If you haven't known yet, I injured my finger a few weeks ago from climbing.
After reading your comments, I realized the road to recovery is often in months instead
of weeks.
Therefore, I have been researching what else I can do to speed up the recovery besides
resting and doing rehab exercises.
I came across the world-class climbing coach Eric Horst's podcast and realized nutrition
might be something that I can improve on the inside.
Therefore, I decided to reach out to him.
If you are involved in an activity that is hard on the connective tissues, such as climbing,
we have high forces that we load on the very small tendons and ligaments.
Tendons and ligaments are comprised of almost completely collagen and then water.
Every time you climb forcefully, you are breaking down collagen, so your body needs to re-synthesize
collagen to return homeostasis.
If you are climbing every day hard, your body falls behind and you have net collagen degradation,
injury is just an amount of time in that scenario.
When you eat a protein source, there are a total of 20 amino acids, but it's the glycine
and the proline, just 2 of those 20 amino acids, that comprise nearly two thirds of the collagen
in our tendons and ligaments.
If you are eating food that have lots of other amino acids but are low in glycine and proline,
there's a good chance that you are deficient.
Now our body can make a little bit of those amino acids, but only a few grams a day, we
do need to consume additional glycine and proline to prevent a deficiency.
The target should be 10 grams of glycine per day.
Vitamin C is an essential cofactor for collagen synthesis.
There're also trace minerals that are required for collagen synthesis but I think most diets
gets sufficient amounts of those trace minerals.
Animal products are most rich in glycine and proline.
If you ate 2 servings of pork per day or 2 or 3 servings of chicken, you would get the
10 grams, just fine, but many climbers don't eat much meat products so that's where a supplemental
protein source that is high in glycine and proline can be helpful, such as hydrolyzed
collagen.
Hydrolyzed collagen is a more refined version of gelatin, which means it dissolves more easily.
The protocol done in the research to really optimize in target the glycine and the proline
to where the body part you want is to consume the hydrolyzed collagen one hour before you
do your training, so that way the collagen protein digests into the amino acids into your
bloodstream. You get the spike of glycine and proline in the serum in about one hour,
and so that is when you want to train your fingers, or elbows, or shoulders, whatever body
part you want to target the collagen to.
The mechanical loading of the tendons draws in synovial fluid from around the tendons,
and that is how they get most of their nourishment because connective tissues, tendons, and ligaments
are virtually avascular. There's a little bit of blood flow around the peripheral, some
capillaries around the endo tendons. The center of the tendons are nearly avascular,
and they get their nutrition through this fluid diffusion during exercises, and so the
nourishment that you consume after you exercise is readily carried to the muscles because
they have many capitllaries, and the blood flow continues after workout to carry nutrients
to the muscle. But once you stop loading your fingers, that fluid flow in and out of the
tendons and ligaments largely ceases and therefore they have a tough time getting nutrients.
The Supercharged Collagen, which is the product that I developed over the last 2 years, is
based on the research. This is really the highest in terms of concentration of glycine
that you can get, even higher than pork.
It has vitamin C enrichment like what's done in the research, I've also enriched it with
L-Lucine, which is an amino acid that has been shown to be a signal of protein synthesis
in the body and I've also added a small amount of Tryptophan to give it a complete amino
acid profile.
So an athlete or a climber, who wants to supplement or gets more glycine and proline in their diet
and they don't want to eat all that meat, the Supercharged Collagen is a product that
you can go to as a supplement.
If you are really into nutrition and study the foods you eat and know how to combine
foods, I think you can get the job done without supplemental protein but many people just
don't have the knowledge nor the discipline to really follow through and get the job done
consistently.
To mix up a hydrolyzed collagen drink before your workout is a pretty simple thing to do.
Full disclosure, I am not sponsored and I won't receive any commission, either if
you purchase anything from Physivantage.
I have neither a biology nor a chemistry background to understand the very details of the science.
However, I trust Eric's knowledge and peer reviews for the research papers.
Personally, I have recently started to consume the Supercharged Collagen, but I haven't
feel an obvious effect yet.
I am also not sure what's a fair way is to measure the effect of nutrition, either.
Say, if my finger recovered in a short period of time, it could be because of nutrition,
but it could also be because of rehabbing exercises, or you could even argue that my
finger injury isn't as severe in the first place.
If you know a good way to measure nutrition, comment below and let me know.
In any case, I am going to try every possible way to speed up my recovery so I can start
making climbing videos again.
Be sure to check out Eric's podcast, website, and YouTube channel, especially if you are
serious in climbing.
As always, make sure to like and subscribe.
See you in the next video.