Arginine May Help Obesity

At HealthNews we always appreciate our reader feedback and we recently received a plea from one reader asking for more amino acid articles. Eager to please our readership and interested to dive into the exciting world of amino acids, I was able to dig up new information on an already investigated amino acid: Arginine.

Arginine is not new to HealthNews and has been reported on before,  but a different light has now been shed on more specific health benefits. In a study that was released this week in the Journal of Nutrition, researchers at a school in Texas were able to produce positive effects using arginine on obese rats.

Arginine is one of our essential amino acids but only on a conditional basis—meaning that we need arginine at a certain age and under certain circumstances and then not anymore as we get older—because infants are unable to produce it on their own yet. As adults, most of our arginine can be attained from inside our bodies but babies need to receive it through their diet. Dairy products like soft cheeses, milk, and yogurt contain arginine, as well as most meats: beef, poultry, pork, seafood and wild game. Grains and vegetable substances like flour, granolas, oatmeal, nuts, some fruit juices, and seeds, among others also contain the amino acid.

Texas scientists at AgriLife Research Centre in College Station, Texas A&M University, and researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine teamed up to explore arginine supplementation in rats. The researchers found that by regulating the amino acid in the rats they were able to promote muscle gain.

In the lab, two groups of rats were fed either a low- or high-fat diet. Over 12 weeks of supplements containing arginine decreased the gain in body fat of both the low-and high-fat diets of the rats. The low-fat diet group decreased body fat gain by 65 percent and was followed closely behind by the high-fat group whose body fat gain was lowered by 63 percent over 3 months.

Researchers hope the results can be directly related to treating obesity in humans. The results could suggest that the supplementation may be able to boost what researchers call, “lean tissue growth.” One of the study’s authors, Dr. Guoyao Wu, says that they found arginine to also be helpful in stimulating a biochemical process called “muscle protein synthesis” that requires an excess of energy thereby forcing the energy acquired through the diet to be used towards adding lean tissue growth instead of fat.

Wu, an animal science researcher, continues to say that the follow-up research will be clinical studies using both adults and children, “Given the current epidemic of obesity in the U.S. and worldwide, our finding is very important….This finding could be directly translated into fighting human obesity.” Wu admitted that arginine supplements are not found in our food currently, but are a possibility for the future.

Wu and his team of researchers were funded by the American Heart Association and for all of the notes or to read the specifics, you can purchase the full text here from the Journal of Nutrition.

Hopefully these important findings can help reverse the growing epidemic of obesity. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a 2007 report of the United States, showed that only one state (Colorado) showed a less than 20 percent obesity rate. Arginine in the past has showed a significant success rate in helping patients with conditions ranging from arthritis and liver disorders to fertility problems and cancer. Although arginine has already proven to be helpful in gaining muscle by being put in protein drinks for use in gyms and fitness centers as a bodybuilding technique, this study is the first to link it directly towards fighting obesity. Although we don’t know what the future will hold for the clinical trials of arginine, we can hope that our obesity as a nation can become controlled with or without supplementation.