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Paracetamol and Ibuprofen fuck up protein synthesis!

maassive

By maassive
in General chitchat

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maassive Senior member

maassive

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Maybe you already know this but I was shocked to find it confirmed in studies! I'd heard before that people say not to take NSAIDs and work out so I looked into it and discovered that multiple studies have demonstrated that both Paracetamol and Ibuprofen significantly decreased the rate of protein synthesis after resistance training in the muscle that was worked.

The conclusion suggests that taking the above drugs after working out renders it a major fucking waste of time!!!

I wish I knew that ages ago because I had been regularly taking voltaren for a fucked up back!!! So, I thought I'd share just in case someone else didn't know this.

Also, abstract of one particular study is copied here for reference.

Effect of ibuprofen and acetaminophen on postexercise muscle protein synthesis

1. T. A. Trappe1,

2. F. White1,

3. C. P. Lambert1,

4. D. Cesar2,

5. M. Hellerstein2, and

6. W. J. Evans1

+ Author Affiliations

1.

1 Nutrition, Metabolism, and Exercise Laboratory, Donald W. Reynolds Center on Aging, Departments of Geriatrics and Physiology and Biophysics, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and the Central Arkansas Veterans HealthCare System, Little Rock, Arkansas 72205; and

2.

2 Department of Nutritional Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-3104

* Submitted 3 August 2001.

* accepted in final form 29 October 2001.

Abstract

We examined the effect of two commonly consumed over-the-counter analgesics, ibuprofen and acetaminophen, on muscle protein synthesis and soreness after high-intensity eccentric resistance exercise. Twenty-four males (25 ± 3 yr, 180 ± 6 cm, 81 ± 6 kg, and 17 ± 8% body fat) were assigned to one of three groups that received either the maximal over-the-counter dose of ibuprofen (IBU; 1,200 mg/day), acetaminophen (ACET; 4,000 mg/day), or a placebo (PLA) after 10–14 sets of 10 eccentric repetitions at 120% of concentric one-repetition maximum with the knee extensors. Postexercise (24 h) skeletal muscle fractional synthesis rate (FSR) was increased 76 ± 19% (P < 0.05) in PLA (0.058 ± 0.012%/h) and was unchanged (P > 0.05) in IBU (35 ± 21%; 0.021 ± 0.014%/h) and ACET (22 ± 23%; 0.010 ± 0.019%/h). Neither drug had any influence on whole body protein breakdown, as measured by rate of phenylalanine appearance, on serum creatine kinase, or on rating of perceived muscle soreness compared with PLA. These results suggest that over-the-counter doses of both ibuprofen and acetaminophen suppress the protein synthesis response in skeletal muscle after eccentric resistance exercise. Thus these two analgesics may work through a common mechanism to influence protein metabolism in skeletal muscle.

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Riccardo Senior member

Riccardo

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Inflammation is important in body repair and initiating pathways of protein synthesis. Inflammatory cells like macrophages ("big eaters") clear up cellular debris after damage caused by exercise, they also release chemicals called cytokines which are important in activating the transcription of genes within the cell. These cytokines usually activate other inflammatory cells but there are factors that also act on muscle cells to initiate the protein synthesis/repair pathways I mentioned before.

Anti inflammatory drugs decrease the activity of these inflammatory cells and therefore interfere with the normal repair process.

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Daz69 Senior member

Daz69

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The conclusion suggests that taking the above drugs after working out renders it a major fucking waste of time!!!

You kids and your abstracts.

Hey Matt...

I thought I'd read somewhere that you advocated taking anti-inflams

Would you care to elaborate...

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Daz69 Senior member

Daz69

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dose of ibuprofen (IBU; 1,200 mg/day), acetaminophen (ACET; 4,000 mg/day)

From what I've read so far, I don't think its an: all anti-inflams are bad, I think it more comes down to the daily dose.....

If kept within a certain daily amount they can be of benefit...

http://www.ampedtraining.com/2010/exerc ... rain-daily

In the above article it states:

Inflammation is thought to be a proximate cause of overtraining.

Inflammation is associated with feelings of perceived stress & fatigue, immune system depression, and disturbed mood & sleep.

Inflammation signals central fatigue.

Inflammation is strongly associated with the metabolic syndrome, which can do nasty things to nutrient partitioning.

It advocates 400-800mg of ibuprofen taken immediately post-workout, or up to 6-8 hours later...

I'm sure he goes into greater detail in his book... But haven't managed to find that particular bit yet.....

http://www.ampedtraining.com/maximum-muscle

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ThePman Senior member

ThePman

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Mainly I think it doesn't matter that much. Timing is probably an issue, and I'm really not sure how well a one-off event in untrained kids matters over the long term.

Trappe's research looks convincing, but then we have this:

The effects of ibuprofen on muscle hypertrophy, strength, and soreness during resistance training.

The important parts:

Subjects had a mean (± SE) age of 24.1 ± 0.6 y, mass of 73.6 ± 2.5 kg, height of 174.9 ± 1.3 cm, and resistance training experience of 75.5 ± 10.0 months in their lifetime. Subjects were instructed to define 1 month of resistance training experience as a minimum of 3 sessions/week over a 4-week period. Experienced lifters were targeted for the study to reduce the risk of injury, since the training program was completed outside of the laboratory environment and was not directly supervised by the research team. Untrained subjects were not included in the study because they might have an extended phase of neural adaptation, which could delay muscle hypertrophy in a short-term training study.
A counter-balanced, double-blinded design was used where subjects were randomly assigned to ingest ibuprofen (two 200 mg tablets per day) immediately after training the biceps of one arm and placebo after training the other arm the next day. The counter balancing ensured that the number of subjects receiving ibuprofen after training their dominant arm was equal to the number who received ibuprofen after training their non-dominant arm. Peak plasma concentration of ibuprofen is reached about 1–4 h after ingestion (Davies 1998), which corresponds to the time at which muscle protein synthesis is significantly elevated after biceps exercise (Chesley et al. 1992; MacDougall et al. 1995). The active moiety of ibuprofen is virtually entirely excreted within 24 h of administration (Davies 1998); therefore, the ibuprofen would have negligible effect on the arm receiving the placebo. Subjects trained 5 d·week–1 for 6 weeks; therefore, each arm was trained over 15 exercise sessions. Muscle thickness and strength were determined before and after the 6 weeks of training and muscle soreness was evaluated everyday during the training program.

Here we have 1. a lower dose taken post-training, 2. trained people actually training regularly and 3. real measures of size and strength gains instead of potentially skewed measures of MPS.

Trappe's team has been looking at one-off events, untrained kids showing up for one workout and then having bloods taken after a max dose. Is it a dose issue? Is it the untrained kids? Is it a timing issue (1x 400mg vs. 3x400mg over a day)?

Inflammation isn't a simple on/off switch either. In older people, NSAIDS seem to aid in muscle growth and/or preventing age-related muscle loss by blocking that low-grade inflammation. The stuff Daz quoted from my other article points out another possibility, that being able to show up and train trumps having to sit it out because you're hurting or feeling sickness symptoms from hard workouts.

tl;dr -- I wouldn't sweat it. If you feel bad, pop a few pills. I'd think twice about running a max dose on a regular basis, but otherwise? This isn't anything to get upset about.

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maassive Senior member

maassive

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Inflammation is important in body repair and initiating pathways of protein synthesis. Inflammatory cells like macrophages ("big eaters") clear up cellular debris after damage caused by exercise, they also release chemicals called cytokines which are important in activating the transcription of genes within the cell. These cytokines usually activate other inflammatory cells but there are factors that also act on muscle cells to initiate the protein synthesis/repair pathways I mentioned before.

Anti inflammatory drugs decrease the activity of these inflammatory cells and therefore interfere with the normal repair process.

Thanks for the interest in this subject fella's; I knew there'd be some other opinions and studies out there so was keen to post this and generate some discussion. I am currently looking into the articles you boys have mentioned...

As I understand it however I think the above point in bold summarizes this issue well, Pman's articles notwithstanding. Admittedly in the article I referenced the dosage of Ibuprofen and Paracetamol was high (the max dosage in a 24hr period) but what stands out is not necessarily the quanitity of meds, but rather the frequency. Yes, I think that a once off dose of 200/400mg of either is not going to drastically reduce your MPS but the point of the study is to demonstrate that these drugs do affect it, and if taken regularly, will significantly hinder it.

Daz - not sure if the article you pm'd me is linked on this thread but its very interesting, esp around the idea that DOMS is not necessarily related to muscle growth. I'll link it here - anyone else care to comment on this?

http://www.ampedtraining.com/articles/doms-muscle-soreness

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maassive Senior member

maassive

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Another thing that really took me by surprise about this was the fact that the seemingly ever-innocuous paracetamol is also a culprit. I really wasn't expecting that!

It definitely makes me think twice about all the OTC analgesics we consume without thought...

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ThePman Senior member

ThePman

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I want to stress again that inflammation's role in muscle growth is not clear, and that you can and do see measures of MPS -- measured in the original article -- and real hypertrophy (size gains) in conditions that don't involve any inflammation.

Inflammatory signals do contribute in some way, but they aren't mandatory and it's not clear as to what degree they're involved.

You can't look at things under a microscope and freak out because one thing doesn't look right. There are 100 other things doing something else and 300 things you don't even know about. What matters is whether or not you can make progress while taking NSAIDs, and it's pretty clear you can.

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Daz69 Senior member

Daz69

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Daz - not sure if the article you pm'd me is linked on this thread but its very interesting, esp around the idea that DOMS is not necessarily related to muscle growth. I'll link it here - anyone else care to comment on this?

http://www.ampedtraining.com/articles/doms-muscle-soreness

If you read the chapter Inflammation and Muscle Growth, I think Matt covers it.......

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ThePman Senior member

ThePman

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Interesting read

I take about 4 grams of panadol and 1600mg of ibuprofen everyday

Wonder how it affects me

Why would you do that?

Rheumatoid arthritis

This would be one of those cases where blunting inflammation is far more important than a cell-level effect which may not even translate to real-world results.

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becbec Senior member

becbec

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Oh and here I was thinking you were just mad

Oh, i'm that too :pfft:

This would be one of those cases where blunting inflammation is far more important than a cell-level effect which may not even translate to real-world results.

Yeah, that's probably true.

I also take a high dose of prednisone which is meant to affect protein synthesis too. In other words, i'm fucked hahah :lol:

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