cyclezen

as it turns out, I hadn't paid close attention... I had ordered bought 2 different brands HMB. The one I bought local at Lassen's was 1000mg per cap. The one I ordered turned out to be 1500 mg per cap...
I've been using the 1500 mg caps... so not 2000 mg /day, turns out its 3000 mg (3 g) /day.
After Sunday hard ride, I took Monday off from riding, did a social evening hike in the Ojai hills...
Tuesday decided to do a 40 miler at steady low/mid Zone 3 pace - went fine, better than ever. 2K feet of mid-grades climbing - legs felt great considering a hard Sunday.
Wed another mid-length ride 38 m with numerous short, steep climbs, one following the other, (8 - 12 %), 1900 ft gain ttl.. Legs felt Great !
Today - 22 mi of Lite-MTB/gravel on the gravel bike- great fun, plenty of power for some grippy, lumpy steeper rises.
No DOMS !
Have not been able to do this kind of riding in a long time! HMB seems to be the real deal for me...
Ride On
Yuri

MoAlpha

Spent a little while reviewing the mTOR pathway today. It’s a complicated story, but the mTOR signaling pathway is involved in regulating a huge number of growth and anti-growth processes in response to changes in the environment. HMB is thought to turn on mTOR. Chronic mTOR activation might not be the greatest thing over a period of years.

1. mTOR activation is associated with aging processes in organisms from yeasts to humans.

2. mTOR activation reduces scavenging of dead or damaged cells etc., possibly leading to accelerated aging.

3. The drug, rapamycin and calorie restriction are the only known ways of slowing aging in animals or humans. Both work by inhibiting mTOR pathway signaling.

4. Constant mTOR activation results in reduction in pancreatic beta cell numbers and insulin resistance.

5. Nearly all tumors rely on abnormal mTOR pathway activation to provide substrates for growth. If I’m harboring malignant cells somewhere, I don’t want to encourage them.

There are chronic safety studies of HMB in animals, but not humans. If I continue to use it, I am going to limit my exposure to a few weeks at a time. At this stage at least, I don’t think the potential benefits outweigh the theoretical risks.

There an authoritative review of the science here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5394987/

scottfsmith

Some studies have been done to see if this activation is a problem. Here is a study on mice tumors for example: https://aacrjournals.org/cancerres/a...mP4aaGC7GX1fBa What it concludes is that in spite of the mTOR pathway being activated the HMB in fact led to decreased tumor growth compared to the control.

In general there is a very big gap between general mTOR activation and specifically what HMB is doing. There could be some concrete downsides to HMB in the mix there, but the studies looking into that have so far found nothing.

Carbonfiberboy 

I look at this sort of thing from a rather distant and I hope logical perspective, totally unscientific in that there's no data, but . . . So, long, long time ago, Yes, older people live longer if they eat less. Hopefully they eventually die of starvation. This is genetic because if they eat less, those of reproductive age can eat more and reproduce more and the children can eat more. Similarly, with HMB, its production decreases with age because there's no reproductive pressure after the age of 40 to keep HMB levels up. Etc. Everywhere one looks, there's DNA doing its thing. DNA does not care about the health and well-being of those of us over 40. Well, maybe a tiny bit, but not much. We're supposed to die a lot younger. As it is said, "Only us and no others?"

Old in "primitive cultures" was about 43. Since that time, there has been no evolutionary pressure on humans, partly because that period has been so short, partly because there's no evolutionary pressure to do anything differently. Anthropologists say that they could take a child from 70,000 years ago and raise them up to be a Dreamliner pilot. No apparent change in intellectual ability in that rather short time period.

cyclezen

Well, maybe I'll get a indication on this from a sample of One... I'm thinking to keep the HMB thing going for a while. And am going to be on a frequent monitoring schedule for my C.
Currently, I 've responded well to my various treatments, and the extensive Metastasis seems to have been mostly abated (been very lucky so far...)
Off the chemo sauce for 2 mos. now, but still doing all the Homeopathic things (will be lifelong) - so I'll see if HMB (or just anything) brings it back...

Given the way I've been feeling these past 9 days, It feels very good to almost be 'normal'...

But - some noted things : Any one taking HMB - have you been gaining weight, quickly ? I've gained 2.5 lbs in the past 9 days, no changes in diet, in fact once I noticed the increase I became much stricter on intake... Maybe it's water ??? It can't be just muscle. We'll see if it levels out in the coming days...

Anyone notice longer sleep cycles? Before HMB I would sleep 6.5 - 7.5 hrs; now 8 - 8.5 hrs. Felt rested both sets of times. Maybe just what's needed because I've ramped up the intensity of everything in the past week.
Otherwise, no other 'side affects' noted...
Ride On
Yuri

Carbonfiberboy 

Since November, '21 . . . haven't noticed anything to do with weight, no changes in sleep cycle. My fancy scale says that both muscle percentage and bone weight are up, not a whole lot, but higher numbers than I've seen in the past 25 years. Body weight is maybe down a little, but hard to say - it varies. Fat percentage is staying lower than usual, but no records. It's possible that because recovery is better because muscle repair is up that I've increased my weekly training load that I need a little more protein to make all that happen. Not sure. I'm experimenting. Got that?

Carbonfiberboy 

Another HMB study showed up on my computer today:
https://www.academia.edu/14849412/High_intensity_interval_training_and_%CE%B2_hydroxy_%CE%B2_methylbutyric_free_acid_improves_aerobic_ power_and_metabolic_thresholds
or
https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/arti...550-2783-11-16

This one's interesting because it's not geezers and also not heavy muscle damage exercise, to the contrary.

Calsun

The point I was making is that with any bike shorts (and I have been using them on multi day tours since 1970) is that there will be a buildup of skin and sweat and the chamois becomes a perfect place for bacteria to thrive. Then wear the same shorts day after day and that bacteria gets into the skin of the rider and then there are saddle sores. In theory one could wash the shorts every day or two in a antibacterial disinfectant and let them dry overnight but that has not been practical. We now have bike short lines which were developed for mountain bike riders with their looser bike pants and if one is at home they could be washed and disinfected every few days and air dried.

What has worked for me over the past 50 years is to wear cotton, which is highly absobent, jockey underwear under my bike shorts. The cotton underwear when washed is done with a weak bleach solution which disables the bacteria so it cannot continue to function. If you never get saddle sores then no worries but if you do you might give some thought as to where the bacteria is growing and change your routine.

With seniors it is now thought that the benefits of a low salt diet is in the use of potassium salt substitutes. It is the addition of the potassium and not the restriction of sodium that had improved heart health and reduced CV events and death. I take a daily supplement of potassium gluconate along with 500 mg magnesium.

rsbob 

Could not get it to open besides granting access to my contacts which I am not willing to do. Any other way to share this information?

Carbonfiberboy 

Try it again. I changed the link and added another link to the same study.

rsbob 

Thank you. Fascinating read with pretty conclusive results (beyond statistical error). My question is, if one ceases to use HMB, do the gains either disappear or reduce a certain percentage? Would be an interesting follow-up study.

The mTOR studies do pose questions about potential risks of prolonged ingestion of HMB. Most of the HMB studies I have encountered are on healthy young people with robust health. We know that as we age, our bodily systems become less efficient reducing inflammation and fighting off diseases (COVID for the unvaccinated is a good example). It may be time for me to weigh the potential costs and benefits to HMB. Perhaps only take it on heavy workout days, and not on a regular basis. On a side note: since taking HMB, my measured FTP has not improved or reduced, but then I did not undertake HIIT, but I know I am stronger in climbs.

Carbonfiberboy 

My guess is that it's all the same thing: Improved recovery. With these young people, it could be that their muscles become better at turning training into progress with the supplement, even though they might not notice a difference in recovery. So my guess is that the improvements would be retained as long as they stayed with the exercise program. Similarly, if I quit HMB, I don't think my squat would go down, it would just be more difficult to make progress. There's nothing artificial - my legs and arms really are slightly larger and more defined.

rsbob 

from above:

The mTOR studies do pose questions about potential risks of prolonged ingestion of HMB. Most of the HMB studies I have encountered are on healthy young people with robust health. We know that as we age, our bodily systems become less efficient reducing inflammation and fighting off diseases (COVID for the unvaccinated is a good example). It may be time for me to weigh the potential costs and benefits to HMB. Perhaps only take it on heavy workout days, and not on a regular basis. On a side note: since taking HMB, my measured FTP has not improved or reduced, but then I did not undertake HIIT, but I know I am stronger in climbs.

Carbonfiberboy 

Issue with mTor? Studies? I see that HMB is a common therapy for some cancer patients.

I have found that weight training increased my endurance on climbs, pre-HMB. So it improved my Time To Exhaustion. CTS just had a good podcast on that (TTE).

MoAlpha

I don’t see why gains in lean mass would disappear as long as training was maintained. I think the risks are theoretical, but something to consider since there are no large long-term studies.

Yeah, it certainly didn’t cause tumors to come roaring back, but, again, the studies are small an short term and I assume the frailty of these patients was an acute risk in itself.

One other thing about mTor stimulation, is that dietary protein, which HMB mimics, activates the pathway in a pulsatile way, which is healthy. More constant stimulation could theoretically have some risk. There are other systems where this is true, for instance the natural fluctuation in cortisol vs the constant levels seen in clinical depression or corticosteroid treatment.

Right now I’m using it on and after weight training days. I’m not going to say if I think it’s doing anything.

scottfsmith

I have some personal data related to HMB that I thought I would share .. I had been on HMB as well as some other supplements and after I had a few Afib incidents I decided to go off them out of an abundance of caution. I had a lipid panel well after stopping them and my LDL was up 30%, ouch (and, they had gone down a lot when I initially went on it). Along with the HMB I was also taking phytosterols and eating 1g dark chocolate and I stopped all three. If you look up various studies you will see HMB, phytosterols, and dark chocolate each are lowering cholesterol by something like 8-10% on average, so my theory is that stopping these three is what caused my cholesterol to go up. For this reason I decided to go back on all three. I am going to re-test this spring so we will see if there is any correlation here.

For the Afib I don't think any of these things were a factor in retrospect, I think it was mainly dehydration which I have hopefully solved .. no Afibs for several months now.

Polaris OBark

Here is a direct link to the review in Cell, which is a lot easier on my eyes at least (and has an update at the end):

https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?...2817%2930182-4