Effect of an Essential Amino Acid/Protein Composition on Protein Metabolism

The product composition is protected by intellectual property. It contains a combination of ingredients designed to stimulate anabolic responses at whole body and muscle and to ultimately induce long-term improvements in muscle function and size. EAAs are the only dietary macronutrients that are required for survival. They are "essential" because the body cannot produce them. There are 9 dietary EAAs while there are 11 dietary non-essential amino acids that are not required in the diet because they can be produced in the body. The composition is based on a blend of 8 of the 9 EAAs. In addition to being the "active" components of dietary protein, EAAs also have the advantage over intact protein including whey protein because free EAAs are absorbed from the intestine more quickly and more completely than amino acids contained in protein, which requires digestion before absorption indicating that intact protein is relatively slowly absorbed. Therefore, the combination of free EAAs and intact protein give not only an immediate response (from the free EAAs) but also a prolonged response (from the intact protein) over time by the slower digestion. The idea of combining a specific formulation of EAAs with an intact protein to obtain both an immediate as well as a more sustained response in protein anabolism is novel. Investigators propose that consumption of the EAA/protein composition will stimulate the net protein balance at the whole body level in a dose-dependent manner. The investigators further propose that the magnitude of increase in the net protein balance will be greater than induced by the consumption of the same amount of whey protein isolate.