When it comes to building muscle tissue in healthy people, glutamine is wholly unsupported. So read further to see if you should add amino acids to your diet.

Branched Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs)

Branched-chain amino acids are a compilation between three amino acids and a side chain that is branched. The ratio is  2:1:1 in this order leucine, isoleucine, and valine.

Usually, they are given to athletes when they are calorically deprived because these BCAAs are found in all protein sources.

Leucine is an anabolic factor for the synthesis of muscle protein. So, if inadequate nutrition is present, this anabolic signal appears to delay muscle cell loss.

However, this extends to most cell types and not only the muscles. BCAAs is high in leucine. But all the other complete protein sources have enough leucine to offer a benefit.

If you look into studies made for this case and you will compare BCAAs to no protein addition it will appear that BCAAs is beneficial. But there are other studies that showed, that comparing BCAAs to another protein source resulted that BCAAs are not better.

FDA allows anything under 5 calories (per serving) to be listed as 0 calories. So this is why BCAAs is listed as not having calories. In the end, you will ingest between 30 calories and 120 calories.

BCAAs has a role in preserving skeletal muscle mass in times of hard caloric deprivation. However, this happens very rarely and is something it can be mitigated by consuming protein.

Essential Amino Acids (EAAs)

Essential amino acids are somewhere between BCAAs and pure protein sources.

The main recommendation for using essential amino acids is to be a supplement to a vegan diet. While on a veganism lifestyle you generally consume less protein than needed. Mostly, they offer the same benefits as BCAAs, but with higher caloric content. If BCAAs were around 30 and 120 calories, now you will ingest between 80 calories and 120 calories. So there are rare cases in which EAAs are useful and not endanger the calorie consumption.

Glutamine

Glutamine is a very popular standalone supplement.

Adding glutamine above normal levels appears to cause dose-dependent increases in muscle protein synthesis, if we only take into consideration isolated muscle cells. Due to this, and also the clinical usage of glutamine in burn victims that makes glutamine to be considered a muscle building agent.

However, now, glutamine is not supported for the purpose of building muscle tissue in healthy people.  Intestines sequester glutamine so much the supplement makes a good intestinal health supplement.

The conclusion is a simple one. You can get enough glutamine from protein sources so you don’t need to take glutamine supplements even though it can help your intestinal health and your immune system.