Lysine Increases My Muscle Mass

natedawggh

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Last year when I was losing weight and fixing my health, I experienced an effortless increase in my muscle mass. I've still maintained an appreciable amount but, in spite of finally adding strength training, noticed the muscle wasn't coming as easily as it had before. A few weeks ago I decided to start using lysine again regularly (some of you who've followed my posts may remember my previous experience with it...if you have questions please search my previous posts on lysine), and suddenly again have been experiencing the same easy kind of increase in muscle mass. TBC I'm not going to the gym more than about 1.5 times a week on average.

I'm not sure exactly why lysine would have this effect, but I'd guess that serotonin has some catabolic properties which the administration of lysine, by reducing nitric oxide and serotonin, would eliminate, allowing more muscle to grow.

In addition, my previous use of lysine reduced for a time the strength and duration of erections (by no means made them impossible), since it reduces NO, which effect faded with extended use. But that has not happened this time. I have a hunch that nitric oxide is some kind of back-up erection mechanism and that a healthy body can get and maintain an erection without it (or very little anyway). In fact I feel like they are more robust than before. I have also felt that lysine enhances my quality of sleep and helped restore my hair loss, both effects perhaps by the reduction in serotonin.

I do believe it is one of those supplements you should take a break from periodically, for instance because nitric oxide stimulates the release of stem cells when needed, and it'd be good to let the body do what it needs naturally from time to time. I also noticed a slight persistent cough after taking it for six months without a break, which went away after a break. It can also make you a little dizzy or spacy at first, probably from the rapid reduction in brain serotonin. I also noticed this effect after cessation of lysine. I would also like to emphasize here the importance of avoiding silica in supplements. For me it causes severe itching and skin problems.

Lysine seems to be effective at smaller doses (I take 500 mg a day), and even seems to work for a few days after cessation, unless a large meal of tryptophan is eaten.
 
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Dopamine

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A scoop of mi-cellar casein contains around 2g of lysine so I wonder if you would get the benefits of lysine from just taking casein or if there are effects that only appear in isolation from other aminos.
 

johnwester130

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I have taken it before bed, maybe for about 2 years now.

It's a powerful supplement, great for skin
 

Dopamine

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johnwester130

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I have incredibly mixed feelings about it.

I have sometimes had bad experiences, good experiences with lysine.

My new solution is to take supplements , theanine, taurine, lysine/ zinc copper with a glass of milk, so the body doesn't reject them.

If you take it with water, you definitely get a stress response and shock state, also the water dilutes the minerals in the body anyway . Taking supplements with a glass of milk seems to trick the body into recognising them as food.
 

charlie

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If you take it with water, you definitely get a stress response and shock state, also the water dilutes the minerals in the body anyway . Taking supplements with a glass of milk seems to trick the body into recognising them as food.
Very interesting, thank you. :hattip
 

magnesiumania

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I understand this thread is a couple years old, anyone care to bring it up to date with a breif post?
 

Terma

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I spent a limited amount of time looking into the importance of Carnitine in things skeletal due to own issues. It's particularly important for bone, chondrocytes, etc. anything structural (these are new-ish):
Sci-Hub | L-Carnitine and Isovaleryl L-Carnitine Fumarate Positively Affect Human Osteoblast Proliferation and Differentiation In Vitro. Calcified Tissue International, 76(6), 458–465 | 10.1007/s00223-004-0147-4
Sci-Hub | l-Carnitine Fumarate and Isovaleryl-l-Carnitine Fumarate Accelerate the Recovery of Bone Volume/Total Volume Ratio after Experimetally Induced Osteoporosis in Pregnant Mice. Calcified Tissue International, 82(3), 221–228 | 10.1007/s00223-008-9109-6

If you eat a high protein diet (sufficient methyl groups, notably from eggs high in both methionine and choline), then adding lysine on top - besides its direct effects - would be expected to increase carnitine slowly over time. If your body could achieve that, it's a crucial gain because simply take L-Carnitine orally can take 24 weeks just to make a dent in your cellular levels. I wonder if supplementing lysine is not more effective at least circumstantially or compared to pure L-Carnitine base (rather than the complexes like in the study, which the Isovaleryl- variety of carnitine fumarate I've never tried, never seen it sold). And it may lower the impact of the believed thyroid-lowering effect associated with carnitine somehow (which becomes somewhat logical if its focus were especially nighttime; however it may also just be better suited to bone maintenance in general).

Carnitine is crucial for skeletal and muscle growth during the nighttime, when carbs are the least appropriate as the liver must ensure a supply especially to the brain, keeping insulin low (which, if you violate by eating carbs, lowers growth hormone, of course), while muscle glycogen should be preferentially reserved for flight-or-fight events, otherwise you'd be at an evolutionary disadvantage (I still need to brush up on this more, but I recall Dr Loren Cordain documenting this). So nighttime is surely when saturated fat outshines carbs the most, and when carnitine is at its most pivotal.

So if you ask me the OP could have tried some extra stuff to narrow down the type of contribution by lysine. Christ, Sucuri firewall is now blocking the last of 2 IPs I was using to post here, **** this thing so hard. Guess it's time to stop posting, not doing this.
 

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