What Are Amino Acids?
Your body builds proteins from a set of "blocks" consisting of 20 amino acids. Once these amino acids are put together into protein, your body can use that protein to build muscle. There are several kinds of amino acids, so lets get into it!
Essential amino Acids
An essential amino acid is one that cannot be synthesized from other
available resources, and therefore must be supplied as part of the diet. The
eight essential amino acids are:
tryptophan
lysine
methionine
phenylalanine
threonine
valine
leucine
isoleucine
Nonessential Amino Acids
These are the amino acids that our bodies normally make and that are found in body proteins. Nonessential amino acids are called nonessential because they are supposedly not needed in our diet. Nonessential amino acids can be manufactured by the body. However, it is very possible that some people, because of metabolic deficiencies in their biochemical systems (which could also be based on dietary nutrient intake), may have low production levels of certain amino acids. In that case, the particular functions usually performed by them will not be fulfilled.
One such amino acids that often get supplemented is Glutamic acid in the form of the popular supplement glutamine. Bodybuilders use this amino acid to help prevent overtraining because glutamine get used up rapidly in the training process. The medical community uses glutamine to reduce the craving for sugar and carbohydrates and so may be helpful for some people in dealing with obesity or sugar abuse.
This is the list of nonessential amino acids:
Alanine
Asparagine
Aspartate
Cysteine
Glutamate
Glutamine
Glycine
Proline
Serine
Tyrosine
If you have some more questions about amino acids just email me and I will keep adding info to this article. Ray@buildingbodies.ca
For more technical info on amino acids and protein check out this more scientific
site:
amino
acid metabolism