What Are BCAAs?

First, a quick refresher on amino acids: They are the building blocks of protein , which helps your body build muscle, repair muscle damage, and regulate immune function, among other things. While there are 20 amino acids in total, nine are essential—essential, because your body can’t produce them, but you need them to live. BCAAs are three specific essential amino acids that inhibit muscle protein breakdown and aid in glycogen storage: leucine, isoleucine, and valine.

Exercise performance

Taking BCAA supplements may help reduce exercise fatigue and improve endurance.

In a 2013 studyTrusted Source involving 26 college-age males, researchers randomly assigned participants to groups. One group took a BCAA supplement and the other a placebo. The team then asked the participants to cycle to exhaustion.

The researchers found that during the cycling, blood levels of serotonin were lower in the participants who took BCAA. Serotonin is an important brain chemical that also plays a role in exercise fatigue.

BCAA supplementation also improved energy metabolism and lowered levels of substances that indicate muscle damage, such as creatine kinase and lactate dehydrogenase.

The researchers concluded that BCAA can improve exercise performance.

Lean muscle mass

According to the authors of a study from 2009Trusted Source, BCAA supplementation can also help improve lean mass and decrease the percentage of body fat.

The study involved 36 strength-trained males who had practiced resistance training for at least 2 years.

The participants underwent an 8-week resistance-training program, and the researchers randomly assigned them to groups. Each received either:

14 grams (g) of BCAAs
28 g of whey protein
28 g of carbohydrates from a sports drink

The researchers found that the participants who took BCAAs had a more significant decrease in body fat and a greater increase in lean mass, compared with the other groups.

Muscle mass during illness

BCAAs, particularly leucine, may help maintain muscle mass in people with chronic conditions.

According to a 2012 reviewTrusted Source, a variety of illnesses can affect protein synthesis, which can lead to a loss of body protein and skeletal muscle mass.

The authors found evidence that a high-protein diet that provides additional leucine can help maintain muscle mass in people with chronic diseases such as cancer.

BCAA Benefits

So if you can consume BCAAs pretty easily through your diet, why take supplements? , including reducing muscle soreness, increasing power output, increased time to exhaustion, decreased lactate production, and weight loss,”

“What makes BCAAs unique is that they can be oxidized in the muscles for fuel,They work to prevent muscle breakdown during exercise, and are beneficial after exercise by stimulating muscle building and promoting recovery.” So when your glycogen stores run low, your body turns to BCAAs for fuel.

These three amino acids make up approximately one-third of muscle protein. And “while other amino acids are metabolized in the liver, BCAAs bypass the liver and head directly to muscles located away from the core, which could aid in energy production. Research has even linked BCAA consumption to increased resistance to fatigue, reduced muscle damage, and increased muscle mass.

“Theoretically, BCAAs reduce fatigue during prolonged exercise by preserving glycogen stores,” . “Remember, BCAAs can act as fuel during exercise and can be delivered more efficiently to muscles. Supplementing with BCAAs and carbohydrates was shown to reduce postrace fatigue in a group of marathoners—although the results only applied to slow runners, not the more elite athletes.”

They may also help you bounce back faster after that track workout. “BCAAs inhibit cortisol, which can cause muscle breakdown, and therefore contribute to faster muscle recovery (and less soreness),”. “And leucine in particular is great at stimulating muscle protein synthesis—it acts almost like a command sergeant in lining up other amino acids to together form new muscle tissue.”

There are even studies that show BCAAs could ramp up fat burning and help regulate your blood sugar levels,

MAECENAS IACULIS

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ADIPISCING CONVALLIS BULUM

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