (and am in the process of writing) articles on all of these ingredients, so if you want to learn about each individual one in greater detail, keep up to date by checking the article section of the RedCon1 website. You may be asking yourself “if they all dispose of glucose and increase favorable partitioning, why not just have one ingredient instead of several?” The answer is because they all control blood sugar through different pathways with various mechanisms of action.
As you can see, you will be able to regulate insulin and glucose levels effectively from every pathway possible, giving your body the best chance at positively partitioning the calories you ingest into favorable compartments. In conclusion, you will always want to monitor your own glucose levels (both fed and fasted) to see how you respond to RPG as some people may need a higher or lower dosage that recommended. It will be safe to say that utilizing RPG during a cheat meal, cheat day, or any type of refeed where a caloric surplus is present, would be a smart decision.
References
As we are looking at some of the inhibitory aspects of cinammon, Adisakwattana and colleagues had a fairly interesting paper on the inhibitory activity of cinnamon bark species and their combination effect with acarbose against intestinal α-glucosidase and pancreatic α-amylase. They state within the abstract “Inhibition of α-glucosidase and pancreatic α-amylase is one of the therapeutic approaches for delaying carbohydrate digestion, resulting in reduced postprandial glucose. The aim of this study was to evaluate the phytochemical analysis and the inhibitory effect of various cinnamon bark species against intestinal α-glucosidase and pancreatic α-amylase. The results showed that the content of total phenolic, flavonoid, and condensed tannin ranged from 0.17 to 0.21 g gallic acid equivalent/g extract, from 48.85 to 65.52 mg quercetin equivalent/g extract, and from 0.12 to 0.15 g catechin equivalent/g extract, respectively. The HPLC fingerprints of each cinnamon species were established. Among cinnamon species, Thai cinnamon extract was the most potent inhibitor against the intestinal maltase with the IC(50) values of 0.58 ± 0.01 mg/ml. The findings also showed that Ceylon cinnamon was the most effective intestinal sucrase and pancreatic α-amylase inhibitor with the IC(50) values of 0.42 ± 0.02 and 1.23 ± 0.02 mg/ml, respectively. In addition, cinnamon extracts produced additive inhibition against intestinal α-glucosidase and pancreatic α-amylase when combined with acarbose. These results suggest that cinnamon bark extracts may be potentially useful for the control of postprandial glucose in diabetic patients through inhibition of intestinal α-glucosidase and pancreatic α-amylase” (3.) Even further more is the regulation of PTP-1 and insulin receptor kinase by fractions from cinammon. Bioactive compound(s) extracted from cinnamon potentiate insulin activity, as measured by glucose oxidation in the rat epididymal fat cell assay. Wortmannin, a potent PI 3′-kinase inhibitor, decreases the biological response to insulin and bioactive compound(s) from cinnamon similarly, indicating that cinnamon is affecting an element(s) upstream of PI 3′-kinase. Enzyme studies done in vitro show that the bioactive compound(s) can stimulate autophosphorylation of a truncated form of the insulin receptor and can inhibit PTP-1, a rat homolog of a tyrosine phosphatase (PTP-1B) that inactivates the insulin receptor. No inhibition was found with alkaline phosphate or calcineurin suggesting that the active material is not a general phosphatase inhibitor. It is suggested, then, that a cinnamon compound(s), like insulin, affects protein phosphorylation-dephosphorylation reactions in the intact adipocyte. Bioactive cinnamon compounds may find further use in studies of insulin resistance in adult-onset diabetes (4.)
Read Part III: HERE
References