What Lifters Need To Know About Essential Amino Acids

For regular lifters—and a whole lot of other people these days—protein is probably the most prioritized macronutrient. Gym rats were decades ahead of the curve on protein, and the reason why was never a secret: Protein forms essential components of muscle, as Dwayne Jackson, Ph.D., explains in the article "What Does Protein Actually Do In Your Body?"

But here's one other thing lifters have been ahead of the game on: the knowledge that when they eat all protein, all the time, they can still obtain some of the benefits of protein by taking the amino acids that protein is made of.

No, I'm not going to jump into a discussion of the merits of branched-chain amino acids here. Why not? Because more research is indicating that those three aren't where the story should end. There are nine essential amino acids (EAAs) in proteins—not just three—which your body can't make on its own. And though it might seem like EAA supplements are new to the scene, there's actually extensive...

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