"Is your supplement program leaving your muscles 'half-fed'?" You'll be shocked when you learn about this gaping hole in your supplement program!

Flex, July, 2003 by Lee Labrada

Dear Friend,

There you are at the gym, grinding out set after set to get your body bigger, leaner, and more muscular. Every single rep stresses your working muscle fibers both physically and chemically. Once the workout is over, you should feed those tired muscle cells to help them repair, recover and grow, right?

Wrong.

You're leaving something out. Each rep stresses not only your muscle cells, but also the layers of connective tissue cells that tightly house the muscle cells and attach them to your joints. Muscle is really composed of not merely muscle cells, but also connective tissue--endomysium, perimysium, and epimysium. (see diagram) In fact your connective tissue bears the bulk oft mechanical burden during each re causing it to literally rip apart in places. You feel this in the days following your workout as annoying pain and stiffness.

This unavoidable connective tissue trauma can make your muscles joints so painful that you just can't lift the loads you need to in order grow. Yet, what very few people realize is that in order for your muscles to increase in size and remain injury-free, both your muscle cells and the connective tissue they're so tightly wrapped in must grow.

Now here's the 'gaping hole': Most (if not all) of today's 'muscle-building' supplements do nothing to specifically feed your connective tissue. Think of the negative consequences this can mean for your body...

What are Connective Tissue Specific Substrates?

Connective tissue-specific substrates (CTSS) are just now gaining attention from serious bodybuilders and other athletes seeking to build a bigger, more muscular physique. Today's supplements are all too frequently missing CTSS -- which may explain why your muscles and joints feel sorer than they need to, why you suffer from persistent (nagging) pain and frequent injuries, and why you gain lean muscle more slowly than you are truly capable of. In a few moments, you'll learn how to add CTSS to your daily diet and protect yourself from these progress-halting problems.

It'll Be as Simple as Pie for You to Do...

But first, imagine a table set for two. Your connective tissue cells are sitting at one plate, your muscle cells at the other. Both have just suffered through an intense, jarring workout. They're hungry!

Dinner is served. A plate full of nutrients is served to your muscle cells. Yet the plate in front of your connective tissue cells remains empty! They're forced to eat whatever they can "scavenge" from your muscle cells.

It's easy to see how this kind of nutritional negligence could cause you more pain and soreness, more injuries, and slower growth (or none at all). Your ideal body gets further and further away from you.

The Muscle/Joint 'Mis-Match': A Road to Tissue Destruction?

Under some conditions, your muscle cells may actually grow faster than those of connective tissue. This temporary state of affairs has been associated with the use of 'performance. enhancing' drugs (e.g., growth hormone, anabolic-androgenic steroids). But it can occur even if you're not using these products.

Whatever the cause, the result is that your connective tissue may temporarily be unable to withstand the forces that are generated by your muscles. They haven't 'caught up'. I emphasize 'temporarily' because if this mis-match becomes great enough, your muscles will painfully 'self-destruct': You'll suffer a disabling injury (e.g., muscle tear) that sends you away from the gym, possibly for a very long time.

Now if there were something simple, effective and economical you could take to protect your body from this kind of physical trauma and ensure you achieve the lean, muscular physique you're committed to, you'd use it, right?

ElastiJoint[R]: Filling the Hole in Your Supplement Program

Of course. That's why my team of research and development scientists at Labrada Nutrition formulated ElastiJoint[R] for you.

Each one of your muscle cells is tightly wrapped in layer upon layer of connective tissue constructed from substrates like collagens, hyaluronic acid, chondroitin and glucosamine sulfates, and more. (6) Every single serving of ElastiJoint[R] gives you all of these connective tissue-specific substrates... and more. Plus, instead of delivering them in a handful of "horse pills" ,you get them in the form of a deliciously refreshing drink.

To give you an even greater feel for how powerful the simple addition of ElastiJoint[R] to your daily course of 'muscle meals' can be, consider the following...

Protect Yourself from CTSS Deficiency with ElastiJoint[R]

Your muscle cells generate the force that enables you to lift weights, but the connective tissue they live in is needed to transmit this force to your bones so that they can move around the joint, which is also made up of connective tissue. Besides transmitting force, connective tissue cells actually "talk" to muscle cells, supporting their repair, recovery and growth following your workouts.

Here's just one example: The basement membrane is a thin layer of connective tissue surrounding the muscle cell. So-called 'cross-talk' between the basement membrane and your muscle cells is critical to facilitate recovery from injury (8) and to allow an increase in muscle size (3) Thus, delayed repair of the basement membrane -as may occur when CTSS supply is inadequate -- can mean delayed or impeded growth of your muscles.