Amino Acids Supplements

What are Amino Acids?

Amino acids are the basic structural building units of proteins. They form short polymer chains called peptides or polypeptides which in turn form structures called proteins. The process of such formation is known as translation, which is part of protein synthesis.

Nearly all of your body's hormones are built by amino acids. They regulate metabolism, and contribute to pigmentation. If you evaporated all the water from your body, 75 percent of what was left would be amino acids. Of the 28 different amino acids that have been identified by researchers, eight are considered essential to body function.

More complete amino acids are found in: dairy products, meats, fish, poultry, nuts, legumes, eggs.

There are two types of amino acids:

• essential (which the body cannot manufacture and must get through food) (such as histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, valine)
• non-essential (which the body can produce if the diet provides insufficient amounts) (such as alanine, arginine, asparagine, asperatic acid, cysteine, glutamic acid, glutamine, glysine, proline, serine, tyrosine)