| Enhance Your Muscle Growth with
Vitamin E -
Body Care Tips - Beauty
Enhance Your Muscle Growth with
Vitamin E
Boosting your vitamin E intake lets
your hard-trained body rebuild itself rapidly. Result? You get bigger,
faster.
Don't dismiss E so fast. This versatile
antioxidant has been known to help prevent cancer and heart disease.
Here's some additional artillery you can tote to the gym: Vitamin E may
also play a major role in muscle repair after a hard session of lifting.
Subduing Soreness
From the novice lifter to the tireless
gym rat, every guy who's ever graced a weight room knows the anguish of
post workout soreness—a condition that can last for days after a taxing
session, in which even the simple act of shampooing leaves you wincing
in pain. Such muscle trauma is detrimental if it keeps you out of the
gym. Vitamin E will help facilitate muscle repair without compromising
your bulldog intensity.
Vitamin E functions as an antioxidant,
protecting your muscles from highly reactive, unstable molecules called
free radicals. Besides leading to hardened arteries and cancer, free
radicals also contribute to your aching muscles and diminished
performance. Because of an increased oxygen requirement during exercise,
the harder you hit the gym, the more free radicals you produce. E's
effectiveness at countering this is backed up by the experts:
Either as a supplement or in food, the
antioxidant properties of vitamin E may be beneficial for an athlete
training hard, whether anaerobically [lifting weights] or aerobically
[cardio.
The Evidence on E
While vitamin E has traditionally
carried the reputation of catering only to the cardio-inclined,
muscle-minded readers like you now have reason to covet this so-called
micronutrient for its macro attributes.
In a recent study in which male
subjects were given vitamin E capsules and put on a lifting program,
blood-borne free radicals were reduced and muscle damage was minimized.
Vitamin E initiated the healing process, allowing the muscles to rebuild
sooner. The faster the muscles begin to repair themselves, the more
they'll grow. This is how you get bigger and stronger.
“Our research supports the claim that
vitamin E can significantly reduce the damaging effects of
high-intensity resistance exercise,” explains Bruce Craig, Ph.D., Ball
State University physiology professor and the conductor of the study.
“However, our study showed that short-term usage does not enhance
muscular strength or power.” Should you implement E into your diet if
your goal is to pack on muscle? Absolutely.
“Though some people question the
effects that antioxidants will have on increasing mass, the protective
effects of vitamin E should not be detrimental to anyone using
resistance training to enhance muscle growth. In fact, the reduced level
of free-radical damage should make the muscle membrane stronger and
enable you to achieve better and faster gains in strength and size.”
Based on the available data, it appears
that vitamin E may very well belong in the class of muscle-building
supplements presently dominated by the likes of creatine and protein
powder. “Unfortunately, very little research has been conducted on the
effects of long-term vitamin E supplementation and resistance training.
“Once this has been done, we are sure that everyone will see the
benefits of taking their vitamin E.”
Tapping Into E
Rummage through your pantry and you're
bound to run across an abundance of vitamin E. Wheat germ, almonds,
peanut butter and even margarine, just to name a few, are all potent
sources of antioxidants. Problem is, you would have to devour between 10
and 16 cups of peanuts, for example, to sufficiently feed your E-starved
muscles—neither a practical nor healthy approach, considering the amount
of fat you would also be taking in. Enter supplementation.
The Recommended Daily Allowance for
vitamin E is a paltry 20 IU, a far cry from the level your muscles
demand for adequate recovery and growth. That may suffice for the
inactive man, but for the Men's Fitness guy who trains intensely,
experts generally prescribe between 200 IU and 800 IU per day. While
this may seem high in comparison to the RDA, vitamin E is safe and easy
on the body, with incidents of toxicity virtually nonexistent.
“There's really no standard for
supplementation, but we believe that 200 IU to 400 IU of a natural
source of vitamin E daily can be a sound addition to a nutrition
program, especially for active individuals on a low-fat, high-protein
diet.
Read the labels and look for d-alpha
tocopherol, d-gamma tocopherol, or d-alpha tocopheryl acetate/succinate,
which are all variations of natural vitamin E. Also, take your vitamin
in one or two doses each day, preferably with a meal that contains a
little fat, as this aids absorption. Readily available and
cost-efficient, vitamin E is sold as soft capsules or chewable tablets,
and as an oral solution. Whatever your preference, your muscles will
undoubtedly rest and recover easier.
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