Last year, I wrote an article entitled, “What’s Good for You May Not be Good for Building Muscle.” Fish and fish oils contain EPA and DHA, which stimulate blood circulation; increase the breakdown of fibrin, a compound involved in clot and scar formation, and additionally have been shown to reduce blood pressure. There is strong scientific evidence that n-3 fatty acids reduce blood triglyceride levels and regular intake reduces the risk of having a heart attack. Omega-3s have potent anti-inflammatory effects and enhance cell membrane fluidity and increase insulin sensitivity by altering the function of the cell membrane.
To sum up the article, it described how prostaglandins were important for muscle growth and that fish contains high levels of Omega 3 fatty acids, which inhibit prostaglandin synthesis, which could be bad for muscle growth. At the time I wrote the article, I concluded that it was just a theory of mine and had no research to back up these claims… until now! There is interest as to how nutrition affects muscle recovery, especially to prevent muscle atrophy when people are injured and are immobilized.
Researchers from the Food and Nutrition Department at Seoul National University examined the affect of fish oils on muscle recovery in rats. One group of rats was assigned to a fish oil group (rich in Omega 3 fatty acids) and the other group was assigned to a corn oil diet (high in Omega 6 fatty acids). The rats were assigned to immobilization for a few weeks and then allowed to put tension back on the muscle.
The hindlimb immobilization technique mimics when people are injured and can’t place weight on the muscle. When a muscle is immobilized, it causes it to atrophy, so scientists are interested in the fastest way to rejuvenate and repair muscle when tension is placed back on the muscle. When the animal is allowed to walk again, the muscle has tension placed on it again, which allows the researchers to examine muscle recovery.
What researchers are currently asking is: what type of fat allows for faster muscle recovery and muscle hypertrophy? The immobilization-induced reductions in muscle weight and muscle protein content were restored faster by three days of remobilization in the corn oil group. However, in the fish oil group, these muscle recovery measurements did not significantly change until 13 days of remobilization. Basically, it took longer for muscle recovery, when high levels of fish oils were consumed.
Some interesting findings: at three days of remobilization, both groups had significant elevations in p70 ribosomal S6 kinase (a marker for anabolic signaling) activation and at a greater extent in the corn oil group than the in fish oil group. Additionally, the activation of another anabolic pathway, Akt, was also increased on Day 3 in the corn oil group, but it was not affected in the fish oil group. Throughout the remobilization period, levels of prostaglandin F2alpha (PGF2alpha) and cyclooxygenase-2 were significantly increased in both groups. However, fish oils had a lesser increase in PGF2alpha than corn oil until Day 13. A growing body of evidence has documented that the COX-2 pathway with prostaglandins plays a pivotal role in muscle growth and regeneration induced by injury, especially at early time points after injury.
PGF2alpha has been found to be critical in muscle growth, including protein synthesis. These results suggest that the lack of increase in PGF2alpha synthesis at three days of remobilization in fish oil might have notably contributed to the inhibition of muscle recovery at this time. These results imply that the PGF2alpha synthesis suppressed by the dietary fish oil at three days of remobilization might inhibit muscle recovery. PGF2alpha, derived by COX-2, cannot be formed from DHA or EPA, but is formed from arachidonic acid (AA; a predominant n-6 fatty acid), whose release amount from the cellular membrane is determined by its content in cell membrane. This fact suggests that arachidonic acid levels in the muscle membrane lowered by chronic dietary fish oil intake can reduce the production of PGF2alpha in skeletal muscle.
These results suggest that the anti-inflammatory function of dietary fish oil may detrimentally influence early muscle hypertrophic response. These findings indicate that dietary fish oil inhibits the early stage of muscle recovery by suppressing the activation of anabolic pathway Akt–p70s6k signaling and PGF2α synthesis. This study should bring to awareness that high doses of fish and fish oils may impede anabolic pathways, at least in rats. No studies in humans with high doses of fish oils have been conducted yet, but hopefully bodybuilders should be aware that high doses of Omega 3s in fish oils can reduce muscle recuperation by inhibiting PGF2alpha synthesis.
By Robbie Durand
source:www.musculardevelopment.com
