str8flexed’s BodyBlog

Hi Everyone,
First off an update on my injury.  Yesterday I went in
for another check up and this time I actually got to
speak with the surgeon.  He felt around on the tear
area and was very pleased with the progress.  He said
he believed I was healing ahead of schedule.  He
thinks I may be back lifting heavy in around 6 months
which is great news.  I also got to talk to him more
about the actual tear itself.  He told me that the
lower head of my pec completely tore away from my
tendon.  I had always assumed it was merely a partial
tear, but in fact I had completely separated the
tendon from the muscle!  The doctor told me that he
honestly was worried that the sutures would not hold,
but now he is very encouraged because it seems to be
healing well.  In his words “we’re holding that thing
together with shoe laces and bubble gum man.”  He
wants me to keep the brace on my arm for another 3
weeks to ensure that I do not tear my sutures away.
After 3 more weeks I’ll begin physical therapy and
start to get some of my function back.  As you can
imagine, I am thrilled to death with how well
everything has gone.  It really puts everything in
perspective when you have something you love very
nearly taken from you.  Next time you think about not
wanting to do a workout or complaining about how hard
your workout is, think about how lucky you are to be
able to workout and be healthy.  It’s a gift and we
should all be more appreciative of it, myself
included.

In other news:  I recently entered a new abstract in
the University of Illinois Nutritional Sciences
Symposium poster competition.  I won this competition
last year and so I knew it would be difficult to do it
again as Illinois is extremely competitive in the
field of nutrition.  The title of my abstract I
presented was “Isonitrogenous protein sources with
different leucine contents differentially effect
translation initiation and protein synthesis in
skeletal muscle.”  The short of the research was we
fed subjects whey or wheat protein at 3 different
total protein levels and looked at the differences in
anabolic response to the meal (protein synthesis and
translation factor activation).  We found that whey
was superior to wheat protein at stimulating protein
synthesis and translation factor activation even
though the total protein intake was the same.  We also
determined that leucine content of a meal was a better
indicator of the anabolic response than total protein
content.  The judges for my section were very critical
and asked me very insightful questions.  I wasn’t sure
how well I had done as the judges were very critical
but in the end my name was announced in first place!
Obviously I feel very honored to have won the award
twice in a row, it is really great to know that other
experts think your research is worthwhile.  Hopefully
I can keep it rolling!

Until next time,
-Layne 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 10:20 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.