RECAL®, Neolactine® or Sarkoprotect®
Hans Leweling and Klaus van Ackern
Healthy people do not need a protein intake in excess of their normal requirements.
Over the last 45 years, it has become increasingly recognised that only people with an increased protein requirement need more protein.
Which people have an increased protein requirement?
Patients in intensive care units (after burns, craniocerebral trauma)
Patients with liver cirrhosis
Patients after major surgery
High-performance athletes
People in special physiological circumstances, such as the elderly, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers
People under particular stress and strain, both physical and psychological
People following a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle
People undergoing weight management and detoxification programmes
People on special dietary nutrition programmes, e.g. ketogenic diet
People with limited intake and utilisation of dietary protein
Protein deficiencies of various causes
Why do these people have an increased protein requirement?
All the groups of people mentioned above have one thing in common: they are exposed to a greater or lesser degree of stress in descending order. Biochemically, stress always means the presence of a hormonally controlled gluco-neo-genetic metabolic state that can hardly be influenced. The organism produces glucose (= glucose) in huge quantities, and this is a survival strategy: all cells in the body can use glucose as fuel, but the most important cells in the organism can only use glucose, and these are the brain cells.
Gluco-neo-genesis (glucose synthesis) can only take place from the 20 amino acids of proteins, and this is an extraordinarily uneconomical process. And of the 20 amino acids contained in a protein, less than half are glucogenic, i.e. suitable for glucose formation. The other half is nevertheless broken down and excreted as worthless urea.
And this stress metabolism, this gluconeogenic metabolic state, modifies the amino acid pattern in the blood in a very characteristic way: Some amino acids drop sharply, while others increase in concentration to a greater or lesser extent. In any case, the amino acid pattern in the blood is altered to such an extent – this is referred to as an amino acid imbalance – that sufficient new protein synthesis can no longer take place, neither in the patient nor in the athlete.
The logical consequence is therefore to equalise the amino acid imbalance, i.e. to increase the supply of those amino acids that are reduced and to reduce the supply of those that have increased concentrations. But how do you do this?
Such a protein or protein mixture does not occur naturally or in nature. You have to help it along.
In several years of research, Leweling and Knauff discovered that every person needs their own, very specific amino acid pattern to achieve maximum protein synthesis. In order for body protein synthesis to take place efficiently, i.e. for the amino acids to actually be used as building blocks for cell metabolism, all 20 amino acids, including the 9 essential amino acids, must be present at the same time and in the exact composition of a specific amino acid pattern of the organism.
Only when all 8 or 9 essential and 12 or 11 non-essential amino acids are available at the same time and in the appropriate proportions can the body utilise them optimally for incorporation into the cell substance. In any other case, the body can only form body protein to a limited extent or not at all.
As such a mixture of amino acids is simply not available worldwide, it must therefore be generated. There is no recipe for this. Therefore, the best amino acid or protein mixtures available on the market today, the whey or whey proteins, are usually used. There are also other good amino acid and protein mixtures that have a good composition. However, whey proteins have the advantage of outstanding solubility and excellent flavour. The amino acid pattern of whey proteins (whey) is unfortunately only of average quality, but sometimes of good quality.
There are many whey proteins, many whey protein isolates and many whey protein hydrolysates, many so-called fast and slow proteins. And therein lies the real secret: you have to mix these proteins in order to achieve an appropriate overall amino acid composition that can produce the desired amino acid pattern in the blood.
We achieved this by using stepwise multiple discriminant analysis. This method enabled us to achieve the exact mixing ratio from several proteins to obtain the optimal amino acid pattern.
How do we know or did we know the optimal amino acid pattern?
Several hundred patients under different stress situations, from intensive care patients to geriatric patients, without and with sporting activities, to athletes of different intensities, were examined.
Pharmacokinetic methods were used; the clearance and transfer rates of the 20 amino acids under stress conditions of varying intensity were analysed: this made it possible to calculate the optimum amino acid pattern under the different conditions.
The greater the stress, the more pronounced the amino acid imbalance and the greater the need for the optimal amino acid pattern.
What is the difference between the various amino acid patterns?
Conventional amino acid mixtures available on the market have a certain composition, a kind of “off-the-shelf” preparation. The amino acid pattern of our quality is customised, composed according to the needs of stressed patients, a so-called needs-adapted amino acid pattern. It is a dynamic, not a static amino acid preparation.
ASP – a unique amino acid formulation for optimal protein nutrition – is a pure food. Its secret lies in the unique and precisely balanced amino acid formula according to the specific pattern under special conditions.