Muscles let us move, healthy muscles let us move freely and gracefully. Apart from the health side, strong muscles indicate positive personal traits like self-control, discipline, and drive. For women, it is even more important as they have fewer muscles to start with.
We tend to believe that a healthy diet is enough for strong and healthy muscles, which actually is not the case. Plenty of physical labor, plenty of food including protein and plenty of sleep are necessary.
Along with these, a supplement to the solid base is also required. Among the whole lot of supplements, what muscles supplements work is my topic to talk today.
Contents Breakdown
What is muscle supplement?
The foods that you take to give some extra boost to your muscles are muscle supplements. There are a whole bunch of foods out and about that claim to be supplemented for building extra strong muscles but what muscle supplements work are really very few.
Among the likely to be effective supplements, there are creatine and protein powder. Beta-alanine is potentially effective and is worth a try to give the muscle building efforts a boost.
How do muscle supplements work?
Some knowledge about how muscle supplements work will help us to determine how safe they are and in what quantity they should be consumed. .Creatine is believed to be associated with long-term health benefits and with overall health.
Creatine gives the cells some extra energy and causes an extra water-weight gain. The extra water stresses muscle cells to grow faster and is the cellular energy it strengthens muscles for long-term and benefits overall health.
The way protein as muscle supplements work is little different. When we eat protein, our body breaks it down into amino acids. Amino acids are used to repair and grow new muscle fibers. Therefore, consumption of adequate protein helps to build stronger muscles.
However, protein intake above 1.2 grams per pound of bodyweight does not do much good. So going overboard for protein intake is useless. Supplementing the shortfall, on the other hand, helps to build stronger muscles.
Are muscle supplements safe?
The two most popular muscle building supplements are creatine and protein powder. We will discuss what is believed to be the side effects of using creatine and protein powder as muscle building supplements.
Creatine
Creatine produces a breakdown product called creatinine. The Body maintains a tight ratio of creatine and creatinine. So the more creatine is input into the body the more creatinine is excreted in the urine, which is commonly believed as creatine causing kidney dysfunction.
As said earlier, creatine causes the water-weight gain, which quickens the growth of cells and eventually the body gains weight fast.
However, multiple scientific studies have concluded that creatine is safe and does not cause any kidney dysfunction or unhealthy weight gain.
Protein powder
Recommended is that you should aim for one gram of protein intake per one pound of body weight. Going over that amount of protein intake not only is unnecessary but also results in the risk of kidney damage and dehydration.
Therefore, protein powder supplement only to fill up the lack of protein in the diet helps to build muscles but an excess of protein intake poses to be a risk for health.
In conclusion, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, having enough exercise, lifting a weight, consumption of healthy diet and enough sleep work in conjunction with the muscle building supplements. What supplements do is just bridge the gap between the required amount of protein intake and the consumed amount from the daily diet.
Creatine improves the growth rate of muscle cells resulting in the stronger muscles. Therefore, healthy habits should be the foundation while the supplements will supply the whole construction.