How Does Stress Influence Muscle Development?

When planning a weight gain programme, most people do not take into account the importance of the relationship between stress and muscle development.

So, you’ve bought a new tracksuit and the latest pair of trainers to get you back in the gym; the weeks and months go by and although you’re watching your diet and training hard, you don’t seem to be progressing at the pace you should be.

One day your gym buddy tells you about the hormone that can ruin your gains: cortisol, the “stress hormone”.

Don’t miss it because I’m going to explain everything you need to know!

Why does stress prevent me from gaining muscle mass?

Our evolutionary process has been based on our body’s ability to maintain homeostasis.

In this way, we respond to stressful environmental stimuli by means of a complex regulatory system formed by structures of the nervous system, in which a large number of signalling molecules are involved, but I will not go into in depth here so as not to complicate the article unnecessarily.

Your body remains, depending on the degree of exposure to stress, in the middle column of the graph, where it is in perfect balance and everything is working properly.

When the activity of the stress regulation system is excessively high or low (because of the stimulus it receives) you would be in a state of allostatic overload (top right).

When is it dangerous?

But if, for example, a person with heart failure, is exposed to the same situation, this state of allostasis is lost and he or she enters the red “excess” sector, where the body’s ability to maintain its equilibrium is exceeded and the person’s health is endangered.

If we apply this to training, we could speak of a functional overreaching approach, where although we accumulate a high stress load that negatively affects our performance, when we rest after this period, our capacity increases and reaches higher levels than the initial ones.

Chronic Stress

Now imagine it in your day-to-day life…

Nobody dies because one day in your life routine is more stressful than usual, because you have an important project at work or because you have an exam at university the next day.

We have not evolved to respond to a stressful environment on a continuous basis, and this has been associated with:

Theoretical explanation

Broadly speaking, a stressful stimulus (such as physical exercise) triggers a series of neuroendocrine responses that result in the secretion of glucocorticoid hormones such as cortisol and corticosterone.

It also targets different tissues in our body to activate pathways for the provision of substrates from which to quickly obtain energy (should we need it) and to reduce the inflammation that is occurring in the musculoskeletal tissue.

Part (a large part) of the cellular responses to cortisol are due to its genomic activity:

When released in an acute pulse, according to natural biorhythms, or acute stress such as training, its anti-inflammatory effects are mediated by the transactivation of ligand-complex dimers in certain regions of our genome that help us manage the inflammation produced by training, without interfering with our muscle mass gain.

When the presence of hypercortisolemia is chronified by our environment, training only exacerbates the severity of the response, causing muscle tissue to tend to become transactivated with pro-inflammatory transcription factors in the form of the monomeric GC-Receptor-Nfκb/AP-1 complex, blocking genomic factor activity (known as transrepression), inhibiting mRNA transcription and limiting protein synthesis.

What about Testosterone and Cortisol?

Testosterone and cortisol have a reciprocal inhibitory relationship, so although this increased expression of the HPA axis after training may be “adverse” to muscle mass gain, if it is an acute stressor stimulus, the net effects are positive.

However, in chronically stressed individuals the free testosterone:cortisol ratio decreases drastically and the classic semiological pictures of subclinical secondary Cushing’s appear.

Stress and rest

Constant exposure to stressful stimuli is linked to the activation of cells located in the brainstem and spinal cord that activate the sympathetic nervous system.

This is the well-known “fight or flight” mechanism, very useful for:

What happens if I always keep stress high?

Not only does it seriously affect your nervous system, producing neurocognitive alterations, it also affects your cardiovascular system, increasing peripheral vascular resistance and inducing a structural response of the left ventricle of the heart that increases the risk of stroke.

But it also affects your rest in the short term: it increases your nervous activation, concentration, wakefulness, cardiac output, ventilatory rate and volume, among others.

In other words, you will sleep fewer hours and of poorer quality, which has a direct negative impact on your body composition.

Supplements to improve Testosterone:Cortisol Ratio

There are a number of supplements, and of these, Ashwagandha extract is the one that has shown the most consistent and largest effect on this marker.

Buy Ashwagandha Extract (10:1) 400 mg

Even so, the initial approach should consist of behavioural modifications:

Bibliographical references

1. Mejías, A. (2020). Glucocorticoides [Diapositivas].
2. Tsigos C, Kyrou I, Kassi E, et al. Stress, Endocrine Physiology and Pathophysiology. [Updated 2016 Mar 10]. In: Feingold KR, Anawalt B, Boyce A, et al., editors. Endotext [Internet]. South Dartmouth (MA): MDText.com, Inc.; 2000-.
3. Allen, D. L., McCall, G. E., Loh, A. S., Madden, M. C., & Mehan, R. S. (2010). Acute daily psychological stress causes increased atrophic gene expression and myostatin-dependent muscle atrophy. American Journal of Physiology – Regulatory Integrative and Comparative Physiology, 299(3), R889-98.
4. Erdemir, I., Kizilet, A., Bozdogan, T. K., Erdemir, I., Kizilet, A., & Bozdogan, T. K. (2013). Effects of Exercise on Circadian Rhythms of Cortisol. International Journal of Sports Science, 3(3), 68–73.
5. Keselman, B., Vergara, M., Nyberg, S., & Nystrom, F. H. (2017). A randomized cross-over study of the acute effects of running 5 km on glucose, insulin, metabolic rate, cortisol and Troponin T. PLoS ONE, 12(6).
6. Nedeltcheva, A. V., Kilkus, J. M., Imperial, J., Schoeller, D. A., & Penev, P. D. (2010). Insufficient sleep undermines dietary efforts to reduce adiposity. Annals of Internal Medicine, 153(7), 435–441.
7. Lopresti, A. L., Smith, S. J., Malvi, H., Kodgule, R., & Wane, D. (2019). An investigation into the stress-relieving and pharmacological actions of an ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) extract: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Medicine (United States), 98(37), e17186.
8. Headquarters, Department of the Army. (2012). FM 7-22 Army Physical Readiness Training.

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