Muscle Amino Acids

　　Explore how amino acids can help build muscle

　　If you want to improve your fitness and performance, or repair muscles lost due to injury, please understand how amino acids make up muscles.

　　Exercise and nutrition to build muscle

　　Exercise is an important part of muscle movement. However, if there is not enough nutrition and hormone balance in the body, it is impossible to build muscle by exercise alone.

　　Enough protein (especially essential amino acids) and carbohydrates in the diet to help muscle growth.

　　If you stop exercising, fasting or not eating for a period of time, muscle filaments may begin to break down faster than they grow, resulting in a decrease in muscle mass.

　　What are amino acids?

　　”Amino acid” is a chain of compounds composed of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen.

　　Amino acids are considered to be the basis of protein in your body. They are a source of energy and help to grow tissues, organs, muscles, skin and hair. Muscle growth or hypertrophy is one of many physical processes related to human amino acids.

　　Imagine that a protein is a set of connected chains. Each link in the chain is an amino acid, forming a peptide chain (polypeptide). The more links on the chain, the larger the polypeptide. Protein is composed of many polypeptide chains.

　　Amino acids can be divided into two categories:

　　Essential (or dietary) amino acids-from the food you eat, mainly responsible for the construction of protein in the body

　　Non-essential amino acids-the human body is synthesized by other amino acids and can be used as fuel

　　How does protein help muscle growth?

　　Muscle is composed of two types of filaments (actin and myosin), both of which are proteins. In order to grow muscles, two protein filaments need to be built and strengthened to make them larger than the existing size.

　　When muscles are more challenged in resistance exercise, the protein cells in the filaments send messages to activate their cell growth. Cells can use the available protein to build damaged muscle fibers to form new and more muscles.

　　The balance between the available protein in the cell growth receptor and the protein mass needed to build muscle is regulated.

　　Research supports amino acids to promote muscle growth

　　The protein is too large to enter muscle cells. Smaller amino acids can easily pass through cell membranes to form peptides that are integrated into muscle proteins.

　　It is important that your body has sufficient levels of essential amino acids to help build muscle. Summary All current studies on muscle growth show that the increase of circulating amino acids in the blood after exercise can stimulate muscle growth in healthy adults, but it can only increase the utilization of amino acids.

　　The source of essential amino acids

　　You can increase the utilization of amino acids in your body by eating some foods. Diet is an important source of amino acids, by ensuring that the diet contains enough protein (such as meat, fish or eggs).

　　Research also shows that supplementing your normal nutritional intake with essential dietary amino acids from protein supplements or powders can help maintain a large amount of amino acid reserves, thereby increasing muscle mass over time. Dietary supplements containing amino acids can increase the utilization of amino acids to muscles. For example, the concentration of essential amino acids glycine, lysine and proline contained in gelatin supplements is higher than that of protein in food.

　　Want to learn more about the benefits of protein supplements?