Controlling Myostatin: The Muscle Growth Blocker by Jerry Brainum 10/23

 

Liam Hoekstra often liked to do inverted sit-ups by hooking his feet to a high bar and raising his torso. It's an extreme way to do sit-ups, but considering Liam's prominent six-pack abdominal development, it seems to work for him. No big deal, right? Plenty of people can do the same hanging sit-ups from a high bar. But there is one difference between them and Liam. Liam was 19 months old when he did them. He weighed all of 22 pounds, yet could do a difficult gymnastic move called the Iron Cross, which consists of suspending his body between two rings with his arms outstretched like a cross. He did that when he was 5 months old. What's the secret of this apparent superboy? It has to do with a protein produced within a muscle that inhibits muscular growth called myostatin. Myostatin is considered a myokine, a term for various proteins produced directly in a muscle that influence processes throughout the body. Unlike adipokines, which are proteins produced by fat cells or lipocytes and exert mostly inflammatory effects within the body, myokines exert beneficial effects on health and wellness, with the exception of myostatin.

Liam had about 40% more muscle mass compared to other youngsters his age, which accounted for both his physique and his prodigious strength feats. While Liam produced normal amounts of myostatin within his muscles, the myostatin didn't interact with his muscles, thus producing the same effects as not having any myostatin activity. Besides having an extraordinary level of muscle development, Liam also exhibited increased speed, agility, and no excess body fat despite having a prodigious appetite and eating anything he wanted. His mother noted that he seemed to want to eat every hour. Liam's lack of myostatin activity didn't affect his heart muscle, but his lack of body fat was problematic because children his age need a certain amount of body fat for brain and central nervous system development. A lack of sufficient body fat in a growing child can stunt growth and result in an impairment of the central nervous system. But Liam appeared to be thriving and healthy, with no apparent health problems. Liam eats 6 meals a day yet still doesn't gain weight.

But Liam wasn't the first human to be seen with a lack of myostatin. In 2004, an article appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine that documented the case of a German child who although an infant, looked more like a miniature bodybuilder. The kid already had prominent muscle development in his leg and arms. It turned out that his mother, a former track athlete, was shown to be missing one of two genes that code for myostatin production in muscles. When the physicians examined her child, he turned out to be myostatin-null, meaning that he was born without the genes that code for myostatin, and . . .