The modern sports nutrition industry offers, and practically insists on the idea that using powders in all possible forms and manifestations is almost better than consuming natural food, since all this goodness is absorbed more efficiently, and portion dosages are selected by the caring hands of chemical technologists especially for you.
In general, sports nutrition in our time represents a variant of trendy business, especially among the bodybuilding brotherhood, which is the target audience for selling this crap. And since business has the property of bringing money, indoctrination and brainwashing didn't take long to appear. Propaganda for sports nutrition that has no downsides but carries exclusively beneficial and salutary effects on the body can be found absolutely everywhere—VK groups, forums, themed sports sites, Instagram, etc. The main drivers of trade, besides the sellers themselves, are personal trainers who convince us that without all this, achieving goals is practically impossible. The hard sell happens in the form of friendly advice and looks plausible, since any self-respecting trainer is primarily interested in their client's results. Unfortunately, interest in quick money nowadays is much more valuable than serious and quality work, and there aren't that many professionals in their field. The result is typically deplorable—tens of thousands of spent rubles and a complete absence of results.
But enough idle chatter, let's get to specifics.
First, it's necessary to understand some theoretical aspects. The most important things that interest us are BCAA and various areas of its application, insulin, hepatic gluconeogenesis, and muscle glycogen.
BCAA are essential amino acids with a special branched structural chain. BCAA includes leucine, isoleucine, and valine. There is evidence that our muscles are 35% composed of precisely these amino acids. The distinguishing feature of BCAA is that the primary site of their absorption is the muscles. They're called essential due to the impossibility of their synthesis by the body itself; they come exclusively from food.
Insulin is a hormone of peptide nature, produced by beta-cells of the islets of Langerhans located in the pancreas. The spectrum of insulin's actions and effects is exceptionally diverse, but in this article we're most interested in its transport role. Under insulin's influence, active transport of not only glucose but also many amino acids is ensured.
Gluconeogenesis is the synthesis of glucose from non-carbohydrate components: lactate, pyruvate, glycerol, ketoacids of the Krebs cycle and other ketoacids, as well as from amino acids. All amino acids, except ketogenic leucine and lysine, can participate in glucose synthesis.
Glycogen is a complex carbohydrate consisting of sequential chains of multiple individual glucose molecules. The primary glycogen depot is muscles and liver. Glycogen represents a kind of buffer zone between energy demand (movements, loads, sports) and its supply (glycogen breakdown into free amino acids for ATP (energy) formation). One glycogen molecule binds three water molecules.
It's worth dwelling on glycogen in more detail. The fact is that glycogen is the main non-contractile element of muscle tissue. As the glycogen depot grows, the muscle itself grows. Muscle tissue, its protein structure, essentially represents a reservoir in which glycogen is contained.
As stated above, glycogen is that very substance that enables a muscle to work actively for a sufficiently long time. Until the reservoir is completely exhausted and no more glycogen remains. When during training an athlete manages to completely deplete the glycogen depot, a compensatory mechanism kicks in, allowing accumulation of an even greater volume of glycogen after some time, with proper nutrition. This phenomenon is called supercompensation. During supercompensation, the body not only restores its strength by storing useful substances, but does so with excess. All this allows it to repel new stress with "less bloodshed." It's precisely thanks to supercompensation that from training to training, athletes become stronger and more enduring. The constant increase in glycogen volume, again from training to training (provided systematic increases in intensity and working weights), begins to excessively press on muscle tissue walls, stretching them. At some point, further stretching becomes impossible, and the only option remains increasing the number of "reservoirs" (muscle tissue growth). Since true hyperplasia (muscle cell division) is impossible, muscle satellite cells come into play. These are dormant cells capable of transforming into fully functional muscle cells as the body needs. Such need includes not only bodybuilding but also possible trauma with muscle tissue damage. It's precisely these cells that are meant to compensate for muscle volume deficit as a result of various traumatic factors. With glycogen depletion, the supercompensation peak is reached after 48 hours. Thus, for constant stimulation, the muscle's glycogen depot must be depleted through training strictly every other day.
What conclusion can be drawn from all this?
A very simple one—glycogen supercompensation is an exceptionally important factor in muscle tissue growth.
Armed with all this knowledge, we're only now moving to the main theme of our article.
Why are powdered BCAA nonsense?
In reality, everything is very simple. When a person takes BCAA before and during training, they simply prevent the expenditure of their own glycogen, postponing its depletion, which for bodybuilding is not only unhelpful but harmful to one's own progress. The funniest thing is that during training stress and caloric deficit, again as a result of training stress, our precious and expensive amino acids safely convert to glucose in the liver through gluconeogenesis. From the standpoint of physiological expediency, everything is again very simple—during training, the body is NOT interested in muscle tissue building; at this time it's interested in economical energy expenditure. Since a huge amount of free amino acids is floating in the blood, why would it break down a complex carbohydrate that's also a strategic reserve? It's much simpler and more expedient to use what's already floating in the blood—BCAA.
Sports nutrition sellers engage in concept substitution, fact manipulation, one-sided coverage of circumstances and physiological principles. Yes, BCAA can indeed prevent muscle tissue breakdown, not allowing their wasteful expenditure for energy balance needs. But this only happens when muscle glycogen reserves are completely depleted. Muscle tissue breakdown into amino acids (catabolism) is possible exclusively with complete glycogen expenditure and continued training, which under normal conditions is simply unthinkable. BCAA will allow you to train longer, but won't allow your muscles to become bigger. Recommendations for intake before and during training are lies designed to squeeze as much money as possible from buyers.
Another amusing fact is that when consuming a sufficiently large dose of free amino acids (BCAA, protein hydrolysate), increased insulin secretion is observed, as a result of which practically all of them will be immediately converted to glucose and absorbed, mostly by adipose tissue, since such an inadequate number of free amino acids simply cannot be metabolized by muscles in such a short period. Moreover, the entry of such a huge amount of free amino acids into the blood in free form is a dangerous condition for blood system capillaries, as a result of which, thanks to insulin, their level is immediately reduced by all available means.
There's no better protein source than natural products. Thanks to complex amino acid chains, their gradual breakdown occurs during digestion, and the same gradual absorption by the entire body, not just adipose tissue.
One could say that BCAA would be expedient to use perhaps in track and field, where training often lasts more than 4 hours straight. It's precisely they that could prevent muscle tissue breakdown after complete glycogen depot depletion. But even here BCAA don't withstand any criticism, since due to inevitable conversion to glucose as a result of greatest expediency, simple carbohydrate drinks are the economically justified choice for athletes, easily taking on the role of expensive amino acids.
That's essentially everything.
Cunning marketers have long been hunting our wallets, and this article will never become their advertising engine on the multitude of bought and sponsored product sales platforms, and therefore won't gain wide popularity. But I hope that at least some of you will think about what you've read and stop giving your hard-earned money to people who cynically deceive you.
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