★★★★★
CrossFit · 56
I recover very fast after each workout and my muscles are not so sore as they were in the past.
You train. You eat “enough protein”. And somehow, every year, it gets a little harder to hold on to strength. If that sounds familiar, this isn’t a willpower problem — it’s a signalling problem.
In 2023, the International Society of Sports Nutrition — the body that reviews the published evidence on sports nutrition — released a position stand on essential amino acids (Ferrando et al., JISSN, 20(1), 2023). It quietly rewrote several things most of us were taught about protein.
Here are the five that matter most if you’re over 40 and still intend to be strong at 70.
1
Muscle Doesn’t Count Grams. It Reads A Signal.
Your muscle doesn’t know what you ate. It responds to one thing: the rise of essential amino acids in your blood — nine specific aminos your body cannot make itself.
The position stand puts the trigger dose at roughly 1.5–3g of EAAs: enough to switch on muscle protein synthesis, the repair process that rebuilds what training breaks down. Below the threshold, not much happens — regardless of how virtuous the meal looked.
That reframe matters: the question isn’t “did I eat protein today?”, it’s “did my blood amino levels rise high enough, often enough, to keep the signal firing?”
2
“Just Eat More Protein” Stops Working After 40
Ageing muscle develops what researchers call anabolic resistance — it stops responding to weak amino signals. The same chicken breast that built muscle at 25 lands with less effect at 50.
Katsanos and colleagues showed older adults need roughly 60% more leucine per serve to trigger the same repair response as younger adults (AJCN, 2006). Leucine is the amino acid that leads the signal — and most meals don’t carry enough of it to clear the higher bar.
So “eat more protein” becomes “eat impractically more protein” — or raise the signal a smarter way.
3
Speed Matters — And Whole Protein Is Slow
Whole protein — food or a shake — has to be digested first: broken down over hours before its aminos reach your blood. The rise is slow and flattened, especially later in life when digestion itself becomes less efficient.
Free-form essential amino acids skip the queue. They need no digestion, appearing in the blood within about 15 minutes — and it’s precisely that sharp rise that muscle reads as the signal to rebuild.
Same building blocks. Very different delivery.
4
Gram For Gram, Free-Form Beats Intact
This is the sentence from the position stand worth reading twice:
“Free-form essential amino acids stimulate muscle protein synthesis more effectively, gram for gram, than intact protein.”
Not “as effective as”. More effective — per gram. Because every gram is signal: no fillers, no digestion tax, no waiting. A 5,000mg serve of the right nine aminos punches above servings of whole protein several times its size.
Free-form essential amino acids stimulate muscle protein synthesis more effectively, gram for gram, than intact protein. — International Society of Sports Nutrition · position stand · 2023
5
The Fix Costs About 20 Calories, Not Another Meal
The cruel part of the protein advice is that appetite falls exactly when requirements rise — with age, in a calorie deficit, on appetite-suppressing medication. Nobody wants a fourth chicken breast.
A full essential amino serve carries roughly 20 calories — against 120–200 for a shake and several hundred for a protein-heavy meal. It mixes into water as a light, clear drink, not another thing to force down.
Which means the signal can fire on the days you train, the days you don’t, and the days you barely feel like eating — the days that quietly decide what your strength looks like in ten years.
People Who Fixed The Signal.
Verified Bare Aminos buyers, in their own words.
★★★★★
Cycling · 6 days a week
A definite improvement in my stamina and endurance on the bike. I have ordered my second batch.
★★★★★
Strength training · 60+
At over 60, maintaining muscle mass is key — and this has been a game-changer.
Bare Aminos
The Study Is Public. The Fix Is Simple.
Bare Aminos delivers all 9 essential amino acids — including 2g of leucine per serve — in a form your gut can actually handle. It's not a protein replacement. It's the support your muscles need, without the punishment whey puts you through.
- 5g essential amino acids per serve
- 2g leucine — above the 40+ muscle repair threshold
- Absorbed in 15 minutes, not hours
- Zero dairy, zero lactose, zero bloating
- 1 scoop in 400ml water · Before, during, or after exercise
