Transcription
HMBB, hold my beer, or the slightly less interesting beta hydroxy beta methylyrate. I'm pretty late to the game, considering that there have already been videos of plenty discussing its effectiveness with a mixture of opinions. But what if we looked at 20 plus studies on the topic? And can we get some more concrete answers then? Yes, we can. It's not straightforward, but I will do my best to give you clear actionable input by the end.
Generally, the idea behind HMBB is that when you consume it, it reduces muscle breakdown and increases muscle protein synthesis. I'll be making separate content on the specifics of that. But for now, in a very general sense, just know that it is primarily known to reduce breakdown of proteins within the muscle cells and it has some effect at raising protein synthesis, which would theoretically increase muscle size and potentially muscle function.
So, aside from how it's supposed to work, do we actually see evidence that supplementing with HMBB improves muscle, especially as we get older? For that, we can lean on two similar but slightly distinct analyses of many studies. In these analyses, researchers searched for all the randomized control trials that they could find that compared supplementing HMBB to people not supplementing. In this one, 21 trials were included, including people over 50 years old, men and women. And when looking at muscle mass, we have six of the 21 studies on the left side. Each box is the result of each study. The more right of the red vertical line there, the greater the muscle effect of HMBB supplementation. That green diamond at the bottom is the overall effect. All the studies combined. Clearly, it sits to the right.
Now, we can do something similar for muscle function because muscle size does not always translate one-to-one with improved muscle function. And we clearly see an effect here as well. Again, indicated by the diamond with many more studies included, moving to the right and statistically confirmed. Okay, so to put it simply, HMBB supplementation leads to improvements in muscle size and function in people 50 and older.
The thing is though, does that necessarily make it worthwhile to supplement with? Well, that depends on a number of things, some of which are addressed in the same analysis. In the study, they performed a subgroup analysis. Ooh, subgroup analyses. I like those. Which means that the researchers didn't just look at the total 2,000 participants, but bucketed the data into different defined groups. For example, if people exercised or not, or by dose or by sex, and so on.
Now, while HMBB has been discussed primarily because it supposedly prevents muscle breakdown, which might play in favor of people getting older and possibly losing muscle over time as they don't exercise, it turns out that HMBB is ineffective if exercise is not paired with it. Beyond that, when bucketing based on dosing, dosing matters as well. Studies using too low of a dose seem to indicate reduced effectiveness. Most effective studies use 3g.
Even beyond these two important points, there is more to consider. Some weaknesses in the evidence that may sway if you want to invest in HMBB or not. Before we touch on those, there are a combination of supplements that seem to supercharge HMBB's effectiveness, both for exercisers and surprisingly for non-exercisers as well. And in fact, there are other considerations that make a difference on HMBB's effectiveness. If you're interested, I'm covering all those in the extended analysis, which includes more studies. You also get an accompanying article along with a whole library of other analyses in video, written, and even podcast form, as I release a regular podcast for the Physionic Insiders where this is all kept. Membership as an insider also comes with all these perks right over here. So, feast thine eyes. The link to access everything is in the description. I'll see you over there.
Before we go on to some of these important nuances, the summary up to this point is that HMBB should be dosed at 3g minimum and should be paired with exercise if taken alone. Now, these nuances, these weaknesses in evidence that I'm alluding to, come down to A, some mild statistical imperfections that I won't bore you with. B, the quality of the evidence, according to the researchers, is quite low in some metrics. And C, there's an issue with comparing against placebos and regular control groups.
In this context, I'll skip to the quality of the evidence, which isn't top tier by any means. For one, the researchers fail to incorporate studies from an unbiased database called Clinical Trials. That database ensures that studies that do not get published for whatever reason are still required to hand over their results, good or bad. That would mean that this analysis may be missing a few studies that would indicate no effect of HMBB.
The final aspect is the comparisons used in these trials. So, both meta-analyses, which mostly agree with one another, even when extending up to people with sarcopenia, so age-related muscle loss in your 70s and 80s and beyond, use either placebos or don't give the comparison group anything. In the purest sense, that's fine. Well, the placebos are fine, but considering that we're discussing muscle growth and function, it would be ideal to compare against proteins, especially leucine-rich proteins, which is the amino acid that HMBB comes from, leucine. There are some studies comparing leucine to HMBB, but they're short and or underdose HMBB, except for one which indicated no preference between HMBB or leucine supplementation. However, the study was in young individuals, so not the main population or goal of interest that we're pursuing here. In addition, the type of HMBB might matter because many studies use calcium HMBB. Yet some reviews indicate free HMBB may be superior to calcium-bound HMBB as it is more readily absorbed.
All right, that was a lot. Putting it all together, where does that leave us? Should we take HMBB or not to prevent muscle loss like sarcopenia? Well, it does seem that HMBB is effective for people 50 and older. We just don't know if it's uniquely effective over other muscle-promoting molecules. As it stands, when compared against placebo, it does seem to have an effect. That's point number one. Number two, the evidence more strongly points to pairing HMBB with exercise, especially resistance training. So, consuming 3g of free HMBB per day and resistance training indicates the best effects. Number three, although we're discussing effectiveness, none of the results in these studies indicate massive effects. Yes, it's effective at improving muscle and strength, but it isn't going to turn you into a Schwarzenegger.
So, is HMBB for you? Comment below if you'll give it a try. No one will respond, but that's what all the YouTubers say, and then they never engage with the audience. I love that energy. What I find better than HMBB because it has excellent evidence behind it for older folks is creatine. I go over the evidence right here. I will respond. I'm not an ass.