Are BCAAs Worth Your Money?

We have to know how to eat right, train right, and take the right over-the-counter supplements.
––Phil Heath

“BCAAs” stands for “branched-chain amino acids”, which are three of the nine essential amino acids your body needs in order to trigger muscle protein synthesis (MPS), or the creation of new muscle: leucine, isoleucine, and valine.

BCAAs are a very popular supplement, but are they worth your money?

There are two main claims regarding BCAAs:

1.     BCAAs improve body composition and training performance.
2.     BCAAs enhance recovery by reducing delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS).

​… But do they?

For the record, my current understanding of and opinion on the scientific literature may change as more studies come out on these topics.

At the moment, there are several papers on resistance-trained individuals showing that BCAAs don’t seem to have any major effect on either body composition or training performance.

For instance, this study by Spillane and colleagues shows no effect of BCAA supplementation on either body composition or performance when the BCAAs were consumed before and after training for eight weeks.

Another example is a study by Smith and colleagues, in which the subjects didn’t experience notable differences in training performance or post-exercise recovery when consuming BCAAs compared to a carbohydrate-containing drink or a placebo drink.

Moreover, while it seems to be true that BCAAs may decrease DOMS, these beneficial effects appear to be comparable to those you’d get from a diet containing enough protein without additional BCAAs supplementation.

For example, a study by Van Dusseldorp and colleagues shows that eating 1.2g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day is enough to make the positive impact of BCAAs on DOMS “likely negligible”, in the authors’ own words.

For context, 1.2g of protein is a far lower target than the range usually recommended to maximise muscle growth, which is 1.6 to 2.2g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day.
 
So you could argue that aiming for 1.6 to 2.2g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day may reduce the beneficial effect of BCAAs on DOMS even further. Importantly, while this line of reasoning makes sense, Van Dusseldorp and colleagues didn’t study the 1.6 to 2.2g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day range, so this remains speculation on my part.

Lastly, to my knowledge, studies that do seem to show some positive effects from supplementing BCAAs don’t usually control for protein intake.

In other words, the participants in these experiments weren’t given an adequate protein target to support MPS or told to report their protein intake at all.
 
Therefore, we can’t say for sure that the BCAAs-derived effects would have still been there if their protein intake had been controlled.

In fact, in a systematic review, which is a review of multiple studies, the authors reported that most of the papers included “did not report the total protein intake across the day and, consequently, the benefits of BCAAs should be interpreted with caution.”

For clarity, the “benefits” mentioned by these researchers only appeared to be related to a reduction in DOMS, whereas they found an insignificant impact of BCAAs on performance and body composition.

In conclusion, my understanding of the current evidence is that, as long as you’re eating enough protein every day, you may already be maximising the benefits you could get from BCAAs supplementation.

So, in my view, your typical protein sources can do the job just as well as, if not better than, fancy BCAAs powders.

If you’re interested in learning more about supplements that could actually enhance your performance and long-term gains, I wrote an article on these on my blog, which you can read here and recorded an interview with Dr. Eric Trexler about here.
 
Practical Takeaways
 

1. BCAAs supplementation doesn’t seem to have any beneficial effect on body composition or training performance.
2. Even though some studies seem to show a benefit on DOMS from BCAAs supplementation, the participants weren’t given a protein target or told to report their protein intake, so we can’t say that the effects would have been the same had their protein intake been accounted for.
3. You likely don’t need BCAAs if you’re already eating enough protein every day.

 
Thanks for reading. May you make the best gains.
 
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