Intermittent Thoughts on Building Muscle: IGF-1, TNF-α, IL-15 & Co and the Emerging Role of an Auto-/Endocrine-Immune Axis in Skeletal Muscle Hypertrophy
Image 1: The word "inflammation" triggers associations which hinder a appropriate understanding of the complexities of the "inflammatory" immune response that is vitally important for (re-)building muscle tissue. Just to make sure that I do not get off another tangent, again, I will start right off, where I left you in the last installment of the Intermittent Thoughts and that was with the promise to have a closer look at the intricate relationship of (exercise-induced) inflammation and the increases in muscle-specific insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) and its splice variants, above all the muscle (re-)building mechano-growth factor 1 (MGF-1). Before we are looking how one influences the other, we will yet have to establish a consistent understanding of "inflammation" , which, despite being in on everyone's lips these days is commonly (mis-)understood and / or confused with "oxidation", as in the oxidation of "inflammable" ...