What Do Amino Acids Do For Your Body...

As you know, we must obtain the necessary balance of essential amino acids from food sources or supplements since we do not have the ability to make them. Your body, on the other hand, can make or synthesize the non-essential amino acids.

When it comes to eating the non-essential amino acids,  most people usually consume more than they need. There is no recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for the none-essential amino acids.

However, there are a very strong RDA for the essential amino acids. After all it is the essential amino acids that control the rate of protein synthesis.

To make matters worse, people usually do NOT get sufficient amounts of essential amino acids, as it is very challenging to eat a diet with an abundance and balance of the essential amino acids. The body can cope, or hobble along with you will, but without adequate EAA consumption, it is not performing at its peak by any means.

This deficiency means that muscle strengthening and muscle growth is happening on a much slower scale than it could or should be occurring. If left unchecked, it leads directly to weaker muscles and then eventually muscle loss.

Each Amino Acid Plays a Part

Every amino acid is a structural component of protein. The principal role of dietary proteins is to provide the amino acids that serve as precursors for the production of new protein, to balance the amount that is lost daily through the process of breakdown.

Many amino acids play additional roles. For example, arginine plays a role in regulating blood flow and blood pressure as a precursor for the production of nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is the primary chemicals responsible for dilating blood vessels, particularly in muscle. The essential amino acid leucine activates the molecular pathwasy involved in initiation of protein synthesis.

Leucine also happens to be a BCAA (Branched chain amino acid), as are isoleucine and valine, but every essential amino acid plays a unique and important role.

It is at this pint that people often get in trouble and hurt their bodies!

They focus on a single task accomplished by a single essential amino acid and reason, " I ant more of that, so I will take a supplement high that essential amino acid".

What they do not know is that if they take a specific amino acid supplement to strengthen or increase the size of their muscles, the adverse effects will likely outweigh the benefits sought.

Why? Because the amino acids do not work independently of each other... they work together in unison. What that mean is this:

Taking the essential amino acids in the correct proportions is just as important as taking the essential amino acids i the first place.

It is important to understand that a supplement containing a high amount of one or several essential amino acids will not benefit the body. It cannot because the body dumps the excess!

Yes, avoiding a deficiency is important, but taking a dietary supplement that creates an excess of certain amino acids my cause greater harm. The intentional overdoes of essential amino acids, because it puts the body out of balance, may have adverse effects on some of the other essential amino acids during the re-balancing efforts.

There is initial loss when all excess essential amino acids are dumped, and there is further loss in the effort it takes to bring the body back into balance.

I have seen body builders try to zero in on a single essential amino acid, such as leucine, and take it as a dietary supplement. They overdose on leucine because it is a key regulator of the rate protein synthesis. they figure that more leucine will trigger greater protein synthesis, and they will gain larger muscles.

What they do not know is that our bodies have regulatory mechanisms built in that always seek to maintain balance in the availability of all the essential amino acids, even when an excess of one is present. When leucine is consumed in large amounts as a dietary supplement, the degradation of leucine is also activated.

Unfortunately for the body builder, the metabolic pathway responsible for the degradation of leucine also degrades other amino acids (such as valine and isoleucine)

at an increase rate. the decrease in the concentrations of valine and isoleucine will limit any effect of the increase in leucine because valine and isoleucine will not be available for the production of new protein. In short:

For new protein to be produced, it requires adequate availability of all the amino acids in the protein.

And since there are nine essential amino acids, it is vitally important that the approach to muscle growth be a balanced one.

Optimal amino acid nutrition requires a balanced approach that includes healthy foods plus the essential amino acid solution (EAAS) formula, MyoHealth.

Together, this brings increase strength and greater muscle grown and a healthier body!!

Dr Robert Wolfe: Build It Stronger