NOW Sports Nutrition, Amino-9 Essentials™ Powder, Enhanced Protein Synthesis, Amino Acids, 330-Grams

I'm a little different than most for this, because I take amino acids as I'm missing my colon and have an ileostomy bag. My food goes through fast and I was starting to have things that were pointing to a nutritional deficiency, along with flat out already being in pretty poor health for a bunch of reasons. Anyway, we decided to give amino acids a try, seeing that if I couldn't break down the protein I ate in time, maybe I wasn't getting my essential amino acids. First, this stuff is rancid gross tasting. Totally vile. Like licking pennies dipped in dust and sprinkled with bleach. My routine is a heaping tablespoon into about 8oz of juice like a string cherry/cranberry/grape juice and then adding a good heart squeeze of Mio drops or the like. It still will taste soured and sorta gross, but it's no longer undrinkable. For me, the results are so worth it. I stopped losing mass from my legs, the daily headaches stopped, I no longer was constantly freezing. My blood work started to improve, and I started having more and more energy to function. I started feeling good, enough to actually start doing more activity. My doctor and I are very, very pleased. This particular brand is the highest listed dose of any amino acid supplement with no "extras" that I can find. Most don't label the amounts, or they add caffiene. I've run out before for a week, and the cruddy feelings - cold, tired and headachy) started coming back. I felt better within a couple days after starting back on it. I fo through about 1 bottle per month. I really think that folks with altered guts should talk with their doctor about trying this, especially if they have constant tiredness, chills and headaches. My doctor and I are very pleased with the results I've had.

Amino-9 essentials contains all of the amino acids that your body needs but can't synthesize on its own. They are all broken down to their simplest form so they are instantly absorbed into the body for use. All of the BCAAs are present which are a major part for muscle growth. Unlike BCAA powders, this product contains the other essential amino acids in the correct ratio. Too many BCAAs without the others isn't great for the body. While the label will tell you to consume the product with fruit juice, it isn't the best way. It doesn't mix well at all! Amino acids are very bitter and will make anything taste bad. I like adding it to apple sauce since it masks the flavor well and its thickness helps mix the amino acids much better than juice. If you want to drink it, add it to Accelerade which also does a pretty good job of killing the flavor if you use two scoops.

Original: Maybe it doesn't DISSOLVE but it does wash down your mouth just fine without sticking or anything, and the flavor REALLY isn't as bad as people say. It does NOT taste like "chemicals". I mean it kinda does, but it doesn't taste like CLEANER chemicals or ANYTHING like that. Its just kinda bitter. The flavor honestly seems harmless to me, that's my opinion. The mistake theyre making is trying to mask it when you should just take it straight and get it over with. Its really not that bad. On the other hand, is it working? Does it DO anything? Dude I have literally no idea XD It probably does. Update: I have been struggling with an eye infection. Ive been taking as much medicinal mushroom (turkey tail etc) as I can to battle this thing, but then I discovered that almost all of our white blood cells are made up of proteins, especially peptide chains. ALL OF A SUDDEN, THIS STUFF TASTES SWEET!!! Legitimately sweet with the faintest hint of bitter. My body was craving this stuff. The mushrooms have all the vitamin D and selenium in the world, but they didnt have these ESSENTIAL amino acids!! Its working. This stuff is actually good for fighting off a bacterial infection dependent on macrophages, which are basically just gigantic blobs of internally created proteins. This is probably the single best supplement in general as it's literally everything you could ever need from your diet for fancy enzymatic stuff, which is where all of the cool human aspects come from. And pro tip, I would not blend it up to get it dissolved as that could easily damage the molecules. Take it like a man to the face.

I like this product because it has no flavoring or sweeteners. Although the bottle indicates it should be added to juices, milk or milk substitutes (like almond or rice milk) because it is somewhat bitter, I tasted the powders itself and didn't find that it had much flavor of its own and certainly nothing unpleasant. This is good, and exactly what I want, because it means I can mix it with anything and have no flavors or sweeteners in the product that I don't like or that taste bad with whatever liquid I'm mixing it in. Most other essential amino acid powders I've looked at - including the one I get from my nutritionist - have some combination of flavors like citrus and berry, some of which I totally dislike the flavors of. And as soon as they try to use fruit flavors, that requires the product to have sweeteners. In an attempt to use something natural, they all tend to use Stevia which has the most awful taste. To my taste buds, Stevia is way worse tasting than any of the artificial sweeteners. So I'm glad this product doesn't have any of that. The only reason I didn't give this product five-stars is because the powder doesn't want to mix will with water or other liquids. No matter how well I stir it, the powder lumps up and doesn't dissolve. But I found this to be true with other amino powders as well, so I presume this is the nature of amino acids themselves.

This product messed up my mood and made me feel off mentally. I am pretty sensitive to supplements, so this is not a huge surprise. I can't use protein powder because of how high it is in 'free glutamate', so I was looking for an amino acid blend that didn't include high amounts of glutamic acid (which this doesn't). However I still had a bad experience with this. Maybe I was taking too large of an amount. It tastes awful so I added some to orange juice one morning as I was driving home from out of town and I had a very unpleasant long car ride due to not feeling right and being overstimulated. I went back to just getting my protein from whole foods/meats.

Very good product

The statement on the bottle says and I quote... "contains all 9 essential amino acids in their superior free-form state and in the proportions recommended by the National Academy of Sciences to optimize protein synthesis and tissue repair for adults age 19 and over." Yes, I verified the percentages against the actual RDA; they are identical. I provided a link below. No one paid me, but they should. Goto: http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/abcs-of-nutrition/protein-building-blocks-of-the-body/ Look at: Figure 1: RDA of Essential Amino Acids Save yourself hours of bashing your head against unending nerd literature. This product contains the exact recommended scientific blend of the 9 essential amino acids in free form. It will digest faster than any other form of protein. This makes it superb for use before (winner!), during, and/or after workouts. However, it does taste kind of nasty because it's a bottle full of acid powder. You will have to try some creative mixtures to mask the flavor. I simply choke it down as my pre-workout with lactose-free skim milk and add creatine, which kick starts my system. Then, I eat normal protein meals the rest of the day since I don't want/need to keep choking this stuff down. Now, thank me.

My main issue with this item is two fold. First it tastes kind of bad. I wish they tried to mask it with something sweet. Two, I get a headache from taking it. I don't know if it's just me. It's too bad because it's hard to find a complete essential amino acid powder on the market that's both reasonably priced and not loaded with unwanted artificial sweeteners.