A beta-alanine guide

You may already know what beta-alanine feels like, but what exactly does it do? Here's everything you need to know about beta-alanine.

Beta-alanine is technically a non-essential amino acid, but it has quickly become something that is anything but non-essential in the world of performance nutrition and bodybuilding. Also known by its brand name CarnoSyn®, beta-alanine has quickly become a bright star in the sports supplement field due to claims that it increases muscle carnosine levels and the amount of work you can do at high intensity.

Beta-alanine is also known to cause a certain tingling sensation when first taken, which anyone who has used beta-alanine before will probably be familiar with.

Beta-alanine can deliver real performance benefits, but it has unique chemical properties that need to be known and understood. There is also a unique relationship between beta-alanine and taurine that should be considered.

Beta-alanine could earn a permanent place in every bodybuilder's supplement arsenal. This article is intended to provide readers with the science-based knowledge that can help them decide if beta-alanine is the right supplement for them.

What is beta-alanine?

Beta-alanine, also known as 3-aminopropionic acid, is a naturally occurring beta-amino acid and a component of the histidine dipeptides carnosine and anserine, as well as vitamin B5 aka pantothenic acid. From a structural perspective, beta-alanine is a hybrid between the potent neurotransmitters L-glycine and GABA, which may explain why users of beta-alanine often report a caffeine-like reaction. In addition, the scientific community is increasingly classifying beta-alanine secondarily as a neurotransmitter.

Only small amounts of beta-alanine are supplied to the body through food, most of which is supplied in the form of the dipeptides carnosine, anserine or baleanine, which are broken down during digestion and release beta-alanine in the process. Unless you are a vegetarian, these dipeptides come from the animal proteins in your diet. Pork and beef in particular are good sources of carnosine, while tuna and game are good sources of anserine.

How strongly is carnosine associated with a meat-rich diet? Well, the expression of the enzyme carnosine synthase, which is responsible for the production of carnosine in the body, decreases significantly after just 5 weeks of a vegetarian diet. As you would expect, muscle carnosine concentrations are much lower in vegetarians than in people who eat meat.

The human body can produce beta-alanine itself in at least three ways. It can be released during the breakdown of histidine peptides such as carnosine or anserine, or it can be produced as a secondary by-product in the reaction that converts L-alanine to pyruvate. In addition, beta-alanine can be formed during digestion when bacteria in the digestive tract remove a carbon atom from L-aspartate and release both beta-alanine and CO2.

When consumed as a dietary supplement, beta-alanine enters skeletal muscle from the bloodstream via a beta-alanine and taurine transporter that is dependent on the availability of sodium and chloride. Once beta-alanine enters the skeletal muscle cells, it combines with the essential amino acid L-histidine to form the dipeptide carnosine. This is where the real fun begins.

Beta-alanine is a standard ingredient in many pre-workout supplements and is also available in isolated form. When purchasing a beta-alanine supplement, look for the name CarnoSyn® on the label, as Natural Alternatives International, Inc. is the patent holder of the manufacturing process for beta-alanine and CranoSyn® is the only beta-alanine product manufactured using this patented manufacturing process. In addition, CarnoSyn® is the beta-alanine that has been repeatedly shown to be effective in scientific research.

How does beta-alanine work and what are its benefits for athletes?

The benefits of beta-alanine supplementation for athletes are largely due to beta-alanine's ability to increase muscle carnosine concentrations. Beta-alanine is the limiting factor in carnosine synthesis, which means that its presence in the bloodstream is directly related to carnosine levels in the muscles.

To date, every study in which beta-alanine supplementation has been performed in human subjects has resulted in a significant increase in muscle carnosine levels. This distinguishes beta-alanine from other supplements such as creatine, where it has been observed that there are also people who do not respond to these active ingredients. The effects of beta-alanine in increasing carnosine levels are more than amazing. It has been shown that beta-alanine supplementation can increase carnosine levels by up to 58% within just four weeks, while an increase of 80% is possible within 10 weeks.

The reader may now be wondering what is so special about carnosine. Well, apart from being a powerful antioxidant, this dipeptide is one of the muscles' first lines of defense against an accumulation of hydrogen ions (H+ ions) during high-intensity exercise. This accumulation of H+ ions lowers the pH within muscle cells into the acidic range and impairs enzyme functions and the coupling of muscle excitation with muscle contraction, which are essential for high-intensity muscle performance. Put simply, a drop in muscle pH contributes significantly to muscle fatigue.

Muscle carnosine concentration is also related to the amount of rapidly contracting type II muscle fibers, with higher levels of these muscle fibers equating to higher carnosine levels. For this reason, higher carnosine concentrations will be found in sprinters and naturally muscular athletes. Men generally have higher muscle carnosine concentrations than women, primarily due to the fact that the enzyme that breaks down carnosine is more active in women.

If you're looking for a boost during short to medium-length high-intensity muscle workouts, there are few supplements that can compete with beta-alanine.

Especially when it comes to supporting training efforts lasting longer than 60 seconds, beta-alanine appears to be the most effective supplement available. Significant or consistent effectiveness in shorter efforts, where the ATP-phosphocreatine system is most challenged, has not yet been demonstrated.

In one of the first published beta-alanine studies examining human athletic performance, subjects were given either a placebo, 20 grams of creatine monohydrate, 800 mg of beta-alanine four times daily or 800 mg of beta-alanine four times daily & 20 grams of creatine monohydrate. The maximum power release in a four-minute cycling sprint test, in which the test subjects had to give their all, was significantly higher in the two groups receiving beta-alanine compared to the creatine monohydrate group and the placebo group. The most significant improvements were observed during the first and fourth minutes of the test.

Since this early study, further research has consistently shown that beta-alanine increases power release, strength, exercise volume, high-intensity exercise performance and maximal oxygen uptake (aerobic capacity). In a recent study, soccer players who took 3.2 grams of beta-alanine for 12 weeks during the competitive season increased their performance by 34.3 percent, while the performance of members of the placebo group decreased by an average of 7.6 percent. An individual examination of the changes in all test subjects revealed a performance increase range of 0 to +72.2 percent for subjects using beta-alanine, while this range extended from -37.5 to +14.7 percent for members of the placebo group.

British scientists presented study results showing that just four weeks of beta-alanine supplementation at a dose of 6 grams per day (1.5 grams four times a day) increased amateur boxers' punching power by a staggering factor of 20 and punch frequency by a factor of four compared to a placebo. However, when there were long breaks (2 to 5 minutes) between the individual sets of a high-intensity strength training session, the effects of beta-alanine were insignificant.

The most noticeable effects of beta-alanine are therefore likely to be seen in HIT bodybuilding training programs, HIIT or interval training, CrossFit training or 1 to 5 minutes of high-intensity exercise with short rest periods of less than 2 minutes.

How should you take beta-alanine?

Beta-alanine can provide an acute stimulant effect and is therefore a good candidate for use before training as a pre-workout product. If you are using a pre-workout supplement, then you may well already be using beta-alanine. However, the performance benefits of beta-alanine are primarily based on an increase in carnosine concentration over time. For this reason, the time of day you take beta-alanine is not nearly as important as taking beta-alanine consistently every day.

The muscle fiber composition and amount of muscle carnosine one has at the start of beta-alanine supplementation does not appear to affect the way one responds to beta-alanine. Similarly, the size of the individual doses does not appear to affect the maximum muscle carnosine concentration that can be achieved. Instead, the total amount of beta-alanine consumed over a period of time influences the final muscle carnosine concentration.

The response to beta-alanine increases exponentially over time due to the long breakdown time of elevated carnosine concentrations. Once carnosine levels are increased with beta-alanine, studies have shown that carnosine levels decrease by only 2 percent every two weeks after beta-alanine is discontinued.

Contrary to recommendations to the contrary, it may make sense to consume taurine when supplementing with beta-alanine. Taurine is not only an under-consumed nutrient anyway, but is also very important for neuromuscular function, cognitive function, lung function and blood sugar utilization, as well as acting as an antioxidant. Since beta-alanine and taurine compete for uptake and the concentration of one affects the concentrations of the other, it is actually a matter of common sense that if you are taking one nutrient continuously, you should also supplement the other.

There is direct evidence that long-term supplementation with high doses of beta-alanine in the absence of dietary taurine could lead to health problems and reduced performance. Data obtained with mice seem to indicate that the use of one nutrient in the absence of the other can lead to neurological and neuromuscular performance reduction in performance tests. In the case of beta-alanine, the result was an increased angiogenesis (stress inducing) response as serotonin production was impaired.

Other studies conducted in rats seem to indicate that significant taurine deficiency in response to chronically high beta-alanine intake reduces nitric oxide production and the nitric oxide response. However, long-term studies have not yet been conducted to determine the likelihood of such problems in humans in response to typical beta-alanine dosing.

Aside from taurine, what to combine with beta-alanine depends most on individual goals. Beta-alanine, as mentioned earlier, works best when the workout is high intensity and the efforts last between 1 and 5 minutes. So if the goal is to improve exercise performance in efforts lasting less than 60 seconds, then you should supplement with something that supports the ATP-phosphocreatine energy system. This includes creatine, caffeine, oral ATP and betaine.

If you are training for a sport, then you should also consider ingredients such as DL-malate and similar energy system intermediates such as alpha-ketoglutarate, citrate and aspartate in conjunction with carbohydrates, BCAAs, glutamine, citrulline and Co-Q10.

Based on the data currently available, it does not appear to be necessary to use beta-alanine cyclically as long as you are also supplementing with taurine. However, if you are not taking taurine in the form of supplements, then it may be prudent not to use beta-alanine continuously. Since taurine uptake is affected by an increase in plasma concentrations of beta-alanine, and since muscle carnosine levels remain elevated for several months after beta-alanine is discontinued, a 4 to 9 week "on", 4 to 9 week "off" regimen of cyclic use should allow the user to consistently reap the benefits of beta-alanine.

One problem with advice regarding the duration of use and/or cyclical use is that no studies have yet investigated the effects of beta-alanine supplementation beyond 12 weeks in humans. It is therefore unclear whether muscle carnosine levels will continue to rise or whether a maximum value will be reached after 12 weeks. In addition, further studies are needed to provide data on what increase in carnosine concentration is necessary to observe significant improvements in performance.

To put it another way, the question is whether an 80% increase in muscle carnosine concentration is more effective than a 50% increase. Furthermore, the question arises as to whether cyclical use is helpful or necessary after a certain limit of muscle carnosine concentration has been reached. Before these questions are finally clarified, all recommendations for long-term use are of a rather speculative nature.

What are the side effects of beta-alanine?

Beta-alanine has its own built-in dose regulator. Many users will be familiar with the tingling sensation in the neck or arms that often occurs when beta-alanine is first used. The scientific term for this sensation is paresthesia, which can also be characterized by burning, itching or reddening of the skin around the ears and scalp.

Beta-alanine doses in excess of 800 mg are reported in the scientific literature to cause moderate to severe paraesthesia lasting 60 to 90 minutes, although this side effect is completely harmless, but is perceived as unpleasant by some users. In a study in which subjects took 3 grams of beta alanine at a time, the paresthesia was described as significant and severe.

If you want to avoid this side effect, you should divide the beta-alanine dosages during the first four weeks of supplementation into 800 to 1200 mg beta-alanine single doses, with a time interval of at least 3 to 4 hours between each dose. This division of the daily dose will not impair the desired effect of beta-alanine, but will significantly reduce the potential for side effects.

If beta-alanine is taken on an empty stomach, blood levels will rise more quickly, but the likelihood of paresthesia also increases. Users who use beta-alanine for its stimulant effect report a better effect when taking beta-alanine on an empty stomach. However, when using beta-alanine solely for its performance benefits, it is relatively unimportant whether it is taken on an empty or full stomach, as each dose of beta-alanine, whether taken with or without food, increases muscle carnosine levels in addition to the previous dose.

Conclusion

Beta-alanine is probably the most effective performance enhancing supplement since creatine was introduced to the market, making it a highly recommended supplement.

Further research will help to further optimize dosage and intake and give us a clearer picture of the long-term safety and effectiveness of beta-alanine. In addition, such studies could show which other active ingredients can enhance the effect of beta-alanine. According to the current state of scientific knowledge, there is sufficient evidence that athletes and especially vegetarians, ectomorph athletes (the typical "hard gainers") and women can benefit from a regular beta-alanine intake.