https://examine.com/supplements/beta-alanine/
Increased stores of carnosine can protect against diet-induced drops in pH (which might occur from ketone production in ketosis, for example), as well as offer protection from exercise-induced lactic acid production.
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Carnosine is abundant in skeletal muscle, but can also be found in the brain and the cardiac muscle. Its foremost role is to maintain the acid base equilibrium (buffering H+ ions), but it is also neuroprotective (a potential treatment for autism
[8]), anti-aging
[9], antioxidant
[10], protective against glycation
[11], and it can sensitize contractile muscles to calcium.
[12]
....
The synthesis or intake of beta-alanine, not histidine, is the rate-limiting step in carnosine synthesis
in vivo.
[14] Beta-alanine is synthesized in the liver
[15] then transported to muscle cells, where carnosine is in turn synthesized (and stored, in type II more than in type I muscle fibers).
...
Beta-alanine increases muscle carnosine stores to a greater degree than the same oral dose of carnosine (with the difference becoming nonsignificant with increasing carnosine dose). This may be due to a higher percentage of ingested beta-alanine being devoted to skeletal muscle,
[18] as compared to ingested carnosine. Ingested carnosine cannot enter muscles cells to a significant extent,
[13]but it can be hydrolyzed
in vivo into its two substrates, beta-alanine and histidine, which can enter muscles cells and there serve to synthesize carnosine.
...
Deficiency states, redeemable through supplementation, are possible with some pseudo-vitamin compounds, such as
creatine or carnitine (
L-carnitine). Beta-alanine does
not appear to be similar in this regard. Dietary histidine deficiency, on the other hand, depresses serum and muscle levels of both beta-alanine and carnosine.
[21] Levels are restored when histidine is supplemented.
[22]
Beta-alanine and carnosine do not have pseudo-vitamin status. Any state of deficiency related to either could also be called a general “protein deficiency” associated with the essential amino acid histidine. It can be avoided by consuming more protein.
Carnosine levels are lower in vegetarians (as compared to omnivores) and decrease with age, but the physiological consequences are uncertain.
...
As a rule, the availability of beta-alanine is the limiting factor in carnosine production. Only in the case of an actual histidine deficiency does supplementing histidine increase carnosine stores.
@picante
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While elevated carnosine levels can be found in the serum of animals, humans seem to rapidly hydrolyze ingested carnosine. Consequently, supplementing with beta-alanine seems preferable to supplementing with carnosine.
At equal doses, supplemental beta-alanine appears more effective than supplemental carnosine at increasing muscle carnosine, with all the associated ergogenic benefits.
[18]
....
Carnosine, the product that beta-alanine forms to buffer H+ ions, appears to exert rudimentary anti-aging properties. It has been hypothesized to act like
resveratrol, due to their respective mechanisms being linked to exercise.
[9]
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Carnosine depletion appears to be associated with aging. Increasing carnosine stores may attenuate the aging process.
...
Beta-alanine may have effects similar to the inhibitory neurotransmitters glycine and GABA, while at the same time competing with these molecules. The overall consequences are unclear at this time.
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For some people it starts earlier, according to the insults suffered. Interestingly it has been said before that people with ME tend to look younger than they really look (me incl.), but at what cost?
