Thread: In plain layman's terms, what is "nitrogen balance"?

I think it revolves around the nitrogen 'wastes' your body produces in relation to the amount of protein consumed (or burned by the body)....I think if its too 'low' it means you're body's using muscle tissue for energy (when the ideal is using carbohydrates or fat)

Good one

Nitrogen is a compound that is unique to protein and can provide information about someones amino acid status (amino acids are found in proteins,there are 20 essential and non essential combined,essential are provided by food,non essential are produced by the liver e.g Glutamine)

All macro's contain hydrogen,carbon and oxygen but protein is the only macro that contains the additional nitrogen molecule,you can measure excretion of nitrogen as to how good the body is at muscle building.

If your nitrogen excretion is high this should make you increase your protein intake to make up the difference and build muscle.There are 3 states of nitrogen balance

Positive
Equilibrium
Negative

With positiving being optimal for muscle growth and negative being bad.

I hope that was relatively easy to understand if not i'll try and rephrase it

So what you are saying is that some people have a higher nitrogen excretion than others? Like ecto vs endo? 190lbs athlete vs 110lbs athlete? They must then eat a certain amount of protein in order to maintain or gain muscle (positive)?

how could some body measure the nitrogen excretion??

Originally Posted by asicx

So what you are saying is that some people have a higher nitrogen excretion than others? Like ecto vs endo? 190lbs athlete vs 110lbs athlete? They must then eat a certain amount of protein in order to maintain or gain muscle (positive)?

No a nitrogen balance is just a state which you are in,you can make it become positive or let it go negative by not eating frequently etc etc

how could some body measure the nitrogen excretion??

You get your urine urea tested as i think it's 90% of nitrogen is lost through the kidneys