Dr. Rhonda Patrick

Consuming 20 to 40 grams of high quality protein, often paired with carbohydrates, can enhance muscle recovery and growth during the anabolic window.

Or so it was once thought.

Recent scientific evidence reveals that muscle protein synthesis remains significantly elevated for a full 24 hours following exercise, effectively debunking the notion of a very narrow anabolic window lasting only a few hours.

Furthermore, supplementing with protein before exercise has the same effects on body composition and strength,

compared to supplementing with protein immediately after exercise.

In other words, there are no meaningful differences between pre- and post-exercise protein ingestion.

This means that you're free to choose when you want to consume protein in relation to exercise, so long as your total daily intake of protein is adequately high to support optimal muscle protein synthesis.

Of course, there is definitely no downside to consuming protein immediately after a workout, especially for people interested in achieving marginal gains in strength or muscle mass.

To wrap up our discussion on protein timing and distribution, I want to bring up one more strategy to help with muscle building that relates to protein distribution and timing, pre-sleep protein.

There's two ways to look at this.

One way is through the lens of time-restricted eating, and the other is through the lens of actively optimizing for muscle protein synthesis on training days.

It's been shown in studies by Dr. Luke Van Loon and colleagues that protein consumed before bed is digested and absorbed overnight.

It also increases overnight muscle protein synthesis rates and improves net protein balance in people who had performed resistance training or

earlier in the day to enhance muscle recovery the benefits of pre-sleep protein have also been shown during chronic resistance exercise training consuming about 30 grams of protein before bed every night while resistance training appears to increase muscle mass and muscle strength

Another thing about pre-sleep protein is that it does not seem to reduce appetite or diminish the muscle protein synthesis response at breakfast the next morning which may have been a concern for some people.

Overall, I think pre-sleep protein is just one way to increase total daily protein intake.

If you don't like going to bed hungry, having a low calorie protein shake on training days may have the benefit of potentially enhancing your muscle gain on those training days.

But don't use this as an excuse to go wild.

We should still be mindful about the fall in insulin sensitivity that happens as we get close to our habitual bedtime.

And this is particularly true if you're not actively training.