Carbs Help Muscles Rebuild Faster After Exhaustion
Dietary carbohydrate and postexercise synthesis of proglycogen and macroglycogen in human skeletal muscle.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
After running really hard, your muscles need to refill their energy stores. Eating lots of carbs helps them rebuild faster and store more energy in a special big form.
No biological mechanisms were identified in this study. This may be an epidemiological, observational, or survey-based study that reports associations rather than proposing causal biological pathways.
Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses
Max 100Randomized Controlled Trials
Max 90Cohort Studies
Max 72Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional Studies
Max 44Case Reports & Case Series
Max 30Expert Opinion & Narrative Reviews
Max 537 / 72
Evidence Score
Groups of people are followed over time to see who develops an outcome. Strong for identifying risk factors and associations, but cannot prove causation as firmly as RCTs.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
After running really hard, your muscles need to refill their energy stores. Eating lots of carbs helps them rebuild faster and store more energy in a special big form.
No biological mechanisms were identified in this study. This may be an epidemiological, observational, or survey-based study that reports associations rather than proposing causal biological pathways.
Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses
Max 100Randomized Controlled Trials
Max 90Cohort Studies
Max 72Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional Studies
Max 44Case Reports & Case Series
Max 30Expert Opinion & Narrative Reviews
Max 537 / 72
Evidence Score
Groups of people are followed over time to see who develops an outcome. Strong for identifying risk factors and associations, but cannot prove causation as firmly as RCTs.
Publication
Authors
Adamo KB, Tarnopolsky MA, Graham TE
Related Content
Claims (6)
Right after a super-hard workout, eating lots of carbs makes your muscles start rebuilding their first energy store (proglycogen) three times faster than if you eat fewer carbs.
Between 4 and 24 hours after a hard workout, your muscles keep rebuilding their first energy store no matter how many carbs you eat, but the bigger energy store only grows if you eat lots of carbs.
After a really hard workout, eating a lot of carbs helps your muscles rebuild a special type of stored energy (macroglycogen) much better than eating fewer carbs.
After a hard workout, your muscles keep making the big energy store only if you eat a lot of carbs — if you eat few carbs, that big store doesn’t grow at all over two days.
Right after a super-hard workout, only about 1 in 8 of your muscle’s energy stores is in the big storage form — but if you eat lots of carbs afterward, that big store grows to nearly half of all your muscle energy.