35g Pre-Bed Casein Protein, 1st Fair, Isocaloric High Protein (1.8g/kg) Comparison: No Extra Muscle Gain in Young Men

Using casein protein pre-bed can be useful but probably only for those of you who use it to up their total protein intake.

"Once Upon a Time..." It may sound like it, but it is a fact when I tell you that there was a time when bodybuilders got up at night to consume a protein shake. That's not just the exact opposite of today's lean gains physique athletes, it is also PM protein ingestion taken to the extreme. An extreme of which a bunch of studies investigating the effects of the ingestion of slow-digesting casein protein before bed suggests that - even if it works - it may be an unnecessary sleep-impairing hassle.
For those who don't want to go to such extremes, a recent study by Jordan M. Joy (Joy 2018) could be of interest, the intent of authors from Texas was, after all, to conduct ...

"[...] the first longitudinal isonitrogenous, isocaloric, nighttime casein supplementation study investigating the impact on body weight (BW) and composition as well as strength and muscle hypertrophy when an impactful resistance training stimulus occurs earlier in the day" (Joy 2018).

Previous studies have focused on the beneficial effects of additional protein intakes pre-bed. Now, these studies were useful to establish that ...

• protein is digested and absorbed during sleep,  
• muscle and other tissues respond to hyperaminoacidemia during sleep by increasing muscle protein synthesis (MPS) when prior resistance exercise occurs in the evening 

In 2015, Snijders et al. (2015) conducted a study that supports both hypotheses. Over the course of 12-weeks, fourty-four young men (22 ± 1 y) were randomly assigned to a progressive, 12-wk resistance exercise training program. One group consumed a protein supplement containing 27.5 g of protein, 15 g of carbohydrate, and 0.1 g of fat every night before sleep. The other group received a noncaloric placebo... unfair? Well, I cannot deny that, but that's what you call a "proof of principle" study.
Accordingly, the previous study/-ies left us with the important question whether any improvements in protein synthesis and lean mass were more than the mere result of the fact that the supplement group consumes 1.9g/kg and the control group only 1.3g/kg protein per day. Exactly this is where Joy et al.'s new study is coming in.

As discussed in the context of different studies, protein timing is a thing... one that probably matters much less than the average gymrat believes. For pre-bed-protein the situation does, however, look different than it does for the legendary post-workout window of opportunity, for which - in science-terms - a ton of research on its importance (or non-importance) for gains exists. For the previously hinted at reasons, this cannot be said of the pre-bed protein research where there's exactly one (the study at hand) fair comparison of post-workout vs. pre-bed protein...

Wait... post-workout vs. pre-bed that's unfair, too, isn't it?

It certainly depends on whether you are with Schoenfeld and Aragon when it comes to the (non-)importance of protein timing if you consider it a "fair" comparison if you have one group of healthy, recreationally active, 18–25-year-old males who have been engaged in regular exercise for the previous 1–3 years at a frequency of 2–5 days per week on night-time vs. post-exercise protein?
In that, the term "post-exercise"-protein may be misleading, because Joy et al. had both groups consume 25g of whey protein immediately after their workouts. In the literal sense - that's the "post-exercise"-protein. The crucial timing difference, on the other hand, was introduced with 30g of micellar casein which were consumed (a) on top of the 25g of whey at (b) different timepoints. I've briefly corresponded with the authors about the casein timing issue because unlike pre-bed administration, the idea of having casein sometime later in the day is pretty vague. Here's what Jordon Joy told me:

"For the day-time-group, they drank the casein at least 3 hours removed from exercise. Could have been before or after (usually depending on their training time) and they could not have it within 6 hours before bed" (Joy, private communication).

Weeks 1–5 Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday Lower Hypertrophy Upper Hypertrophy Lower Strength Upper Strength Leg Press 5 × 6–15 Bench Press 5 × 6–15 Leg Press 5 × 1–5 Bench Press 5 × 1–5 SS Box Squat 4 × 6–15 Decline Press 3 × 6–15 Hack Squat 3 × 1–5 DB Press 3 × 3–8 Hyperextension 3 × 6–15 Incline Flye 3 × 6–15 Lunge 3 × 3–8 Shoulder Press 3 × 3–8 1-Leg Extension 3 × 6–15 Machine Shoulder Press 3 × 6–15 1-Leg Extension 3 × 6–15 Chest Supported Row 3 × 3–8 2-Leg Curl 3 × 6–15 Lateral Raise 3 × 6–15 2-Leg Curl 3 × 6–15 Pulldown 3 × 3–8 Calf Press 3 × 6–15 Low Cable Row 5 × 6–15 Leg Raise 3 × 10–20 YTWL 3 × 6 1-Tricep Extension 3 × 6–15 Pulldown 3 × 6–15 2-Bicep Curl 3 × 6–15 1-Cable High Row 3 × 6–15 Cable Abdominal Crunch 3 × 10–20 2-Rear Delt Flye 3 × 6–15 Weeks 6–10 Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday Lower Hypertrophy Upper Hypertrophy Lower Strength Upper Strength Leg Press 5 × 6–15 Bench Press 5 × 6–15 Leg Press 5 × 1–5 Bench Press 5 × 1–5 Front Squat 4 × 6–15 Incline Press 3 × 6–15 SS Box Squat 3 × 1–5 Pause Press 3 × 1–5 V-Squat Good Morning 3 × 6–15 Decline DB Press 3 × 6–15 DB Lunge 3 × 3–8 DB Shoulder Press 3 × 3–8 1-Leg Extension 3 × 6–15 Shoulder Press 3 × 6–15 1-Leg Extension 3 × 6–15 Cable Low Row 3 × 3–8 2-Leg Curl 3 × 6–15 Cable+DB Lateral Raise 3 × 6–15 2-Leg Curl 3 × 6–15 Pulldown 3 × 3–8 Calf Press 3 × 6–15 Chest Supported Row 5 × 6–15 Leg Raise 3 × 10–20 YTWL 3 × 6 1-Supine Tricep Extension 3 × 6–15 Pulldown 3 × 6–15 2-Preacher Curl 3 × 6–15 1-Cable High Row 3 × 6–15 Abdominal Crunch 3 × 10–20 2-Rear Delt Flye 3 × 6–15

Table 1: Overview of the workout program Joy et al. prescribed (Joy 2018).

Even if we assumed that this form of pre-workout (slow digesting) protein supplementation was relevant, it is thus unlikely to have had an effect in the study at hand. Accordingly, any beneficial/detrimental inter-group differences should - as the authors planned - be a consequence of nighttime protein ingestion in response to a realistic hypertrophy + strength workout (see Table 1) in what you can describe as otherwise "optimal" protein-anabolic conditions.

Figure 3: Changes in body composition over the 10-week study in the nighttime and daytime protein group (Joy 2018).

The scientists' data analyses using repeated measures ANOVA with Bonferroni post-hoc (alpha was set at p < 0.05), do yet show: there is no such effect. In fact, if anything, the daytime protein administration seems to have a non-significant edge when it comes to the extent of the significant main effect of time (p < 0.05).

No effect was observed for the weekly averages of DOMS and RPE, either. Things look only marginally different for the performance measures. No significant inter-group differences... with one exception: The peak force (PF) during vertical jumps decreased by − 249 ± 386N while it increased by 445 ± 602 N in the daytime supplementation arm of the study.
References:

• Joy, Jordan M., et al. "Daytime and nighttime casein supplements similarly increase muscle size and strength in response to resistance training earlier in the day: a preliminary investigation." Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition 15.1 (2018): 24.
• Kinsey, Amber W., and Michael J. Ormsbee. "The health impact of nighttime eating: old and new perspectives." Nutrients 7.4 (2015): 2648-2662.
• Kinsey, Amber W., et al. "The effect of casein protein prior to sleep on fat metabolism in obese men." Nutrients 8.8 (2016): 452.
• Lacroix, Magali, et al. "Compared with casein or total milk protein, digestion of milk soluble proteins is too rapid to sustain the anabolic postprandial amino acid requirement–." The American journal of clinical nutrition 84.5 (2006): 1070-1079.
• Madzima, Takudzwa A., et al. "Night-time consumption of protein or carbohydrate results in increased morning resting energy expenditure in active college-aged men." British journal of nutrition 111.1 (2014): 71-77.
• Snijders T, Res PT, Smeets JS, van Vliet S, van Kranenburg J, Maase K, Kies AK, Verdijk LB, van Loon LJ. Protein ingestion before sleep increases muscle mass and strength gains during prolonged resistance-type exercise training in healthy young men. J Nutr. 2015;145:1178–84.
• Tipton, Kevin D., et al. "Stimulation of net muscle protein synthesis by whey protein ingestion before and after exercise." American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism 292.1 (2007): E71-E76.