(tense music)
-: Now let's move onto anabolic signaling
and you're gonna see some repeats in
terms of some of the same hormones.
Again, it's because it's not
black and white anabolic catabolic
but we're gonna try and focus more on
the other side of the story
that you're really have been focusing on
'cause if you're concerned with anabolic signaling
most of you guys are probably considered
in the context of muscle growth or hypertrophy.
So we'll give you what you want in that aspect.
Sp we have some systemic growth factors
like growth hormone which, well,
is it really a growth factor?
It's a nutrient partitioning factor
but it's anti-catabolic to certain tissues
and allows us to bias our carbohydrates to other things.
So it does increase the anabolism of
the say post workout carbohydrates
or whatnot that I'm getting.
It does increase my ability to recover at night
by allowing the glucose to be
partitioned to where it needs to go
and allowing the other parts of my body
to run off of body fat.
So it's a combination of anti-catabolic
and anabolic via indirect mechanisms.
Its cousin here, insulin-like growth factor,
would be what we would consider more
of a true anabolic hormone where
it really actually stimulates a repair or building process.
So IGF-1
is going to have a direct anabolic
affect on a lot of tissues in terms of
stimulating cells to proliferate or differentiate
which basically means they're either
going to grow or replicate.
So there's that process there.
So that could be very valuable for recovery
and then we have local growth factors as well
but we'll talk about that more in cellular physiology.
From a systemic level we really
have a different version of IGF that's
mainly made by the liver
in response to growth hormone
which we'll kinda get to when we look at this picture.
Other systemic hormones like non-peptide based hormones
so we have androgens.
Androgens like testosterone would be
the main one that we would be thinking about.
When we look at testosterone it is mainly
a nutrient partitioning hormone
that has the ability to also kind of
signal the biochemical pathways that will
promote certain genes to be on
but they're all nutrient dependent.
So really people think of testosterone as like
oh it's this magic thing that makes you grow muscle
and, think of it,
it's kind of like tissue specific insulin
is almost a way of thinking about it
in that
it turns
on
a lot of the metabolic uptake
or the resource uptake parts of the cell.
So androgens are gonna help drive more
carbohydrates into the muscle tissue.
They're gonna help drive more amino acids
into the muscle tissue
and they're gonna try and get the nutrients in
that allow the cell to run an anabolic process.
So
we have specific receptors for androgens
so when we have high levels of androgens
those specific cells
start taking up more nutrients.
Muscle tissue is one of those
and that's why we look at testosterone
as being a very anabolic hormone.
There's other tissues
but the ratio of receptors is really high
in muscle tissue compared to other tissues.
When we look at thyroid hormone
thyroid hormone is thought to be
catabolic in that the higher your thyroid
the higher your metabolism
but remember thyroid is that
all systems go, everything is okay,
all of our processes can run.
So when thyroid hormone is low
we actually don't have the permission,
or oftentimes the metabolic function,
to facilitate these growth and repair processes.
So you need adequate thyroid hormone to be anabolic.
Excessive thyroid hormone, being hyperthyroid,
can become catabolic to tissues
because you get into a state of energy wasting.
Your cells are now just like doing
things for the sake of doing them
not because they need to be done
so they're wasting fuel, wasting energy.
Which is why, in the bodybuilding world,
people will use higher doses of thyroid hormone
in an attempt to get lean.
There's a lot of bad things that can happen with that
so I'm not saying to do that
but that is what happens is when
thyroid level gets to a super-physiological
or to a hyperthyroid level we start wasting fuel.
Insulin.
Insulin's anabolic in the sense that it's going to
drive nutrients into certain tissues
especially if there is room is those specific tissues.
But when we get into cellular physiology
we'll see that insulin doesn't always get to do its job
and that's why we see this insulin resistance,
insulin sensitivity issues thing being so widespread is that
a lot of it has to do with cellular health.
So let's walk through kind of what's going on.
Obviously, in this case, we're not
going to be going intra-workout during training
'cause all this anabolic signaling
is gonna be happening after training,
during the recovery process
but, in terms of the signaling,
so let's imagine we're towards the end
of where we finished the catabolic video
and we're talking about the training stimulus.
So
we could get it to the place where
it's alright we have the brain.
It's receiving that stimulus from the liver
that we've just burned a ton of glucose
so the brain's like okay well
what we're gonna do is we're going to
release some growth hormone, releasing hormone,
or some Gonadotropin Releasing Hormone is another one.
So this one is gonna go towards the testosterone,
the GHRH, which is not on here,
would go to the
pituitary releasing growth hormone.
We already talked about that
so let's talk about this thing down here
with the Leydig cells
which these would be the testes.
Or the adrenals have the ability to
make testosterone as well.
That's why females can also make testosterone
but there's this signaling process here.
From that whole lactic acid recycling environment
and that lactic acid recycling
environment is important
because one of the fuels that this Leydig cells use
to make testosterone is lactic acid.
So simultaneously from that type
of training that we just did that
created a lot of lactic acid
I can stimulate the brain to say
hey
we just did a lot of work at muscle tissue.
Let's go down and create a hormone
that drives, that would be androgens,
a hormone that drives nutrients
specific to those tissues.
It could just say hey let's make insulin
but
insulin's job is to get rid of
extra resources when they're available
not to make the muscles recover.
Could it make the muscles recover?
It could help.
It could help in the right conditions
but androgens are gonna say hey,
let's drive nutrients to the muscle tissue.
And high lactic acid means guess what just worked?
Muscle tissue.
Any other tissue in the body is
not gonna be able to make the lactic acid
like we are in a workout.
So this whole signaling process here
is specific to hey let's turn up the hormone
that is going to cause muscle tissue to recover
and that is why testosterone levels
are affected by lactic training or higher volume training
because, overall, we are stimulating this process.
So you don't have to stimulate
the same amount of lactic acid that you need to
get a huge growth hormone response
but you need to stimulate enough
that we have lactic acid going into these
Leydig cells so they're like oh, okay.
Between that and the brain signal
now I know we should make some testosterone
because I know the muscles worked
and I'm getting the signals from the brain
that these contractions happened.
That this glucose was burned.
Let's make some testosterone to help those muscles recover.
So we have this huge cascade going here.
Once that happens testosterone's
gonna get to a certain level
and we're going to send a signal
back up to the brain to stop.
So there's this feedback loop.
So
testosterone doesn't just keep
going up, and up, and up.
Once this happens done.
So this is why you have to train with frequency.
You can't just oh I trained once
and then my testosterone levels are gonna go up
forever, and ever, and ever, and ever, right?
We have this built in mechanism
because
anything in our body that is programmed to use energy
will have way more ways of turning
it off than turning it on
because we don't wanna be wasteful.
We're programmed for survival.
Wasting things, wasting resources
is the best way not to survive.
So our body has way more ways of shutting off
this process than it does turning on.
So there's checks and balances.
You know like are we sure could do this?
Are we sure?
Are you really sure?
Okay, we did it is that enough?
Have we done enough yet?
Let's stop.
Are you sure?
Okay.
That's the thought process for anabolism.
So when we look at growing muscle
that's one of the reasons to challenge.
We have to really convince our body
that we have the resources available
to actually grow that tissue
and deserve to keep that tissue
'cause we're gonna have continued resources available
so that's why stress, and inflammation,
and these things that waste energy
are so inhibitory towards muscle growth,
towards changing body composition
because they're wasteful processes
and any wasteful process is gonna be ugh.
We shouldn't be doing anything.
We should be conserving as much as possible
because we're stressed, we're inflamed,
we're wasting all these nutrients.
We can't depend on being able
to do all these other functions.
We may run out of resources.
So I also have the liver on here.
Like I said the liver is gonna be where
the growth hormone is converted to the IGF
so in this same process here, same timeline,
we did that lactic acid thing.
The growth hormone got stimulated.
The growth hormone as it's circulating in the blood
is also gonna come down to the liver.
Some of that growth hormone then
is then going to get converted over into IGF-1.
That IGF-1 will circulate
and also signal anabolic processes.
Two things to look at.
We're not getting deep into the hypertrophy
but just to kinda give you guys
a little bit of a preview
so we have testosterone and insulin-like growth factor
that are both gonna affect the muscle tissue themselves.
And they'll also affect these things
called satellite cells which are like stem cells,
or blank cells, that we have pools of
that can basically donate themselves to repair.
And that's where some of these systemic hormones
can really come into play
is they can recruit some of those satellite cells
to help go and repair the muscle tissue as well.
So testosterone at the muscular level
mainly drives nutrients into it
but, outside the muscle tissue,
can help recruit some of those
satellite cells to come
and basically donate themselves to repair.
So all of their contents gets added to the muscle
and then the muscle cells now have more things to work with.
More mitochondria, more organelles
which will make more sense when we
get to the cellular physiology in the next module.
Just wanna close out this module
looking at the body as a whole.
So remember we can say that,
in terms of net energy balance,
the body is either in a state of loss or gain
but that really doesn't tell us the information we need.
In essence we have to figure out
alright this balance of anabolic versus catabolic.
Don't just think of it as like
okay it's one or the other.
We need to think of it as what is anabolic?
What is catabolic?
Where are nutrients being
removed from, added to?
What are the conditions that are
gonna affect how that affects those tissues?
Am I gonna be getting fat out of fatty acids?
Am I gonna be getting glucose out of the liver?
Or am I gonna be burning amino acids?
Am I gonna be driving that
nutrients to the muscle?
Is the muscle in a state where
I'm gonna be more catabolic
because it has less nutrition to start with?
All of these things that come into play.
So it's not about is it catabolic?
Is it anabolic?
It's where is it anabolic?
Where is it catabolic?
And to what degree based off of
the current nutritional status?
Once you understand that stuff
you can start to think of how should I train this condition?
If somebody has low liver glycogen
or low muscle glycogen
you should start thinking well
I should probably use a different
type of training program versus if it was full
because there's going to be a
totally different stress response to that type of training.
So when we look at okay
if the training is going to be very demanding from glucose
but there's not glycogen stress
hormones are gonna be way elevated.
So do I want that?
Or do I not want that?
This is where understanding trainability
is going to really take you to
the next level in your program design.
You can start making these decisions
based off of where a person comes in.
Nutritionally, you can say okay.
This is a good workout.
This is not
so good of a workout.
Even if these were both workouts
that could be used for the same long term
or external goal.
If we take this into the entire context
of our regulation of systemic energy
we have to assess what is the incoming nutrition
both from a diet, intra-workout, post-workout
okay how is that gonna be utilized?
Alright we need to asses the external stresses
and how they are gonna impact
the movement of that nutrition.
Do I have external stressors that
are gonna be lifting cortisol and mobilizing nutrients?
Okay if that's the case
what do I need to do to counteract that?
What do I need to do to lower those stresses?
What do I need to do from a nutritional standpoint
to minimize the damage of those stresses?
Is there a need to transfer energy, alright?
Do I need to transfer energy
from the liver to the muscles because I'm training?
Do I need to transfer energy
from fat to the rest of my body for fuel
because I'm sleeping and I'm not eating
so growth hormone needs to come and do that job.
What is going on there?
Is there an increased
metabolism in a specific tissue, right?
Am I detoxing right now?
Am I training right now?
Do I have a wound that's healing?
All sorts of reasons that we could
have specific tissue metabolism right now.
So looking at, okay, if that is the case
how do I fuel that?
How do I affect the energy that's going to that?
The anabolic, catabolic ratio of that tissue
compared to the tissues that could
donate resources to it.
Am I in a position where I'm just
going to store excess energy?
And, if so, where am I gonna store it?
What fuel source is it?
And what are my options?
How do I get it?
What do I need to do
to store carbohydrates in the
muscle tissue and not as fat tissue?
Do I need to minimize inflammation?
Do I need to minimize stress?
Do I need to do something to
stimulate that muscle tissue to take up
that glucose as glycogen?
What do I need to do to get that
stored where I want it to?
Or do I simply need to
remove certain amounts of nutrition from the diet
because I know, under the current conditions
that this person has, that it's
gonna get stored as fat, right?
So that's where it's like well, okay.
You can't have carbohydrates right now.
You can't have a lot of carbohydrates right now
because they're not gonna get
where we want 'em to go.
So we gotta do some things.
We gotta do some things with your lifestyle,
and your training, and your nutrition
to get into the point where you
actually take that nutrients where we want it to go.
So looking at the whole body,
looking at energy, and balance, metabolism,
and the shift of that, the where's
and the why's this is happening is what we want you to get
so that you can really see how you
would change somebody's nutrition,
and their training synergistically
to actually influence how their
whole body is using energy and where.