Arginine is an essential amino acid that causes the secretion of growth hormone from the pituitary gland. A dose of arginine an hour before a weightlifting workout speeds muscle building and fat loss. Researcher Sandy Shaw used this protocol by taking 10 grams of arginine before doing bench presses. She lost 25 pounds of fat and gained 5 pounds of muscle within 6 weeks on this regimen.
Dosages
Clinical studies have shown that various doses of arginine have a wide range of effectiveness. Based on these studies, the smallest effects can be expected at dosages of less than 3 grams.
The impact of arginine also shows a diminishing response with aging. The greatest GH (Growth Hormone ) responses occur in subjects with the lowest body fat composition and the highest aerobic capacity.
This means that the impact of arginine on GH release increases with decreasing body fat composition and with increasing aerobic fitness. Arginine will work better as you increase your fitness.
Starting dosages for arginine as a supplement are 2 to 5 grams on an empty stomach one hour before exercise and before bedtime. Side effects may include stomach upset, nausea, and diarrhea. However, these can be minimized by starting at low dosages (1 gram) and building up slowly.
Effects of Arginine on Exercise Performance
Arginine enhances exercise performance because it is one of the main ingredients, along with glycine, that goes into the biosynthesis of creatine in the liver. Creatine is important for high-intensity, short duration exercises for muscle building.
This means that arginine provides a two-fold boost in exercise performance by stimulating GH levels and creatine synthesis.
Additional Benefits
Positive effects of arginine also include boosting the immune system, fighting cancer, protecting the liver, promoting healing of burns and wounds, enhancing male fertility, and restoring ***ual function in impotent men. Most of these benefits come from stimulating GH secretion. However, arginine restores ***ual function because it is a precursor to nitric oxide, which plays a key role in getting and maintaining an erection.
Enhancing Performance with Additional Amino Acids
Bodybuilders get even better results by combining arginine with other amino acids, such as ornithine, lysine, and glutamine. This is called stacking. When taken together, these amino acids have a synergistic effect on GH release.
A beginner’s stack is 2 grams each of arginine and ornithine and 1 gram each of lysine and glutamine. An advanced stack would include 2 grams each of all four amino acids. The arginine-lysine-glutamine trio is especially important because it stimulates insulin levels, even on an empty stomach. The combination of GH and insulin in the absence of food drives the incorporation of amino acids into muscle. When taken before bedtime, this combination also stops the body from breaking down as much muscle tissue as it normally does during a night’s sleep.
Familiar and lesser-known properties of L-arginine
Argininat helps you against aging?
L-arginine (hereafter referred to as the arginine) is a positively charged amino acid that is classified as essential or INDISPENSABLE under certain conditions. Every fitness enthusiast has heard of L-arginine, but few know that it neutralizes free radicals.
What is L-arginine?
Generally the body can synthesize enough arginine alone to meet their own needs. There are several cases, however where this is not so.
Arginine is an essential amino acid for young children. In stressful for the body conditions such as trauma, burns and inflammations, arginine is also essential amino acid for adult organism and is therefore very important to drink enough of it through diet and / or supplements.
How to produce / isolate?
Arginine is produced by fermentation using bacteria Corynebacterium (Brevibacterium), Bacillus, Serratia and Escherichia coli.
Primary physiological effects of arginine
Participate in building muscle tissue, is included in the composition of proteins, but there are many other actions.
Optimal dose and route of administration
As a supplement arginine is taken from 3.5 to 15 grams daily. People with cardiac dysfunction should consult a doctor before taking arginine.
Since the safe daily dose for administration of arginine as a supplement has not yet been established, take a low dose one week, note the positive and negative effects and then increase the dose, while positive effects are maximum, and negative – minimal.
Possible harmful side effects
If overdose is possible to diarrhea, general weakness and nausea. Special care should not take arginine if you take the following drugs: ibuprofen, organic nitrates, sildenafil citrate. If you take Yohimbine should know that arginine enhances the action.
Why take it?
Everyone needs to take enough arginine, as groups with increased needs for this amino acid have adolescent children, athletes, overweight people and older people.
The adoption of arginine by trained people can strengthen the immune system, thereby allowing them to train harder and avoid the unpleasant consequences of over-training.
Use steroids may also benefit from additional intake of arginine, because these people often have elevated levels of “bad” cholesterol – a condition that improves with the adoption of arginine.
Overweight, recovering from an injury and those with erection problems would also experienced improved physical condition if they take arginine.
Additional physiological effects of arginine
Even when it is not essential for the body amino acid arginine has many other physiological effects because it:
- stimulates the release of growth hormone and prolactin from the pituitary, and glucagon and insulin from the pancreas, when taken in high doses
- neutralize the ammonia formed in the breakdown of amino acids through the formation of urea
- is a precursor for the formation of nitric oxide (one of many so-called. signaling molecules in our body), creatine, L-glutamate, L-proline, L-ornithine, polyamines and peptide tuftsin, which is considered to be immunomodulators ( improves immune system function)
- neutralizes free radicals
- kravorazshiryavashto act (including in the genitals)
- lowers blood pressure
- Glycogen is an amino acid – can be converted to D-glucose and glycogen if the body needs them, or they can be broken down to release energy
- support regulation of the level of salts in our body
- significantly increases the amount of so-called. T-killers “- white blood cells that naturally injured and killed cancer cells in our body.
How arginine is absorbed by the body?
After digestion of dietary arginine is absorbed from the intestine by active transport and enter the enterocytes and part is metabolized in them. The remaining part absorbed arginine is transported to the liver, where again a part is metabolized.
The remaining amount of arginine is transferred to a big round of circulation, where it is distributed to various tissues in the body. The highest concentration of arginine in plasma was observed 1-2 hours after a meal / reception of the supplement.
Which foods contain arginine in the greatest quantity?
The main source of L-arginine are plant and animal proteins. Small amounts of free arginine is contained in vegetable juices and in fermented foods like miso (soy cheese) and yogurt.
Soy and other plant proteins are richer in arginine than animal, which are rich in lysine.
Amino Acids – The Foundations Of Life
Amino acids – they’re the building blocks of proteins. Proteins in turn are the building blocks of just about everything else! Without these vitally important compounds, we wouldn’t exist. So what are amino acids? Let’s start right at the beginning. Before amino acids. Because even amino acids are ‘made’ from something else! Namely nucleotides.
Nucleotides – The Building Blocks Of Amino Acids
Everything boils down to just five base chemicals, or bases. The base chemicals used in DNA are adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T). The fifth one uracil (U) is only found in RNA where it replaces thymine. These base chemicals are used to build nucleotides.
A DNA nucleotide is made up of one of the 4 base chemicals (A / C / G / T) plus a molecule of phosphoric acid and a molecule of sugar. RNA nucleotides are identical except U replaces T. Nucleotides are in turn joined together in sequences of three to form codons. Each codon encodes specifically for one of the amino acids. So the amino acid Methionine for example is encoded as ATG, meaning it contains adenine, thymine and guanine nucleotides in that order.
Twenty Amino Acids Represented By Sixty-One Unique Codons
If you do the math, you’ll discover that these 4 nucleotides can be arranged into 64 unique codons. Even though there are only 20 amino acids! Therefore, some amino acids are represented by more than one codon. Isoleucine for instance can be coded as any one of the following – ATT, ATC or ATA. Each codon only encodes for one amino acid however so you won’t find any other amino acids encoded as ATT, ATC or ATA.
Sixty-one of these codons encode amino acids. The remaining 3 are used as stop codons. Stop codons are used to signal the end of a sequence of codons or protein. A protein is effectively just a long string of codons or amino acids. The body manufactures more than 50,000 different proteins.
Essential And Non-Essential Amino Acids
Amino acids are classified into two groups. Essential amino acids are those our bodies are not able to manufacture so it’s ‘essential’ we obtain them via our diet. The list of essential amino acids are:
- Isoleucine (eggs, soy, spirulina, dairy)
- Leucine (cheese, soy, beef, chicken, pork, nuts, seeds, fish, seafood, beans)
- Lysine (lean beef, cheese, turkey, chicken, pork, soy, fish, shrimp, shellfish, nuts, seeds, eggs, beans, lentils)
- Methionine (nuts, beef, lamb, cheese, turkey, pork,fish, shellfish, soy, eggs, dairy, beans)
- Phenylalanine (meat, fish, eggs, cheese, milk)
- Serine (beef, dairy products, almonds, asparagus, chickpea, cow pea, flax-seed, lentils, sesame seed, walnut, soy beans)
- Threonine (lean beef, soy, pork, chicken, liver, cheese,shellfish, nuts, seeds, beans, lentils)
- Tryptophan (turkey, milk, cheese, oats and oat bran, seaweed, hemp seeds, chia seeds, spinach, watercress, soybeans, pumpkin, sweet potatoes)
- Valine (cheese, soybeans, beef, lamb, chicken, pork, nuts, seeds, fish, beans, mushrooms, and whole grains)
Non-essential amino acids are still ‘essential’ in that we require them for the creation of functioning proteins. Our body however is able to manufacture them so long as the raw ingredients are supplied. The non-essential amino acids are:
- Alanine (poultry, a variety of fishes, meat, seaweed, eggs, dairy products)
- Arginine (turkey, pork loin, chicken, pumpkin seeds, soybeans, peanuts, spirulina, dairy)
- Asparagine (dairy, whey, beef, poultry, eggs, fish, lactalbumin, seafood, asparagus, potatoes, legumes, nuts, seeds, soy, whole grains)
- Aspartic Acid (dairy, ggs, chicken, pork, beef, fish, walnuts, pistachios, almonds, chestnuts, oats, corn)
- Cysteine (meat and poultry, eggs, dairy, red peppers, garlic, onions, broccoli, brussels sprout, oats, granola, wheat germ, sprouted lentils)
- Glutamic Acid (matured cheeses, cured meats, fish sauce, soy sauce and soy protein, mushrooms, ripe tomatoes, broccoli, peas, walnuts)
- Glutamine (beef, chicken, fish, dairy products, eggs, beans, beets, cabbage, spinach, carrots, parsley, vegetable juices, wheat, papaya, brussel sprouts, celery, kale)
- Glycine (bone broth, meat, dairy products, poultry, eggs, fish, beans, spinach, kale, cauliflower, cabbage, pumpkin, banana, kiwi)
- Histidine (Apple, pomogranates, alfalfa, beets, carrots, celery, cucumber, dandelion, endive, garlic, radish, spinach, turnip greens.)
- Proline (meat, nuts, seafood, dairy products, eggs, fish, asparagus, avocados, bamboo shoots, beans, brewer’s yeast, broccoli rabe, brown rice bran, cabbage, caseinate, chives, lactalbumin, legumes, seaweed, seeds, soy, spinach, watercress, whey, whole grains)
- Tyrosine (cheese, soybeans, beef, lamb, pork, fish, chicken, nuts, seeds, eggs, dairy, beans, and whole grains)