Is protein the only intake needed for muscle gain?

Question

There are three types of muscles in the human body: Skeletal Muscle, Smooth Muscle and Cardiac Muscle (heart muscle).

Among them, we focus on the weight gain of skeletal muscles only.

Skeletal muscles contain approximately 75% water, 20% protein, 1–10% fat, and 1% glycogen. [Section-3]

From these facts, if I kept the water aside. Then is it only the protein that is required for muscle growth? Since fat and glycogen are in minor amounts, discard them. Am I missing anything? I mean are there any other sources to build muscle gain along with protein?

Is cardiac muscle not smooth muscle? I did not know it was considered to be a class of its own. — Ryan Mortensen, Mar 17 '19 at 19:12

score 8 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 08 '19 at 08:50

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Yes you need lots of other things, minerals, vitamins, essential fats, carbohydrates. These are needed to build muscle and also to stay alive, while the muscle building happens.

That's why should keep a proper healthy diet, and with healthy I mean what's very commonly healthy: veggies, fruits, whole grain, then you can add additional protein to your diet.

answered Mar 08 '19 at 08:50

Christian

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These are needed to build muscle , why if muscle is made up of protein? – hanugm Mar 08 '19 at 08:53
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because your muscles are not made by attaching ground beef to your arms, the proteins are taken apart and rebuild and these intermediate steps needs nutrients to work. Also muscles are not 100% protein. – Christian Mar 08 '19 at 09:04
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Also you can't build muscle if you're malnourished and/or die. – DeeV Mar 08 '19 at 15:31
But all these are for the process and are not helpful directly for muscle building. – hanugm Mar 08 '19 at 22:32
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You no eat vitamin, you no build muscle. Doesnt get more direct. – Christian Mar 09 '19 at 08:16
@hanugm Ever heard of rabbit meat starvation? Where people who eat exclusively rabbit meat will starve to death? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_poisoning) True, I couldn't find any pictures of the victims of this, since it hasn't happened for a number of years, but looking more long term, death would probably slow down muscle gain a fair amount :) – Dark Hippo Mar 13 '19 at 09:14
@hanugm Another way to look at it is in the biochemistry world everything has a cost. Let's call this currency ATP (adenosine triphosphate). We get ATP from glucose, which we get from the carbs we eat. A backup source of ATP is also from fat. We need protein to rebuild muscle, yes, because amino acids are the building blocks. But you have to pay your workers. You don't pay the workers (the enzymes to build muscle) they will not work. – Lux Claridge Mar 14 '19 at 21:28
Myself and many others would disagree that whole or un-whole grains are to be considered part of a healthy diet. There is a lot of strong evidence indicating that they should be completely eliminated from human diets, maybe doubly true for whole grains as opposed to those without the bran, and that is completely aside from any discussion about carbs being good or bad. – Ryan Mortensen Mar 17 '19 at 19:20

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 12 '19 at 20:14

Think of it this way:

Picture your muscle as a brick wall. The muscle fibers are the bricks, and the connective tissue the mortar. Now near the wall, you have a huge lump of clay, which is the equivalent of protein.

For the protein to be of any use, it has to be turned into a brick. This is what your body does with proteins, is it denatures them, breaks them apart into amino acids, which get routed via the liver to the muscles that need repair. Once it gets there, structures in the muscle cells take the amino acids and weave them into muscle fibers (Bricks) that they then use to rebuild the wall (Muscle). All of this takes energy (glucose), and the other elements (vitamins, minerals, etc) are also used to help build/maintain the connective tissue.

So in the strictest, most elemental sense, yes, protein is what is used to fix/repair/build muscle itself. However none of that will happen without the other elements as well.

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 12 '19 at 19:39

Yes, protein is clear and needed. No question about it. However, we need fats too. If we don't take enough fat in, our hormones will not work properly 1. As far as I know tho, there are no essential carbohydrates. Therefore, I believe one can build muscle without eating any carbs. However, it would not be feasible, and one would need to eat the adequate amount of calories needed to build muscle without carbs. But theoretically, eating protein and fat (healthy ones) would be enough to build muscle.

Is protein the only intake needed for muscle gain?

3 Answers3