A person loses an average of 30% of their muscle mass by the age of 60, but thanks to a new development, we can remain strong and independent into old age – and even have more muscle mass than when we were younger!
But what is the miraculum that can not only stop muscle loss, but even reverse it? Believe it or not, it’s protein… that’s right, protein.
But these results are not based on eating more protein or drinking protein shakes. Rather, they are achieved by the body producing more protein.
Correct, you get the body to build up more protein. But first, let’s look at why proteins are so important.
Proteins form muscles, bones, skin and hair. They form connective tissue that holds our body together. They act as messenger substances in our body, form hormones, immune cells, enzymes and are responsible for the entire brain chemistry.
Think about what this means in reverse. If we don’t have enough protein, we lose muscle mass, our hair becomes thinner and our skin sags. Our bones and immune system become weaker.
But that’s not all. Our sex drive decreases, we become more anxious and depressed. We fall more and more often and then suffer from hip fractures, from which we find it increasingly difficult to recover.
Surely you now understand why proteins are so important and why it is bad for our health if our body has too little of them.
But where do we get all these proteins from? Most people believe that we get them from food, but this is not entirely true. The truth is that our body produces these proteins itself according to its requirements. But our diet is important because it provides us with aminocarboxylic acids, the building blocks from which our body builds proteins. In plain language, this means that our body cannot build proteins without aminocarboxylic acids.
How it works
Let’s assume you eat protein sources such as meat or fish. These protein sources enter the stomach, where the digestion process begins. Our digestive system breaks down the proteins into amino acids.
These aminocarboxylic acids first pass through the small intestine and then enter the bloodstream, through which they are distributed within the body. The body uses these aminocarboxylic acids to build exactly the proteins it needs. Some of the aminocarboxylic acids go into the muscle, others into the organ cells, others are used to produce hormones, etc.
The dietary protein trap
But not all aminocarboxylic acids are broken down into proteins. Some are converted into glucose, i.e. sugar, and burned for energy. This is a relic of our ancestors. When we were still cavemen, food was scarce. So we had to be able to draw energy from any food source, regardless of what we ate.
From berries, for example, because they contain carbohydrates that are converted into energy. From nuts, because they contain fats that are converted into energy. Or freshly killed squirrels, because part of the meat is converted into lean muscle mass and the rest is converted into glucose for energy.
The right analysis
So how can we find out whether our body is using the proteins for muscle or converting them into excess glucose? Scientists and studies have already answered this question.
Aminocarboxylic acids are known to contain nitrogen. When aminocarboxylic acids are used to build proteins, the nitrogen remains in the body as a protein component. However, if aminocarboxylic acids are converted to sugar, the nitrogen is split off and excreted in the urine.
So all we have to do to find out whether a food is converted to protein or sugar is to measure the nitrogen content in our urine.
This method is also known as net nitrogen utilization (NNU) measurement
And this is how the NNU measurement works:
If a dietary protein has an NNU of 100%, this means that our urine has zero nitrogen content and the body uses 100% of the aminocarboxylic acids from that dietary protein to build body protein. That’s great!
On the other hand, if a dietary protein has an NNU of 10 %, this means that our body only uses 10 % of the aminocarboxylic acids to build up body protein, which in turn means that it converts 90 % of the aminocarboxylic acids into sugar. That is bad!
But what is the best source of dietary protein with the highest NNU? Science tells us that breast milk fulfills this criterion with an NNU of 49%. This makes sense, as infants need an efficient source of dietary protein. But we’re not babies anymore, so what’s the next best source of protein?
The next best source of protein is whole egg with an NNU of 48%. But it has to be whole egg. If we only use egg white, as many of the so-called health experts proclaim, we only have an NNU of 17%. Why? Because the egg yolk contains the essential aminocarboxylic acid methionine. If we exclude the egg yolk, we significantly limit the nutritional value of whole egg for building up protein.
Meat, poultry and fish come after whole egg. They equally have an NNU of 32 %. From then on, however, things go noticeably downhill.
The truth about protein shakes
We’re all familiar with the commercial protein powders that are said to be great for building muscle. If these are your preferred source of protein, you’re about to be disappointed because protein powders only have an NNU of 17%. This applies to all protein powders made from soy, milk or eggs. An NNU of 17% means that 83% of the protein is converted to sugar.
And finally, what about spirulina, a well-known protein supplement derived from algae? Depending on the manufacturer, spirulina has an NNU of between 0 and 6 %. This makes it practically worthless as a source of protein.
Let us now return to the initial problem. Why do people lose so much muscle mass as they get older? There are 3 main reasons for this:
- You do not consume enough protein
- You are eating the wrong protein sources. And…
- They do not digest the proteins
As you can see, it is not enough to eat the right proteins; we also need to digest these proteins and break them down into aminocarboxylic acids.
Unfortunately, the older we get, the weaker our digestive system becomes. We produce less stomach acid and digestive enzymes. And this can set a downward spiral in motion.
As mentioned at the beginning, enzymes are actually proteins. So if we have a protein deficit, we have correspondingly fewer digestive enzymes, which in turn means we don’t digest food adequately, which increases our protein deficit even more, which in turn leads to even less enzyme production…a literal chain reaction.
How nice and easy would it be if we weren’t dependent on our digestive system to break down dietary protein first so that the body can build new body protein? What if we could skip this process altogether and just consume aminocarboxylic acids instead? The aminocarboxylic acids would go straight into the blood and then be used to build muscles, bones, connective tissue, hormones, enzymes and much more.
Well, this is exactly the insight that led to the development of Daminoc®.
The right composition
And it is not enough to simply buy any aminocarboxylic acid product. Why? Because our development work has shown us that it is worthless to simply consume aminocarboxylic acids at random, but that the right composition and quantity of aminocarboxylic acids is more important.
The explanation is simple: we know that proteins consist of aminocarboxylic acids. Some of these aminocarboxylic acids are produced completely independently by our body. We have to consume 10 aminocarboxylic acids with our food. These are the essential aminocarboxylic acids.
Now you might think that the body would convert all of these 10 essential aminocarboxylic acids into body protein. And this is where the big mistake lies, because as with so many things, the issue is somewhat more complex.
It has been shown that we cannot simply consume these 10 aminocarboxylic acids at will, but that they must also be dosed in the right proportions. Otherwise we consume too much of one aminocarboxylic acid and get too little of another.
To illustrate this concept, let’s imagine we are the owner of a bicycle production facility. Let’s say we have a plethora of handlebars, saddles and frames, but only one set of tires. In this case, it doesn’t matter how many of the other spare parts we have, because if we only have one set of tires, we can only produce one bike! The rest of the parts are rejects.
The same happens if we do not consume the aminocarboxylic acids in the right composition. Let’s remember that our body only utilizes 32% of aminocarboxylic acids when we eat meat. The reason for this is that the aminocarboxylic acids in meat are not present in the correct composition because it is not species specific. The remaining aminocarboxylic acids are therefore converted into sugar.
Daminoc® contains all 10 essential aminocarboxylic acids in the perfect, species-specific composition. How do we know that this is the perfect composition?
Because the tests with the DAMINOC® formulation resulted in an NNU of 99%
This means that 99% of the aminocarboxylic acids it contains are used by our body to build up protein and only 1% is broken down into waste.