How Exercise Injures Muscle

How Exercise Injures Muscle

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Muscle power is generated by conversion of the chemical energy of a compound in your muscle cells called ATP, the mechanical force of the muscle contraction. But your store of ATP is very limited. During exercise it must be regenerated continuously. The principle way your body does this is by converting stores of fat and sugar(glycogen).

We need to dip into a bit of biochemistry to understand how this happens, but stick with me. Once you get a handle on it you’ll know why some nutrients work and a lot of others are just hype.

The conversions of fat and sugar to energy occur by oxidation. Pairs of hydrogen atoms fire off from the fat and sugar like guided missiles, and hit the oxygen from your blood to form water. For 95% of your oxygen consumption, the conversion is pretty clean, and does not produce free radicals.

This process is the tetravalent reduction of oxygen with cytochrome C oxidase. That is the energy production process explained in all the college biochemistry text books. BUT many of the books leave out the second pathway by which muscles use oxygen.

Though it involves 5% of your oxygen use, this recently discovered univalent reduction pathway is very dirty. That is, every time you exercise, it produces millions of superoxide free radicals. These act like shrapnel, damaging every muscle cell they contact. The damage they cause is a major source of the continued muscle soreness and weakness you feel for days after heavy exercise.

There are now more than 100 studies supporting this discovery. If you need a complete A to Z research to convince you that damages the body in this manner, than read, Oxy Radicals in Molecular Biology and Pathology.

Whenever you push your training, the scenario gets worse. Athletes in top gear use 12 to 20 times the oxygen of sedentary folk. That’s a ton of free radical.

We don’t know yet how much their extra use of oxygen increases free radicals in the athletes, but new work on animals gives us a pretty good idea. Dr. Alexandre Quintanilha ran rats on a treadmill for progressively longer periods. In a few weeks the rats could run for 2 hour nonstop everyday. Once trained the rats did not appear too distressed by the exercise. But the exercise showed a 3 Fold increase in muscle free radicals during exercise and autopsies showed extensive muscle damage.

The sheer volume of oxygen you use is not the only reason that exercise overwhelms your muscles with free radicals. The chemical cytochrome C also gets used up. Cytochrome C is the last catalyst in the chain that regenerates ATP, so your muscles can continue working. With any intensity of exercise beyond a wimp, Cytochrome C levels can drop by fifty percent or even more

This well established reaction is why some manufacturers put Cytochrome C in sports supplements. But the notion that this chemical can increase your Cytochrome C levels is pure crap. Not a shred of scientific evidence has been produced to show otherwise.

When cytochrome C activity levels drop, another nutrient you’ve heard about, CoenzymeQ, comes to the rescue. CoenzymeQ10 is the chemical transformation used by human bodies. CoQ10 is a powerful antioxidant, and neutralizes some free radicals as well as increasing the efficiency of the energy cycle. Researchers have found that the overall effect of elevated levels of CoQ10 in muscles is a net reduction of free radicals. Daily CoQ10 amounts of 30-60mg are recommended.