Day 3: Why
High Quality Muscle Tissue is Your Key to Superior Diabetic Health
By Cyrus Khambatta, Ph.D.
In yesterday’s lesson we learned briefly that you can make
your muscle tissue hungry for glucose simply by exercising. In today’s lesson, we’ll go into more detail
about how that process occurs.
Imagine if we were able to separate you into a number of
piles and weigh each pile separately, based on the type of tissue. In one pile we might find your bones. In another pile we would find your
muscle. In a third pile we would find
your body fat.
What proportion of your total body mass would your muscle
tissue weigh? Take a guess before you
look at the table below:
Tissue Type
|
Male
|
Female
|
Bone
|
15%
|
12%
|
Muscle
|
42%
|
36%
|
Fat
|
16%
|
27%
|
Average Body Composition of
Men and Women in the United States. The average body composition
of males and females in the United States is shown here, broken down by bones,
fat, and muscle tissue. On average,
males tend to be composed of a larger proportion of lean body tissue (bones and
muscle), whereas women tend to be composed of a larger proportion of fat tissue.
Muscle tissue is the largest tissue in the body by
mass. What that means is that your body
has more muscle tissue than any other single tissue type (unless you are obese,
in which case fat may occupy a larger proportion than muscle). This is great news for you as a diabetic
because muscle tissue is also the hungriest tissue in the body, and is
responsible for more glucose vacuuming than any other tissue.
Why Is Muscle Tissue
Important?
Muscle tissue is important for many reasons. For one, muscle tissue allows you to perform
movement because they are directly connected to bones all throughout your body. Through a coordinated collection of muscle
contractions and relaxations you are able to perform movements as simple as
turning your head and as complicated as running in a straight line. Muscle tissues often cross over one or more
joints so that a single contraction results in the movement of that joint. Manipulating the position of a joint is the
basis of human movement, and muscles provide the infrastructure to make that
possible.
Muscle tissue is also unique in that it responds to physical
movement by changing shape, size, and function.
This is the very nature of exercise “training.” When a muscle contracts, the fibers that
comprise the tissue contract. In the
process of contracting, the muscle consumes small amounts of fuel that are
stored within the tissue itself. These “onboard”
fuels are mainly carbohydrate and fat.
In response to repeated contractions, the contracting muscle
fibers get depleted of their onboard fuel stores because the mitochondria are
being asked to generate energy continually.
In addition to using up onboard fuel, the muscle fibers undergo a series
of micro-tears that are by-products of repeated contraction cycles.
Frequent and repeated muscle contractions result in
muscle fiber micro-tears and depleted “onboard” fuel stores that are then
repaired in the resting state.
When the exercise session is complete, the muscle fibers
enter a state of recovery in which the damaged muscle fibers are hungry for
nutrients from the bloodstream to (1) replenish fuel stores, and (2) grow in
preparation for the next exercise session. Let’s look at these a little more
closely.
Replenish Fuel Stores:
Muscle Supercompensation
The way muscle tissue adapts to exercise is by
supercompensating in the resting state.
What this means is that the repair process not only fixes the
micro-tears that occurred during the previous exercise session, it repairs
itself to be stronger than it was originally so that the muscle can withstand
longer durations of exercise and generate more force. This is known as the supercompensation
effect, and is the main reason why exercise training over time results in
muscle tissue growth. If this were not the
case, muscle tissue would not grow larger or become stronger over time, and you
would not notice a difference in endurance, speed, flexibility or
strength.
Think of a car. When
the gas tank in your car gets low, you head to the gas station to refill the
tank. If your car has a 15 gallon fuel
tank, 15 gallons is the most fuel that you can carry at any one time. But imagine if you drove a “smart” car that
adapted to the amount that you drove.
Over time, the size of the gas tank would grow. Today it’s 15 gallons. Tomorrow it would be 16 gallons. Next week it would be 17 gallons. Over time, this would mean that the more you
drove, the more fuel your car could carry.
This is exactly how your muscle tissue responds to
exercise. The more you exercise, the
larger the glucose stores become. This
process does not continue forever, but strategic exercise training can increase
the amount of glucose that your muscles store as glycogen. How convenient.
Unlike tissues like your liver and spleen that cannot be
manipulated to change size through movement, you are in control of the shape,
size and function of muscles in your body.
And that’s great news for you because you can decide how you want them
to look and function!
The Difference
Between Muscle Quality and Quantity
Most people don’t differentiate between muscle QUANTITY and
muscle QUALITY. Most people think that
exercise will lead to large muscles.
This can be an especially large deterrent for women, who want to
maintain a petite physique.
Simply exercising muscle tissue will not make it larger,
unless you specifically design your exercise program to gain mass. The truth is that your muscle will respond to
the type of exercise training you perform.
Therefore if you want to maintain long, slender, skinny muscle, then you
can easily do so by performing the right activities. Instead, if you want to gain 10 pounds of
muscle and enter a bodybuilding competition, you must specifically train your
body to gain muscle mass.
As a diabetic, muscle quality is more important than muscle
quantity. This is because muscle quality
is a measure of how well the muscle tissue in your body responds to glucose,
whereas muscle quantity is a measure of the size of your muscle tissue. The two do not have to be mutually exclusive,
however it is important to note that you do not have to look like the
bodybuilder on the left in order to have high insulin sensitivity. The truth is, you can’t look from the outside
to determine which of these three athletes are the most insulin sensitive. Instead, we have to examine the muscle tissue
from the inside, and ask ourselves the following questions.
What are
Characteristics of High Quality Muscle Tissue?
As far as diabetes is concerned, the most important
determinant of muscle tissue quality is how well the muscle tissue responds to
insulin. Therefore, the following two
points are important to understand:
If a small amount of insulin can push a large quantity
of glucose into the muscle, then the muscle is considered high quality (insulin
sensitive).
If a large quantity of insulin is needed to push a
large quantity of glucose into the muscle, then the muscle tissue is low
quality (insulin resistant).
Characteristics of High
Quality Muscle Tissue
Even though the predominant characteristic of muscle tissue
that you should care about as a diabetic is it’s responsiveness to insulin,
there are a number of other factors which ultimately determine the quality of
muscle. Not all of these factors must be
present at the same time in order for your muscle to be considered high
quality. In other words, strive for
these muscle qualities, but don’t get hung up if you don’t possess them all.
(1) Flexibility
Flexible muscle is limber, easily
stretchable, and resistant to injury.
Flexible muscle has a low level of inflammation, a low degree of
collagen adhesions, and allows for easy pain-free movement.
(2) Strength
Muscle tissue that is routinely
strength trained is dense and capable of withstanding considerable force. Strong muscle requires the support of strong
connective tissue, namely tendons that connect the muscle to an adjacent
bone. In the process of developing
muscle and tendon strength, bone tissue is also strengthened in order to
withstand increased force. The
combination of strong muscle, strong tendons, and strong bones are extremely
important factors in maintaining athleticism as you age.
(3) Endurance
High quality muscle tissue
possesses a large degree of endurance, which allows the muscle to contract and
elongate hundreds to thousands of cycles for extended durations of time. Building endurance into muscle tissue tends
to increase the proportion of oxidative muscle fibers which are extremely
hungry for carbohydrates and fatty acids following exercise.
(4) Vascularization
Frequently exercised muscle tissue
undergoes a process called angiogenesis
which results in an increased number and cross sectional area of blood
vessels. By increasing the number of
blood vessels, the muscle tissue is able to receive valuable nutrients and
exchange waste products efficiently. The
more vascularized the muscle tissue becomes, the more resistant it is to
fatigue during exercise.
(5) Short Time to Recovery
Muscle tissue that can rebuild
itself quickly following an exercise session is capable of being exercised
frequently. Indicators of fully recovered
muscle include reduced soreness (or none at all), a good degree of flexibility,
and a mental desire to exercise. Muscle
with a poor ability to recover may require up to 96 hours before it can be used
again, and muscle with a short recovery time can be exercised in as little as 6
hours following strenuous exercise. The
shorter the recovery time, the more efficient the refueling process!
(6) High Demand for Nutrients (Hungry)
If you exercise frequently,
chances are your muscle tissue has developed an ability to deplete it’s onboard
glycogen and fatty acid fuel tanks efficiently.
When those tanks become empty, your muscle tissue gets fatigued, and
signals to your brain that it’s time to slow down. Often, the feeling of being tired during
exercise occurs when the carbohydrate and fatty acid fuel tanks get depleted. In the recovery phase following exercise,
these muscles are so hungry for glucose, they can vacuum it out of the
bloodstream using a very small amount of insulin. This is great news for you, because it
reduces your level of insulin resistance.
(7) Low level of inflammation
Inflamed muscles are painful,
tight, and problematic for other tissues in your body. When your muscle tissue becomes inflamed, a
valuable enzyme named creatine kinase
is leaked into the bloodstream, along with stored myoglobin, a molecule which traps oxygen inside the muscle
tissue. The leakage of both of these
valuable molecules can wreak havoc on your liver and kidneys, and can be very
painful. Healthy muscle tissue may become
sore following exercise, but not painful.
Reducing your level of inflammation by exercising the appropriate amount
can keep you from this painful and dangerous condition.
0 comments:
Post a Comment