Muscle Protein Synthesis Essay

Proteins are the building blocks of muscle. Protein synthesis is the process of building new proteins. This process happens at a cellular level.

Muscle Protein Synthesis (MPS) is the process of building muscle mass. Muscle protein breakdown is the opposing process of breaking down muscle tissue. If muscle protein synthesis exceeds muscle protein breakdown, your muscle will grow.

Most athletes easily exceed the recommendations for daily protein intake. However, in order to optimise the effects of training, it is still important to understand the amount of protein needed in each meal.

How to Optimize Muscle Protein Synthesis; Nutritional Guidelines.

There are various studies that show how one can optimize muscle protein synthesis based on various factors.

1. Amount of Protein
Twenty gram of protein gives a near-maximal increase in

2. Protein Source
Protein sources differ in their capacity to stimulate Muscle Protein Synthesis. The main properties that determine the anabolic effect of protein are it's digestion rate and it's amino acid profile.

This is best illustrated by study which compared the muscle protein synthetic response to casein, casein hydrolysate and whey protein.

The muscle protein synthetic response to hydrolyzed is lower than that of whey protein. While both proteins are fast digesting, whey protein has a higher essential amino acid content (Pennings, 2011).

Animal based protein sources are typically have a high essential amino acid content and appears more potent than plant protein to stimulate Muscle Protein Synthesis (Van Vliet, 2015). However, there this can potentially compensated by ingesting a greater amount of plant protein (Gorissen, 2016).

Protein digestion speed and amino acid content are the main factors that determine the anabolic