What Are Amino Acids?

Amino Acids The Protein Building Blocks

Amino acids are critical to good nutrition and life itself. Alpha-amino acids are the building blocks of proteins and can be linked in varying sequences to form a huge variety of proteins.

There are twenty standard amino acids, ten of which can be synthesized by the human body. Those amino acids that cannot be manufactured must form part of the daily diet, as unlike fat and starch, the human body does not store any excess for later use.

The amounts required depend on the age and health of the individual, so it is hard to make general statements about the dietary requirement for some amino acids. Failure to obtain enough of every one of the ten essential amino acids, can result in degradation of the body’s muscle tissue as it will be broken down to obtain the one amino acid required.

The 10 amino acids that we can produce are:

• Alanine
• Asparagine
• Aspartate
• Cysteine
• Glutamate
• Glutamine
• Glycine
• Proline
• Serine
• Tyrosine

(produced from phenylalanine, so if the diet is deficient in phenylalanine, tyrosine will also be required).

The essential amino acids required from daily food intake are:

• Arginine

(required for the young, but not for adults).

• Histidine
• Isoleucine
• Leucine
• Lysine
• Methionine
• Phenylalanine
• Threonine
• Tryptophan
• Valine

When it comes to body building, branched chain amino acids deserve a special mention. These amino acids are different from others in several ways, one being that they are metabolized in the muscles rather than in the liver and are considered to be one of the most effective body building supplements available.

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