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Hiya,
Thanks, I'm going to go dig out the article and add to library---it
would be great to have the funding available to do a controlled study on
recoveries under endurance conditions when protein/aa levels were
manipulated to find out correlations. For that matter, it would be
great to have more funding, period ;-)
The reason why I suggested possibly an improvement in performance when
lysine is supplemented is because I saw an improvement in my own horses
when I increased protein levels from 7 to 11% by adding a small amount
of SBM. However, there were other factors which may have also had a
hand, so this in itself is hardly Empirical Research.
The other, primary reason why I suggested a bit of added protein is
this. Last year, I was asked for nutrition suggestions for a barn of
horses all being used for polo. Despite conditioning and good care,
there were very poor hair coats, brittle feet, not coming on with muscle
as they should have been, and very tired and muscle sore. The feed was
all cereal grass hay (primarily wheat, as a matter of fact) plus corn
grain, corn oil and vitamin supplements. AND the hay wasn't really very
good quality to boot, but they had a huge barnful of it and weren't
going to just throw it away. It wasn't moldy or dusty, just quite
mature, harvested WELL past the milk stage quality that Lari Shea liked
and was able to obtain for her very successful horses. The polo barn
didn't feed any alfalfa at all and the overall protein level was around
7-8%, but was also specifically very deficient in lysine---each horse
was only getting maybe 5 grams, when 23-28 grams was recommended by
NRC. I thought a better aa balance would be helpful, so suggested
adding a pound of SBM per day and feeding a grain mix rather than just
straight corn. I think this new protein level was around 12%, but the
lysine was now around 24 grams per day. Undoubtedly the overall aa
profile was better than before, so just lysine itself wasn't the big
thing all by itself. Every single horse showed a HUGE improvement in
overall health, attitude and performance within a few weeks to a month,
including in their recoveries after a chukker.
HOWEVER, in light of Sarah's data regarding protein levels and metabolic
failure in her study, it's possible it may have been just a different
kind of improvement in recoveries. Although the polo horses DID recover
more quickly after hard exercise, and have less muscle soreness, this
may not have been true improved *metabolic* recovery. It might very
well be that the increased overall muscle mass meant that each
individual muscle fiber no longer had to work as hard to get the same
amount of work done, and so recovered more quickly. We didn't do blood
work, but there may have been other contributing factors, like anemia or
who knows what else.
Here's another really fascinating thing---I didn't realize this at the
time, but the horses were previously supplemented with a kinda sleazy
"performance booster" amino acid powder someone had sold them. Not a
known name or anything like that, but it was supposed to be a
"concentrated source of amino acids for maximum performance" and
contained alot of nifty sounding stuff, few of them recognizable. I
tend to prefer providing a balanced ration over supplementation whenever
possible, so I talked them into throwing it away. As Sarah said, it
could be that whatever aa's were in the "performance mix" were blocking
the absorption of the the other amino acids the horses REALLY needed
just for good health.
This isn't to say that supplementing with specific aa's may not have
some benefits, just an example, as it turns out, that such
supplementation should only be done by the VERY knowledgable, not
haphazardly.
maybe it's the nutritionist training where
> NOTHING is ever simple or straight forward!
No kidding! :-D
Thanks for the post. See ya.
Susan
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