Building blocks
The competition among online fitness brands is more intense than ever, but the average creator has opportunities that never before existed. For example, an individual can now work with a generic supplements manufacturer to create custom pills, with packaging that represents the individual’s brand.
While I don’t have the audience yet for this overhead to make sense, a supplements line fits perfectly with my brand — the leveraging of biohacks to heal injuries faster.
What would my line of supplements look like?
First, protein.
A sensible goal for athletes (really everyone) is to consume a gram of protein per day per pound of body weight.
If you’re working through an injury, adequate protein is even more important. Collagen, made of protein, forms the building blocks of the structures of the body: cartilage, bones, and connective tissue.
In order to consume a gram of protein per pound of body weight, you can 1) supplement with collagen, or 2) get organized with your meals.
Collagen supplements
For tendon and ligament healing, I would offer a hydrolyzed collagen supplement. Collagen contains arginine, which is a useful amino acid for stimulating protein synthesis and collagen deposits. Arginine, when converted by the body into nitric oxide, increases blood flow to an injured area and boosts healing factors.
Amino acids supplements
If you want to get fancy, for a muscle injury, you could take “my” branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) supplement that contains leucine, isoleucine, and valine. Leucine stimulates muscle protein accretion, and valine aids in muscle tissue repair.
The 20 amino acids that combine to make a collagen molecule include these three BCAAs. However, collagen is more expensive, and the proportion of BCAAs in collagen are different and smaller in quanitity than taking BCAAs as a specific supplement. Studies show that BCAAs do trigger protein synthesis, but it’s not clear that these supplements are superior to dietary sources.
I could also market other amino acids supplements, but they have only theoretical benefits, especially taken in isolation. Examples include arginine, glutamine, and HMB — a metabolite of leucine. Many of the studies of these individual amino acids were done on elderly and hospitalized patients, who suffer from all kinds of maladies and malnutrition. Deficient in everything, these subjects would show improvement from any kind of micronutrient boost. Relatively healthy subjects already consuming an adequate, protein rich diet would probably be pissing their money away.
Meal planning
You can consume enough protein from food to meet your body’s demands, but you’ll need to visit the grocery store a lot.
Here’s what my typical OMAD (one meal a day) looks like to hit my protein goals:
- 6 eggs – 36g
- ½ lb red meat/hamburger – 50 g
- 5 oz Salmon – 30 g
- Bowl of kefir – 10 g
- 5 slices of cheese – 25 g
- Box of chicken bone broth – 20g
Second, my vitamin and mineral supplements for healing.
While none of the vitamin and mineral recommendations below are groundbreaking, most individuals are deficient in these key nutrients. Society has shifted away from eating ancestral animal foods, and monocrop farming has depleted the soil of nutrients that used to be abundant in plant-based food.
These vitamins and minerals are all critical for efficient healing from injury:
Vitamin A
Studies have shown that collagen cross-linkage is stronger with vitamin A supplementation and repair is quicker. Everyone is deficient in retinol except for the few folks who regularly eat organ meat.
The supplements available on Amazon right now are 10,000 IU pills. My brand of vitamin A would be a 5,000 IU per day pill until healed (or forever), to reduce the risk of toxicity from preformed vitamin A.
Vitamin C
Vitamin C enhances neutrophil activity immediately after injury. Neutrophils are a type of white blood cell that help your immune system fight infections and heal injuries. Vitamin C also plays an important role in collagen synthesis, as it helps form bonds between strands of collagen fiber.
Take three grams per day until healed.
Copper/Zinc
You must take zinc and copper together because zinc reduces the amount of copper your body absorbs.
Copper is a mineral that assists the formation of red blood cells, which help create collagen. Copper also works with vitamin C to form elastin and to strengthen connective tissue.
Zinc is necessary for the production of collagen. It plays a role in DNA synthesis, cell division, and protein synthesis — all necessary for tissue regeneration and repair.
My brand of zinc with copper would be 30 mg zinc/2 mg copper per day. I have seen recommendations for taking up to 4 mg copper per day, but since copper is a heavy metal, I prefer to be conservative.
Boron
Boron is the new “it” supplement. Boron is a micronutrient with vitally important metabolic roles that recent research suggests makes life on Earth possible. For our purposes, Boron helps stimulate the production of collagen, improves bone development and regeneration, and aids wound healing.
Take 6mg/day.
Magnesium
Magnesium helps activate certain enzymes that are important for the repair of injured tissues. Magnesium is involved in over 3,000 enzymatic processes and is the second most important nutrient for overall health, just behind vitamin D. Of all supplements, the impact of magnesium on energy, mental clarity, focus, and sleep is most immediate and noticeable. Take 1,000 mg of magnesium glycinate per day.