UKC

I was listening to a podcast by Eric Horst the other day and he outlined some emerging research on tendon strength and nutrition.  He explained that if one consumes collagen (BCAAs I think are the same thing??) and vitamin C, 60 mins before climbing then the tendons uptake 50% more nutrients.  He then went on to present his new line of special supplements for tendons.  Has anyone else read more about this?  Is it worth trying out or do you think it's snake oil. Can one replicate the same results by say eating some chicken 60 mins before training? 

Snake oil. 

He was probably talking about his "Supercharged Collagen"

Here are all the studies he mentions https://physivantage.com/pages/research-references - I Don't have the education to really know how legitimate these are. 

15g of gelatin. Looks like I better start eating some fruit passtlies before training 🤣

I don't think it's necessarily snake oil, there is plenty of science to show the benefit of timing your protein intake, and the benefit of amino acids (in this case my understanding is Proline and Glycine plus Vitamin C create collagen - cheers Dave MacLeod). The question really is how much more isolated aminos would benefit you over eating a normal meal before hand, and if that benefit is worth the money. To be honest, with the amount of finger injuries in climbing I can't see how it's a bad preventative measure, not essential but not bad. I've definitely had some fatigued fingers after hard crimping sessions that have taken a while to recover, and in my experience focusing on good nutrition BEFORE exercise and then doing stimulating workouts really helps recovery (that is, doing more light exercise helps stimulate recovery). 

A few years ago I would have been in the snake oil camp but after trying Creatin which is an amino acid type metabolite I've done a bit of research. The affect from creatine were so obvious for me and I believe help with inflammation as well. BCAA might be best if you were on a calorie controlled diet and wanted something with less calories than a protein shake.

Try BCAA's and then try creatine, there are cheap versions available. Don't waist money on the expensive stuff. 

Only if they're non-vegetarian ones! Though you can always make your own collagen gummy sweets if you want; it's pretty easy to do.

Nope, BCAAs are leucine, isoleucine and valine.

Collagen is mostly glycine, proline and hydroxyproline (though there's some debate over the merits of taking collagen versus its individual constituents).

The study Horst's citing is legit (though it's only one study, which in science doesn't mean a lot), but obviously that doesn't mean you have to buy his line of supplements. Especially as collagen and vit C are dirt cheap.

Not unless the chicken was mostly skin and bones. If it's a skinless chicken breast, it'll do wonders for your protein intake but nothing for your tendons.

The idea is that the study seems to indicate collagen substrates can be incorporated directly into tendon structure if they are circulating in the bloodstream directly during loading, meaning they would be consumed 30-60 minutes beforehand. This would be advantageous as the process of creating collagen in the body is slow so the potential to directly incorporate collagen substrates is definitely attractive. 

In the end, the baseline is that we don't have a good broad body of tests demonstrating that this actually works, so the advice I received from a nutritionist was 'it certainly won't do any harm, and potentially could be beneficial'.  

These things tend to play out in time either way, and BCAA's are a good example of an absolutely useless supplement that got hyped massively by the industry before being thoroughly discredited. I've had multiple finger injuries and a tub of collagen blended with Vit C costs €15 so I figured it was worth a punt as one tub lasts months. It's certainly not a wonder drug and if you're not injured or struggling with finger problems you're probably better off just ensuring you get enough good whole foods and making sure that every fingerboard session is a good one! 

Doesn't sound like he's got any thing to make out of his claims, so it's probably true </sarcasm>

Good summary. There's a few extra bits that help understand the test. They took tendons from ACL replacements in surgery and mechanically stressed them in a petri dish of nutrients. Increasing the collagen and vitamin C in the nutrients increased collagen uptake and led to stronger tendons. 

Good article here from Outside magazine

https://www.outsideonline.com/2392880/gelatin-injury-prevention-recovery

do you have to eat the bones too ?

I watched the dave Mac video about eblow tendonosis and he explains at the end it might be beneficial but it solved all his problems and he eats meat and bones to get the right nutrients in. 

just ordered some beef gelatine and vit c powder off ebay so i'll let you know how I get on...cheapest snake oil i've ever bought! 

following this recipe: https://twitter.com/musclescience/status/903454079443021826?lang=en

edit: I don't eat any meat (only occasional fish) and suffer lots of tendon injuries so pretty interested in this one

If you want to get maximum collagen then you do have to eat the gristly bits and boil the bones for stock ...

(Which is obviously not the most practical for a quick pre-climbing snack!)

The modern tendency to consume just the "muscle" bits of meat rather than using every possible edible scrap does mean that we get much less collagen (and its constituent parts) in our diet than humans used to.

I've read almost every article on the physivantage page. Other than potentially wasting some money, I don't see a big risk in trying it.

However, I have big problems with the studies that I have read. First and foremost, unless there is one that I have not seen, the control is never a different source of protein like whey (usually carbohydrate). Second, the most directly relevant paper (Shaw 2017) appears to show no real difference between collagen and placebo -- figure 4?! Bars are marked as significant, but compared to pre workout. Now look at the error bars. Now consider that there were only eight study participants. I think this comment in the discussion says it all:

"Finally, although the focus of the manuscript has been on the nutritional intervention, the exercise intervention was effective at increasing collagen synthesis on its own"

As sad as I am I just googled that and come across a really good gummy bear recipe that I am going to have to try.

Hey, I am sad enough that I already did that, which is how I know!

Top tip:  sprinkle some malic acid (also dirt cheap) on top if you want a Haribo Sour type flavour. If you do that too long before eating the gummies it seems to de-gel the surface a bit, though.

But that's not realistic for the practice of  a human athlete ingesting collagen (rather than injecting it into or near tendons). Because the stomach acids + enzymes first break the ingested collagen into its constituent amino acids. So virtually none of the collagen ingested ever reaches the tendons in the form of usable collagen.

Ken

P.S. A similar practice with much greater socio-economic payback would be to eat Hair protein as a partial cure for baldness. How come that doesn't work - (or does it?)

Sounds like Bovril?

He then went on to present his new line of special supplements for tendons

Of course he did.

Nah, that has very little protein in, so minimal collagen.

A bag of pork scratchings and an orange juice might do you quite nicely, though!

(Okay, you might need a couple of glasses of orange juice to get the vitamin C dosage in the study; I'd need to check numbers.)

Well, there's some research indicating that some of it's broken down into collagen peptides, rather than all the way down to the amino acids:

https://www.longdom.org/open-access/effects-of-collagen-ingestion-and-their...

And of course being broken down into amino acids doesn't mean that it's not a good source of those particular amino acids -- which are the required building blocks for collagen. And some of which (such as glycine) are in short supply in the modern diet; we can manufacture some glycine in the body, but possibly significantly less than we need.

The science here is all very speculative, of course, but it's not nonsensical.

Only if you had reason to believe that baldness was being exacerbated by a dietary shortage of the proteins needed to build keratin! Which AFAIK isn't believed to be the cause of most baldness.

nice will look forward to the update report, what will the cost per serving be?

Read similar stuff before on the merits of home made soups from boiling left over bones and carcasses, often referring to that they help repair damaged soft tissue. 

There could well be merit in the old wife's tales of chicken soup helping recovery from a cold. 

Only if the old wife finger boards 60 mins. After eating the soup

That likely has its basis in the role of the derived amino acids (i.e. animal protein in this instance) in a strong immune system. Can't imagine the collagen was doing any harm by providing a glycine source but it's important not to be too vague about these things as we're really talking about exercise specific tendon remodelling which has little to do with ill health unfortunately.

Interestingly repeated quote but not completely true. Some peptide can get uptake across the GI tract. In particular type II collagen has evidence of being transferred and some references suggest hydrolised collagen also can get transfered. 

More importantly, a massive amount of research points at improved collagen content via the introduction of dietary collagen. The exact transport mechanism is unknown (as are many things about how digestion works) but it's obviously working in some fashion. 

Tim

https://jcp.bmj.com/content/jclinpath/s3-5/1/29.full.pdf

Snake oil.

Look at the second example excerpt box.  When you read to the end of the extract you find it relates to a single subject with no control subject.

That's not science, it's self-interested bunk.  But it seems it was the most positive example the author could find for the promotional webpage.

That’s just one paper out of many quotes (and a few that aren’t referenced). 

I listened to that podcast, I was boggled that he took an entire hour to say what you just summarised in a sentence. So much waffle!

Yes. Nutritional supplements make a difference if there’s actually a deficiency.  So, if you have damaged collagen because you are deficient in the vitamin C you need to cross-link the proteins, then of course supplementing that will make a difference.  If you have a sensible diet any extra you take goes straight down the toilet.

The repair of connective tissue is complicated, but unless you have a seriously protein deficient diet, the idea that by eating more collagen will somehow magically mend your tendons is rubbish.

And you are hardly likely to get reproducible science from people in the business of selling dietary supplements, are you?

I was recently told it was protein that would be reabsorbed by your tendons and basically if you drink protein shakes youd be better off drinking it before you climb to build tendon strength instead of after which would promote muscle growth. 

I got a very breif summary of a study from a friend whos into all this kind of stuff (in relation to tendons/muscles etc etc) from a ruby/weightlifting perspective. 

Could just be aload of bollocks though. 

So how are tendons strengthened by fingerboarding?