Glycemic load is a term that describes the effect of food on blood sugar. The higher the glycemic load, the more it spikes your blood sugar and insulin. There has been a growing public awareness to the glycemic factor and how it affects our health. Nevertheless, this has been one of the most misunderstood issues, particularly in the area of sport nutrition. One of the most common fallacies is that high-glycemic protein meals promote muscle gain. Commercial protein products are often packed with a high sugar content, claiming to deliberately spike insulin and thereby promote muscle gain. It has been speculated that since insulin is an anabolic hormone, it will promote protein deposit in the muscle when overspiked. That’s the idea … but that’s not what happens in real life.

In real life, high-glycemic protein meals are countereffective to your muscle. There are two reasons why:

• First, exercise causes temporary disruption in glucose utilization in your muscle. That’s due to muscle microtrauma (the wear and tear of the muscle tissue). Hence, right after exercise, your muscle can’t tolerate high-glycemic meals.

• Second, high-glycemic meals impair your insulin, disrupt your muscle mTOR, and shatter your muscle protein synthesis. mTOR is the biological mechanism that builds your muscle, and it can’t be fully activated when your insulin is insensitive

Chronic intake of high-glycemic meals has been shown to cause hyperinsulinemia, a condition in which insulin is chronically overspiked. Hyperinsulinemia has been linked to uncontrollable fat gain as well as irreversible damage to insulin receptors and devastation of the muscular system.