Fitness is not just about pushing your limits in training, it’s also about how well you recover and repair your body to come back to the gym stronger than before. After all, failure to recover means failure to grow – literally and figuratively. During strenuous exercise, you are putting a lot of pressure on your central nervous system and skeletal muscle tissue. While CNS recovery is best handled with natural remedies such as CBD and cannabis in general, muscle tissue breakdown needs to be handled with protein.
Protein is the building block of life, after all, and it is directly responsible for cellular repair and muscle growth. However, it’s important to know that there are superior and inferior forms of protein out there. Let’s focus on the most powerful protein on the market currently and delve deeper into the benefits of casein protein and its involvement in total-body recovery.
What is casein protein exactly?
First things first, let’s demystify this somewhat unknown protein. Casein, quite simply, is a protein in a family of related proteins derived from dairy products. These proteins, including whey and casein, comprise more than 80% of cow milk protein and are considered the purest form of protein on the market. And for a good reason, too.
Packed with nutritious goodness, casein protein is the ideal choice for athletes and people who are simply keeping fit to meet their daily requirements, stock up on calcium and other vital micronutrients, and most importantly, release protein slowly into the bloodstream. With that in mind, let’s break down the individual benefits of casein.
Good for digestion
You know that bloated feeling you get when you gulp down on a glass of milk, or when you take a regular whey protein powder? Well, you can forget about that with casein. Because of its slow digestion rate, the healthy bacterial cultures released during digestion cannot overflow in your stomach and cause flatulence, as your body has enough time to slowly digest it and restore homeostasis.
Buy beyond mere protein farts, casein is an excellent choice for a healthy diet regime that supports total-body fitness. As amateur and professional athletes tend to suffer from constant hunger due to their diet constraints, casein protein can serve as an excellent, and nutritious, filler that will stifle hunger during the day because of its slow-releasing properties.
Best for nighttime recovery
If there is a benefit that casein protein is most popular for in the health and fitness industry, it’s the benefits it has for nighttime recovery. There is no denying that pre-bed nutrition is essential for CNS and muscular repair, seeing as how your body consumes macro and micronutrients during the night. Fail to satisfy your nutritional needs for the night, and you might lose out on your expected post-workout benefits simply because your body did not have the proteins necessary for recovery.
Casein is arguably the best option in this regard, as a good casein supplement before bed can not only help you feel full without any discomfort, but also slowly release amino acids into your bloodstream throughout the night and help your body grow and recover. Remember that your body will try to recover during sleep, so you need to support it by minimizing atrophy and fueling the muscle-building process.
Elicits greater muscle gain
Building muscle is a slow and arduous process that requires a lot of time, physical effort, and consistency. In order to maximize your potential, you will also need to optimize your nutrition, and make sure to avoid injuries over the years that might prevent you from exercising on a regular basis. It all makes for a pretty rigorous routine if you’re serious about your fitness goals, but casein might just be able to help you reach them faster.
After training, muscle-protein synthesis is elevated for a certain period of time. It’s not like there is a two-hour anabolic window you need to hit, rather these is 48-hour spike in protein synthesis that you want to utilize as much as you can. This is why slow-digesting protein is a better choice than, say, hydrolyzed whey protein that passes through your body quickly, as casein allows your body to repair damaged muscle tissue at a steady rate without wasting resources.
Managing hunger for better weight control
On a final note, it’s important to remember that recovery is an arduous process for your body when you’re on a diet. If you’re looking to lose excess weight, you’re probably in a constant caloric deficit, which in turn means that your body has limited resources to repair damaged muscle tissue and your central nervous system. While limiting your choices with low-calorie foods during a cut is necessary, you still need a quality protein source to prevent unwanted muscle loss. Use casein protein to support the anabolic process and fuel your body without hindering your weight loss progress.
Final thoughts
Protein is the building block of life, and the foundation of every fitness diet routine. However, there are different types of protein that will deliver different results. Now that you know how casein can help you in particular, you can optimize your training and nutrition to reach your fitness goals faster while supporting long-term health and longevity.
