New research in The FASEB Journal suggests that rats fed homobrassinolide, found in the mustard plant, produced an anabolic effect, and increased appetite and muscle mass, as well as the number and size of muscle fibers.
Bethesda, MDIf you are looking to lean out, add muscle mass, and get ripped, a new research report published in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) suggests that you might want to look to your garden for a little help. That's because scientists have found that when a specific plant steroid was given orally to rats, it triggered a response similar to anabolic steroids, with minimal side effects. In addition, the research found that the stimulatory effect of homobrassinolide (a type of brassinosteroid found in plants) on protein synthesis in muscle cells led to increases in lean body mass, muscle mass and physical performance.
"We hope that one day brassinosteroids may provide an effective, natural, and safe alternative for age- and disease-associated muscle loss, or be used to improve endurance and physical performance," said Slavko Komarnytsky, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Plants for Human Health Institute, FBNS at North Carolina State University in Kannapolis, N.C. "Because some plants we eat contain these compounds, like mustards, in the future we may be able to breed or engineer these plants for higher brassinosteroid content, thus producing functional foods that can treat or prevent diseases and increase physical performance."
To make this discovery, Komarnytsky and colleagues exposed rat skeletal muscle cells to different amounts of homobrassinolide and measured protein synthesis in cell culture. The result was increased protein synthesis and decreased protein degradation in these cells. Healthy rats then received oral administration of homobrassinolide daily for 24 days. Changes in body weight, food consumption, and body composition
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Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology