Whey Protein Hydrosolate Better Than Whey, BCAA and Casein as Post-Workout Supplement

The initial hype around Whey Protein Hydrosolates (WPH) has ended and everybody returned to his favorite whey protein or one of the hundreds of BCAA products on the market. A new study by Kanda et al. (Kanda. 2010) does however suggest that this might be a mistake.

In their study (unfortunately done on rats) they compared the immediate effect of supplementation with carbs + either WPH, Whey, BCAA or Casein and found:

WPH caused significant increases (p < 0.05) in skeletal muscle glycogen level (5.01+/-0.24 mg/g), compared with whey protein (4.23+/-0.24 mg/g), BCAA (3.92+/-0.18 mg/g) or casein hydrolysates (2.73+/-0.22 mg/g). Post-exercise ingestion of glucose plus WPH caused significant increases (p < 0.05) in both phosphorylated Akt/PKB (131%) and phosphorylated PKCζ(154%) levels compared with glucose only. There was a significant positive correlation between skeletal muscle glycogen content and phosphorylated Akt/PKB (r = 0.674, p < 0.001) and PKCζ (r = 0.481, p = 0.017) in the triceps muscles.

So, for those of you always seeking the optimal way of using the "post workout window of opportunity" to refill your muscles with energy, you better spend the money on Whey Protein Hydrosolates than on fancy BCAAs (as I am quite certain some of you will do).