What Do Amino Acids Do?

Amino acids have been called the building blocks of life, but what do amino acids do anyway? Let's start off with a pretty amazing fact. According to the book The Hidden Face of God, each of the 70 trillion cells in our body produces 2000 proteins every second. Every second! And each of the proteins in this multitude produced each second is made up of amino acids. So as you can imagine, this requires a huge amount of amino acids. Proteins are sometimes very simple, being made of only a couple of different amino acids. But most proteins contain an average of 200-300 amino acids. When you combine that with the fact that the body is making about 140,000 trillion proteins each second, you can see why amino acids have been called the building blocks of life.

There are over 20 amino acids that the body uses for the many thousands of chemicals it produces on a daily basis. Some of these amino acids the body can create on its own, but 8 of them must be gotten through food. These 8 have been called the essential amino acids. This is the reason why some protein sources have been called "complete" protein sources, because they contain all of the amino acids the body uses.

Amino acids, besides being the building blocks of life, also often have other functions in the body as well. I think primarily of the amino acid L-Carnitine, which many people are beginning to take in supplement form because of its very unique function inside the body. L-Carnitine functions as a transport mechanism for fat molecules in the cell. L-Carnitine grabs fat molecules and transports them to the cell mitochondria to be used as fuel. This has caused many people to raise their eyebrows and give L-Carnitine some serious consideration. Other amino acids also have unique functions like this in the body

Because of how many amino acids there are, and the fact that there are multiple classifications of amino acids, there's lot of confusion concerning the difference between animal and plant sources of protein. When people hear the word protein, they naturally just assume that protein is just protein, and that most forms of protein are essentially the same. But this couldn't be further from the truth. Animal proteins, for example, are considered a better match for most of the functions that happen in the human body. The amino acid profile of animal proteins is much closer to the amino acid profile of human muscle tissue, and eating animal proteins has been generally shown to boost overall health and wellness.

Plant proteins are good also, but are almost always incomplete. They have amino acid profiles that aren't a great match with human processes and functions like building muscle tissue. Plant proteins might be full of a few different types of amino acids and completely lacking in the others. So vegans and vegetarians need to be especially careful about watching their protein intake. When getting your protein purely from plant sources, you really ought to consider eating a good variety of plant sources of protein to make sure you're getting the full range of amino acids needed for healthy function.

There definitely are complete plant sources of protein out there. In fact, you'll be surprised to hear that the most abundant source of complete protein actually comes from a plant source. The algae known as spirulina is not only a complete protein, but is a richer source of protein than beef, chicken, pork, or fish. Not only that, but spirulina also has a wide range of other nutrients as well, giving it the label of nutrient dense superfood.

There are a couple of other complete plant protein sources as well, but these are artificially produced. A few distributors of green powders and protein powders have created plant protein powders that combine different kinds of plants together to create protein powders that are considered complete. Many vegans and vegetarians have found these plant protein powders to be very helpful at boosting their amino acid intake.