AGE’s - Aging and Bodybuilding

Too many ages will make you fat. But the longer-term consequences are much more severe. A process starts in which “silent” inflammation occurs in different parts in your body. Your arteries get clogged, your brain deteriorates and your kidneys can’t do their job properly. If this process does not stop, you have a greater chance of getting Alzheimer's or on a premature death by heart and vascular disease.

First saturated fat was the main culprit in cancer and cardiovascular disease, but that was not true. Then we all went “low carb” because we became too heavy from all those unhealthy sugars and carbohydrates. And now that story can also be thrown into the trashcan?

Not really. Sugars and fast carbs are still not good, too much sugar (especially fructose) chases the spontaneous formation of AGE’s in your body

When we often think about the aging process, we usually think about wrinkles, gray hair, slowed motor function and loss of memory. It is something we will all go through sooner or later. What if I told you that you have more control over your aging process than you once thought? After all, you have heard the saying, “You are what you eat.” What you are eating may end up killing you faster.

What Are AGEs?

AGEs are toxic compounds. Their full name is Advanced Glycation Endproducts, and they form naturally in small amounts in our body. Until recently, scientists thought AGEs were just normal byproducts of our metabolic system linked to sugar.

New studies show that AGEs are present in large quantities in most of the foods we eat today. As new modes of food processing, applied by food industries, or popular methods of cooking expose food to dry-heat to make it safe, digestible and tasty, they also help raise AGEs to levels dangerous for the body.

Why do we consume foods that contain substances known to be toxic? It’s simple. AGEs are known to bring to raw nutrients those positive attributes we associate with our favorite meals. AGEs are responsible for the taste, appearance and the smell of foods we enjoy – the grilled burger and pizza and soft drinks and fried chicken; the bacon and corn chips and cookies. AGEs are at work whenever cooked food attracts our attention, awakens our senses and encourages us to take yet another bite, even when we’re already full. How many of us would consider eating these same foods raw? But before you think of thanking AGEs for all the pleasure they have given you over the years, consider this:

More than any other single dietary component, AGEs are now found to be linked to more diseases and health problems, including diabetes, heart and kidney disease, but also dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, arthritis, osteoporosis, skin aging, poor wound healing, and periodontal disease. If you have a high amount of AGE’s in your diet, even in your 20’s, you are on your way to developing chronic diseases you would normally see later in life. Just by cutting your AGE’s consumption, you can save your eyesight, your memory, skin and blood vessels, and delay “Father Time’s” natural process.

Why are AGEs toxic?

AGEs are oxidants. They corrode our body the same way rust damages metal in a machine if it’s allowed to build up. Oxidation depletes our natural reserves of anti-oxidants, which are the “good guys”. Anti-oxidants are the substances that can neutralize the corrosive effects of AGEs, but only up to a point.

The body reacts to AGEs the same way it fights an infection, except that its capacity is limited. Our native defenses normally eliminate AGE toxins by mobilizing a low level of generalized inflammation, which is our body’s normal reaction to ”irritants”, such as bacteria. For example, a person with an infection – an “irritant” to the body – may experience a rise in body temperature – a “fever”, which indicates inflammation, but this will go away soon. Food AGEs, like bacteria, can also trigger inflammation but this time – since they come in often – it may not go away soon, and over time it can erode our self-defenses, as AGEs pile up in the body, like junk. And they continue to cause more oxidation (rusting) and inflammation (low “fever”), which may not become noticed for many years.

At worst, if inflammation is prolonged it will slowly damage every organ in the body – Most chronic diseases are associated with inflammation and high levels of AGEs. At best, AGEs speed up our body’s and mind’s aging

Animal fats are easily oxidized by AGEs. When this happens, AGE-lipids from our food tend to stick to our arteries and cause blockage, high blood pressure or heart trouble. Or they settle in our waistline as AGE-fat, causing inflammation, obesity, insulin resistance. Insulin resistance occurs when insulin, a vital hormone, becomes less effective at lowering blood sugar and its levels become abnormally high. Excessive body weight is closely associated with this condition, frequently leading to diabetes.

AGEs also can cause proteins to stick together. With years, AGE-proteins become rigid. This is one reason why joints, muscles and tendons become stiff and inflexible over time. This is why blood vessels become thick and inelastic, a condition we call “hardening of the arteries”, which leads to high blood pressure and heart disease.

On the internet you can find large lists that clarify how much AGE’s are present in the diverse nutrients.

Bodybuilding Food

Now, in the era of Get Big or Die Trying, in order to be competitive at the Junior and National level competitions it’s not uncommon for a competitor to use big amounts of several types of steroids, all in the hope of potentially cracking the top ten. But even if it seems to be so, especially in the media, Bodybuilding is more than using some chemical aids. Even if we use anabolic androgenic steroids for cosmetical improvement, we need to eat more than usual to create those hot-desired muscles.

It’s therefore a lazy and unfair argument to cast all of the blame on anabolics. I believe that a great deal of the blame for why we’ve seen so many tragic and untimely deaths, many of them due to heart disease, is due to the bodybuilding diet. In order to build the tremendous size we see from today’s competitors it requires an enormous amount of food to meet nutritional needs and fuel growth. Building a championship physique – or even a decent gym physique, for that matter – requires substantial amounts of protein, plenty of healthy (ideally) fats, and a surplus of carbohydrates, and therein lies the problem.

Carbohydrates in any form – simple or complex – cause blood sugar to rise. That means that the standard bodybuilding diet of six meals per day causes a near constant elevation in blood glucose levels. When blood glucose levels are constantly elevated something called glycation occurs in the body.

Glycation occurs when excess blood sugars bind with protein or lipid molecules causing what are known as advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) to form. Once AGEs are formed they become Weapons of Mass Deterioration in the body. AGEs deposit themselves in tissues throughout the body and once they reach their destination there is no way to remove them. Buildup of AGEs leads to deterioration of joints, eyes, the brain, and most importantly to the bodybuilder, the heart.

AGEs don’t damage the heart directly. They do their work much more discretely, by glycating LDL cholesterol particles. In the body we have two forms of LDL cholesterol particles; we have normal large particles, and small damaging particles. Under normal circumstances large LDL particles transport cholesterol through the blood delivering it to cells in need before being taken up and disposed of by the liver.

However, once an LDL particle becomes glycated it changes in size from large to small. Because they’re no longer normal size, the liver is unable to properly dispose of small LDL particles and they remain in the blood before ultimately becoming deposited in our arterial walls. Now, imagine the amount of damaging glycation that occurs in a 250 plus pound bodybuilder eating six meals per day and consuming thousands of grams of carbohydrates – day after day, week after week, year after year. We are literally creating the perfect environment for the development of heart disease, and most of us are doing it for decades.

Is it possible for us to simultaneously maximize our health and our physiques? Or is this just the price we owe to the Iron Goddess for her allowing us to set foot in her domain?

Skin advanced glycation end product accumulation and muscle strength among adult men.

AGE-ing muscles

The data reported by Haus et all 2007 are the first to comprehensively examine the intramuscular connective tissue network in aging men and women. These data suggest that, despite large changes in muscle mass, the concentrations of the two main contractile proteins, myosin and actin, the protein responsible for the transfer of force out to the whole muscle, collagen, and the enzymatically regulated cross-linking of collagen are tightly regulated in aging human skeletal muscle. It does appear that non-enzymatic addition of AGEs to the intramuscular connective tissue network may play a role in the reduction of muscle and physical function with aging.

Aging is associated with decreased skeletal muscle function. Increased levels of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) in skeletal muscle tissue are observed with advancing age and in diabetes. Which makes it obvious that if you consume large amounts a AGE’s, you will not only ruin your skin and look much older then you are. You also ruin your muscles, joints and tendons. Although serum AGE level is negatively associated with grip strength in elderly people, it is unknown whether this association is present in adult males. To determine the relationship between AGE accumulation in tissue and muscle strength and power among Japanese adult men.

Skin autofluorescence (AF) (a noninvasive method for measuring tissue AGEs), grip strength, and leg extension power were measured in Japanese adult men, aged between 37 and 56 years. Among these Japanese adult men, participants with higher skin AF had lower muscle strength and power, indicating a relationship between AGE accumulation and muscle strength and power. A long-term prospective study is required to clarify the causality.

Another study from Cassese et all in 2008, showed that in skeletal muscle advanced glycation end products (AGEs) inhibit insulin action and induce the formation of multimolecular complexes including the receptor for AGEs.

Their conclusion: “Chronic hyperglycemia promotes insulin resistance at least in part by increasing the formation of advanced glycation end products (AGEs). We have previously shown that in L6 myotubes human glycated albumin (HGA) induces insulin resistance by activating protein kinase Calpha (PKCalpha).”

Without any doubt, we will see in the near future much more studies to AGE’s effect on skeletal muscle.

So how do we minimise AGEs?

So based on the data above. We should cook at low temperatures for shorter periods of time. Do not fry your meat, stay away from high-fat spreads (that includes butter, however I'm skeptical of the data, because it seems based on these numbers olive oil is high too which I find hard to believe).

Basically the largest contributors to AGEs in the modern diet is anything grilled, roasted, fried, or baked. If you decrease the intake of any foods that are cooked under dry heat, then you are on your way to extending life. If you do cook meat its best to marinade it with vinegar or lemon juice (decreases AGE formation by 50%).

Anti-oxidants

What also helps to put a damper on AGE inhibitors is your B complex vitamins, such as B1 and B6, in tiny amounts. Doctors will tell you to use sunscreen. But then again, there are studies of sunscreen nano-particles being researched to see whether or not they contribute to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's. So the research continues. You need to find ways to protect your skin and the same time get enough sunshine to produce vitamin D.

You could eat your antioxidants, such as foods containing vitamins C and E. Foods such as red bell peppers, walnuts, green tea and black tea. But antioxidants help to keep sugar from attaching to proteins. Look into research on what protects your skin from damages caused by sugar. And at least try to cut back on sweets

The objective of a study from 2012 was to determine the phytochemical content and the protective effect of red grape skin extract (RGSE) against fructose-mediated protein oxidation. In addition, RGSE was screened for its potential as an antioxidant using various in vitro models.

The conclusion was that RGSE has potent inhibitory effects on protein glycation and oxidation-dependent damages. Furthermore, the results suggest that RGSE acts as an antioxidant with suppressing effect on the formation of AGEs. The findings may lead to the possibility of using RGSE for preventing AGE-mediated diabetic complications.

Are AGE’s new?

To understand AGEs (about which there is much confusion in the popular literature), we need to go back a century, to prewar Paris. In 1912, a young French physician and chemist named Louis Camille Maillard began investigating the chemical reactions between nutrient sugars (such as glucose and fructose) and amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.

When Maillard heated aqueous solutions of sugars and amino acids for a few hours, they turned a yellow-brown color, the result of a series of reactions that yielded a witches’ brew of products. Significantly, the same phenomenon occurred, albeit much more slowly, when he simply allowed the solutions to sit for a few weeks under physiological conditions (37ºC, pH 7.4).

Maillard had discovered a series of complex and important chemical reactions that now bear his name: Maillard reactions. He predicted that they would occur in the human body, especially in diabetic patients because of their chronically high glucose (blood sugar) levels. This prophetic insight went unnoticed for half a century, however, and he did not live to see it realized.

In 1971, scientists investigating the blood of diabetic patients discovered that some of the hemoglobin was glycated. Glycation—the first step in the Maillard reactions—is the chemical attachment of a sugar molecule (either free or bound in a polysaccharide, such as starch) to an amino acid (either free or bound in a protein, such as hemoglobin). As the ensuing reactions advance through numerous complex stages, they can lead to a great variety of endproducts, most of which are harmful to us. These are the “advanced glycation endproducts” we now call AGEs.

Smoking

Smoking is known to elevate the level of AGEs. AGEs are formed when tobacco leaves are dried in the presence of sugars. During inhalation, these AGEs are absorbed in the lungs. Both serum AGEs and AGEs in skin (measured with skin autofluorescence) are higher in smokers, compared to non-smokers. Smokers have a significantly higher risk for developing coronary and cerebrovascular disease than nonsmokers.

I didn’t mean to scare you away from the BBQ, the smoking, the pizza’s etc. I just want to inform you about its dangers, after all bodybuilding once started as a healthy sport.