Hormonal
Immobilization induces rapid muscle insulin resistance (MIR) within 3-5 days, which may contribute to the dysregulation of protein metabolism, although a direct causal link to atrophy is not fully established.
During periods of immobilization, your muscles become resistant to insulin within days. This hormonal shift likely contributes to the shutdown of muscle building. While you cannot always avoid immobilization, understanding this link highlights why metabolic health and potentially minimal movement (to stimulate glucose uptake) are important considerations alongside nutrition.
Immobilization results in the development of whole body and muscle insulin resistance (MIR) in people within 3–5 days... Although a series of molecular pathways can be dovetailed to illuminate a sequence of coordinated events that explain immobilization-induced changes in MPS, MPB, and MIR, in reality, in vivo evidence to substantiate such speculation is currently unavailable.
Why this rating
Strong evidence for the existence of MIR, but limited evidence for its direct causal link to muscle mass loss.
Source
Control of skeletal muscle atrophy in response to disuse: clinical/preclinical contentions and fallacies of evidence
Philip J. Atherton et al. · American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism · 2016
DOI 10.1152/ajpendo.00257.2016
More from this paper
- Disuse-induced muscle atrophy in humans is primarily driven by a sustained reduction in muscle protein synthesis (MPS) rather than an increase in muscle protein breakdown (MPB).Good
- In preclinical rodent models, disuse atrophy involves both decreased protein synthesis and increased protein degradation, with the extent of degradation being muscle-specific and dependent on fiber type.Good
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