🤓 creatine enhances steroids? Creatine is a myostatin blocker? Interesting.... 🤓

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creatine enhances steroids? Creatine is a myostatin blocker? Interesting....

Study 1
HMB Proved More Effective than Leucine in Inhibiting Protein Degradation

Protein plays a significant role in building muscles. However, protein degradation may occur in skeletal muscle and lead to muscle atrophy and death, which highlights the urgent need to develop more effective therapies to inhibit protein degradation and combat muscle atrophy.​

β-hydroxy-β-methyl- butyrate (HMB) is a key metabolite of leucine. Previous studies have shown that both HMB and leucine can inhibit muscular protein degradation.​

However, questions about which one is more effective, whether insulin contributes to the antiatrophic effects of HMB and leucine, and what the underlying mechanism is still remain unknown.​

Recently, using a starvation model, researchers from China Agricultural University and the Institute of Subtropical Agriculture (ISA) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences compared the effects of leucine (within a range that is physiologically relevant) and HMB on protein degradation in order to examine the underlying mechanisms and assess the contribution of insulin in protein analytic response to HMB and leucine.​

The researchers found that the inhibitory effect of HMB was more potent than that of Leu and KIC, and was significantly abolished in the presence of LY294002 and rapamycin.​

In the presence of insulin, the inhibitory effect of HMB was still more effective than that of Leu and KIC. Interestingly, LY294002 treatment markedly attenuated the effect of HMB, while rapamycin treatment failed to exert the same effect.​

Overall, HMB appears to be more potent than leucine in inhibiting protein degradation in the absence or presence of insulin, and this inhibitory effect may depend on PI3K/Akt signaling pathway regardless of insulin.
mTOR signaling was only involved in the effect of HMB in the absence of insulin.​

The study entitled "β-Hydroxy-β-methyl Butyrate is more potent than leucine in inhibiting starvation-induced protein degradation in C2C12 myotubes" was published in Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

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Study 2
How creatine, leucine or HMB may enhance the effect of anabolic steroids

If athletes do decide to use anabolic steroids, they might consider combining their gear with supplements such as creatine, leucine or HMB. These supplements could enhance the muscle enhancing effect of anabolic steroids. We deduce this from an animal study that Australian pharmacologists published in Andrologia in 2016.

Study
The researchers compared the biological effects of testosterone enanthate with those of trenbolone enanthate. They injected these two anabolic steroids into neutered rats for four weeks, and afterwards determined the anabolic effect of these agents by studying the rats' levator ani muscle.

The researchers gave the rats in the testosterone group seven times the dose they gave the rats in the trenbolone group. Trenbolone is a more aggressive anabolic than testosterone.
Results
In terms of anabolic effect, trenbolone and testosterone - at least in the doses used - were well matched. The two steroids increased muscle mass and muscle size in equal measure

The Australians also found that both testosterone and trenbolone increased myostatin production.
Myostatin inhibits muscle growth. It is a hormone released by muscle cells and interacts with receptors that are also in muscle cells.

Wild speculation

Testosterone and trenbolone also increased the production of proteins that neutralize myostatin. This explains why the net effect of the administration of the two steroids was still positive, but it does make you think.
Suppressing myostatin while taking classic anabolic steroids could be surprisingly effective, we suspect. This could be done with supplements such as creatine, leucine and HMB.
If you give people creatine, the concentration of myostatin in their blood decreases. The effect is not great, but it is statistically significant. In vitro studies suggest that myostatin inhibition is increased by combining creatine with leucine and HMB.

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Study 3​

The chemical sports world waits with baited breath for the arrival of myostatin blockers: new muscle strengthening substances that sabotage the protein myostatin in muscle tissue, and thereby boost muscle build up. According to a human study in Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology, a supplement that works in exactly this way has been available for years. If we're to believe this study, good old creatine is a myostatin blocker.

The authors of the study are sports scientists at Arak University in Iran. They wanted to know exactly how creatine [chemical structure is shown here] works. Some scientists regard creatine as little more than a battery that provides muscle cells with energy and fluid. That's why you gain a couple of kilos of muscle tissue if you take a course of creatine, these scientists claim. Your strength increases in the gym as well, but the effect is temporary. If you stop taking the creatine then the positive effects disappear. But there's a small group of researchers who say that creatine does much more. They say creatine also stimulates the manufacture of muscle tissues.
The researchers did a trial with 27 male students. Of these, 8 did nothing – the control group.


The other 19 students trained for 8 weeks using weights. The students went to the gym three times a week, where they did 6 basic exercises that covered all the major muscle groups: bench-press, lat-pulldown, biceps curl, leg press, knee extension and leg curl. The students trained at 60-70 percent of their 1RM, and did three sets of each exercise. The students rested for no longer than 2 minutes between sets.Half of the students who trained took creatine. In the first week they took a daily 0.3 g creatine per kilo bodyweight, and in the remaining weeks they took a daily 0.05 g creatine per kilogram bodyweight. It doesn't take a genius to work out that the test subjects who trained became more muscular and stronger, and that the creatine supplement enhanced the effect.
The researchers measured the concentration of myostatin in the subjects' blood. Weight training reduced the concentration. And training while using creatine reduced the concentration even further.

The researchers measured the concentration of the protein growth and differentiation factor-associated serum protein-1 [GASP-1]. This protein neutralises myostatin. There's a patent in which researchers describe how synthetic versions of can cause muscle growth by manipulating GASP-1. [United States Patent 7,192,717] Whatever, the production of GASP-1 increased as a result of strength training and it increased even more in the subjects who combined strength training and creatine supplementation.

The researchers conclude that creatine doesn't just pump up the muscles temporarily. So creatine is a real anabolic, responsible for increased muscle protein production. "Decreasing myostatin and inhibiting its function by GASP-1 may play an important role in increasing muscle strength and mass by resistance training", they write. "Supplementation with creatine resulted in greater increases in muscle mass and strength, and these improvements were accompanied by more decreased myostatin levels."
Source:
Mol Cell Endocrinol. 2010 Apr 12;317(1-2):25-30.