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Rebecca Strong. Our stories are reviewed by medical professionals to ensure you get the most accurate and useful information about your health and wellness. For more information, visit our medical review board. BCAAs, short for branch-chain amino acids, are three types of essential amino acids. BCAA benefits include reduced fatigue, muscle soreness, and helping with weight loss. Use a BCAA supplement that has been third-party tested and contains two to three grams of leucine.
Visit Insider's Health Reference library for more advice. Rebecca Strong is a Boston-based freelance writer covering health, nutrition, wellness, and dating and relationships. You can follow her on Twitter. Additional comments. Email optional. All 20 amino acids are needed to build the body.
Because essential amino acids cannot be synthesized within the body, they must be acquired from food. The function and shape of each protein varies depending on the number, type, and combination order of its amino acids.
All 20 amino acids are needed to build the body, but essential amino acids cannot be synthesized in the body and must be acquired from food. If you consume BCAAs before exercising and use them as a source of energy, they will help you maintain your performance. Their main functions are as follows. BCAA is a general name for valine, leucine, and isoleucine.
If you've ever strolled down the supplement aisle at the health food store, there are plenty of powders and pills all promising to get you where you want to be, but faster.
In that aisle, you may have come across products labelled BCAAs or Branched-Chain Amino Acids , which claim to help you work out harder or recover from your workouts faster.
But are they worth the buzz? We reached out to nutritionist Kyle Byron and sports dietician Ashley Leone, owner of Gazelle Nutrition Lab , to find out exactly what BCAAs are, how they work and if they're worth the investment for you. To understand what branched-chain amino acids are, we have to first know about proteinogenic amino acids in general. The non-essential amino acids are "non-essential" because they can be made by your body.
BCAA's are considered essential amino acids. They're made up of three separate essential amino acids — leucine , isoleucine and valine — and are called "branched-chain" because of their molecular structure.
Essential amino acids aren't produced internally, "which means the body can't make them," says Byron, "so we have to eat them. So if we are deficient in proteins, we don't function very well as humans.
BCAAs also play a role in glucose metabolism and immune and brain function. Byron says that BCAAs supplements often claim to improve muscle gains and exercise performance.
Leone says people them "to help improve muscle growth and repair and help reduce muscle fatigue and soreness. BCAA supplements often come in pill or powder form and can sometimes be bundled together with other supplements, such as glutamine and creatine.
Also, supplements are regularly recalled for infractions such as excess amounts of vitamin D, A, B6, and selenium because these substances are potentially toxic in large amounts. Leone suggests: "One handy way to check, though not guarantee, the safety of a supplement is to see if it is listed on the NSF International Certified for Sport site.
Depending on what's in them, BCAA supplements can vary in calories, but ultimately do count towards your daily protein intake. Some studies have been able to find some benefits. A study found that BCAA supplementation may decrease muscle soreness after exercise, but, when consumed alongside a diet of adequate protein, the results are "likely negligible".
In a study , participants reported reduced perceived exertion but they didn't actually improve their aerobic performance. A review of the literature on the subject ultimately concluded that "that the claim that consumption of dietary BCAAs stimulates muscle protein synthesis or produces an anabolic response in human subjects is unwarranted. More to the point of practical BCAA supplement use, Leone states, "There is no evidence that amino acids that are taken in a form that is separate from food is superior to amino acids provided from eating food.
Preliminary results appear to support the importance of BCAAs in your diet, but generally do not appear to support free form supplementation.
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