The Magic In A BCAA Supplement

While BCAA supplementation may be useful for gaining skeletal muscle. A BCAA supplement is especially helpful for maintaining mass while on a calorie-deficit diet. They're particularly useful for bodybuilding competitors who take their physiques to the lean extreme.  Although dieting down makes you look awesome onstage, on the beach, and to your friends, it can also take a chunk out of your muscle mass. Increased BCAA levels also work in your favor by reducing the rate of protein breakdown. They do this by decreasing the activity of the protein breakdown pathway, and also by decreasing the expression of several complexes involved in protein breakdown. There are three BCAAs: leucine, isoleucine, and valine, which are all essential amino acids not produced by the body but needed for survival. BCAAs are the largest collection of amino acids in the body, accounting for up to 35% of muscle proteins. Basically, a BCAA supplement are excreted rapidly. BCAA intermediates can be toxic at high concentrations, so functional BCAA breakdown is vital. BCAA formulas have been on the market since 1996, mainly for treating liver diseases such as cirrhosis and hypoalbuminemia. Nowadays, BCAAs are mainly used by bodybuilders for exercise purposes, to increase energy, and to boost protein synthesis. Another interesting BCAA benefit is delayed fatigue during prolonged exercise, allowing you to work harder, longer. This study shows that BCAAs may help keep you focused and alert by blocking tryptophan from crossing the blood-brain barrier a process that normally increases during extended exercise, and is followed by serotonin production, which causes fatigue. Additionally, to the recovery benefits, that improved mental edge which is critical during strategic, grueling, long-distance events—is why BCAAs are widely used among endurance athletes like ultra-runners and triathletes.

Some people use branched-chain amino acids to prevent fatigue and improve concentration. Athletes use branched-chain amino acids to improve exercise performance and reduce protein and muscle breakdown during intense exercise. Healthcare providers give branched-chain amino acids intravenously (by IV) for sudden brain swelling due to liver disease (acute hepatic encephalopathy) and also when the body has been under extreme stress, for example after serious injury or widespread infection. Branched-chain amino acids stimulate the building of protein in muscle and possibly reduce muscle breakdown. Branched-chain amino acids seem to prevent faulty message transmission in the brain cells of people with advanced liver disease, mania, tardive dyskinesia, and anorexia. Despite all these benefits of BCAA supplementation, there are many skeptics who say branched-chain amino acids are overpriced and you can just get them from whey protein. While proteins like whey are naturally rich in BCAAs, this isn't the most effective strategy for muscle growth or fat loss. The BCAAs in whey are peptide-bound to other amino acids. In order to raise BCAA levels in your body, they must be liberated through digestion and then absorbed into the bloodstream. Even though whey protein is relatively fast digesting, it still takes several hours for all the amino acids to be broken down and absorbed into the plasma. Branched-chain amino acids in supplement form, however, are free-form, require no digestion, and are rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream. They spike blood amino acid levels more quickly and to a much greater extent than peptide-bound amino in proteins. Even a few grams of free-form BCAAs will spike BCAA plasma levels way more than 30 grams of whey protein. They can start working right away.