BCAA stands for Branch Chained Amino Acids, and it is comprised of Leucine, Valine, and Isoleucine. BCAAs are the main amino acids oxidized during exercise, and due to them totaling 1/3 of the total amino acids in muscle tissue it is important to ingest enough of these during exercise.
Additionally, they are the building blocks of muscle, so they are very important to intake. Furthermore, these are essential amino acids which means we need to have them in our diet, but luckily whey protein has a high content of BCAAs.
This amino acid is probably the most important out of the three, as research indicates that during intense exercise is used up quickly compared to the others. One study compared muscle protein turnover after resistance exercise
They had three different groups: carbohydrates only, protein and carbohydrates, and finally leucine carbohydrates and protein. Their findings were interesting to say the least as the leucine+carbohydrates+protein group had the largest whole body protein balance.
Furthermore they explained that it could have been caused from various different pathways such as providing more amino acids for muscle protein synthesis, the leucine increased insulin concentrations when compared to the other groups which could help in protein synthesis
They also found that leucine has the ability to help stop protein degradation, which they believe is caused by greater insulin secretion
Furthermore, another study found that leucine supplementation stimulates recovery of the skeletal muscle protein synthesis after exercise. However, they used rats in the study but the results are still interesting .
