Hi, it's Dr. Minkoff here.
You know, I look around and I see things advertised all over the place
and one of the things that's promoted heavily in athlete communities,
are things called "branched-chain amino acids".
So, I want to talk to you a little bit about it. So you can understand this.
And see that this is a lot of promotion and hype,
but not much substance.
Now, what is this thing called a "branched-chain amino acid"?
First of all, what is an "amino acid"?
Amino acids have carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.
And they're mixtures of these things.
There's about twenty-two of them that are used in the human body.
And they are the building blocks of our proteins.
Now, protein is hair, and skin, and enzymes, and many hormones.
And really, it's the body structure.
So, amino acids are like an alphabet.
And you put them together in the right sequence,
and the right amount,
and you get a protein.
Now some amino acids are really simple
and some of them are really complex.
And the other thing is, so it's carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, plus N, which is nitrogen.
And in Greek, nitrogen is "amino".
So there are amino acids.
And an acid is a substance that's got a COOH on it.
That means it's an acid. Okay?
But it's got to have a nitrogen.
So all amino acids have nitrogen.
Now there are three amino acids of the twenty-two,
and they're all essentials.
So there are three of eight essential ones,
and the essential ones you have to get in dietarily.
We can't make them.
If you have the eight,
you can make the other fourteen
to equal twenty-two.
Three of these are called "branched-chain amino acids".
And the chain is going like this, and it's got a branch in it.
That's all it means.
And those are leucine, isoleucine, and valine.
Now the idea that people say is,
if you take branched-chain amino acids,
you will recover faster,
you will build muscle faster,
you will improve your body.
But we know that if you want to build a protein,
or recover a protein,
or repair a protein,
you've got to have eight amino acids.
The essential eight.
You can't have three of eight.
Now, there have been some very elegant studies done
where if you give these eight,
and they're very specific, in the specific ratio,
that the body will take those in,
and utilize those
and make protein.
But if you take three,
which are the branched-chains,
you won't make any protein!
Because there's five missing!
And the only thing that happens is,
your body turns this into fuel.
And you might as well just not even take an amino acid
and have a banana,
or a GU Gel,
or something like that.
Because you're not making any protein out of three amino acids.
So the hype on "Oh, take branched-chain amino acids. They will really help you."
No. Don't waste your money.
Take eight essential amino acids, and they will help you,
because your body can make protein out of it.
And every time you get the impulse
or you see a promotion to take branched-chain amino acids,
take a carb instead.
It will work the same way.
Amino acids make proteins.
You need eight of them.
To actually do it,
three of them won't cut it.
So, I'd just pass on the branched-chain amino acids,
because they're really not going to do anything for you.
Except cost you some money.
There's one other aspect of it, which is,
since there's been so much promotion on branched-chain amino acids,
and people fall prey to the promotion that,
"Oh, it's going to do it", or "This guy's got muscles and that's what he took",
but the true test of it is,
and, and look, all of us are susceptible to these things,
so, the true test of this is this,
if you take the right balance of eight essential amino acids,
you will see proteins being made in the body.
If you just for one day took branched-chain amino acids,
and you measured, did the body actually utilize those branched-chain amino acids to make protein?
Do you know how much protein would be made from those?
If you just ate those all day long?
None.
So, it requires the other five amino acids to be taken at the same time
in order to make protein.
So what we want to do is, we want to do things that are going to actually work
and work well.
If you just take leucine, which is one of the branched-chain amino acids,
it does stimulate gene response to build protein.
Okay, that's real.
But, if you don't have the other five amino acids,
when you take those three while the body is geared up to make protein,
it's not going to have what it needs in order to make that protein.
And so what we want to do is make sure,
when we take this in,
because we want to build protein,
that then we've got it there and it'll actually work.
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