Do You Need Carbohydrates to Build Muscle?

If you were asked what it takes to build muscle, you’ll probably say that you need protein. This is common knowledge and it’s not wrong. Protein is important, after all our muscles are made of protein, and our body requires an adequate amount of protein in the diet in order to build up muscle mass. But protein alone won’t do. Carbohydrates are a different kind of crucial macronutrient that is relevant while attempting to gain muscle, and their significance will be further examined here.

Carbohydrates Provide Energy 

Many people see carbs as the enemy, and that can be a common misconception. Yes, highly refined carbohydrates and sweets hardly do the body any good, but that’s not all carbs. 

We have two types of carbs: simple and complex. Simple carbohydrates are the ones that most nutritionists will advise you to avoid, but they may come in handy before intense workout sessions since they can cause a rapid spike in energy. 

Complex carbohydrates that are found in whole grains, beans, fruits, and vegetables get broken down into glucose in the digestive tract. Glucose then travels through the bloodstream and moves into cells, where it can be used for energy immediately or stored in our muscles and liver as glycogen, a form of sugar that can be used for energy in the future. 

Carbohydrates for Building Muscle

Carbohydrates are often said to be a non-essential macronutrient. Our bodies don’t technically need them, and can derive the energy sources that carbohydrates provide from fats and proteins. That said, ensuring you have the energy your body needs to function and repair is pretty essential to achieving muscle gains, or muscular hypertrophy.

Carbohydrates play a significant role in muscle development in two ways. Firstly, the body requires a lot of energy to power through high-intensity workouts. By preventing you from feeling fatigued during your strength training workouts, carbs will allow you to train longer and harder, resulting in adequate muscle tearing. Secondly, after exercising, torn muscles need to be repaired. Protein and glycogen are needed for that muscle repair to take place. 

 How Many Carbs Do You Need and When Do You Need Them?

The rate at which our glycogen stores are used depends on the activity. For example, if you are doing a light-intensity exercise, you only need 3 to 5 g of carbs for each kg of your body weight. This means, if you weigh 150 pounds (Approx. 68 kg), you will need roughly 204 g to 340 of carbs daily. If your workouts are more intense and last longer, then your carb requirements will increase. If you exercise for more than an hour every day, you will need to consume 6 to 10 grams of carbs for each kg of your body weight. If you weigh 150 pounds, your daily carb requirements will increase and range between 408 g and 680 g.

When you eat carbohydrates, you also impact athletic performance and muscle building.  It’s important to consume complex carbs a few hours before an intense workout so that glycogen stores are full enough to fuel the training. After exercise, it’s important to consume complex carbs to replenish those glycogen stores for later use, and to ensure there is enough glycogen to be used in the muscle repair process after your workout.

How Low Carb Diets Affect Muscle Growth?

The human body is a complex system. It needs a lot of things for proper function, but it’s capable of making some of them on its own when they are missing. This is the case if we are on a so-called low-carb or no-carb diet, diets where you lower or fully cut carbohydrate intake. If you are on this kind of diet and exercising, the body is missing one of the main nutrients, a.k.a carbohydrates, which starts a process called gluconeogenesis. 

Gluconeogenesis is when the body forms glucose from new sources to compensate for the lack of glucose from carbohydrates. When this happens, the body turns to sources like fats and proteins to fill this need. Breaking down protein starts from the muscles, meaning the body breaks down muscle protein to make more glucose, causing them to waste away. The body does so to access the amino acids (the building blocks of protein). The amino acids are then broken down into glucose and used for energy. Regular carb intake helps to prevent this process by encouraging protein sparing, which means they conserve muscle tissue by providing energy instead. When carbs are present, the body will use carbs first and foremost for energy. When carbs aren’t available, muscle gains that you have worked so hard to achieve can be lost.

Effects of High Protein Intake on the Human Body  

Trying to avoid ‘consuming’ muscle, people who are on low-carb or no-carb diets, require high protein intakes by almost doubling the recommended daily allowance for protein. High protein intake will give you enough protein to maintain your current muscles as well as provide a source for your body to convert in order to repair the muscles that have been broken down during your workout. However, some studies associate high-protein diets with an increased risk of heart disease and heart failure. Research has also linked high protein diets, primarily those with lots of animal protein, to an increased risk of certain cancers, including colorectal cancer, as well as negative effects on bone, liver, and kidney health. 

Conclusion

YES, we do need carbs to build muscle. While protein is what actually goes into the muscle tissue - the process that enables this to occur is highly regulated by carbohydrates. Carbs as a primary energy source, serve the following functions, all of which are critical to optimal muscle protein synthesis a.k.a the process of building muscle. Carbs are the body’s preferred source of fuel for exercise. If you have enough carbohydrates to fuel your workouts you’ll work longer and train harder, which means you’ll generate a stronger stimulus for the body to add muscle. Carbs also ensure that you will spare existing muscle tissue from being consumed as fuel - this is especially important in situations where you are in a calorie deficit - you want to make sure your carbs are high enough to spare the burning of existing muscle tissue for energy.

In the end, it’s all about eating a balanced diet. Carbs, protein, and fat all contribute to optimal bodily function. 

How Long Does it Take for Creatine to Work?

Creatine is involved in making energy for the muscles. About 95% of it is found in skeletal muscle. Studies show that it can increase muscle mass, strength, and exercise performance. The majority of sports supplements in the US contain creatine, and besides the different forms available on the market, one of the safest and most effective is creatine monohydrate. Here we’ll discuss what is creatine, creatine supplementation, and its effects on the human body.

Creatine 

Creatine is a nutrient that humans can process from the food they eat, and can also create themselves through natural biological processes. Creatine is a substance found naturally in muscle cells. It helps your muscles produce energy during heavy lifting or high-intensity exercise. Creatine has been recognized as a natural substance for over 150 years and is best known for contributing to muscle growth. It is an amino acid derivative, naturally produced in the human body from the amino acids glycine and arginine, which later transform into creatine. This non-protein compound is actually turned into creatine phosphate inside the body, which is used to regenerate ATP within the cell. ATP is often called the body’s energy currency. More ATP means the body can perform better during exercise. When ingested, through blood circulation  95% of the human body's total creatine and phosphocreatine are distributed in the skeletal muscle, while the remainder is distributed in the blood, brain, testes, and other tissues. High concentrations in skeletal muscle prove its use as a supplement in sports and weightlifting.

Creatine Supplementation 

One thing is clear about creatine: it is one of the most popular performance-enhancing supplements on the market. A large review of the most popular supplements selected creatine as the single most popular supplement for attempting to add muscle mass. 

The amount of ATP found within a muscle is generally so low that it’s only enough to generate energy for a fraction of a second. Such as through lifting a weight in the gym. After it generates that energy, it breaks down into ADP, which can't be used for energy. And that’s exactly where creatine phosphate comes into play. Creatine phosphate serves as the phosphate donor for the replenishment of ATP.

Our body creates around one gram of creatine per day on its own. Our bodies also process creatine from food, for example, we can get around one gram of creatine from one pound of salmon. So, the primary benefit of creatine supplementation is placing more creatine phosphate at the disposal of your muscles, than would naturally occur or could be reasonably created from dietary intake. Supplementation has been proven to yield an improvement in strength and power output during resistance exercise. Creatine is well researched for its role here, and the effects are quite notable for a supplement when compared to others. When used in conjunction with resistance exercise, creatine may modestly increase lean mass.  

Creatine Monohydrate and Dosing

There are many different forms of creatine available on the market, but creatine monohydrate is the cheapest, most effective, and has the most scientific support. Studies have shown that this supplement can increase strength gains from a weight-training program by approximately 5–15%, on average. RDA (recommended daily allowance) for creatine is 3-5g maintenance dose and 20-25g loading dose (lasting 5-7 days only).

 Loading Dose

When we use the term "creatine loading", we're talking about taking a higher initial dose of creatine for 5-7 days only, before continuously taking a lower "maintenance" dose. 

You can determine your daily dose for the loading phase by multiplying your weight by 0.3. For example, an individual weighing 180 lbs. (82 kg) would consume 25 g (82 x 0.3) of creatine daily during the loading phase only. 

The loading phase leads to a rapid increase in musculature stores of creatine. As those creatine stores fill, not only does the level of creatine phosphate increase, but you also retain more water. This is because when creatine is taken into a muscle cell it also draws water into that cell. Water retention within your muscle cells may contribute to increased body weight. Your muscles retain more water which is why you can reasonably expect to weigh more after a week of creatine loading. While extra water being retained within your muscles may give the appearance of a “fuller look,” it’s important to remember that once the water has dissipated or is removed through the bodies natural functions, that this appearance may be dissolved as well. This may also confer a psychological detriment that since you can see your muscles “getting smaller” that more creatine supplementation is needed, which in turn can become a dangerous cycle for your filtration system (i.e. liver, kidneys, etc.) to eliminate the excessive dosing.

Maintenance Dose

 After the 5-7 day loading phase, muscle creatine stores are fully saturated and supplementation now only needs to cover the amount of creatine broken down per day, meaning taking approximately only 3-5 g per day. 

Creatine loading may give you a big “headstart” if you want to build muscle in a short amount of time, but it could result in digestive discomfort, dehydration, cramps, and/or diarrhea. If you want to avoid these side effects you can simply start with the smaller, maintenance doses and you will still see the results within 2-4 weeks. Taking a smaller dose for a longer period of time will still reach the same saturation point. For the health benefit risk-to-reward, starting with and continuing the maintenance dose is highly recommended if choosing to use creatine supplementation.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, creatine may be an effective supplement with benefits for athletic performance. It generally will take 2-4 weeks of consistent supplementation for creatine to be effective, whether you’re running a loading phase or maintenance phase. If you choose to use it or not, you should continue to see improvements in muscle growth as long as you’re leveraging progressive overload.

The Process of Muscular Hypertrophy

Being active is crucial for overall health, and it is also the best way to build skeletal muscle. This article is all about the muscles, getting to know what they represent, their function and the process of muscle growth.

In the human body we have more than 600 muscles. All of them functioning together form the muscular system that permits movement of the body, maintains posture, and circulates blood throughout the body. Although there are different types of muscles, here we will talk exclusively about the skeletal muscles, also known as voluntary muscles, meaning we can control how and when they move and work.

How It Works

We, humans, are biologically programmed to thrive on activity. Our muscles tend to shrink if they are not regularly exposed to some kind of resistance. This process is also known as muscular atrophy (decrease of the total mass of a muscle). 

On the other hand, muscular hypertrophy (an increase of the total mass of a muscle) means exposing our cells to higher workloads than they are used to. When muscular hypertrophy happens, for example when we are working out, the level of circulation increases, and our muscles get that pumped-up look. 

With every basic workout, the muscle cell undergoes another kind of cellular change. As we expose the muscle to stress, it experiences microscopic damage, which in the case where you want muscle growth, is a good thing. The injured cells release inflammatory molecules called cytokines that activate the immune system to repair the injury. This cycle of damaging and repairing the muscle makes them bigger and stronger. 

The skeletal muscle is composed of filamentous myofibrils and sarcomeres that form a muscle fiber and are the basic units of contraction.  Each myofibril is composed of about 1500 adjacent myosin filaments ( contractile protein ) and 3000 actin filaments ( contractile protein ), which are large polymerized protein molecules that are responsible for muscle contraction. Every movement represents a contraction. 

After a workout, our body repairs or replaces damaged muscle fibers through a cellular process where it fuses muscle fibers together to form new muscle protein strands or myofibrils. These repaired myofibrils increase in thickness and number to create muscle hypertrophy. Muscle growth occurs whenever the rate of muscle protein synthesis is greater than the rate of muscle protein breakdown.  That’s why it is important to have the right diet while working out. The diet should compensate for every nutrient lost due to working out.

If we do not provide our bodies with adequate rest or nutrition, we can actually reverse the anabolic process and put our bodies into a catabolic or destructive state. The response of muscle protein metabolism to a resistance exercise bout lasts for 24 - 48 hours; thus, the interaction between protein metabolism and any meals consumed in this period will determine the impact of the diet on muscle hypertrophy.

The Importance of Hormones 

Our hormones like testosterone, human growth hormone, and insulin growth factor, also play a role in muscle growth and repair.

Testosterone is responsible for increased deposition of protein everywhere in the body, but especially in the muscles. A study shows that even a male who participates in a small sports activity but who nevertheless has a normal level of testosterone will have muscles that grow about 40% larger than those of a comparable female without testosterone.  In addition, testosterone can increase the presence of neurotransmitters in the muscle fibers, which can help to activate tissue growth. 

Men and women build muscles differently. That’s because testosterone plays a big role in muscle development. While both sexes have testosterone in their bodies, men have more of this hormone. However, studies have shown that both men and women have similar responses to strength training.

Growth hormone helps to trigger fat metabolism for energy use in the muscle growth process. Also, the growth hormone stimulates the uptake and incorporation of amino acids into protein in skeletal muscles.

Insulin growth factor also stimulates muscle growth by enhancing protein synthesis and facilitating the entry of glucose into cells. It plays a primary role in regulating the amount of muscle mass growth and promoting muscle cell repair.

Fast Muscular Hypertrophy Is Very Unlikely

Muscle hypertrophy takes time and is relatively slow for the majority of people. People will generally not see visible growth for several weeks or months as most initial changes are due to the ability of your nervous system to activate your muscles.

In addition to that, different people have different genetics, which ranges from hormonal output, muscle fiber type and number of muscle fibers. To ensure you’re doing your best to grow muscle, muscle protein synthesis must exceed muscle protein breakdown. This requires that you take in an adequate source of protein (especially essential amino acids) and carbohydrates to help facilitate the cellular process of rebuilding broken-down muscle tissue. Visible muscle growth and evident physical changes in your body’s muscle structure can be highly motivational which is why understanding the science behind how muscles actually grow is important if you want to see and feel the fruits of your labor.

Summary 

The most adaptable tissue in the human body is skeletal muscle, and it is remarkably remodeled after continuous, and carefully designed, resistance exercise training programs. Resistance training leads to trauma or injury of the cellular proteins in muscle. This prompts cell-signaling messages to activate a cascade of events leading to muscle repair and growth. The adaptation of muscle to the overload stress of resistance exercise begins immediately after each exercise bout, but often takes weeks or months for it to physically manifest itself in noticeable physical change. All studies show that men and women respond to a resistance training stimulus very similarly.