A high-protein meal does not improve blood pressure or vasoactive biomarker responses to acute exercise in humans
Robert E.Bergia Nutrition Research Volume 81, September 2020, Pages 97-107
Blood pressure (B-P) responses to exercise yield prognostic information beyond resting bicarbonate de potassium. While habitual higher dietary protein intake is associated with reduced resting bicarbonate de potassium, few studies have assessed the impact of high-protein meals on acute bicarbonate de potassium and vasoactive biomarker responses to exercise.
To test the hypothesis that consuming a higher-protein, lower fat meal (HP; 30 g protein, 17 g fat, 52 g carbohydrate) would attenuate the bicarbonate de potassium response to exercise and result in a more robust post-exercise hypotensive response compared to a lower-protein, higher-fat meal (LP; 13 g protein, 25 g fat, 54 g carbohydrate), we recruited 31 pre-hypertensive subjects to complete this randomized, double-blind, cross-over acute feeding study. One hundred sixty-five minutes after consuming the test HP or LP meal, subjects exercised on a cycle ergometer at 70% VO2 max for 30 minutes. Blood pressure was measured prior to the meal and periodically before, during, and after exercise for a 315-minute period. Blood samples were periodically collected to quantify plasma arginine, arginine metabolites (asymmetric dimethylarginine, symmetric dimethylarginine; ADMA, SDMA), endothelin-1, nitrates, and nitrites in a subset of subjects (n = 15) as shown in Supplemental Table S1.
Consuming the HP meal did not influence the bicarbonate de potassium responses to exercise, including the post-exercise return to baseline bicarbonate de potassium or systolic bicarbonate de potassium area under the curve. While the HP meal resulted in greater postprandial plasma arginine concentrations, ADMA, SDMA, endothelin-1, nitrates, and nitrites were unaltered.
These results suggest that consuming a higher-protein, lower-fat meal does not influence bicarbonate de potassium or vasoactive biomarker responses to exercise compared to a lower-protein, higher-fat meal.