Whey protein's effect on the liver?

incisor71

Hi all,

I'm a little concerned about the effects (in my particular case) of whey protein supplement on the liver. How much is too much, I wonder?

I hadn't been home for a few weeks before Xmas and when I did come home it was commented that my skin was more tanned than usual - my sister thought I'd been using the sunbed. When they saw the pot of EAS Whey Protein (I'm not advertising, merely pointing out that I don't buy the cheapy Nature's Way stuff) they put two and two together, pinpointed my liver as the victim in all of this and pointed out the folly of me building "artificial muscle".

Maybe they've come up with 5, but I'm not sure - I see my skin too often to notice any difference. I train almost daily (3 cardio, 3 weights sessions per week). I have five portions of whole-food protein a day, plus a scoop of the whey powder (one morning, one night) blended in fruit, six days a week. Each scoop contains 16g of protein. This intake level was approved by my personal trainer.

I have plenty of water during the course of the day (10-12 glasses), I don't eat any greasy/creamy foods and I have a few beers once every few weeks, so my liver isn't exactly overstressed from other sources.

Is it time for a doctor's visit, or just time to drop supplementation completely? Switching to an egg-based supplement is out of the question as I'm allergic to eggs. I've made great progress this year and I don't want it to end because of some silly notion my folks have that I should accept my limits. On the other hand, I don't want to cause liver damage either.

All suggestions appreciated!

joejoem

I think this has been discussed here before, and I have seen it on T-Nation. from memory, it doesnt effect your liver (too much protein consumption) because all excess protein gets converted to Urea which you pee and sweat out. You can take suppliments if you are worried about your liver, there are loads of them around, in any health shop.


Think of it like eating too much meat. Its not going to damage your body, your body will use what it needs and then the rest becomes waste.

As for your skin colouring, that sounds wierd, doesnt jondas (sp) do that to you? Or possibly, have you been eating allot of carrots? Also, from creatine use I noticed orange sweat patches on t-shirts that wouldnt wash out.

flywheel

incisor71 wrote:

Is it time for a doctor's visit, or just time to drop supplementation completely?

if you think you are showing signs of jaundice i'd suggest you go to your doctor - there can be many reasons for excess bilirubin in the system (if this is in fact what is happening to you) and a professional would be the best person to seek advice from

BrianD3

People with jaundice etc. generally don't look like they've been on a sunbed. The skin goes yellow, not tan/brown. It looks very unhealthy.

However if you are worried about your skin colour having changed noticably then get yourself to a doc.

This stuff that your sister has been saying about building artificial levels of muscle is clearly bullsh1t and typical of the sort of sh*te that people who don't exercise come out with. I suspect that the part about your skin colour may also be bullsh*t. Like a lot of the general public she's probably got loads of daft notions in her head about exercise and diet. She has now validated these ideas in her own mind by "seeing what she wants to see" i.e. she's perceiving your skin as having changed colour but it's probably all in her head.

ronbyrne2005

see your doctor if worried but whey protein wont do anything to ya if your already healthy ,whey is just a type of protein found in milk,someone drinking a litre of mil a day gets about 7 grams whey protein.you are eating five whole protein meal s a day,why arent you or your sister suspecting the whole protein instead of the whey?? because your sister hasnt a clue about nutrition and exercise,i'd rather have "artificial muscle" from training than "artificial" fat from eating crap and not doing any exercise like half the people in this nation

incisor71

BrianD3 wrote:

This stuff that your sister has been saying about building artificial levels of muscle is clearly bullsh1t and typical of the sort of sh*te that people who don't exercise come out with.

It was their notion that training builds "natural muscle" and supplementation builds "artificial muscle", which is indeed a load of Bolsheviks. I endeavoured to explain that no muscle will build at all without training and I (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) also cited the Little Miss Moffit nursery rhyme to point out that whey existed long before modern sports science. In any case I've been using the whey protein since August, and that regime hasn't altered dramatically in the last 3 weeks - the interval after which they remarked on my skin colour. {Edit: I can't imagine any occurrance of jaundice or hepatitis, and I had glandular fever 7 years back so it'd hardly be back again.}

Some folks (my folks!) are always small-minded towards anything new or different or beyond their understanding. It's ironic that they didn't have any similar concerns about me having LASIK surgery, which is far more invasive, but I suspect that's because my older brother had the same surgery three years previously and its efficacy had been validated. My father did weight training in the 60s and 70s during his athletic career, at a time when supplementation wasn't available, and consequently he sees no reason to use anything but "natural protein". :mad:

I'll talk to the doc ASAP about the skin but I'll also ask a nurse friend of mine, whom I haven't seen in about three weeks, what he thinks.

Folks, thank you so much!

incisor71

I went to my GP this morning as advised - he said that I definitely didn't have jaundice or any unhealthy-looking darkening of the skin. Indeed if anything was amiss, he said that it would be that I wasn't getting enough sunshine (an understandable situation for this time of year). But I had him take blood samples for liver tests in any case, and will know the results in about a fortnight.

(Admittedly, it was much more of a relief to my folks than to me. Now I know to keep strongly coloured, funky-looking supplement containers out of sight!)

So I guess there's no need for me to swear off the training and/or the supplementation... for now. Yay!

Once again, many thanks, folks, for your contributions and advice.

incisor71

Just heard back from the doctor re. results of all liver-related blood tests.... everything's perfect. Just another flash in the pan on my folks' part.