Poll on benefits of supplementing amino acids

[Consul]

I wonder why AC is low though. Could be because the body has shifted energy metabolism towards more lipid usage and lower usage of glucose.

 

[Mick]

My $0.03...

Protein deficiency in general is a problem. I was protein deficient for 5 years (2015-2020) and it could be seen in test results but nobody noticed it because blood albumin level was just above the lower normal level.

I will not describe here the ways, time and money that were required to correct this. Doctors were of no help here, just the opposite - they made the whole process much more difficult and ridiculous.
When I said that I can't eat meat because it causes me allergy (because it was, and it was causing me joint pains and stomach pain) they said that I have to eat meat. Nobody even suggested supplements. When I started taking normal protein supplement - it was no good too - allergy/sensitivity again.
Nobody suggested aminoacids, ie. EAA. But when I started taking EAA this also caused me joint pain - because of sweetener. It also caused me migraines/headaches because one of the aminoacids was arginine which causes headaches.

So all of this caused incredible delays in treatment which were entirely to avoid. A few years of life wasted, and possibly the whole life wasted because as you get older certain opportunities are not there for you any longer.

I only started doing better when I started taking single aminoacids like BCAA, glutamine, tyrosine, tryptophan (more on tyrosine and tryptophan below). In order to supplement other aminoacids, I take hydrolysed collagen. I can't take any EAAs on the market - there is always something wrong with them. And they are expensive. It is not a problem to take one AA at the time if you can pay 2 times less than in the case of EAAs.

I don't know if I should take methionine. That is a problem. Theoretically, you should reduce your intake but if you reduce it too much, you will not be doing fine. I suppose I ingest too little (considering all sources). I will try to get some more.

I must also mention L-carnitine. In 2004 (?) when I took only one tablet, 500 mg, I had a heat stroke episode, so to speak. Simply, I was so deficient in L-carnitine that only one tablet made me so hot that I wasn't able to sleep for 24 hours and my heart was racing etc.

Ok, when it comes to tyrosine, tryptophan, glutamine, and aspargic acid.
They will directly affect your mood and brain function.

Tryptophan will make you happy but may make you sleepy.
But all other AAs: tyrosine, glutamine, aspargic acid will make you more agitated.
And that's why it is worth to try them.

 

[Viala]

At one point, a meal of carbs made me feel worse starting 20 minutes later. A level tsp of BCAAs prevented that (or maybe spread it out over a longer period so I didn't notice it). The sensitivity to carbs went away after a few weeks or months. BCAAs didn't have any other benefit for me.

Later, meat (or rather, the fatty acids in it) made my symptoms worse. Acetyl L-Carnitine (500 mg?) with the meal prevented those symptoms. As with the carb sensitivity, it went away after a few months. Carnitine didn't have any other benefits for me.

I did try both at higher amounts, and different times of day, but no benefits from that.

That's very interesting, so it seems that BCAAs and ALCAR helped with your metabolism of carbs and fats. I've had some success myself with carnitine regarding fatty foods and meats as well. It makes me wonder though why do we have these deficiencies in the first place. Carnitine is more obvious because it is mostly found in meat and beef, but what about other aminoacids.

My diet is abundant in protein, so I should get all aminoacids that I need, but then I notice improvement with even small amounts of supplemental aminoacids. It would mean that digestion of proteins is not working properly, because absorption of supplemental form works quite well, or that something is wrong with the food itself. I noticed it also with some vitamins.

 

[Mick]

Carnitine is more obvious because it is mostly found in meat and beef, but what about other aminoacids.

Carnitine is not so obvious as would seem because you can make your own carnitine just fine and that's what vegans do and they do not experience any problems with deficiency. Specifically, they will not exhibit such a strange behaviour as when you take one tablet of carnitine and you prove that you are completely deficient.

So in my case we may explore other possibilities: either I don't make carnitine or I don't recycle it (of do it poorly). But here comes another problem: it seems that I have deficiencies of about everything... CoQ10, iron, vitamins (including such that almost nobody is deficient in).
Yes, I do have gut issues, I do have absorption issues for sure but I think something else is at play here: one deficiency or metabolism impairment causes other issues and these cause other issues and suddenly we have a vicious circle. I don't know how to catch'em all (you know that old phrase: gotta catch'em all ) but I'm trying my best to counteract as many of these deficiencies as I can. Had I known about this all earlier I would have been much much better off in general.

 

[Wishful]

so it seems that BCAAs and ALCAR helped with your metabolism of carbs and fats.

Well, I think it's not quite that simple. Carnitine transports long-chain fatty acids into the mitochondria, but I didn't seem to be lacking in ATP production, so it wasn't a shortage of fuel. One possibility is that an excess of fatty acids in the cytoplasm, due to inadequate transport into mitochondria, caused problems, like a worksite with too much material piled around. Carnitine also transports metabolic products out of cells, so maybe the fatty acids were getting to the mitochondria properly, but the products weren't getting back out; again the image of a factory with the loading docks blocked by untransported products. ATP production might have been fine, but some other part of cell function might have been affected.

I think the carb problem was my sensitivity to tryptophan in my brain. Carb ingestion triggers insulin, which boosts TRP transport into the brain (~20 minutes later). BCAAs block TRP transport.