Muscle Repair

Have you increased your exercise as a part of your New Year's Resolution? Don't forget when you increase your exercise you also need to change your diet to help your body respond. When you work out you break down muscle and you need to repair the muscle with protein (amino acids) from your diet. Good examples of protein are eggs, fish, poultry, beef, cottage cheese. If you are wondering why I didn't mention beans or nuts as a good source of protein it's because they are not a 'good' source, but if you are vegetarian, they may be your only source.

From a nutritional standpoint, protein is scored from 0-100 based on it's amino acid content and the ability of those amino acids to sustain life. For example: the egg (white) is given a score of 100, if you only ate egg as your source of protein you would have healthy amino acid levels. Meats are given a score of 70-80 (depending on the meat), therefore you really need to eat other sources of protein to sustain healthy amino acid levels. Beans are only a score of 20-30, that's why vegetarians have to be very careful to eat a wide variety of beans in order to build their score to 100, to sustain a healthy body. You can also use supplemental proteins to increase your dietary protein --most health food stores carry whey protein, rice protein, pea protein and/or egg protein. Keep your body healthy to reduce injury and speed recovery!

Trina Seligman, N.D., L.Ac

Evergreen Integrative Medicine, L.L.P.
11520 NE 20th ST.
Bellevue, WA
98004
www.eimed.com
ph: 425-646-4747
fax: 425-646-4770