When it comes to building and maintaining healthy lean muscle there are many factors that can help this process. In the healthcare world, people tend to be searching for anything that can help reverse the aging process. Maintaining great lean muscle is a key for the way our body both looks and performs. We all want to look and feel our best. Right? So is it just eating fruits and vegetables and some protein and hoping for the best? If you are serious about optimizing your daily performance, then you should consider some of this new research that is out. Let’s talk about an amino acid that is changing how we look at the aging process. Our cells are made of the building blocks of protein. We know these are called amino acids. In particular, there is an amino acid that is considered “essential”, and we must get it from the foods that we eat. In the aging process we have to look at a couple of questions that are important for empowering your health:
1.How much lean muscle do you have?
2.How rapidly are you losing it?
When asked, these are the two primary questions. After the age of about 35 we begin to lose about 1% of our muscle mass per year. This is why typically someone that is 70 seems to be more frail than someone who is 35. The amino acid that we know can help combat this issue of muscle breakdown is called L-Leucine. Leucine has been known about for some time. The key is that it stimulates what is called protein synthesis. This is what causes our bodies to use the nutrition that we take in and make more muscle. The key is that it also prevents muscle breakdown. The ability to slow down how much muscle we have over time is essential in us prolonging the aging process.
Listen, the amazing fact about Leucine is how it can cause us to lose so much bodyfat. In some recent studies we learned how with lower calorie restriction, the Leucine caused a preservation of lean muscle by up to 25%! That is amazing to what it can do to support a healthy body. Leucine is in combination with two other branched chain amino acids Valine and Isoleucine. Studies have shown that they are better when taken all together.
So where do we get Leucine? We get it from our foods. We primarily get it from whey protein. For every 25 grams of whey protein, you will take in around 2.5 grams of Leucine. And from most protein sources you may get about 1 gram from a chicken breast, or eggs. However, studies showed us that we need about 8-10 grams of Leucine to see the anti-aging results. Therefore it is better to take all 3 together in a supplement form. One that I use everyday is our CrossBody Natural Amino. It is loaded with the essential branched chain amino acids and especially Leucine.
