Amino Acids help the body maintain optimal health and often referred to as building blocks of life.
When you eat protein, it’s broken down into amino acids, which are the building blocks of your body such as building muscle and regulating immune function.
Amino Acids - Essential and Nonessential
Amino acids are classified into two main categories: essential and nonessential.
Amino Acids both Essential and nonessential produce energy and build proteins, and some form neurotransmitters and hormones. The unique chemical structure of each amino acid determines its function.
The code that determines the sequence of amino acids (the order of the ‘carriages’) is in our DNA.
There are at least 10,000 different types of proteins that serve distinct functions within the body.
There are about 20 different amino acids commonly found in plant and animal proteins. Eight of them are essential in the diet. We can make the others from those eight if necessary
amino acids can be in either a D configuration or L configuration ****
For adults, 8 of these, have to be provided in the diet and are therefore defined as essential amino acids or indispensable amino acids.
