Ammonia smell during excerise

[Skipper]

I've come through the warnings before, but never thought it would ever happen to an average lazy overweighet guy like me, nevertheless, after 40 minutes intervall training on my stationarybike not in extremely heavy load (burned 200kcal according to bike-computer) I sat down to drink water and found that I smelled ammonia.

I searched the net and found a great article about this issue on this link: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/ammonia.htm

I also found hundreds of 'amatour' answers aiming for different solutions/explanations, but no one as 'deep' as the article above.


What is your experience of this?


btw, I drank 2dl milk mixed with 1,5 banana and some chocolate pulver ro increase my carb storage.

[Skipper]

Originally Posted by Skipper

I've come through the warnings before, but never thought it would ever happen to an average lazy overweighet guy like me, nevertheless, after 40 minutes intervall training on my stationarybike not in extremely heavy load (burned 200kcal according to bike-computer) I sat down to drink water and found that I smelled ammonia.

This is becoming a problem for me, yesterday I lifted weights in a slow tempo but intensive load for around an hour, after that I cycled for 15 minutes. Five minutes after I walked of the bike I started to smell Ammonia again.

I then drank a shake with 3dl milk, 1 banana, 1 egg and 1 portion of protein and the ammonia smell went away.

90 minutes AFTER everything I felt the Ammonia again, so I had a sandwich. And everything was fine until this morning when I made a fast walk to the kindergarten, then sat on the train and started to smell the ammonia again. I couldn't do anything about it on the train and after like 20 minutes it went away again.

I'm starting to be worried about this, do I need a medical doctor to check me out?

[listo]

What causes the ammonia smell? This is the first time I've ever heard of that.

[sterno]

Originally Posted by listo

What causes the ammonia smell? This is the first time I've ever heard of that.

I found this at: http://www.hussman.org/fitness/

Ammonia is essentially nitrogen, and that sensation after a workout is a signal that you've raised your cortisol levels enough to trigger the breakdown of amino acids by the liver (gluconeogenesis). When the body needs energy, it metabolizes glycogen, then fat, then protein. If one isn't fast enough, it goes down the list. But if it's going to feed on protein, you want it to go after something other than muscle tissue. So if you smell ammonia, you should have a protein and carbohydrate containing supplement immediately after your workout, preferably along with a protein stimulating supplement such as L-Leucine (whey protein is about 20-25% Leucine).

There's a lot of info on this page so it's worth a read.

[Johan]

I used to have this problem when doing tough cardio, but then I ate about 10 grams of protein before each cardio and this seemed to help.


// Johan.