Evening star., 1939-03-22
Muscular Endurance
Doubled by Athletes
Drinking Ge|atine
6oin in Strength Losts
Long Time; Tests Fail
To Benefit Women
BY HOWARD w. BLAKESLEE.


Associated Press Science Editor.
NEW YORK. March 22-A new
drink that makes men strong has
been announced at the Long Is
land College of Medicine.
The drink is about one third of
q cupful daily of ordinary dry gela-
tine dissolved in orange and lemon
Juice.
Results, six men doubled their
muscular endurance in about a
month and a half training at bicycle
riding. On women there was no ef-
feet. The announcement was made
by DR.. G. r. Ray, J. R. johnson and
M. M. Taylor.
It is planned to try gelatine on
football players and other athletes
IN training. The gain in strength in
the tests lasted long time and no
bad effects have been found.
Sedentary person4also drank gela-
tine, DR.. Ray said. These reported
they ''felt better" but that there had
been no way of proving whether this
was real or imaginary.
Gelatin Made of Bones.
The kind of gelatin used was not
the mixtures on the market, con-
tanning many other ingredients, such
as sugar, coloring matter and flavor
Ing, already prepared for making
fancy deserts, as these contain too
small an amount of gelatin. The
gelatin used by DR.. Ray is the
gelatin made from bones of food
animals, with nothing added. The
amount of gelatin taken by the male
subjects was so grams, or about 2
ounces. day, and by the women,
three-quarters of this amount.
There is good scientific back
ground for giving gelatin to make
muscles strong. 1t is rich in a sub
stance known to help in making
muscles contract more easily.
The substance is glycine, an
amino acid also called gelatine
sugar. Glycine has been used
medically for several years to treat
muscular weakness. 1t has been
tried on athletes. Thus DR.. r. M.
Wilder reported to the Mayo clinic
that his tennis game improved after
two weeks of taking glycine.
But glycine causes discomfort
when taken in large amounts. The
Long Island scientists reasoned that
gelatine would be an easy way to
take the endurance chemical and
reported they succeeded.
How Tests Were Conducted.
The men who made the tests
spent three weeks with no gelatine,
training daily at bicycle riding. until
fatigued. In this period their in
durance rose 20 to 25 per cent.
They then added the drink - two
glasses, each of which contained
half of the 60-gram gelatine ration
and endurance took spectacular
jumps. 1t reached its peak after
about so days drinking and training.
Sixty grams is about a third of
a cup OF dry gelatine. To make this
easy to take the Long Island men
dissolved it in orange and lemon
juice at the rate of 80 grams to 8
ounces of juice. Then they drank
it quickly before it could "jell."
Then the drink was stopped, but
training continued. There was
slow drop in endurance, but never
to as low as before the drink started.
Other experiments showed, the re-
port stated, that the orange and
lemon juice, had no part in the
result.
Four women who tried the same
training, with two-thirds as much
daily gelatine, showed no benefits.
Previous medical experiments have
indicated why women may not be
benefited.
Unlike the male, feminine muscles
cannot store up creatine, an amino
acid, natural in the body, whose
reaction with phosphoric acid forms
the grease" that makes muscles
contract easily. Glycine causes in
creased storage of creatine in mus
cleS,