Amino Acid Chronicles

[Friday]

Something that you may find useful, if you haven't done so already, is to go snag a couple used nutrition & adv. nutrition textbooks from your local university. Sciences advance so quickly that there are new editions coming out every other year or so, which means reasonable prices on last year's model. The changes made in each edition are clearly listed, so if the new model changes an area you're interested in? (Usually not) then you can source that material separately, and not be paying $300 instead of $50 for 2 paragraphs!

What's fantastic about college textbooks is that they present all of the known information, not just one site's pet theory, and when there are conflicting theories in use? Usually present those theories side by side. One of the things that drives me absolutely mad are the "good" v "bad" stuff one finds in researching pop-nutrition, because it's simply untrue.

((High fat diets, for example, are not just "good" but needed/necessary for proper brain development and myelinization of nerves in young children (until at least age 5, possibly older). Never ever ever feed a child a low fat diet unless specifically under medical orders to. & Yet, so many adults hear "Low Fat = Healthy!" that they give their kids a low fat diet, as well. Even though it -often seriously- affects brain & nerve development, and is one of the -many- contributing factors in childhood obesity (Kids who are starved of the nutrients they need, constantly hungry and consuming thousands more "empty" calories, as well as creating fat stores for the deficit of fats in their diet ends up = a fat malnourished kid. And then parents start restricting calories, which makes them even more malnourished and slows metabolism a further... When the easy thing to do? Give them an avocado, switch to whole milk, hell, even an ice cream cone! Fixes their nutritional deficiency, and the weight melts off them! SMH). And that's just one examples of thousands of science vs popular opinion.))

Once you start getting into serious nutrition texts, you can start to see all the moving pieces, and how nearly nothing in nutrition is good/bad, but depends on the individual person's actual needs based on their age, sex, activity levels, & existing medical conditions. Anyhow, fascinating stuff!

While basic nutrition is a 1 quarter requirement for all med-pros, it's also a 4 year degree in and of itself... So there are some really amazing focused texts, as well as foundational knowledge :)

 

[joeylittle]

This is an excellent article on proteins and how they work, which includes info on the essential, non-essential, and conditional amino acids and what they do: http://www.precisionnutrition.com/all-about-protein
And this wiki article is a good complimentary read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_amino_acid

 

[Deleted member 29961]

The first thing everyone should know about amino acids is that the human body uses only 20 amino acids. of these 20, 10 are considered to be essential, the other 10 can be manufactured by the body if the essential 10 are present. The 10 essential amino acids are considered to be essential because we can not produce them and they need to be supplied to are bodies daily via our dietary intake. the 10 essential amino acids are; arginine (required for the young, but not for adults), histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine. you obtain the 10 essential amino acids through your diet by eating complete proteins, a complete protein contains all 10 essential amino acids, Complete proteins are all your meat products (beef, lamb, pork, poultry, foul, fish, eggs and all dairy products). If you are one who does not eat animal products, you can get the 10 essential amino acids by combining whole grains with legumes such as whole grain rice and black beans.

If you are going to supplement amino acids, I would suggest you look into branch-chain amino acids because some of them do not work effectively without others being present. this can help to maximize effect while minimizing dosage. I would also suggest that you insure that you are getting a proper daily intake of the 10 essential amino acids. if you diet is sporadic, you may want to ensure that you are getting the proper amount of the 10 essentials before supplementing others. as you discovered, amino acid imbalances can have bad side effects, such as increases in blood pressure and heart rates, blood sugar imbalances (not good if you are diabetic), fatigue, sleepiness and even coma.

I'm not trying to ward you off, just take care and understand what you are getting into. just an FYI, I used to be a power lifter in my younger days and used to supplement amino acids regularly, but not before doing my research.

p.s. the 10 non-essential amino acids are; alanine, asparagine, aspartic acid, cysteine, glutamic acid, glutamine, glycine, proline, serine and tyrosine. These amino acids probably do not need to be supplemented since they can be manufacture from the other 10 essential ones.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Well, to be honest, I had the most radical change in my symptoms after supplementing with l-glutamine. That is, physical symptoms were severely exacerbating my PTSD symptoms. I know for a fact that my body was SO out of whack that there was no way I'd ever get balanced again just by eating tons of protein. (Been there, done that, and no, it didn't help.) The reason I started the l-glutamine was because it is known to help with intestinal problems. If my symptoms persist, I will likely pick it up again. You honestly have NO idea how radical the change was.....seriously, stopped being so reactive, stopped getting triggered all the time, can handle things that would have (and had) hospitalized me in the past. All from supplementing with an amino acid. If push comes to shove, I'd risk the physical side effects to feel normal.....YES, amino acids made me feel NORMAL! Its pretty incredible how drastic the change is. I don't want to take on these negative side effects, but if its down to being miserable or putting up with a few side effects, I'll take the side effects even if it gives me other health issues. I don't think I can stress enough just how dramatic the change in me was/is.....

I don't think its so simple as saying "eat a balanced diet and you will be fine". Well, this probably holds true of those who are healthy, but once something gets out of whack, sometimes you do indeed need to supplement. And yes, that's where I believe I am. (And in more ways than one.....I am quite vitamin D deficient, so simply getting a normal amount of sunshine every day will never get my levels back up to normal. Supplementation is essential.)