Are antioxidants antianabolic too?

Hexagon Sun

Bluelighter
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Mar 29, 2010
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I was going to put a homemade green tea in my training drink. Then I have remembered somebody saying that after training, you want pro inflammatory response in the muscles, as the inflammation is a marker for the body to start building muscle.

That guy says that if you take an antioxidants (like vitamin c, NAC or green tea) you reduce this signaling and therefore the muscle building

Is that correct?

Would you include aspiring too as not suitable before and after training?

I alro remember a guy calling to take arachidonic acid (not sure about the name) as is quite inflamatory and helps build muscle. What´s your take on this?
 
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I was going to put a homemade green tea in my training drink. Then I have remembered somebody saying that after training, you want pro inflammatory response in the muscles, as the inflammation is a marker for the body to start building muscle.

That guy says that if you take an antiinflamatory (like vitamin c, NAC or green tea) you reduce this signaling and therefore the muscle building

Is that correct?

Would you include aspiring too as not suitable before and after training?

I alro remember a guy calling to take arachidonic acid (not sure about the name) as is quite inflamatory and helps build muscle. What´s your take on this?

There was a discussion many years ago regards pharmaceutical anti-inflammatories such as ibuprofen, in which it was shown anything over 800mg/day could impact skeletal muscle hypertrophy..
Also more recently antioxidants such as fruit post workout could create opposing pathways, but i'm skeptical.???
The fructose in some fruit creates an insulin response which is essential for growth, although in berries it is minimal due to fibre content slowing fructose release..
 

Found this which seemed interesting.
Something I picked out:
Antioxidants can attenuate hypertrophy which isn't good, but they help one perform multiple bouts of high intensity activity at a higher level. So what I took away from that is, during training it's best to avoid them but during competition time when you need to be at peak performance it may be beneficial since your goal is to win and not gain muscle for that event.
 
yeah, good points for competition and peak performance.

For regular bdodybuilding is probably best to avoid in the 2-4 hours pre and post workout time window but beneficial the rest of the time
 
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What the f...dude I would not be stressing at all about green tea or whatever. I mean you sound serious that's crazy. Don't over think concentrate on your macros training and recovery. Antioxidants are a good thing. You probably could not measure impact from them good or bad on muscle growth.
 
When anti-anabolism is more than your need it turn into
I was going to put a homemade green tea in my training drink. Then I have remembered somebody saying that after training, you want pro inflammatory response in the muscles, as the inflammation is a marker for the body to start building muscle.

That guy says that if you take an antioxidants (like vitamin c, NAC or green tea) you reduce this signaling and therefore the muscle building

Is that correct?

Would you include aspiring too as not suitable before and after training?

I alro remember a guy calling to take arachidonic acid (not sure about the name) as is quite inflamatory and helps build muscle. What´s your take on this?
I was going to put a homemade green tea in my training drink. Then I have remembered somebody saying that after training, you want pro inflammatory response in the muscles, as the inflammation is a marker for the body to start building muscle.

That guy says that if you take an antioxidants (like vitamin c, NAC or green tea) you reduce this signaling and therefore the muscle building

Is that correct?

Would you include aspiring too as not suitable before and after training?

I alro remember a guy calling to take arachidonic acid (not sure about the name) as is quite inflamatory and helps build muscle. What´s your take on this?
 
Yeah, antioxidants do protect tissues from the harmful effects of reactive oxygen species and other free radicals.
Antioxidants prevent undesired inflammatory responses from forming in the first place by protecting tissues from damage.
 
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