Beta-alanine: The complete guide

December 7, 2024

CONTENTS

Improve your performance while training hard, with greater strength and power and an optimal level of recovery with beta-alanine.

Unlike most other amino acids used to build proteins, beta-alanine is not one of them. It is bonded to a beta carbon rather than an alpha carbon, which means it performs a slightly different function.

Rather than being incorporated into proteins, it combines with another amino acid, L-histidine, to produce carnosine, a natural dipeptide stored in skeletal muscle.

Carnosine acts as an intramuscular proton buffer to maintain proper muscle pH 1. But that is not all. Carnosine can help protect muscles against the harmful effects of free radicals produced during high-intensity exercise.

The accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) during exercise contributes to muscle fatigue and exercise-induced muscle damage. Thanks to carnosine’s free-radical-scavenging properties, taking it can reduce oxidative stress levels and prevent damage, which contributes to its benefits.

In summary, beta-alanine is the rate-limiting precursor for carnosine production, so if you run out of it, you cannot synthesize sufficient levels to buffer the muscles and mitigate fatigue.

The amino acid is present in muscles only in small amounts, and it can be difficult to consume enough food to provide the additional amount that a high-performance athlete may need.

What is beta-alanine?

Beta-alanine is a compound amino acid, basically consisting of the amino acids L-Glycine and GABA. There are several ways to synthesize it from the breakdown of histidine or from the reaction that converts alanine into pyruvate.

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During training, we deplete our muscle glycogen stores. Throughout this process, acidity develops and performance decreases. This is where this amino acid comes into play, as it reduces acidity (the burning sensation) and improves performance.

It can be found in protein-rich meats, so you should monitor your levels if you are vegetarian, due to the lack of meat consumption.

Even so, for athletes, it is very difficult to achieve adequate levels of it, as very large amounts of meat would be necessary to use it effectively. Here, beta-alanine supplementation is the ideal solution.

How does beta-alanine work?

Before learning how beta-alanine works and why it is beneficial for bodybuilders, you must first understand what happens during exercise..

During high-intensity exercise, the main energy pathway used is anaerobic glycolysis: glucose is broken down to produce ATP to fuel the activity.

However, the breakdown of glucose results in an accumulation of lactate and hydrogen ions (H+) in the muscles, which subsequently increases pH.

Hydrogen ions are acidic, and their accumulation causes the muscles to become overly acidic if they are not removed.

The muscles take only 5 minutes to reach their lowest pH, and hydrogen ion accumulation reaches its maximum after 5.

As muscle acidity begins to increase, it interferes with contractility, resulting in a loss of function and a decline in overall performance.

Although some research suggests that increased muscle acidity (H+ accumulation) is not the only cause of fatigue during short-duration maximal exertion, it interferes with several metabolic processes, inevitably reducing force production.

Since you do not want the accumulation of hydrogen ions to interfere with muscle contraction and performance, you must increase carnosine levels, which can be done by supplementing with beta-alanine.

When combined with histidine to produce carnosine, it buffers muscle acidity to prevent fatigue.
Because the amount of carnosine synthesized depends on the availability of beta-alanine, pre-workout supplementation raises carnosine levels in type I and type II muscle fibers and prevents fatigue.

Many pre-workout supplements contain beta-alanine.

What are the benefits of beta-alanine?

Before discussing its direct benefits, let’s analyze the properties of beta-alanine by summarizing them into two key elements of sports.

Reduces acidity due to the resulting increase in carnosine levels.
Increases performance, especially in people who engage in high-intensity exercise such as HIIT or weightlifting, for example.

It can also increase performance in endurance athletes by extending the time to fatigue. This could result in increased muscle mass due to the ability to tolerate a greater workload and improved recovery capacity.

Increases VO2 max, delaying fatigue.
Improved recovery, preserving muscle mass.
It increases the ability to use energy substrates and enhances muscle contraction capacity, which increases training volume.

Benefit 1: how does it delay fatigue?

When you are training hard, you want to maximize muscle growth by pushing your muscles to the limit, and you can do so with beta-alanine.

Because high-intensity exercise increases the accumulation of hydrogen ions, it can cause faster muscle acidification and, consequently, faster fatigue.

By increasing carnosine concentrations through supplementation, you enhance the muscles' buffering capacity, work at a higher intensity for longer, and increase time to exhaustion.

In just one month, taking this supplement could delay the onset of neuromuscular fatigue and the ventilatory threshold during submaximal workloads and increase time to exhaustion during maximal cycling performance.

Benefit 2: how does it preserve muscle mass?

Although a supplement such as beta-alanine can maximize fat loss by helping maintain intensity during activities such as HIIT and sprints, what about protection against the muscle loss that accompanies fat loss?

The literature and experience have shown that using this supplement together with HIIT can improve body composition by preserving lean mass and increasing fat loss.

For high-performance or intermediate athletes looking to surpass their current level, only six weeks combined with an HIIT protocol are required for a tremendous increase in lean mass. In two months, you can already notice a substantial difference in muscle mass, whether you are an endurance athlete, a fitness athlete, or a bodybuilder.

Benefit 3: how does it improve training volume?

Although you may think that beta-alanine is only suitable for endurance exercise, it offers something more for bodybuilders.

Increasing training volume over time is one of the most effective ways to maximize strength and muscle gains. You have to perform more repetitions, increase the number of sets, and move more weight… it’s easier said than done…

The point is that beta-alanine may be useful by delaying fatigue and increasing performance during weightlifting.

According to research, just 30 days of supplementation at a dose of 4.5 g/day can improve anaerobic (weight-training) volume and perceived fatigue.

If you can perform a few more repetitions or an extra couple of sets, you could help facilitate greater muscle adaptations.

It also increases power output in lifts equivalent to maximal strength or when training at maximum power output. Beta-alanine appears to improve 1RM by increasing the load lifted.

Benefit 4: How does it help with losing body fat?

The research so far mostly agrees that beta-alanine supplementation reliably improves exercise performance. There are also some studies that suggest an increase in muscle mass thanks to the amino acid. But, can these findings suggest benefits for fat loss?

It is certainly plausible.

On the one hand, it leads to increases in lean body mass during periods of weight loss. This alone is a significant indicator that it may be a useful supplement for fat loss.
The goal of any sound weight-loss plan is to allow us to retain as much muscle mass as possible while losing fat; this will enable us to achieve the lean, athletic look we all seek. Losing weight for its own sake often leads to disappointing results.

But gaining lean mass while losing fat offers an even better aesthetic result, mainly thanks to the increase in carnosine, which allows:

Making cardio sessions more productive and burning more calories without tiring yourself as much.
It can also lead to better weight-training sessions overall (which often cannot be fully achieved in a calorie deficit). Even if there is no significant difference from set to set, the additional repetitions here and there translate into better results in the gym, more calories burned, and greater fat loss.
The delay in the onset of muscle fatigue may also play a role in NEAT: non-exercise activity thermogenesis. In other words, it may have a beneficial impact on your overall activity level throughout the day.

These options allow you to combine this amino acid with stimulant-free pre-workouts for greater performance, focus, and fat burning.

Does beta-alanine have side effects?

As for side effects, only a tingling sensation has been reported when using beta-alanine (paresthesia). It feels, for example, as if your leg had fallen asleep.

However, to prevent this from happening, one option is to take smaller doses. After taking the supplement for some time, this tingling eventually disappears as the body adapts to the nutrient.

What is the appropriate beta-alanine dosage?

First of all, we want to make it clear that its effects are not noticeable on the same day because carnosine levels need to increase. Therefore, you need to wait about two weeks before beginning to notice its effects.

An intake of 0.05g/kg is recommended on training days during the first two months.
After these two months, a dose of 0.025g/kg is recommended to maintain optimal carnosine levels in the body.

When is the best time to take beta-alanine?

It is recommended to take beta-alanine in 2 to 4 doses, but one of those doses should always be taken before training and another after training. This can help improve vascularization during the workout and promote recovery. It can also be taken with a meal, as this improves its absorption.

Beta-alanine, like creatine, never needs to be stopped (it does not need to be cycled), since its receptors do not become saturated, unlike those for caffeine, for example.

The benefits provided by the supplement can be observed more easily when it is taken on an empty stomach; however, it is recommended to take it with food to prevent side effects.

Which beta-alanine is recommended?

Currently, on the market, most brands stock beta-alanine for sale; you only need to consider your preferred brand or the most popular ones.

Now, you can look for the ingredient “Carnosyn” on the label, as it is the patented ingredient used in all the studies and whose efficacy has been demonstrated.

CarnoSyn®: why is it a reliable source?

Although generic beta-alanine supplements are abundant, only the CarnoSyn® version has more than 55 clinical studies supporting its benefits for athletic performance.

Moreover, it is the only ingredient that has successfully obtained “new dietary ingredient” (NDI) status from the FDA. It has also achieved Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) status.

Therefore, it is guaranteed to be free of prohibited substances. In this context, generic impostors cannot make the same promise.

From our perspective, scientifically backed ingredients are very important to brands and consumers because they demonstrate the efficacy, safety, and purity of the product.

The thing is, we are always involved in an industry where we see many brands and companies engaging in what is called “borrowed science,” claiming the science behind that scientifically backed ingredient even though they have a generic ingredient in their product.

Well, what specifically stands out to me regarding CarnoSyn®'s scientific portfolio is the number of studies showing so many different benefits that can be obtained by using the patented ingredient.

Creatine: a beta-alanine adjunct?

Beta-alanine often works with other products such as citrulline malate and Creatine. This is also often the case with most pre-workout performance-enhancing supplements.

But can we expect it to work synergistically with Creatine? Does it matter whether we take them together or not?

We have long known that Creatine helps improve performance by providing a precursor molecule during the synthesis of ATP molecules (the primary energy currency for our muscles).

This leads to a slight improvement in work capacity, power output, strength, and endurance.

When used together, both supplements benefit exercise performance and strength. Does this mean we should take them together to obtain these benefits?

With regard to both supplements, you can take your daily dose whenever it suits you best and not worry about taking them together or taking them before a workout with the idea of gaining extra benefits.

Taurine: why might it help too?

Some sports nutritionists have recommended consuming Taurine in equal doses to increase muscle building. The combination of beta-alanine and Taurine may be important for bodybuilders.

It may also be that not taking Taurine in equal doses can lead to imbalances over time, as similar levels may be optimal.

Conclusions

Beta-alanine supports bodybuilders through several physiological mechanisms. For example, when taken daily, it increases carnosine levels in the body, including in muscle and brain tissue.

Carnosine, a dipeptide composed of histidine and beta-alanine, has other positive effects that result in overall improvements in health and energy, such as improved strength and functional performance, including cognitive performance.

Of note to bodybuilders, carnosine buffers the decrease in pH that causes fatigue to appear. pH buffering helps delay or even prevent muscle fatigue and is essential for cells to function properly.
It also provides antioxidant protection at the cellular and systemic levels. This metabolic benefit allows for increased cellular oxygen consumption, as well as the expression of several cellular proteins associated with improved oxidative metabolism.

These benefits have been associated, in part, with higher carnosine levels, which act as an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agent.

Science has shown that increased carnosine levels reduce the inflammation that arises from the post-traumatic stress caused by strenuous training or a sporting event, mild traumatic brain injury, and heat stress.

These benefits are recognized by sports-focused authorities such as the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

That's all for today's article. We hope you enjoyed it, and if you have any questions, leave them in the comments on our channel, where we discussed how to use it and some important points in a video.

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