Texas-based research team finds combo of fish oil and curcumin activates anabolism in muscles
Pretty much everyone is familiar with this phrase, a phrase that is applicable to all different kinds of areas of life – but also pretty poignant when it comes to our muscles and our bodies.
Folks have long understood the impact that atrophy has on muscles, particularly for the elderly and the seriously ill as well as injured athletes. If you aren’t using your muscles the muscle tissue itself is going to atrophy and degrade, your strength is going to degrade, and before you know it you have an almost impossible time building your body back up.
Age remains undefeated.
At the same time, Texas-based researchers at Texas A&M University have been trying to find a solution to help push back against atrophy and activate anabolism in muscles that go without a lot of activity for significant stretches of time. Researchers have been working on this project to help astronauts in space avoid atrophy that comes from existing in a zero gravity or nearly zero gravity environment for durations.
In cooperation with NASA, these Texas A&M University researchers conducted a 17 day animal study to see what kind of impact a variety of different substances, supplements, and ingredients could have on helping humans avoid atrophy.
Over a block of 17 days, researchers gave laboratory mice large amounts of fish oil and curcumin. Initially the results weren’t all that promising, and on Day 10 of the research project the scientists actually temporarily “hobbled” these laboratory mice so that they couldn’t use one of their hind legs.
Day 17 of the project rolled around, however, and the researchers were amazed to discover just how much muscle fiber and muscular strength remained in the temporarily hobbled leg – all thanks to the combination of sky high doses of fish oil and curcumin that the laboratory mice were provided with.
This led researchers to conclude that regular supplementation of these two ingredients together has the ability to at least slow down and possibly totally prevent muscle decay in the short and long-term. Interestingly enough, the anabolic signaling that happens at the molecular level to decay muscles that are inactive for longer stretches of time stopped almost completely because of the biomarkers released from the elevated consumption levels of fish oil and curcumin.
Researchers believe that it was in elevated activity of heat shock proteins that prevented the decay. These heat shock proteins worked to actually form a protective barrier of sorts to protect muscular tissue at the cellular level, preventing it from being damaged or decayed and helping to maintain musculature and strength even when the muscle goes dormant or inactive.
It’s important to highlight just how sky high the doses of fish oil and curcumin were for these laboratory mice. If the mice were actually human beings that weighed 80 kg they would have been taking 60 g of fish oil and 12 g of human daily – more than your average person could ever stomach in a 24 hour block of time.
It looks like researchers are headed in the right direction even if the delivery system for these results hasn’t been fine-tuned yet.
Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00722/full
