Protein Super-Dosing: Performance Enhancing or Gastric Nightmare?

This post evolved out of the Protein 2.0 post and covers a subject still surrounded by mystery, mysticism and flat out stupidity, a subject where speculation and sensationalism are endemic and encouraged: protein super-dosing. Is there an advantage to doubling, tripling or even septupling the recommended daily allowance of protein (RDA)? I wish the answer came in a single-syllable flavor, like a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ and I could go to bed. Life, of course, never gets that simple.

The Basics

Before I answer the question—and yes, there is an answer—I need to explain how muscles grow. Two processes compete for supremacy within the muscle at all times, protein breakdown and protein synthesis, and signaling for each act more or less independently. To increase muscle mass—hypertrophy—requires widening the gap between these two processes by lowering muscle protein breakdown (MPB) while raising muscle protein synthesis (MPS).

Because these two processes can be differentiated, by looking at how much dietary or otherwise exogenous protein incorporates into muscle tissue and how much is excreted, scientists can determine the dietary protein levels needed to maximize MPS. Antiquated methods, used throughout the 70s and 80s and into the 90s used the concept of nitrogen retention to estimate maximum protein absorption. In this methodology, the amount of nitrogen ingested is compared with the amount excreted over a specific period of time. At high protein intake levels—1.3 g/lb and above—significantly less nitrogen was excreted than absorbed. And the more nitrogen consumed above that point, even lower percentages were excreted. From there, the leap of faith is rather short: all that unaccounted nitrogen must still be part of the protein molecule and has become muscle.

There’s one problem. If this had been the case in these studies, the test subjects on the medium protein diet would gain roughly ½ lb of skeletal muscle per day and the group on the higher protein diet would gain 1 lb of muscle per day according to the retention data. After a month, assuming the nitrogen balance data correlated with muscle growth, there would have been a significant difference in muscle gain. In fact, in all the studies, amongst all the groups consuming .6 g/lb of protein and above, across all levels of conditioning, all groups gained the same amount of muscle as their matched, lower protein peers. More advanced tracer-based methods—leucine containing the C13 carbon isotope is incorporated into muscles, which can then biopsied and examined, or the stable carbon isotope can be recovered from exhaled CO₂—confirm that the maximum amount of protein that the body can incorporate into muscles is met with dietary at or below 1g/lb body weight per day.

Achieving Maximum Muscle Protein Synthesis

Now, achieving maximum MPS requires more than eating a certain amount of protein. Timing, protein type and insulin release create a maelstrom of anabolic effects and if you follow the protocol laid out in my Protein 2.0 article in conjunction with resistance training, you will achieve this maximum anabolic state. The question, therefore, is not how much protein you should consume, but how to keep free amino acid levels at the right level at the right time for the right duration. And don’t think that you’ll just spike levels with whey or casein hydrolysates throughout the day. Done incorrectly, this can actually increase skeletal muscle protein breakdown, not speed it up. Follow the protocol using the blends specified in Protein 2.0 and reap the benefits.

The Other Half of the Equation

Here it comes: I can hear, “that’s bullshit,” pouring out of your mouth right now. “Kai Greene (or Greg Kovacs, or Ronnie Coleman, or Dorian Yates: take your pick) says you need at least 2 g/lb and maybe even 3 or 4 if you want to grow.” And who doesn’t want to believe them, they’re monsters, far beyond anything imagined in ancient times, far beyond the biggest guy who lifts at the local big-box gym—far beyond even me. Who the hell am I to tell you the facts and expect you to believe them?

First of all, someone like Dorian Yates or Kai Greene would never read this blog because they don’t need to. Whatever they do, whether wrong or right, they grow. They grow not because of what they do, but in spite of what they do. If you want to be one of these guys, to do what they do and get the results they get, then I suggest you start by going back and choosing genetically gifted parents, which you obviously didn’t do, or you also wouldn’t be reading this. After you complete step one—being reborn to new parents—all your troubles will be over and you can stop reading this disrespectful blog that doesn’t hold the words of Greg Kovacs as Biblical. (Incidentally, I believe Kovacs finished near last if not last in every professional show he entered and instead of overcoming his weaknesses, he simply quit; now there’s a guy to take advice from.)

Here’s where we reach the other side of the equation: decreasing muscle protein breakdown. Despite the power of growth signals such as insulin, the negative regulators of growth, like myostatin, have far more influence on hypertrophy. Weight lifting causes specific adaptations to decrease negative regulators. Also, beyond increasing the accretion of new protein into muscle fibers, weight lifting increases the amount of protein reused within the muscle—more specifically, it decreases amino acid turnover. Said bluntly, not only do we grow more muscle but we lose less muscle too.

This is the difference between you and the pros. I would venture to say, if they were ever to volunteer to tracer-method studies and biopsies, their rate of muscle growth would be the same if only slightly higher than the average-sized weight lifter and that rate would still be optimized with 1g/lb per day; but the rate at which they lose muscle would be significantly lower, probably an order of magnitude lower (that’s 10-times less). Unlike us, they lose nearly none of their hard-earned muscle mass. Of course they’re going to be beasts—every nanometer of hypertrophy they earn, they keep. Talk about depressing: it makes me sick to think about all the muscle I’ve gained and all that’s been turned over and lost, despite my dedication to the gym.

Still don’t believe me? Are you cradling your tub of Isopure, rocking back and forth, teary-eyed, chanting, “Say it’s not true, say it’s just not true”? Here’s an example of the growth potential possible by blocking the anti-growth factors.

In the three slides of transgenic mice above, the first is a normal mouse. The second lacks the ability to produce myostatin, one of the most powerful negative-growth regulators. The third mouse over-produces follistatin which blocks myostatin activity. The excessive size of the third mouse leads one to believe that other negative growth factors exist, which follistatin also happens to block. These three mice had the same diet. The difference is that the second two mice had lower protein turnover than the normal guy.

Super-Dosing for Life

Okay, so maybe you’re convinced, maybe you’re not. I don’t really care. My only goal is to provide the facts. If I tell you the sun is going to rise tomorrow and you hide in your basement all day, just so you can say, “Well, I didn’t see it, so I don’t believe you,” that’s fine. Not my problem. But if you are convinced that super-dosing is not going to increase the rate at which you gain muscle, you might still be wondering if there’s any reason at all to continue spending so much money on tubs of extracted milk proteins and countless pounds of fish and beef.

Maybe. Normally—this situation is not unique to certain DH readers—when a person begins super-dosing with protein, they do so out of desperation. I’ve been there, I’ve done it myself and seen countless people do it, despite the deluge of warnings I threw their way. Immediately, I felt better, I recovered faster from my workouts, I tightened up and for a few weeks, my training was fantastic. Then…well, then nothing. I start losing my appetite, become lethargic, both causing my gains to stall and then I’m back feeling desperate.

If you have experienced the situation above, there’s a good reason why the excess protein made you feel good, as it did me. You were eating too few calories, not too few grams of protein. When dietary protein levels go above the 1g/lb mark, the only metabolic change that occurs is protein oxidation. The body starts getting energy from protein and even begins replenishing glycogen reserves by converting the amino acids into glucose through a process known as gluconeogenesis. The excess protein is not making you bigger or stronger; your body is finally getting enough substrate to use for energy and now it can shift from catabolic to anabolic and you’ll begin growing again.

There’s also absolutely no evidence in the scientific literature for toxicity at high dietary protein levels. Kidney function is normal, if not enhanced; bones become stronger, not weaker. So why not get all your extra calories from protein? Why not keep carb levels low to moderate, fat levels low to moderate and make up the difference with all protein, consuming three, four or even a higher number of grams per pound body weight?

For those concerned with cultivating mind-blowing strength or shirt-shredding muscles, there is a good reason to forgo the extra protein. In all those nitrogen retention studies, when less nitrogen was being flushed from the body than was taken in, in which higher and higher doses of protein did not cause greater amounts of nitrogen excretion, the body was not incorporating the unaccounted-for protein into muscle tissue; it reached the point at which it could no longer clear the massive amount of urea. If it can’t get rid of it, it builds up throughout the day in the system. The only real consequences are loss of appetite and lethargy. Not desirable qualities for someone whose success depends on eating and who’s probably hitting the gym after work, at a point where the urea buildup begins curbing enthusiasm and focus. The saturation point, taken from the accumulation of data, appears to be around 1.3g/lb, so there’s a little wiggle-room between optimum and inferior.

Don’t misinterpret my position. The scientific research and empirical data make it clear that going over the 1g/lb mark is unnecessary, wasteful and potentially detrimental for strength and physique athletes, but that doesn’t mean I’m opposed to high-protein diets in all situations. Because of dietary protein’s ability to accelerate metabolism, preserve muscle mass, curb appetite and its inability to be stored as fat, increasing protein content in the diet, or shifting macronutrients in favor of higher amounts of protein is ideal for losing body fat, whether for the obese, or the physique competitor trying to shave of a few more percentage points of her body fat.

Conclusion

Although there are many open questions, and many avenues of debate, there are some robust statements that come out of the research as well as practical experience.

1)      1 g/lb body weight will provide the means necessary to achieve maximum muscle growth.

2)      Hypertrophy is more strongly mediated by anti-growth factors than growth factors, which, unfortunately, are determined by genetics and little else currently known.

3)      Levels much higher than 1g/lb body weight saturates the body’s ability to clear the urea produced from the metabolism of protein, which may cause loss of appetite and lethargy.

4)      Increasing calories by increasing dietary protein is advantageous for meeting energy needs while not getting fat.

5)       There is no upper limit to how much protein you can safely consume.

6)      The RDA of 0.4g/lb is grossly inadequate for athletes.

I hope this helps drive the first nail into the coffin of protein super-dosing.

SAQs (Seldom Asked Questions)

Q: It doesn’t make sense that eating more food makes someone increasingly fatter, but that eating more protein doesn’t do the same to muscle.

A: To compare fat storage with muscle growth is almost inane. The two tissues grow and differentiate through unrelated mechanisms and are governed by different parameters. For example, the number of muscle fibers the body possesses does not change throughout life, therefore, there’s a limit to how large muscle can become through the accretion of amino acids. Fat cells, however, can grow in number ad infinitum. With no upper bound on the number the body can produce, fat cells can proliferate and store copious amounts of fat—enough fat to turn the average beach-going, sunbathing American into a grease fire waiting to happen.

Q: Hey man, weren’t cavemen huge and buff? I mean, it makes sense that they’d store all that extra food they gorged themselves on after a kill as muscle, right?

A: Seriously? Cavemen, before the advent of modern agriculture, according to the fossil record, had diets very similar to modern hunter-gatherer societies. Now, crack open a National Geographic and find the super-buff, muscle-head aboriginal. Hmm…how strange: there doesn’t seem to be any. Go figure.