Previous work has shown that taking some extra protein before sleep might increases muscle mass gains.
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🥛Our new study suggests that you probably want a relative large dose before going to bed for stimulating muscle protein synthesis (MPS, the process that drives muscle growth) during the night.
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🌜We have previously shown that the ingestion of 40 g casein protein stimulates overnight MPS (1). In the present study, 30 g casein was not enough to stimulate overnight MPS. Even when extra leucine was added to the casein, it wasn’t enough.
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🍳This was a bit surprising, since ~20 g protein during the day optimizes MPS. So why didn’t observe an effect of 30 g protein prior to sleep? We think this is because the overnight period is much longer than the average period between meals during the day. 20 g protein may be enough to maximize MPS until your next meal (about 4 h later). But it seems you need at least 40 g protein to stimulate MPS over a ~7.5 h night.
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💡Practical takeaway:
You need a relatively large amount of pre-sleep protein (40 g or more) if you want to optimize overnight muscle protein synthesis.
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💪Want to know more about pre-sleep protein to support muscle growth overnight? Check out my open-access review on pre-sleep protein (4).
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📄Study:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28536184
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🗂Other references:
1) Protein ingestion before sleep improves postexercise overnight recovery. - PubMed - NCBI
2) Ingested protein dose response of muscle and albumin protein synthesis after resistance exercise in young men. - PubMed - NCBI
3) Myofibrillar muscle protein synthesis rates subsequent to a meal in response to increasing doses of whey protein at rest and after resistance exerc... - PubMed - NCBI
4) Pre-Sleep Protein Ingestion to Improve the Skeletal Muscle Adaptive Response to Exercise Training. - PubMed - NCBI