BCAA
Among the most beneficial and effective supplements in any
sports nutrition program are branched chain amino acids. These are the essential aminos
leucine, isoleucine, and valine.
Although these supplements have been around for a long time
and the scientific understanding in the exercise performance benefits of BCAA
supplementation is rich many people don't know exactly how they exert their effects or how
and when to use them properly.
You probably know that amino acids are the building blocks
of protein. When you eat a protein food, it gets digested in the stomach and intestine
into individual amino acids and short chains of amino acids that are small enough to be
absorbed into the bloodstream. These amino acids have far reaching effects in the body
from building and repairing tissues, to producing chemicals that enable our brains to
function optimally.
Essential amino acids cannot be made by the body. You must
get them from complete protein foods or combinations of incomplete vegetable foods. There
are 9 essential amino acids: histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine,
phenylalanine, tryptophan, and valine. Your body can make non-essential amino acids by
itself from vitamins and other amino acids.
The term "non-essential" can be misleading since
all amino acids are essential for proper metabolism and certain non-essential amino acids,
such as glutamine, become very essential. The 13 non-essential amino acids are alanine,
arginine, aspartic acid, cysteine, cystine, glutamic acid, glutamine, glycine,
hydroxyproline, proline, serine, & tyrosine.
The essential branched chain amino acids (BCAA's) are of
special importance for athletes because they are metabolized in the muscle, rather than in
the liver. Here's how this works: After digestion once protein is broken down into
individual amino acids these aminos can either be used to build new proteins or be burned
as fuel to produce energy. |
