Stress Proteins and Heat Shock Proteins: Role in Muscle Building and Sports Nutrition

The heat shock proteins (HSPs) are a family of proteins contributing to cellular protection, protein homeostasis and cell survival against a variety of environmental and metabolic stresses. HSPs, originally identified as heat-inducible gene products, facilitate cell proliferation and regeneration, protect against tissue injury, repair damaged proteins, assist in protein refolding, protect proteins against aggregation and maintain overall integrity of cellular components. A continuous interplay between mechanisms that drive protein synthesis and those that boost protein degradation is an important regulating factor of skeletal muscle mass, where HSPs may play an important role. Both acute and chronic exercise induce HSP expression. As a physiological tool, physical exercise can be considered the safest strategy to enhance skeletal muscle HSP levels. Studies on the modulation of skeletal muscle HSP levels using antioxidant and dietary supplementation strategies gave contradictory results, and this line of research deserves greater effort.