Hi Jordan,
Thanks for all you and the team do! I know there have been lots of discussions on MPS refractory period but I haven’t seen this specific question addressed. Let’s say you start eating a meal and then you get interrupted, so by the time you finish it has taken 45 minutes to complete it. Is there some threshold after you start eating that you need to complete the meal for it to count towards maximum MPS, or am I worrying about something that doesn’t really matter?
Also, how precise is the 3 hour window between bouts of MPS? If I start eating a meal at noon and finish at 12:15, does that mean I’m ok to eat again right at 3 PM or do I need to wait until 3:15 PM? I know this seems trivial but lots of days it seems like I have very small windows to get enough meals in without violating the refractory period.
Thanks Jordan! I kind of knew this was probably in the realm of things that aren’t super important compared to other aspects of training and nutrition, so I appreciate you humoring the question.
Jordan can please you cite the paper off which you base your meal timing recommendations and that states the “refractory period of protein synthesis”?
All I found was Latency and duration of stimulation of human muscle protein synthesis during continuous infusion of amino acids - PubMed. I don’t know how you can base recommendations off of a study which infused AAs intravenously, personally when I consume a meal I ingest a combination of macronutrients, I don’t usually use needles.
Like most things in science, there is no “one paper” that you’d be looking for here, but rather a collection of studies that show (and repeat) the same thing. I am impressed with your incredulity and subsequent tone here on the forum. Nice work!
We base our recommendations regarding MPS and protein frequency off of ~ 70 different studies all showing the same thing. That paper from 2001 is a great one and the mechanisms elucidated during that early study are very elegant.
Can you please tell me why you think bypassing the confounding aspects of GI uptake and hepatic metabolism in human subjects significantly alter MPS studies? That would be interesting to hear.
In any event, here are 3 more recent studies discussing the mechanism :
I’m politely asking the reasoning behind your recommendations.
I’m not an expert in MPS but I can say for sure that none of the studies you cite clearly demonstrate your hypothesis, they don’t negate it either but it remains an hypothesis. Like “bcaa pulsing” was an hypothesis which you recommended by the way and has been confuted.
I think that we need to see more papers to say that “MPS refractory period” is a reality. It is plausible but there is no conclusive evidence.
You are not politely asking anything, Simone. You posted a (seemingly) histrionic statement and now are replying with more (seemingly) attitude. If this is you being polite then you may consider working on that, lol.
And yes, each of the studies posted show exactly what is said even if they don’t explicitly call it what you’d like so I disagree that there is no conclusive evidence of MPS refractory period. That’s what it is and it is unfortunate that you did not read Atherton’s work on this, as I think his description of what is going on physiologically is very elegant. There are, additionally, plenty of studies using the terminology you’d like and you’re free to look them up.
BCAA pulsing hasn’t been proven “wrong” either, btw- it just hasn’t been proven to do anything either.