Protein plus alanine keeps your muscles in 'build mode' a little longer than protein alone, but the total amount built is the same.

Adding sugar or alanine to a protein drink doesn't make your muscles grow more than the protein drink alone in healthy young people.

Even though drinking whey protein makes more building-block amino acids show up in the blood during extreme dieting, those amino acids don’t get the muscle to grow like they normally would.

After working out, your body builds muscle best when you eat protein and carbs in a certain mix — about 1 part protein to 3.2 parts carbs. Eating more carbs beyond that might not help you build more muscle.

If you're a healthy, active young person working out, eating more protein helps your muscles recover — but only up to a point. After about 1.6 grams of protein per kilo of body weight each day, your body can't use any extra to build more muscle.

In young men who do not regularly lift weights, performing resistance exercise increases muscle protein synthesis by about 41% two hours after the workout. Consuming leucine-enriched amino acids and carbohydrates after the exercise increases synthesis by an additional 145% compared to baseline, indicating a combined effect greater than either intervention alone.