Essential Amino Acids Explained: Protein Quality, Leucine, BCAAs and How Much You Need

Are you still confused about protein? Well, my friend, that is a luxury that nobody can afford. Protein is not just one thing. It is a group of different amino acids. Some which are essential, some which are not, but all equally important. And that is the reason that I have pulled together some of my favorite moments with some of the finest protein scientists in the world. You will understand what not to do, how to get your central amino acids, how much, what are the patterns, what are the protocols, how do they work in the human body and most importantly, what happens if you get this wrong. Now I have to ask the elephant in the room question, which is we are talking about protein, but you have said numerous times that we don't have a protein requirement. What we really have, the sucks is having a mentee that's, you talk to every day, we don't have a protein requirement, but what we really have is an essential amino acid requirement. Okay, can you unpack that a bit because the guidelines, it doesn't only take into account that. We all have a requirement for 20 amino acids to make the proteins in the body and also the other metabolic aspects. Eleven of them we potentially can make, nine of them we can't, so they're called essential or indispensable. Protein ends up just being really the delivery system for getting those, that represents the food sources of where we get those amino acids. So I think the era coming up, I think one of the things we're going to have to be more, we treat protein sort of like it's a vitamin pill. We might have a vitamin pill that has 14 vitamins in it, and then we don't spend a lot of time discussing the color of the pill. That's kind of like discussing the type of protein. What we really discuss are the 14 vitamins, and we need to think more about the individual amino acids that are in that pill, in that protein. And so I think that's the next era, and that gets into the difference between does protein cause a change in lean body mass, what protein those amino acids have lots of other roles. And we know that some of them are signals like lucine and protein synthesis, or lucine is provides the nitrogen that allows us to make other amino acids like arginine, which is essential for blood pressure. We know that triptophane is essential for serotonin, which is related to sleep and mood. We know that phenylalan is related to dopamine, and your cognitive function. We know that methylene is related to glutathione and oxidative. So there's all these other roles that is totally obscured by a focus on, well, it didn't change lean body mass. And it gets into that, you started to allude to it earlier about oxidation of amino acids, or are they wasted? Well, all of those things that I just mentioned are actually amino acids getting metabolized. So does that mean having serotonin to allow your brain to function as a waste? I mean, that's the lack of understanding of amino acid metabolism that is prevalent out there. Absolutely. We can talk about the dietary guidelines for America, and for those of you that don't know, this is a framework for policymakers, nutrition professionals, as well as health professionals, and they're really intended to make practical recommendations for a nutritionally adequate diet. And as you said, Gabrielle, essential amino acids and dietary protein quality is something we're very interested in in our laboratory, as well as my mentors' laboratories. And what you can really discover in the dietary guidelines, if you dig in when you're focused on protein, is a lack of addressing dietary protein quality. And you might ask for the listeners, what is protein quality? Well, when we consider protein quality, this is the amino acid composition, specifically the content of essential amino acids. And I know your listeners, if they've been following for some time now, they're aware that essential amino acids are the amino acids or the building blocks of protein that the body cannot make, which means we have to get those essential amino acids from dietary sources. And now we're starting to build this storyline of, okay, it's needed in the diet, it's required. It means it's really a key component of achieving an adequate diet. Or if you're more in the realm of pursuing optimized diets, you really need essential amino acids at a higher level to achieve a more optimal diet. And so we dug in and found that the dietary guidelines aren't really addressing, per se, this protein quality perspective. And this could be for a lot of reasons, this could be because we have had a limited ability to measure essential amino acids in food sources for everyday consumers. For example, if you look at the food label, we don't have a great way of demonstrating right now the amount of protein from a quality perspective on a food label. Can you clarify that for the listener because what they're thinking is they're thinking, what do you mean? I see protein on the back of a label. And it says, for example, if you see a hemp protein shake, you will see 15 grams of protein on that. And what I'm hearing you say that yes, it is saying that it has that protein in, but it does not speak to the quality. Right. Right. So the quality really again is the content of amino acids, the profile of the amino acids in the bioavailability. What that label is telling you is the nitrogen content. So that protein gram amount doesn't speak to the essential amino acid content. And it doesn't speak to the source. And so it's really, you know, a good starting point for trying to achieve quantity and intake, but it really doesn't give the consumer a transparent view of the quality of the protein. It's very misleading, essentially. We have, we have some growth that we can make. We said that very diplomatically. I would agree. So in the dietary guidelines, they have pursued one way to provide recommendations for protein intake. And this has come about as an ounce equivalence. And for example, announce equivalence in the dietary guidelines for nuts is half an ounce. As the name would imply, the equivalent of that in mean beef is an ounce. However, the problem when you start to look at the amount of protein that ounce equivalence provides, it's only around four grams of protein in the nut amount. And nine grams of protein in the lean cooked beef portion. When we break it down even further into that essential amino acid content, it's only about one gram of essential amino acids in the one ounce, half an ounce of nuts. Whereas in the equivalent to the dietary guidelines equivalent to lean beef, it's about 3.5 grams of essential amino acids. So in animal foods in general, essential amino acids make up 45 to 50% of the, of the amino acids in that food. In plant-based foods, it's more like 35%. So you'd have to eat a lot more of them. What we know from when people go more plant-based, they decrease the quantity of the protein they eat. And they also begin to decrease the quality because of that, both the essential amino acids and also bioavailability. If you look at the enhanced data or national survey data, what you find is that when people shift that way, they shift to eating more grains. They don't eat a lot more beans and lentils and nuts and seeds. They shift toward grains. Beans and lentils make up less than 10% of even the plant-based, actually, of the total protein, but only about 18% of the plant-based protein. So the rest is all coming from those very poor quality grains. And so we've modeled that. And basically, if you're getting, you know, as you go from a high-protein animal protein, say 100%, you can meet your essential amino acid requirements with less than 40 grams of protein per day, if that's your only target. But as you go down less animal protein toward more and more plant-based, assuming that you're always making it from grains at the point of 50%. If you get below 50% animal proteins, then the RDA for protein can't possibly meet your essential amino acid needs. So you have to then eat more and more protein to get to it. So if you get down to a vegetarian, a vegan-based diet, you're going to probably have to be in the 100. And you're going to probably be approaching 120 to 130 grams of protein to meet your essential amino acid requirements. Let's talk a little bit about branch-chain amino acids, the necessity, the potential benefits from taking branch-chain amino acids as it relates to pre-workout. You take them pre-workout? I think the important thing to realize what the branch-chain amino acid story really is. And going back to sort of what we discovered with Lucide and M-Tor, Lucy. an M-tor represent a recovery from a catabolic time. So when we go into a fasting period, like a short-term 12-hour overnight fast, the system down regulates and sort of saves energy and shuts everything down. And that means we turn off a whole series of initiation factors. And until we have enough Lucy to turn that back on, we stay sort of in that fasting state. And so Lucy is effective to sort of recover from a fasting state. So almost all the research on Lucy has been shown the first meal of the day, breakfast. And the other time it's been shown, and we actually, with the first to show, it is after endurance exercise. Endurance exercise also turns off protein synthesis, probably an energy issue in both cases. And what we showed is that Lucy could cause a recovery of that. That's where we were, the whole Lucy story came from. I mean, Tracy and Josh and Jamie Baum were in the lab at Greg Paul. And we all were looking at this recovery after endurance exercise and showed that Lucy better recover it. So again, benefit of branch chain amino acids, well, it's a recovery mechanism. So then you have to think about when are you trying to recover? Well, small meals, a breakfast meal, you know, do you have enough Lucy to get a recovery? How about a small lunch meal? And by small, I mean, a meal where you won't have enough overall amino acids. And what we showed was having around 30 grams of protein was enough. And the reason for that is that in a next kind of diet, like most Americans see, Lucy makes up about 8% of the protein. So 30 grams gives you about 2.5 grams of losing. And that's, we'll turn it on. So that's where kind of all those numbers came from. So again, I think after exercise might be useful, certainly at small meals, but after exercise for recovery as it relates to muscle would probably require the whole spectrum of amino acid. So that's exactly right. Is that again, what Lucy is a trigger to turn on the system for initiation. And as soon as you turn on the trigger, then you have to have all the amino acids to make it work. So, you know, should you take in branch chain amino acids or should you take in weight protein? Obviously, you should take in the protein. It's a completed mixture. Do you have hemorrhoids postpartum skin or want to be clean? I'm glad Toshia sponsoring today's episode because this is an upgrade to your bathroom care. Think of it like this, washing dirty dishes. You wouldn't just wipe a dirty plate with a dry paper towel and call it clean, would you? A baday removes bacteria instead of spreading it around. It is better for sensitive skin, dry wiping, severely irritates, conditions like hemorrhoids, fissures, or postpartum skin. I've used them for both of my pregnancies. Water provides instant relief and clean comfort without friction. I am not good at anything mechanical and I was able to attach Toshii to my toilet in about 10 minutes. No plumber required and it's just fresh water. So, I'm improving my hygiene with less irritation than wiping over and over again. There's a 30-day return window and a 12-month warranty. So, you can try it. Your cozy aeration stop at the toilet. For a limited time, our listeners get 10% off their first baday order when you use code Dr. Lion to check out. That's 10% off your first baday order at hellotoshii.com with promo code Dr. Lion. Spelled H-E-L-L-O-T-U-S-H-Y.com. Use promo code Dr. Lion. But the starting point was to current sports nutrition recommendations apply in those extreme stress scenarios. And so, we brought that back to the laboratory and tested a dose response, if you will. It was really a high dose versus a low dose. So, perhaps not a true dose response. But the standard or the lower dose was the current sports nutrition recommendations of.1 gram per kg of body weight of essential amino acids compared to a higher amount, which was.3 grams per kg of body weight of essential amino acids. And what we demonstrated in this study is that following a controlled laboratory exercise and following five days of energy deficit at around 30%, individuals who consumed the higher dose, because this was a within subjects comparison. And for the listeners, that means the volunteers went through both the high dose and the standard dose. For the high dose, whole body protein net balance, which we didn't define that yet today. But whole body net protein balance is the combination of synthesis and breakdown. So, if you subtract whole body synthesis, excuse me, if you subtract whole body protein breakdown from whole body protein synthesis, you get net balance. And so, this is really a marker of body protein status. And so individuals who consumed the high dose during that trial had a higher whole body protein balance than during the standard dose. One interesting thing you did say essential amino acids protect from muscle. And certainly, we were hypothesizing that the higher essential amino acid dose would provide a protective effect. And so, for those who might be familiar with this paper, we did not show a statistical significance such that there was no difference between the standard and high essential amino acid dose at the muscle level. There could be a variety of reasons for this. So, that standard dose when you calculated that.1 grams per kg per body weight for actual gram amount, it came out to around 8 grams of essential amino acids. And when we look at the rest of the body of literature, there's a sweet spot for maximizing muscle protein synthesis around 8 to 11 grams. So, it could be in this study that while there was a greater benefit at the whole body protein level of the higher essential amino acid dose, at the muscle level, we had likely maximized our response. And have you thought about dosing? Some of your earlier work, again, you did it with the 8 grams of essential amino acids, with your work with the military individuals. Have you thought about it beyond that for, I mean, it probably translates maybe a little bit higher, again, for the aging individual because of the muscle proteins synthetic response or even the slower protein turnover? Right. So, certainly we haven't done that work in my laboratory or with my collaborators firsthand. But when you do look at the literature, you're right. There is seen, there does seem to be a dose increase or an increased requirement as we age. For total protein intake as well as amino acids, essential amino acids. And this could be, and you know the literature just as well as I do in the longevity space, this could be to reduce, this could be due to a reduced ability to digest and absorb protein as a whole food in the gut. This could be due to re-reduced muscle sensitivity or what we sometimes term as anabolic resistance. And we're still teasing out the actual mechanism or reason why individuals become anabolic, anabolic resistance as they age. And the term anabolic resistance is also more nuanced, right? So anabolic resistance in a young individual who's going under an energy deficit is very different than anabolic resistance in the aging individual. So, to your point about dosing and aging, I think the literature has really done a nice job of arriving at a consensus that protein does become increasingly important as we age and that it is to support overall lean mass, but that there are considerations for total quantity as well as the types of protein consumed. So not to get too far off on a tangent, but going back to the eating behavior perspective with protein as well, these individuals are often consuming fewer calories. And unfortunately they're also less active. And so now we're kind of battling a reduced total amount of protein intake coupled with a lower sensitivity of the muscle because they're not as physically active. So in light of all of that, consuming essential amino acids in a powdered form may be an easier way for them to get those overall protein needs. So with that, I definitely think Whole Foods approach. I've heard that on your podcast before. So Whole Foods definitely have a lot of benefits from their matrix and what I mean by matrix is exactly what you just described. All of those micronutrients and vitamins that come along because certainly protein is not the only macronutrient and so not the, it doesn't cover the micronutrients and vitamins as well. So for individuals who have the energy allowed balance in their diet, pursuing a whole foods approach would be most ideal. But as you mentioned in some cases, individuals can't consume enough protein to maintain from a plant-based source to maintain that energy balance or that weight maintenance status. And so in that case, for an individual and you bring this point out as well in this paper as well as Dr. Rodriguez does, using an isolated plant-based protein powder could be one option, free form, essential amino acids could be another option. These we'd like to talk about as tools in the toolbox. And I'm not going to pivot too much to our service members right now, but there are times in the military setting where you can't eat a whole food because of the logistics. And so same thing for an individual who's jumping in the car, they're trying to get their kids to work or kids to school on time, maybe in that case, an essential amino acid powder that they can consume on the go helps them get to that more optimal intake. So to have a short answer, yes, I think they have a place in the diets very pattern. As a hundred and I don't know, maybe 110 pounds as a female, I am one of those people I do not like to eat in the morning. As you see, well maybe you didn't see, but I'm all over the place all the time moving very fast. For me, what I do is I might have one or two eggs that are hard boiled fast and then I'll add in essential amino acids. I'll add in a scoop of essential amino acids. As you know this, I use body health, tastes great. I put strawberries, strawberry in water or strawberry in tea, one scoop with my eggs. And that way, I don't know how big your appetite in the morning is, but mine's not huge. And so this allows me for that first meal to hit 40 or so, the equivalent nutrient density of 40, roughly 40 grams in the morning. Start with whole foods. And when life gets in the way, because it will, an essential amino acid supplementation is a tool in the toolbox. If you are with me and you believe that muscle is the organ of longevity, feed it to stay forever strong.