If you read some nutrition “gurus”, insulin gets a bad rap. Especially guys who argue that carbohydrates are evil and push low-carb diets, try to point the finger at insulin as one of the main causes of people getting fat. They argue that carbs are bad and insulin is bad by association.

However if you look at their arguments more closely, you can see that they make pretty sketchy connections and their conclusions are pretty much BS.

In order to be able to analyze all the different diets that people are hyping-up and make an informed choice on which is the best for you, you need to know what insulin is and how it works.

Let’s start by listing the main roles of insulin in the body:

1) push glucose into cells, in order for it to be used as energy

2) push other types of nutrients (for example proteins), in order for them to be used by the cells

3) store excess glucose for later use (either as glycogen or fat)

Remember these roles when reading the rest of the article, as this is crucial for understanding the importance of insulin in different bodily processes, and especially in what role it plays in getting bigger muscles and losing fat.

Insulin is one of the most important hormones for your metabolism. The different cells in your body need glucose for energy and insulin promotes the absorption of glucose by them (either for energy or for storage – glycogen, fat).

It is a peptide hormone, which means that it’s a functional protein. It is produced in the pancreas by beta cells and serves many functions in your body. You can think of it as the main regulator of your body.

Insulin is released into the bloodstream when glucose is present, whether due to food getting ingested or due to different stress hormones flooding the body.

What happens is that when you are eating, the food is broken down into its more basic constituent parts, and the pancreas starts releasing insulin into your bloodstream. The insulin then directs the transport of these nutrients either into the cells or for storage. Once the level of these nutrients in the blood drops, then the amount of insulin drops as well.

Let’s use an analogy in order to illustrate how insulin works. Imagine that insulin is a small spaceship that travels through your blood and muscle cells are big space factories. These space factories have docking stations (insulin receptors) that the insulin spaceship periodically visits and docks at them.

In the process, the insulin acts as a sort of key, unlocking the doors to the cells. Once these doors are unlocked, nutrients such as glucose or amino acids can enter the cells, bringing energy and also different building blocks for their internal processes.

When insulin is released, the body gets a signal to stop burning fat for energy and instead use the new food that just came in. At that point, insulin also begins the process of energy storage.

Once again imagine insulin as a small spaceship and fat cells as big storage depots. The insulin spaceship docks at the fat cell and tells it to start the process of storing all the excess energy for later use. This thereby increases body fat.

This role of insulin is why it is often depicted as one of the main reasons that people get fat. However this argument is based on a very simplistic reading of the situation.

Insulin is just a hormone which has a certain role to perform in the body. The way it performs it is based on external factors and especially on the choices that people make with their habits and their food.

High vs. Low-Glycemic foods (fast vs. slow absorbing)

The type of carbs you eat, has an effect on how your body controls insulin. If most of the carbs you ingest are high on the Glycemic Index, then you might have a problem. High-GI foods pass through the blood quickly, which can cause insulin spikes. This can result in reduced insulin sensitivity and higher storage of the excess glucose as fat.

Low-GI foods release their nutrients more slowly, meaning that insulin is released slower as well. Most of these nutrients then go into being used as immediate energy or to replenish glycogen stores, instead of for fat storage.

One problem that can occur through living a bad lifestyle and having bad eating habits is insulin resistance. If insulin is released in large quantities very often, the cells lose their sensitivity to it. This means that more and more insulin is always required to perform its function. At the extreme level, it can lead to a total loss of response and diabetes.

The loss of insulin sensitivity is one of the main culprits of obesity. One way this happens is because your liver loses insulin sensitivity as well.

One important function of insulin is that it tells the liver to increase production of glycogen. It also suppresses the liver’s capacity to produce new sugar. This process is called gluconeogenesis in fancy scientific language.

If the liver loses its ability to respond to insulin, the result is too much glucose (sugar) in the blood. This excess sugar then gets stored as fat and makes people put on more body fat.

Another important factor in reducing insulin sensitivity is the modern lifestyle. A bad lifestyle can cause several problems, including insulin resistance.

What many people don’t know, is that insulin can also be released without a person having to eat anything. This takes place when an outside stimuli causes the body to go into reflex mode. When this happens, the body starts releasing stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol.

These hormones then command the body to produce more sugars. In evolutionary terms, this was very beneficial, since stress hormones were released due to some dangerous outside stimuli. For example, a lion could be attacking or an enemy force could be heading your way.

In a moment like this you needed to be able to react quickly and with as much power as possible. So that’s why the body developed a mechanism to supply energy to its cells fast. Stress hormones gave a signal to the body, which then quickly released sugars in order to have more energy available to respond to these threats.

However in the modern world, stress is usually due to BS things like pressure at work, which puts the entire system out of whack. The body is constantly releasing sugars, causing the system to become more insulin resistant. The end result is that all that excess glucose gets stored as fat in the body, and people end up looking like Humpty Dumpty.

The Role of Insulin in Muscle Building

Insulin is needed for getting bigger and building muscles. Insulin is anti-catabolic. When it is present in the blood, it slows down the break-down of muscles proteins. Without insulin, muscle protein would start breaking down (in a process called proteolysis).

Insulin is also anabolic in that it aids the building up of muscles. It promotes protein synthesis and helps different nutrients (including amino acids) to get into the cells. In this way, they get different building blocks that they can then use to build bigger and stronger muscles.

Remember glucose is the basic source of energy for your body as well. Insulin helps in getting this energy-source to the right destination. When the different cells get the energy that they need, they can also work harder and longer, further enhancing the effect.

Also let’s not forget one little side-benefit, which has an impact on external aesthetics. Insulin saturates the muscles with amino acids and glycogen, which then gives them a fuller look.

So you see, insulin is incredibly important to how your physique will look like. Another important element that often gets forgotten, but is crucial for any budding Renaissance Man, is the fact that your brain is the biggest user of carbs and so insulin is needed for transporting glucose to the brain, not only to strengthen your willpower, but also to help you do all that thinking.

Read more:
What are carbohydrates?

Which nutrients are needed for your brain to function well?

In a future article, we will explore what types of strategies you can adopt to heighten insulin sensitivity and get a lean body. Stay tuned!

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What is the reason? There are several things that are behind this, but one culprit seems to be the diet. Recent scientific studies point to improper nutrition as one of the main explanations of why there has been such an abrupt rise in mental illnesses among the population in the past few decades.

Nutrients are not only important for growing a big and healthy body, but also promote healthy brain functions, which allows you to do all your mental activities better. Healthy eating is a prerequisite for maintaining a healthy body and is also an important prerequisite for maintaining a healthy and functioning mind.

Unfortunately, many people don’t get their required amount of nutrients for proper brain functioning. In the modern era, the diet of many people has become very unbalanced and does not include many of the important elements that it should. This imbalance can become quite critical for the brain, since it demands around 20% of the total nutrient intake of the body in order to function properly.

Coupled with instant gratification behavior (which is growing stronger partially due to changes in technology) and a loss of values, the lack of a proper diet is another one of the culprits of the decline of mental health, a rise in different mental disorders and also the rise of depression.

A lack of proper nutrition leads to problems in the brain

There are more and more scientific studies which are starting to prove the connection between nutrition and mental health. These studies demonstrate a link between these 9 nutrients and brain health: omega3, B vitamins (especially folate and B12), choline, iron, zinc, magnesium, S-adenosyl methionine (SAMe), vitamin D, and amino acids. This means that if you want to have a healthy, functioning brain, you need to have these nutrients in your diet.

In order to illustrate what is going on, let’s look at some of the things that happen in the brain. Amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein are also involved in the production of such important neurotransmitters as dopamine and serotonin. Enzymes (they are made of proteins) convert the structure of tyrosine (an amino acid) and produce dopamine (a neurotransmitter). Other types of enzymes convert tryptophan (another amino acid) into serotonin (a neurotransmitter).

If the above two amino acids are not present in the brain, there can be serious problems. Deficiency of these two amino acids in the diet has been linked with depression and aggression.

Similarly, diets lacking in omega 3 fatty acids can lead to severe disturbances in the brain. An intake of fatty acids is especially important for the brain, since it contains the highest level of fat in your body (surprise, surprise it’s not your stomach that contains the highest level of fat ) Half of the grey matter that is in your brain consists of polyunsaturated fats, with one third of that being omega 3 fatty acids.

The modern diet is severely deficient in this type of fatty acid, which is considered essential. Several scientific studies have shown that diets lacking in omega 3 fatty acids can lead to severe disturbances in the brain and various mental problems.

In order for your brain to function properly, you also need to fuel it and for that carbohydrates are very important. However recently you have seen carbs being labeled as the work of the devil and many modern fad diets call for severe restrictions in the consumption of them.

That can be disastrous for your brain. Consumption of diets low in carbohydrates tends to precipitate depression. For example, the production of brain chemicals serotonin and tryptophan is triggered by carb rich foods and if your brain doesn’t get these carbs, then it cannot start producing these brain chemicals.

A lack of any of the nutrients above can lead to a variety of mental problems. Recently we have seen a huge rise in people diagnosed with depression. Many scientists have studied this phenomenon and some of their studies point out that depression is not only due to emotional factors, but nutrition also plays a role in its onset and duration. So if you want to prevent depression, you not only need to avoid emotional triggers, but also eat properly.

What to do in order to have a healthy brain?

What do you need to do in order to have a healthy and functioning brain? The authors of one of the studies give some tips: “A traditional whole-food diet, consisting of higher intakes of foods such as vegetables, fruits, seafood, whole grains, lean meat, nuts, and legumes, with avoidance of processed foods, is more likely to provide the nutrients that afford resiliency against the pathogenesis of mental disorders.”

They also state that it is also possible to supplement your diet with supplements if you are not getting enough of the right nutrients. However the primary source of your nutrients should always be a proper diet.

How is your diet? Do you get all the nutrients needed in order for you to have a healthy brain and a healthy body? If not, try to change it up and include foods that are sources of the above nutrients. Fish are very good sources of omega 3 fatty acids, seafood such as oysters and also spinach are good sources of zinc, sunflower seeds, pistachio nuts and dried fruits are good sources of B vitamins, while magnesium is found in dark leafy greens and different types of nuts. Ensure that you get a good mix of foods and try to avoid anything processed.

Read more:
The lack of omega 3 fatty acids in your modern diet.
The omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids imbalance in our diets

Instant gratification behavior in the modern society.
The end of the world is near, the selfie stick is here

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I am above average height for most countries (6’1 or 184cm), however in the Netherlands I was just average (sometimes I felt even below average). I am used to urinals being way below my crotch level, however here it felt like I almost had piss up instead of down.

This is one of the first things that you notice when you arrive in the Netherlands (besides the fact that everything is flat and there are bikes everywhere), the people are much taller than in other places.

They seem to tower above you. They are quite lanky and not too built, but they are tall. I remember my first day at school, sitting down at a table next to one Dutch guy. He seemed pretty thin and not very big, so I did not pay particular attention. Then he stood up from his chair and was almost a full head taller than me! While sitting down he seemed small, but when standing up you had a completely different image of him.

It wasn’t always so. In fact a few generations ago, the Dutch were one of the shortest people in Europe. Almost all the other countries had on average taller people. This changed rapidly, especially after World War 2.

Height seems to be linked to nutrition and health. The average height of Dutch people started shooting up after World War 1, but declined sharply during World War 2, to again start rising sharply after the end of the conflict. The explanation is that during war times, people don’t really have access to adequate amounts of food and nutrition and their health declines, which means they also end up not growing as much.

Two factors have been linked to the enormous increase in the average height of the Dutch, their nutrition and healthcare, where they have a high standard and expectant mothers even have access to advice on nutrition for their kids.

Their diets are simple, but are heavy on dairy products, such as milk and cheese. This means they have a high supply of protein and calcium, which then helps their bones grow, as well as other parts of their bodies. Sometimes they even drink milk for lunch!

So here is something to be learned. If you want to grow taller, you need to incorporate a lot of dairy products in your diet. Most of you are probably already past the age of growth, but maybe it’s still not too late for any potential kids that you might have.

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There are times when you need to forget about the pain you are feeling, clench your teeth and continue, yet at other times, when the pain is too great, you need to stop and turn back. The smart man can distinguish between the time when he should not give up and the time when he should. This is a vital skill, which will help you succeed in life.

When you are working out (or doing any other type of physical or even mental activity), your body will feel pain, you will be reaching your limits, yet you continuing to push through, forgetting about the pain and finishing up those reps, will be the key to achieving your goals or even surpassing them. Getting big (and gaining weight) means having to go through a rigorous exercise process and not giving up when the going gets tough.

So why am I talking about times when the pain is too great and you should give up? There are two types of pain: the pain you feel when your body is working harder than it ever did before, that is a good pain, and the pain you feel when your body is breaking down, that is a bad pain.

When you are lifting heavy or sprinting hard and you feel you can’t push anymore, using your mind to supress that pain will help you finish up strong, which will give you the ability to lift heavier and sprint harder the next time. That is the key to improving.

However supressing your pain, when you feel your knee or head hurts, when you feel you have been injured, can lead to fatal consequences. The pain you are feeling is your body’s way of telling you that what you are doing is bad and that you are hurting your body. This could mean that your body could break down and stop functioning properly.

For example when you injure your knee and you feel it hurt, continuing to play on that knee, could just aggravate that injury even more and lead to you damaging your knee beyond repair. This in the long-run could take you out of the game for good.

So how do you distinguish between good and bad pain? One way is to ask yourself, what am I risking if I continue? If the answer is that the risk is permanent damage and that risk is high, then you should most likely stop.

Last summer, I went for a hike into the mountains. We chose a hike to the top of a mountain which was over 2500 meters high, with the last part being basically a climb over rocks. I had previously been diagnosed with a torn ACL, however I decided to do the trip anyways.

The uphill climb was quite a challenge. It was a really hot day and many parts of the mountain were barren, exposing us to the sun. As you get to higher elevations, the sun becomes stronger and you can burn yourself quite easily. It also becomes a bit harder to walk, as the air becomes thinner.

The walk on the gravel and dirt path was not that much of a problem, however I started having problems when we got closer to the top. There the gravel and dirt path ended and you had to climb over rocks in order to be able to reach the top of the mountain.

There were a bunch of other people trying to do the same thing as us and sometimes you had to overtake them or watch your back when some people were trying to overtake you. At one point I had gotten a second wind and felt a bit more energetic, despite the thinner and heavier air, and so decided that I wanted to reach the top faster.

There was a lady who was climbing over the rocks quite slowly and I decided that I didn’t want to be stuck behind her and so needed to get in front of her quickly. I hopped on one rock, then another and lastly I had to jump on top of another rock. I got in front of her, but then I heard a pop and felt that I tore something.

The knee is made up of several ligaments and I was afraid that I had torn some other ones as well besides the already torn ACL. I started mentally blaming myself for becoming so reckless and not paying attention to where I was going and also the speed I was going at. The mountains are a dangerous territory and one little mistake could have grave consequences.

However I decided to continue. I was very close to the top and maybe there was no damage, so I decided to go on and try to reach the top. However with each step, I could feel the knee and I was becoming more and more mentally agitated and angry at myself.

I was very close to the top. I was pondering what to do. At that point I decided not to risk it and instead to turn back. I would have loved to have reached the top and feel the pride of a great achievement, as I looked down at everything below me.

But it was not worth it. I was risking aggravating my injury. This could have grave consequences for the rest of my life. One short moment of glory was not worth a lifetime of misery. If I turned back now, I could always still come back and repeat this when I got better, but if I did permanent damage to myself, it could affect everything.

Plus there was still the way back down. The way down was a horrendous journey, since with each step, I was putting a lot of pressure on the knee and it hurt really bad. I felt like I was never going to make it, but pushed on, knowing that unlike reaching the top, there is no other decision, but to continue on down.

At the end, I made it down. Later I had the operation and had to undergo a tough rehabilitation process. In fact, I am still struggling to recover and my knee doesn’t feel as before. However I made the right decision by turning back at that point. Maybe I could have continued and not damaged myself further, but it was too much of a risk.

I hope that when I recover, I can still go back to the mountains and conquer them. I gave up in order to be prepared to fight another day.

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A common problem (among other problems) for most office workers, aka desk jockeys, is a stiff neck and shoulders. We often spend most of the day sitting in unnatural positions and that has a negative effect on our body. This causes all kinds of different pains in different parts of the body. The neck often ends up hurting a lot, which can even cause mobility problems in people. A lot of people also end up with a forward head posture, which makes them look weird.

Unfortunately most of us are stuck in our office jobs, so we cannot spend most of the day running around and doing other healthy activities, but there are certain things that you can do in order to relieve the pain and also make your neck and shoulders be a bit stronger and more elastic.

In order to illustrate the different stretches you can do, I found some videos on Youtube. Below is a short routine that you can do at your desk several times during the day:

Some other stretches you can do at home:

Read more:
Your Lifestyle Will Influence Whether You Get Fat

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However that is not the whole truth. The ratio of these matters and if it’s not in balance, then a lot of bad things can happen. Don’t just take my word for it, but also take a look at the scientific evidence.

So what are fatty acids and what about these omegas? Fatty acids are the building blocks of fats. They are a long chain of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen atoms which is capped by a carboxyl group at one of its ends, and a methyl group at the other end.

Fatty acids are classified on the number of carbon atoms in the chain, and also how many double bonds are in the molecule. So an omega-3 fatty acid has a double bond (C=C) at the third carbon atom from where the carbon chain ends, while an omega-6 fatty acid has a double bond at the sixth position from the end, with the end being the methyl group which caps off the fatty acid chains.

The word omega actually signifies the methyl end, while the word alpha is used for the beginning of the chain, the carboxyl group. So that’s where the word omega comes from in the name.

For some reason, whenever I hear these random Greek letters, I think of the Puff Daddy (the artist later known as P-Diddy) song “Come with Me” from the Godzilla soundtrack, which brings me back to my high school basketball days.

Now back to our discussion of the omegas. The most important omega-3 fatty acids for humans are the alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and the docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Some important examples of omega-6 fatty acids are linoleic acid (LA), and arachidonic acid (sometimes abbreviated as AA or ARA).

Linolenic acid (ALA), which is an omega-3 fatty acid, and linoleic acid (LA), which is an omega-6 fatty acid, are both considered essential for the human body, meaning that the body cannot manufacture them itself and they need to be taken in from outside sources (food).

So what roles do these omegas play in the human body? They have a variety of roles and functions that have a large effect on how healthy the human body is. Omega-3 fatty acids reduce inflammation in the body, keep the blood from clotting excessively, improve the insulin response and also regulate prostaglandin production.

Omega-6 fatty acids, on the other hand, promote an immune response of the body (for example through inflammation), promote the aggregation of platelets (which is good for blood clotting), are good for blood lipids, and also help in the regulation of metabolic functions.

Notice how the roles and effects of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids are in many ways opposite to each other. For example, omega-3 reduce inflammation in the body, while omega-6 promote it. Inflammation is good for fighting diseases, however too much of it is harmful for the body.

That’s why the need for a balance between omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids in your body. These fatty acids have competitive interactions between each other and that’s why a balance between them is needed. Health is about balance.

However the balance in our bodies is out of whack, due to our diets. Sometimes the ratio between omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids is 10:1 or even 20:1. This has very serious effects on our health and is a very large contributing factor to people in the developed world suffering from such diseases as heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

Both omega-3 and omega-6 are important for you body, however they need to be in balance. So how much omega-3 you need to eat is dependent on how much omega-6 you are eating. Because of all the processed foods that are in stores, it is hard to maintain a balance between the two omegas.

Aim for a 1:1 balance, but even a 4:1 omega-6 to omega-3 balance is good.

The ratio between omega-6 and omega-3 used to be much more in balance in prehistory. Even in some recent hunter-gatherer societies the ratio was favorable. For example, before the 20th century among the Greenland Inuit, this ratio was 1:2 (even 1:4 in some cases) in favor of omega-3 fatty acids (because of a diet rich in fish and seafood).

However, throughout the course of human history this ratio changed and this is probably one of the factors that contributed to humans getting sick more often in modern times. The most significant change was during the industrial revolution, when the ratio changed drastically due to the wide availability of vegetable oils produced.

Among developed societies, the ratio is most favorable in Japan, due to their diet, and you can see that that country suffers much less from diseases such as heart diseases.

So what can you do to bring down this ratio towards a better balance? Well you need to start eating foods higher in omega-3 and bring down the amount of food rich in omega-6. The best source of omega-3 are fish, different types of seafood and marine algaes.

We are especially deficient in EPA and DHA. These can be synthesized from ALA (found in foods from plants such as flax, pumpkin seeds and walnuts), however this process is inefficient and limited. This means you need to eat foods that already contain EPA and DHA (such as fish, seafood, marine algae).

The ALA to EPA and DHA conversion is also highly dependent on such things as iron, zinc and pyridoxine. So you need to have these things in your body as well. Iron can be found in different types of animal sources, but also bananas.

Grass-fed meat is also the way to go (as it is high in omega-3 from the different grasses that the animals ate), however most meat today is from animals fed on grain-based feeds and so lacks the omega-3 component. You can also supplement omega-3 by eating fish oil capsules.

The other part of bringing the ratio back into balance is by eating less foods that have large omega-6 components. This doesn’t mean cutting them out all together, as many foods that contain omega-6 fatty acids are very good for you and omega-6 fatty themselves are also needed by the body.

Look at the chart below and try to cut down on the vegetable oils which have a high omega-6 ratio as opposed to other fatty acids.

Remember also to cut down on processed foods, as they are also high in omega-6 fatty acids, and are generally considered less healthy.

Eating more foods with omega-3 fatty acids also has other benefits. For example, they have a positive effect on the eyes and vision. They can also help you in your quest to gain weight and get big. If your body knows how to partition nutrients well, then you can gain a lot of weight and size based on lean muscle, without adding too much fat.

Insulin plays a large role in this. When you have too many omega-6 fatty acids you can have a chronic inflamed state, which is bad for insulin sensitivity.

So you need to bring the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio more into balance in order to increase insulin sensitivity and to get your nutrients to be partitioned better, leading to lean muscle gains without too much extra fat being stored.

Now that I’ve explained to you the potential dangers of a high omega-6 to omega-3 imbalance and the benefits that omega-3 can have for your body, I hope that you examine your diet and try to bring the ratio to a reasonable level.

Your body needs both omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids, as they both play an important role. However the amount of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids that you take in needs to be in balance. That way, you can get the positive benefits of both and be much more healthy than ever before.

 

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John Cisna, who is a teacher in Iowa, decided to go on an all McDonald’s diet and with it managed to lose weight and lower his cholesterol!

He had the kids in his class plan his meals based on the nutritional value of each meal. “What is cool is when you see one kid say, ‘It’s not McDonald’s that makes you fat. It’s your choices that make you fat,'” Cisna said. This gives further credence to your lifestyle determining whether you are healthy or not.

Is this the start of a new weight loss dieting fad? The McDonald’s Diet?

Read more:
Guy loses weight by eating McDonald’s

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Before the injury I was finally getting into a good lifting and sports routine, gaining weight and building muscles. I slowly wanted to get back to playing basketball again. Of course, a big part of basketball is being able to jump higher. So I started doing plyometrics exercises. These types of exercises are a really good way of making your muscles more elastic and thereby be able to perform many activities more explosively and efficiently.

I started off with different types of plyometrics and at one point incorporated a sideways plyometrics exercise, where you have one of your legs on a chair and the other on the floor. You then jump, pushing off the foot on the chair, you fly above the chair and land on the other side of the chair, with the foot that was on the ground now being on the chair, and the foot that was on the chair, now being on the floor. You then repeat this from the other side of the chair, jump over the chair and land on the other side again. So you repeat this sequence for maybe 10 jumps. I was doing this and at one point kind of stopped concentrating on the exercise. I landed, my knee buckled, I heard a pop and in a surreal moment collapsed on the floor. After that, I managed to get up, but my knee was busted.

I rested the knee a bit and actually got up to go on the in place skiing type machine where you kind of slide your legs up and down as if you were doing cross-country skiing. I was hoping that nothing serious happened. I got home rested the knee a bit and was reading my symptoms on the internet and fearing the worst (all the symptoms were pointing to an ACL rupture). I went to sleep and got up the next day to go to work, however my knee had swollen up and was hurting. I had trouble walking. I went to work and was sitting there for a while, but the pain was not going away. So I decided to go to the hospital to get it checked out. The doctor checked it out, sent me to another room, they checked it out there. Then I went back to the original doctor and in came the verdict. Supposedly just a big sprain with a lot of liquid in the knee, but that it should subside and I should just rest the knee. So I was happy! That was sometime at the end of April.

However the months were passing by and I still had problems with the knee. I couldn’t do any sports or anything involving the knee and it wasn’t getting better. Always be ready to get a second opinion, because according to the statistics the vast majority of ruptured ACLs are not diagnosed properly the first time and people don’t even know about the fact that they have a ruptured ACL.

So in July, I went to another doctor to see what’s up. He sent me to get a magnetic resonance test. In a few days came the final verdict: complete rupture of the ACL, with some other minor damage to some other parts of the knee like the patella. Surgery was imminent!

Once an ACL is ruptured you cannot repair it and instead need to get a graft from somewhere else to be put in place of the ACL. Basically there are three choices of where the graft can come from: from a tendon in the patella, a tendon in your hamstring, or a cadaver (meaning a dead person’s ACL). If you are an athlete, then the logical choice is to get the transplant from your patella, as that is the one that will limit your future movement the least (but there is the risk of prolonged pain when kneeling).

I had the surgery at the beginning of September. I went in, they put me to sleep and that was that. The next thing I remember was the nurses trying to wake me up. It was extremely cold and my knee was hurting and I was feeling dizzy and disoriented. After a while of lying there, I managed to get up, take the crutches that were provided to me and start moving, hopping on one leg. However I was feeling extremely dizzy and almost managed to pass out. I was completely out of air as well and thirsty. I had apparently also had some sort of an allergic reaction to the antibiotics given to me during surgery. I managed to get to the car, was driven home and lay in my bed. I had a huge cast over the knee and was experiencing severe pain. For the next 3 days, the pain was so intense, that I was wishing that I had never done the surgery at all, but luckily the pain was getting better, especially with the help of pain killers. After the surgery, be prepared to experience some of the worst pain that you have ever felt.

After that you are supposed to slowly start trying to get the knee and muscles around it to start waking up again. You have to start off slowly however. The first thing that I did was just moving the foot around and trying to clench the quadriceps muscle. After the surgery, the quadriceps completely goes away and you cannot even activate it. It feels just like liquid blubber.

In order to get back to normal, you have to start rehabbing your knee. It takes a long time (even up to a year). There are different phases of rehabilitation:

Phase 1 (weeks 1 and 2):
You have to rest your knee, but slowly try to start strengthening it. Your knee is still in that huge cast and you are using crutches to move around. Don’t try to do too much, as the graft is still in the process of setting itself in place.

Phase 2 (weeks 3 to 6):
After the end of week 3, you can get rid of the crutches and start walking normally. It’s still going to be hard to walk though. You also need to start with a rehab program in order to strengthen the muscles around the knee and also in order to activate the quadriceps muscle.

Phase 3 (week 7 and 4 months):
At this phase you should continue with your rehab routine and add more things, such as cycling on a stationary bike, swimming and other things. The exercises are straight-line work.

Phase 4 (after 4 or 5 months):
Slow progression into more sports related workouts. At one point, you can start practicing pivoting again.

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Here are some knee strengthening exercises:

During rehab, you also need to remember that you should focus not just on strengthening the knee (and the quads), but also other muscles, since these are all parts of a large muscle chain. You need to get all the muscles in the chains strengthened, otherwise they will be weak, and your entire muscle chain will be out of whack, leading to a higher probability of injury. The different muscles that you should also strengthen are for example the hamstrings, calves, foot muscles, glutes, back muscles and your core.

The ACL tear is a common sports injury which can take an athlete out for the entire season.

this post is a work in progress, I will update it with some exercises to do during the rehabilitation process

Muscle fibers form in a process called myogenesis. In this process different myoblasts are fused. This fusion results in long cylindrical cells that have more than one nucleus and are called myofibers. Myofibers are further made up of myofibrils, which are in turn made up of sarcomeres, which are the basic units of cells in muscles. These sarcomeres repeat one after another to form the muscle.

Sarcomeres are made up of different types of protein. The different proteins that make up the sarcomeres can be described as long and fibrous and function by sliding past each other when the muscles contract. There are several types of protein that make up sarcomeres, however the most important are myosin (which is thick) and actin (which is thin). They are the primary building blocks and also very important for muscle contraction. Myosin and actin bind to each other, while the myosin head also binds to ATP (source of energy for muscle movements). Myosin and actin act on each other and this makes the muscle fibers generate tension. With the aid of motor neurons this tension is what creates muscle contraction. While myosin and actin are probably the most important proteins that make up the sarcomeres, there are also other proteins, for example titin and also nebulin.

Types of Muscle Fibers
There are two broad types of fibers:

1) slow twitch fibers (Type I)

2) fast twitch fibers (Type II)
Fast twitch fibers are further subdivided into two subcategories, Type IIa and Type IIb fibers.

Whether a muscle fiber is slow twitch or fast twitch depends largely on two factors, the type of myosin present and also on oxidative phosphorylation. Oxidative phosphorylation is a process after which ATP is formed (ATP = fuel).

slow twitch (Type I)

• slow to contract
• red in appearance (because of all the blood vessels)
• can sustain the contraction of muscles for long periods of time
• contain large number of myoglobin
• contain a large number of big mitochondria which helps in the use of oxygen
• good in use of oxygen to produce ATP
• relatively fatigue resistant, but low output of force
• good for endurance activities

fast twitch (Type IIa)

• quick muscle contractions
• usually pinkish in appearance
• use a method of anaerobic glycolysis to produce ATP
• can also use aerobic ways of producing ATP
• not resistant to fatigue
• middle of the muscle spectrum (intermediate)

fast twitch (Type IIb)

• very easy to get tired
• generate the most power and force
• have a large diameter
• low amounts of myoglobin
• contain few mitochondria
• contain high levels of creatine phosphate (which is required for energy)
• use anaerobic methods to produce ATP
• used in activities where a lot of force needs to be generated for extremely short amounts of time

How to exercise the different muscle fibers
The amount of muscle fibers that you have in your body will greatly influence how big you look. Most people have an even split of 50% to 50% of slow twitch to fast twitch muscle fibers. However there are some people who have a predominance of one type over another.

If you have a predominance of slow twitch fibers, then you will look skinny. So you will have to train hard in order to maximize those fast twitch fibers that you have, because they are the ones that have a much higher ability to grow bigger. Fast twitch muscle fibers are twice the size of slow twitch muscle fibers and also have a higher potential to get much bigger. So if you want to look bigger, you will have to concentrate your training on making those fast twitch muscle fibers expand and grow. So this means heavy loads and low reps. Or train like a sprinter. Those guys usually have a predominance of fast twitch fibers over slow twitch fibers. That could be because of genetics, but also training.

Training slow twitch muscle fibers requires a different strategy. In order to train them, you will need to do higher reps, shorter rest and higher volume (so more sets). Some scientific research shows that training can change fiber type, however it does not happen very often, so you cannot rely on it.

There are different types of strategies that can be adopted in order to maximize your gains and achieve your goals. Whatever strategy you choose, remember to train hard and push through your limits.