Beta-Alanine: The Basics
October 15, 2007
One of the hottest nutritional supplements to hit the market recently has been beta-alanine. Basically, beta-alanine is a precursor to the compound carnosine which works by “quenching” the acidic environment created by working muscles. If the cellular environment within the muscle becomes to acidic then the muscle stops working; the theory is that carnosine attenuates the onset of an acidic environment allowing you to do more work (lift more weights, run faster, etc). As you can imagine the has gotten a lot of people in the fitness and performance industry excited as the more work you can do and weights you can lift the biggest, faster, and stronger you can become.
You may be wondering “Why supplement with beta-alanine? Why not supplement with carnosine?” Carnosine is made up of beta-alanine and histidine (an amino acid). In the gut carnosine is split into beta-alanine and histidine and then re-assembled back to carnosine in muscle or other cells in the body. Since histidine is already very abundant in the body and food supply the limiting factor with carnosine synthesis is beta-alanine. Supplementing beta-alanine has been show in studies to increase intramuscular carnosine concentrations. That is why people supplement with beta-alanine and not carnosine.
As you can probably tell from a performance perspective carnosine and beta-alanine have the potential to make a huge impact. But what may be even more interesting is the role that carnosine may place in slowing the aging process.
Tomorrow we’ll look at how carnosine can prevent aging (and potential the onset of some diseases).
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