Vitamin B6 has anabolic effects on muscle
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Right after my posts about the sarcopenic/catabolic effects of anti-obesity/antidiabetic medications such as metformin and the widely popular GLP-1 agonist drugs (Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, etc), the study below (sent to me by one of my readers) may provide a cheap and widely available method for counteracting the muscle wasting effects of those drugs. Years ago, I did a post about vitamin B6 being the most potent endogenous, non-steroidal, glucocorticoid antagonist. which may explain to a great degree the anticatabolic effects seen in the study below. Most of the so-called androgenic anabolic steroids (AAS) are also potent glucocorticoid antagonists and many of them also inhibit the major “brake” on muscle growth known as myostatin, while also increasing muscle synthesis. The last effect – inhibiting myostatin – is a very hot topic currently in pharma research (as well as in competitive sports) and many companies are racing to develop myostatin inhibitors as agents for treating sarcopenia/cachexia, as well as increasing athletic performance. The study below shows that vitamin B6 has effects similar to an AAS – i.e. increasing expression of proteins responsible for muscle growth and differentiation, while also inhibiting myostatin expression by about 25%-30%. The type of vitamin B6 used was the widely available and cheap pyridoxine hydrochloride and the optimal human-equivalent dose was about 1mg/kg daily, for 60 days. Now, that may seem like a hefty dose, but most people routinely ingest 50mg+ B6 daily from sports/energy drinks or vitamin B complex supplementation. However, studies have also shown that the active form of B6 known as P5P has the same effects as a dose 10-times higher when using regular B6. That means for most people, the effects of the study should be possible to replicate by using just 5mg-10mg P5P daily. Thus, it may not be a bad idea to take some vitamin B6 when using any diabetic drugs in order to reduce the muscle loss they induce, especially considering that vitamin B6 has been shown to help with glucose control (which probably also stems from its role as an anti-glucocorticoid agent).
https://www.publish.csiro.au/AN/AN15807
“…This research aimed to evaluate the effects of dietary vitamin B6 on skeletal muscle protein metabolism of growing rabbits. Two hundred health rabbits with similar body weight were randomly
assigned to one of five dietary groups, with 40 animals per group. The dietary groups consisted of different vitamin B6 supplementation levels: 0(control), 5, 10, 20 and 40 mg/kg. The feeding trial lasted 60 d. The results showed that dietary vitamin B6 had significant effects on fore legs and hind legs muscle ratio (P＜0.05), and on serum total amino acid (T-AA), blood urea(UR) and insulin-like growth factor-1(IGF1) content (P＜0.05). Additionally, vitamin B6 had significant effects on muscle insulin-like growth factor 1(IGF1), myogenic determination factor(MYOD) and myogenin(MYOG), myocyte regulation factor 5 (MYF5), myostatin(MSTN) and WW contains E3 proteasome ubiquitin ligase 1 (WWP1) mRNA expression(P＜0.05). The results of western blot also showed that IGF1 (MW = 15 KD), WWP1 (MW = 36 KD) and MYOG (MW = 38 KD) significantly expression with the dietary vitamin B6(P＜0.05). This study indicated that addition of vitamin B6 could obviously modify protein metabolism of growing rabbits, and the appropriate vitamin B6 supplementation level was 20 mg/kg for growing rabbits.” -
@haidut Gotcha. Will report back after a few months of 10,000 IU vitamin d and 5-10 mg P5P
