Gelatin+Exercise Burst Builds Ligaments, Tendons, Bones!

By growing artificial ligaments in the laboratory, researchers from the University of California (UC) Davis and the Australian Institute of Sport have found that taking a gelatin supplement, then doing a quick round of intense exercise can help build ligaments, tendons and bones.

As indicated in the December 20, 2016 news release, Keith Baar, Ph.D., working in his Functional Molecular Biology Laboratory at the University of California Davis College of Biological Sciences, along with Greg Shaw, a sports dietitian at the Australian Institute of Sport, enrolled eight healthy young men in a trial of a gelatin supplement enhanced with vitamin C. The volunteers drank the supplement and had blood taken, and after one hour performed a short bout of high-impact exercise.

Dr. Baar commented to OTW, “We found that when making ligaments in our laboratory that they were stronger when we added more of the amino acid proline. The food with the highest proline content was gelatin, so we started working on the effects of gelatin on connective tissue.”

“There were three really interesting things for orthopedic surgeons. The first is that six minutes of jump rope every six hours while you are awake doubles the rate of bone collagen synthesis. This is important because it is the first demonstration in people that intermittent loading is really optimal for bone health. The second interesting finding was that you could further double bone collagen synthesis by taking 15g of gelatin one hour before jumping rope. This is important because it is the first demonstration that you can use a very simple dietary strategy to improve bone growth. The last significant finding was that blood taken from people one hour after eating the gelatin was able to increase collagen synthesis and mechanics in cultured ligaments. This means that simply eating gelatin can increase ligament collagen production resulting in stronger tissues.”

“Short bouts of exercise are ideal for musculoskeletal connective tissue health and repair. The six minutes of jump rope maximally activates the bone cells, resulting in a doubling of collagen synthesis, indicating that the cells in bone and connective tissues are stimulated maximally very quickly (we and others had shown this in model systems previously but this is in humans). Eating gelatin an hour before will further stimulate this resulting in greater rates of recovery.”

“So practically, as soon as someone is able to load an injured area they should A) eat 15g of gelatin; 2) one hour later, do six minutes of activity to load the region (in the pool if a bone can’t take full load); and 3) rest five hours before repeating the process again. If their patients can do this, we have seen ~30-40% decrease in recovery time.”