20 Jul 2016

Participants wanted for study into the effects of being overweight on muscle growth

Muscle mass plays a major role in controlling blood sugars and preventing type 2 diabetes, but animal studies have suggested that being overweight can impair muscle growth, making exercise less effective.

Dr Carl Hulston, School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, is looking for male volunteers aged 18-40 with a BMI over 30 who consider themselves to live a sedentary lifestyle (taking part in less than three 30 minute bouts of exercise a week).

Participants will need to visit the Loughborough lab twice to take part in some short resistance training, and have measurements and some muscle biopsies taken. 

This is the first study of its kind to determine human muscle growth in response to exercise.

Dr Hulston comments: “We want to understand whether there are underlying factors linked to obesity that stop exercise being as effective.

“It may be that once people reach a certain percentage body fat it is harder for them to grow muscle, which in turn impacts on their ability to burn fat through exercise.

“We hope this research will uncover important information to help address the current obesity epidemic.”

The study is funded through the Society for Endocrinology.

If you are interested in taking part, please contact Dr Carl Hulston T: 01509 226 449