Essential Amino Acids

What are the essential things in life? A nice house? A steady paying job? A fitness model with glutes that only Leonardo Da vinci could have conceived hanging by your side? Clearly it’s a though question to answer. But when it comes to what’s essential for you muscle’s anabolic cycle of life, the answer is easy. In fact,it’s so obvious that you’ll give your self a roundhouse kick in frustration. What is it?


The Essential Amino Acids

Gaining muscle has been made easier with the advent of scientific findings. you have at your disposal and assortment of diet and supplement choices that will lead you closer to your physique goals.

Creatine supplementation can increase muscle fiber size and improve strength and power. If you don’t eat enough protein you’d get shrinkage worse than George Constanza emerging from a cold lake. You must, I repeat, You must add another efficacious supplement to your list: Essential Amino Acid

The essential amino acid or EAAs for short, are those amino acids that are not made by your body. Hence you need to get them from your diet, these include Phenylalanine, Valine, Threonine, Tryptophan, Isoleucine, Methionine, Lysine, and Leucine.

A study from Texas looked a how powerful the EAAs truly are. They took research subject and had them perform an exercise training routine that consisted of: 10 sets x 8 repetition of leg press at 80 percent of their maximum and 8 sets x 8 rep of leg extension at 80% of max. The rest interval between sets was 2 minutes and the entire leg workout took about 45 to 50 minutes. Not exactly a typical leg day but it’s better than a fork in the eye.

What did these brainiacs find?

Consuming a mixture of EAAs significantly increased blood levels of amino acids. But more importantly, total net phenylalanine uptake across the leg was 158 percent greater when the EAAs were taken before versus after the training bout.

Interestingly, EAAs seem to exert a positive effect on protein metabolism without the presence of the other non- EAAs for instance a 40 gram solution of EAAs was found to improve net muscle protein balance thus indication a possible anabolic effect.

And for further show the versatility of these amino acids, a study from the University of Nebraska has shown that supplementation with EAAs may have an ergogenic effect.
Scientist studied a group of women who consumed either 18 gram of EAAs or placebo daily for 6 weeks. Each woman performed a split routine, multipleset weight training regimen three times weekly as well as aerobic training three times weekly for 20 minutes per session.

The result of this investigation showed no effect on body weight or body fat levels; how ever, treadmill time to exhaustion improved more in the EAA group and although it was not quite statistically significant, total weight lifted by the EAA group improved more than the placebo group.

So clearly if you want to increase muscle protein gain you may want to ingest EAAs and mixing it with a high glycemic index sugar might help as well. Some might suggest eating whole foods is the same thing. Wrong! There are no whole food’s that contain just the EAAs! In terms of efficiency, you are better off consuming 6 grams of EAAs then consuming whole protein.
Let me repeat. There are reasons why supplements are the better choice. The convenience factor is one of them. Also, there are no single foods thet are purely essentially amino acids. And of course there is the issue of digestibility.

My advice to you: consume the essential amino acids before training. It will stimulate muscle mass gain but for those of you who have sensitive stomachs, make sure you have a post work out meal right after training. Make it roughly 500 calories wiyh roughly equal protein and carbs. Add some glutamine for immune support. Drop in a teaspoon of flax oil or peanut butter, and you’re good to go.