Is Meditation Anabolic?
A couple of interesting episodes from Chris Beardsley’s and Jake Doleschal’s Hypertrohpy Past and Present-podcast (https://open.spotify.com/show/78sy8vFEPjOxGdG4IGslh5?si=a07013907d804209) prompted this question for me. In the podcast, they offer a research-based framework for assessing the independent impact of various variables on hypertrophy. With the effect of strength training as their main theme, they further dive into the catabolic (atrophy-inducing) effects of dieting, sleep restriction, injuries, and stressors in general.
To me, the most interesting conclusion from their analysis and interpretation of a group of studies dedicated to answering these latter questions is that a single common mechanism is responsible for muscle loss in all the above examples, namely stress. From this collection of studies it seems quite clear that dieting, sleep restriction, and injuries do not themselves cause muscle loss. Rather, they induce muscle loss to the extent that they produce a bodily stress response, measured as a significant increase in blood corticoid levels (commonly and appropriately referred to as “stress hormones”).
The studies show, for example, that there are two independent atrophic effects from being bedridden after a severe injury. The immobilisation itself removes any mechanical tension-induced stimulus for muscle growth, but this does not explain the full extent of muscle loss in these individuals, since it is greater than for a bedridden control group with no injury. The injured group has significantly higher levels of stress hormones and when these levels are matched via exogenous injections, the muscle loss becomes similar. Thus, a corticoid response—stress—is itself catabolic, independently of other factors. How and why is less clear, although it seems to relate to oxidative stress.
Interestingly, stress is not purely a physiological phenomenon. Different individuals can be exposed to the same potential stressors and have very different levels of corticoid responses, which mirrors how these individuals perceive their own levels of stress. Basically, if you feel more stressed, your corticoid levels are likely to be higher and vice versa.
Beardsley takes it so far as to claim that something is a stressor - raises corticoids - if and only if it is perceived as one. That is, he views a strong causal link from the subjective perception or experience of stress to the physiological stress response. Simply put, something is a physiological stressor if and only if it is perceived as one.
He takes this to imply, for example, that dieting will have heterogenous effects on muscle loss in proportion to the individually felt stress induced by a specific diet. Someone who is used to dieting, trusts the process, and is in an energy deficit they can handle will experience less muscle loss than someone for whom dieting is a terrible experience—exactly because their perception of the stressfulness of the experience differs. This should hold even if the diet is objectively the same.
This framework has far reaching implications for how one should structure one’s life in the pursuit of muscle growth. It becomes, really, a strong case for eradicating stressors in general (in case one needed more reasons to justify this goal). Since the effect of stress on muscle loss is independent of other effects, higher levels of stress will make hypertrophy a forever uphill battle while low levels of stress are protective. It is almost like stress itself causes the body to “leak” muscle mass regardless of how hard one trains, whereas the absence of stress protects our muscular integrity.
Stress can be reduced in many ways, especially when we understand it as the perception of stress. Two main paths are possible:
- Remove external stressors
- Reduce your tendency towards experiencing stress—your baseline level of stress and your response to potential stressors
The first point is obvious and straight forward. It speaks to living a healthy life in all dimensions: Get good sleep, have healthy relationships, perform rejuvenating activities you enjoy, manage your work/life balance, say no to doing more than you can handle, etc. This is an interesting topic in itself, but it is the second point that this post is about.
Meditation is, by now, a well known practice for reducing stress. It does so in the moment, at least once a habit has formed, and it also tends to reduce both one’s baseline level of stress and the magnitude of one’s stress response to perceived stressors. The precise mechanism is of less interest in this context. What matters is the magnitude of the effect. Could it be that a habitual meditation practice can lower one’s average level of stress so much that it also lowers one’s average corticoid levels so much that there is a meaningful effect on net hypertrophy over time?
I doubt there are studies testing this specific hypothesis, but we might be able to make a reasonable prediction if they exist on the effect of meditation on corticoid levels, and if the studies referenced by Beardsley indicate a quantitative relationship between corticoid response and elevated muscle protein breakdown. (Elevated muscle protein breakdown is the main pathway by which stress induces atrophy. Elevated muscle protein synthesis is the main pathway by which strength training induces hypertrophy. Net hypertrophy depends on the balance of the two).
The effect of meditation on stress levels is likely very heterogenous across individuals, so we may have to be careful about applying the aggregate results of such studies to our own situation. What we can probably do, however, in keeping with Beardsley’s argument, is to assess our own subjective level of stress and the extent to which habitual meditation reduces it. If we find that there is a significant effect, then this is probably the case.
Placebo is not an issue here, since the subjective experience of stress is the outcome we are looking for, and, if I subjectively believe my stress level has gone down, then, by that perception alone, it has. I can hardly trick myself into believing I am less stressed because in doing so, I truly am.
In some sense, this really demonstrates the immense power of the mind-body connection, which medical research has long neglected by casting it aside as a “placebo”-effect, a phenomenon not of primary interest in medical research, except as a confounding factor in the search for “real” treatments. However, if the subjective perception of stress is a significant factor in determining one’s body’s hormonal response—the secretion of stress hormones—then the key variable we should seek to influence is just this: The perception of stress. Meditation seems a powerful way to do so.