Universal Nutrition Animal Nitro
Well it's a solid-looking gray can. Pop it open and you'll notice it's got inidividualized packs filled with pills inside just like the other Animal products. What is it? Take a look at the supplement facts. Whaddya see? A bunch of aminos (9 to be exact) totaling 12,000mg per dose (arginine, histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, and valine) along with some vitamin B6 and niacin. You'll also see that each dose gives you over 9000mg of BCAAs (branched-chain amino acids). Alright.
Now if you're one of the 99% of the lifters out there who think that, who think amino acids aren't worth it, then stop reading right now. But if you're that 1% who knows the value of aminos, then read on because you're gonna find out that Animal Nitro isn't just another amino product. It's the only one of its kind that contains the right forms of aminos (uncoupled), the right types (essential amino acids), and the right ratios (Human Muscle Protein ComplexTM).
Animal Nitro is like pure gold. If you continue reading, you'll also find out that the sum is greater than the individual parts, and that Animal Nitro is more than just the sum of a couple of different amino acids. You get the right mix of aminos together, and what you'll get is an important supplement that all strength athletes can benefit from.
Aminos vs. Protein
Over the years, words like "protein" and "amino acids" have been thrown together so much, they usually mean the same thing to a lot of guys. Protein? Aminos? What's the difference? Too bad, because an effective amino supplement can do things whole proteins can't. Now whole or intact protein from food and powders like whey, casein, egg or soy are made up of amino acids linked together by chemical bonds. In the small intestines, special enzymes get to breaking down the dietary proteins in smaller peptides and individual aminos. Whole proteins must first be broken down into these smaller peptides and individual aminos before they can be absorbed. Some measurements indicate that 70-80% of 15g of milk protein in a meal get absorbed in 3 hours.
While it takes a lot longer for it to get digested, dietary protein is important because it gives your body the basics building blocks it needs-a wide range of amino acids that can be used to restore amino acid levels in the body to help new tissue growth and regulate important bodily functions. For accomplishing these very basic functions, supplement wise, you can't beat protein powders. They're fairly cheap and effective. But think of protein in foods and shakes as gold ore. There's pure gold in the rock, but you've gotta get it out to be able to use it. You can definitely get it out, but it takes more time and work.
Protein powders are less efficient too. A lot of the aminos in protein powders get deaminated by the liver. In other words, you lose more aminos. In fact, if you eat too much protein, it can actually hurt your gains because of something called the Protein Paradox (see below). Individual amino acids, on the other hand, are like pure solid gold. Because individual aminos are quickly absorbed and assimilated, they're far more efficient. Like protein powders, individual amino acids can provide a source of dietary protein the body needs. More importantly, because they can more efficiently directly enter into systemic circulation, individual aminos offer additional benefits that we'll talk about shortly.
Animal Nitro's formula contains only individual amino acids, no whole proteins. Why? Individual amino acids can produce pharmacological and physiological effects such as anabolism, hormone regulation (growth hormone, insulin), immunomodulation, neurotransmitter function, and the like. Amino acids, in other words, have the ability to be more than just building blocks for the body. Unlike protein powders, aminos can exert certain anabolic and anti-catabolic effects and impact hormonal functions.
In the real world, what this means is that the right ratios, forms, and kinds of individual aminos can potentially increase strength, shorten recovery times, reduce fatigue, and increase lean mass in a way protein powders can't. So does all this mean if you're gonna use Animal Nitro, then you should stop taking your protein powder (actually, you could use Animal Nitro to replace your protein shake-it'd be better and more efficient, but it'd be more expensive too)? No. You should probably be doing both. In fact, if you're on a higher protein diet, then you should really consider taking Animal Nitro because of something called the Protein Paradox.
There are studies that argue that increasing protein intakes too much can actually hurt growth, not encourage it. This is the Protein Paradox. By eating more protein-rich foods and protein shakes, scientists believe this can actually reduce the availability of aminos in tissues due to wastage (catabolism). This reduction of aminos can then put the brakes on protein synthesis and, ultimately, weight gain. For example, drinking a lot of whey protein shakes may give you a lot of BCAAs, but with high protein diets, these BCAAs can be quickly catabolized. Over the long run, researchers speculate that high protein diets can lead to metabolic imbalances, deficiencies of key amino acids in the body, and suppress protein synthesis.
So while higher protein diets are important for bodybuilders, there are diminishing returns as you increase your intake-you get less and less value back from each gram of protein. More importantly, beyond a certain point, too much protein can actually have a negative effect by making it harder to gain size as more and more aminos are lost to catabolism. The Protein Paradox can affect the bodybuilder who's getting a large percentage of his calories from protein. Since you're not going to know when you hit the point where you're taking in too much protein, you should supplement with the fast-acting amino Animal Nitro just in case. Animal Nitro can continue delivering important amino acids.
"Uncoupled" Aminos
Animal Nitro contains only individual or "uncoupled" aminos. You're not going to find protein powder filled into capsules. No way. We use uncoupled aminos for a couple of different reasons. A lot of important research has shown that uncoupled amino acids are more quickly absorbed in the GI tract than protein in whole foods and supplements. As these uncoupled aminos don't need to be digested, they should ideally be taken when rapid absorption is critical, when certain pharmacological effects are desired, or when individuals are on higher protein diets. They can also help lifters who are cutting and bulking.
But uncoupled aminos are different in a more fundamental way. They can actually bypass the liver (where aminos are usually deaminated and ultimately converted to urea) and enter systemic circulation. When this happens, the pharmacological benefits can be realized. Here's how it works. When you eat a steak or drink a protein shake, the aminos get caught up and processed in the liver. Uncoupled amino acids, on the other hand, have the ability actually bypass the liver. Once ingested, uncoupled aminos can form a "bolus"-think of this as a therapeutic mass of aminos.
Due to this protective bolus, when the uncoupled aminos reach the liver, they can escape the liver's processing. In other words, these aminos can enter into systemic circulation quickly and reach their target areas to exert the pharmacological and physiological effects. Tableted amino acid supplements or protein powders, because they take longer to digest, are catabolized to urea a greater degree by the liver. That's why Animal Nitro contains only uncoupled amino acids in quick-dissolving capsules. Tableting would defeat the purpose of this particular product.
Additionally, only with free "uncoupled" aminos can you precisely complex and formulate the right kinds of aminos, in the right ratios. It's not just a matter of throwing uncoupled aminos in there. You have to also choose the right aminos and in the right amounts relative to the other aminos. The only real downsides to uncoupled aminos are their price (very expensive) and their taste (not so good). This takes us to a discussion of essential amino acids versus non-essential amino acids.
Essential Aminos vs. Non-Essential Aminos
So now you know why using uncoupled aminos are important and different than regular protein shakes. We got the form of the aminos down, now we have to talk about which aminos are critical. Without getting into a debate about conditional aminos, there are two accepted categories of amino acids: essential (indispensable) and non-essential (dispensable). Essential amino acids (EAA) are those that are, well, essential. The body can't make them on their own; it must obtain them from the foods and supplements you eat. Non-essential amino acids (NEAA), on the other hand, can be synthesized by the body.
It's pretty obvious that the EAA are valuable. Just how valuable? Let's put it this way, the human body can maintain nitrogen balance on just the essential amino acids if necessary. And Animal Nitro contains 8 essential amino acids (histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, valine) plus arginine, an "acquired non-dispensable" amino acid. Why these 9 amino acids? First, there are numerous studies looking at the impact of these same amino acids on the human body. Again and again, clinical studies have shown that EAA can exert significant anabolic effects via protein synthesis and net nitrogen balance.
Second, non-essential amino acids aren't necessary to stimulate net protein synthesis and anabolism. In concrete terms, researchers at the University of Texas found that a 6g dose of essential amino acids was about twice as effective as a 6g serving of mixed amino acids in stimulating protein synthesis. These researchers concluded that NEAA are not necessary for the stimulation of net muscle protein balance. Other researchers have confirmed this finding. They concluded that "nonessential amino acids did not provide any additional significant stimulation of muscle anabolism above that reached with essential amino acids alone". This is just another reason that other amino acid supplements and protein powders won't cut it when it-you need to be able to custom-tailor the amino acid profile and include EAA. Non-essential aminos are just that, non-essential.
Bottom line, when it comes to delivering an anabolic pulse necessary for new growth, only uncoupled essential amino acids are absolutely critical. Pure EAA are just that efficient and important. One researcher who examined EAA concluded that "our results, along with virtually all date in the literature on the topic, suggest that increasing amino acid intake will increase muscle mass, with all other variables remaining constant." So now that we covered the forms of the aminos (uncoupled) and the types (essential amino acids), let's put it all together and look at the ratios of aminos, which we'll talk about next...
Human Muscle ProteinTM: Putting It All Together
As we talked about last time, Animal Nitro uses only uncoupled, essential amino acids (EAA). Although very expensive, uncoupled aminos are unique in that they can form a bolus, bypass the liver, and enter systemic circulation quickly; they can produce pharmacological and physiological effects such as hormone regulation (insulin, GH), immunomodulation, anabolism (via protein synthesis); and they provide flexibility-you can custom-tailor a supplement with the ideal amino acid profile.
Further, we only used essential amino acids (EAA) because a number of recent studies have looked at the impact of oral EAA supplementation on anabolism and protein synthesis. These important studies also found that only small doses of EAA were required and that non-essential amino acids (NEAA) weren't necessary to obtain results. For instance, researchers have found "that providing only essential amino acids in a supplement would provide all the amino acids necessary to increase net muscle protein synthesis" and that they believed that it wasn't necessary to "include nonessential amino acids in a formulation designed to elicit an anabolic response from muscle after exercise" (Tipton, et al.) Bottom line: to spark anabolism, only the essential aminos are needed.
Finally, we chose these 9 aminos because these are the same exact amino acids found in human muscle protein itself. More precisely, Animal Nitro's Human Muscle Protein ComplexTM contains the same aminos and ratios of aminos as found in human muscle protein. No other amino acid supplement can make that claim. We formulated Animal Nitro to be perfectly tailored to meet the needs of your working muscle itself, to be engineered to match the nutritional needs of your working muscles right down to the individual amino. If muscles have a lock, then Animal Nitro is the key to unlock it.
Before we talk about Animal Nitro, we need to look at the effectiveness of oral amino acid supplements. As we touched on in Part I, the kind of the pills, the types/amounts/form of aminos used, and the timing of the doses can make all the difference when it comes to anabolism. As much research has shown, taking in amino acids after lifting can significantly increase muscle protein synthesis and reduce muscle protein breakdown. In other words, amino acids can have an anabolic effect on muscle (via hyperaminoacidemia). While older studies looked at intravenous infusion of aminos, more recent studies have shown that orally administered amino acids (provided they are the right kinds and amounts) can also produce anabolism.
In fact, researchers have concluded that among healthy, training individuals, "an oral amino acid supplement is just as effective as amino acid infusion for producing hyperaminoacidemia and net muscle protein synthesis" (Tipton, et al.). And like we said earlier, studies also show that you don't need a lot of aminos... All you need are just 6g of the right aminos. Just how efficient are orally-delivered essential amino acids in practical terms? According to some unpublished results, researchers noted that a small amount of essential amino acids were incorporated into protein, not catabolized. When 40g of whey protein was ingested, on the other hand, urea production increased significantly.
Animal Nitro: What It Can Do For You
So by now, you should know what Animal Nitro is all about. Each pack contains a proven dose of 6g of those special aminos your muscles need (including about 4568mg of BCAAs). Nothing else. Animal Nitro is pure, clean, simple, and effective. As it contains only the uncoupled, essential aminos acids, vitamin B6 and niacin, Animal Nitro makes a perfect all-around, all-purpose amino acid product for strength athletes. But we'll be honest with you. While we think Animal Nitro is the best amino supplement around, we think that the advanced, competitive athlete really stands to benefit the most from this new product.
Untrained or inexperienced lifters can make great gains with proper nutrition and training. For these guys, focusing on eating the right foods and training hard will make all the difference. The elite athlete is the one looking for incremental gains; he needs to squeeze out every last advantage he can from his training and his nutrition. Now Animal Nitro isn't going to pack on outrageous mass overnight or give you incredible strength gains in a couple of days. Guys who've been in the iron game for a long time know that no supplement is going to do that. But for this competitive lifter with the seasoned physique, Animal Nitro can give him that extra edge.
At this level, experienced lifters know it's about pounds and inches. Animal Nitro was designed with these guys in mind to help increase strength, improve recovery, reduce fatigue, and provide more energy for improved training efficiency. In the real world, this can mean adding meaningful weight to your 1 rep max in the bench, helping your body recover faster from grueling workouts, helping to maintain lean tissue for a show, and improving your energy levels (we'll talk about the results some testers achieved in Part III of this article).
Timing is important too, according to current research. From an anabolic point of view, there is a critical nutritional "window of opportunity" that exists for all lifters. During this important time, it's possible to prime your body's anabolic engine and ultimately set your body up for optimum gains. Miss this window, and you can shortchange your muscles. Therefore, for optimal gains, Animal Nitro should be taken around lifting-just before training, and immediately after. Following lifting, the body enters a state where muscle protein synthesis is stimulated, as is the rate of muscle protein breakdown. The trick is to make sure that the net muscle protein balance is positive, not negative. When it's positive, your body enters an anabolic state.
Taking Animal Nitro pre-training can be beneficial as well. In one published study in the American Journal of Physiology, Endocrinology, and Metabolism, researchers examined the consumption of an oral essential amino acid supplement prior to training. What these researchers concluded was that when oral essential aminos were taken prior to training, net muscle protein synthesis was greater than when those aminos were consumed afterwards. The researchers theorized that this was due to the fact that there was an increased delivery of aminos to targeted tissues. Therefore, taking Animal Nitro pre- and post-training should produce the best results. As a targeted amino acid supplement, athletes can use Animal Nitro when they're cutting, bulking or even maintaining.
Dieting athletes can benefit from the extra BCAAs in Animal Nitro (close to 4600mg of BCAAs per pack), as well as the other essential aminos. Essential aminos can be used by the body to create other non-essential aminos. This is important when calories and protein are restricted during pre-contest dieting. On the other hand, athletes who are taking in more protein because they're bulking up can benefit from Animal Nitro because Animal Nitro can deliver those essential amino acids more quickly and efficiently. At a certain point, the body reaches a threshold and cannot effectively utilize dietary protein-excess aminos from food and protein shakes get catabolized, producing diminishing returns. In these instances, Animal Nitro makes a whole lot of sense. For guys looking to maintain, Animal Nitro can help with increasing strength, recovery, reducing fatigue, and maintaining a favorable testosterone levels. In short, Animal Nitro is a pretty useful supplement for strength athletes.
How To Use Animal Nitro
It's pretty simple. Just take one pack of Animal Nitro, right after training. But to take full advantage of the anabolic window of opportunity around lifting, you should take Animal Nitro pre- and post-training. The trick with Animal Nitro is to always take it on an empty stomach. Because the aminos in Animal Nitro don't need to be digested like regular protein, you won't have to worry about stomach upset, feeling full, or anything else. If you have a favorite post-training shake, then you can continue to use that with Animal Nitro. Immediately following training, you'd take your Animal Nitro. After a half hour or more, you can follow this up with your protein/carb shake. Piece of cake. Right?
All in all, amino acids are pretty simple things, but supplementation can be complex. It's not just a matter of popping a few amino tablets or drinking a protein shake. With Animal Nitro, getting the right aminos is a piece of cake. When it comes to sparking anabolism, no other supplement-protein shake or amino supplement-is as efficient and effective as Animal Nitro. When all is said and done, after all the talk about EAA and uncoupled aminos, Animal Nitro works very, very simply. Taking Animal Nitro is like turning on a light switch. The unique, oral amino formula in Animal Nitro can literally turn the anabolic switch "on" by shifting muscle protein balance from negative to positive. Once on, with the body in an anabolic state, the body can recover more quickly and efficiently for gains. By taking Animal Nitro pre- and post-training, the anabolic switch is turned on and remains on during the most critical nutritional window of opportunity.
Real World Results:
Sure, amino acid supplements have been around for a long time. The fact that they're still being used should tell you something. They've got a proven track record in the gym. They've been used by a countless number of lifters. Over the years, amino acids have also been subject of numerous studies. In short, along with protein and a handful of other supplements, amino acids have a studied in depth. More importantly, new studies are being performed all the time. So just because aminos aren't new, it doesn't mean new studies aren't being done on them. They are.
As we talked about in Parts I and II, some of those newer studies published in the last couple of years have looked at essential amino acids and how they can benefit athletes by enhancing anabolism. So just because a supplement is "old school" doesn't mean it can't be brought into the future. With essential amino acids, this is exactly what the recent studies are doing. Using the latest research as a foundation, we created Animal Nitro to be the best amino acid supplement. Period. We think we did just that.
But at the end of the day, studies are studies. What truly matters, in our opinion, is real world results. What do real lifters who use supplements think of them? What kinds of gains are they making? Is a particular supplement worth it? These are some of the things we wanted answers to. That's why we created the Alpha Testing Program. We wanted to see how our supplements would perform in real life situations when used by real lifters.
To test Animal Nitro, real lifters were recruited. They were sent the product to test for 3 weeks. 52 people successfully completed the three-week program, filling out weekly progress reports, etc. Before we started, we pretty much knew what the Alpha Testers could expect with Animal Nitro. Even so, when we saw the end results, we were pretty surprised. We're sure Animal Nitro is going to be a solid addition to the Animal line.
Look you don't have to take our word for it. You don't even have to take the word from real people like yourself who've tested the product firsthand. If you don't want to be a skeptic, we encourage you to try the product yourself. After all, we've been proudly standing behind our product guarantee for a long, long time. If you try Animal Nitro and you don't like it, return it and we'll credit you or refund your money. It's that simple. What more do you need to know? Oh yeah, the results...
Objective Parameters:
We basically measured two things, one objective and one subjective. In the first, we had each Alpha Tester measure his one rep max in the bench press, deadlift and squat. In the second, we also had them indicate what benefits they got from Animal Nitro at the end of three weeks. We measured subjective elements including strength, fatigue, recovery, and energy.
For starters, we can talk about what the average Alpha Tester looked like. Our average, he's 31 years old, weighs just under 205 with 13% bodyfat. At the start of the program, he could bench 272, deadlift 335, and squat 358. Among all the Alpha Testers, the highs in the bench, deadlift and squat were 400, 525 and 765 pounds respectively.
Of the 52 Alpha Testers, all but three experienced one kind of gain or another. Not bad. Let's start with the bench press. After 3 weeks, the average bench press (one rep max) increased by 4.7%. That percentage increase translates into 12.88 lb. In other words, after three weeks, the average gain on the bench press (1 rep max) was nearly 13 pounds. Nearly 60% the Alpha Testers saw an increase in the bench press (one rep max) between 6-45 pounds.
On the deadlift, we saw similar gains. The average deadlift (one rep max) increased by 18.07 lb. after only 3 weeks (a 5.4% increase). Over 65% of the Alpha Testers saw their deadlift increase by between 6-45 lb. In terms of the squat, the average increase for the one rep max was a sizeable 21.52 lb., reflecting an increase of 5.9%. 73% of the Alpha Testers experienced a gain in their squat between 6-55 lb.
Now while we anticipated some strength increases from the use of Animal Nitro, we didn't expect gains of nearly 13 lb. in the bench, 18 lb. in the deadlift, and nearly 22 lb. in the squat. Pretty impressive. For a seasoned powerlifter, gains like this for a one rep max could be significant, especially in a competition. Remember too that all this was after only 3 weeks of using Animal Nitro.
When we looked at weight and bodyfat percentages, no real surprises. On average, there was a weight gain of 0.78 lb. However, according to the numbers, the average Alpha Tester also saw his bodyfat percentage decrease by 0.9%. So there were some nominal lean mass gains. In our opinion, while the amount of lean mass gained was pretty negligible, what struck us was the fact that the vast majority of Alpha Testers saw increases in strength without any real change in weight.
