Nitrogen Balance

RedLeader

Bluelight Crew
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Jul 23, 2008
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Okay, so my extremely basic understanding of nitrogen balance is that it goes up as we consume protein and can serve as a metric for anabolic potential. Positive nitrogen balance is what bodybuilders want. So the questions...

1) Do various drugs affect nitrogen balance? I have heard a couple cycle architects arguing that cycle design should account for this.

2) Do BCAA supplements affect it?

3) Should the nitrogen balance curve look a certain way to optimize gains? Undulating, constant/positive, etc?

4) Anything else interesting and relevant on this topic.
 
Yes nitrogen balance is just a metric proxy for (muscle) protein synthesis. If you're retaining more of the nitrogen you eat, that means more of the amino acids (which contain most of your dietary nitrogen) are turning into solid tissue (mostly muscle, some organ). If you're losing more nitrogen than you're eating, it implies your MPS is negative (you're losing more muscle than you gain).

Obviously drugs which cause muscle growth are going to have the greatest impact. Therefore the most important drug for improving nitrogen balance by a country mile is AAS. Nitrogen balance is a metric they sometimes (used to) use in studies of AAS to determine their effectiveness (and still do in cattle).

There is nothing about this concept which is new. Therefore the gurus promoting it as a 'new' idea are just trying to con befuddled newbies into handing over their cash for the latest saleman's gimmick.

The best way to maintain a positive nitrogen balance is to taper every training, dietary and PED strategy to attempt to outrun homeostasis, and obviously periodise your training as well. As has always been the case.

Can you link me to some of these New World gurus? I'd love to see how they're trying to define this as something new.
 
I will try and get on YouTube when I have more free time to find the relevant clips/podcasts. I listen to a lot of them while at work, so it all blends together. Something in the other thread just triggered these questions. But I don't think it's purely a salesgimick as it is just part of the new wave of openness of people to actually talk about drugs in bodybuilding. Yes, there does seem to be a lot of "I will demonstrate great knowledge of AAS and then try and sell you SARMs or peptides," but that is rather transparent even to a novice like me.

Do you have any links to such studies, on humans or cattle, that would rank steroids according to such a metric? I understand that, for example, test being 1:1 anabolic:androgenic and something like LGD being 100:1 is not enough information, but it seems like combining ratios with nitrogen balance could be more interesting.
 
Pretty much any study looking at the in vivo effect of an AAS will discuss nitrogen balance. It's the classic metric of MPS. Here's a few from a Google scholar search:

http://journals.lww.com/jtrauma/Abs..._Anabolic_Steroid_on_Nitrogen_Balance.11.aspx

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0026049585901969

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0306039X75900021

http://www.eje-online.org/content/110/3_Suppla/S11.short

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/036354658401200613

I understand that, for example, test being 1:1 anabolic:androgenic and something like LGD being 100:1 is not enough information, but it seems like combining ratios with nitrogen balance could be more interesting.

I'm not sure I quite understand you here. Nitrogen balance is a passive measurement of change. It's not a thing in itself. It's a global estimate of MPS.

That means none of these ideas about receptor affinity, anabolic:androgenic ratios and so forth matter at all. You're measuring the ultimate outcome of [whatever steroid input] = [amount of nitrogen retention] = [MPS] = [muscle gain].

Therefore you can simply ignore the middle steps - all you need to know is how much [muscle gain] your chosen PED (at whatever dose) gives (all else being equal).
 
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