Acetyl l carnitine

[Elizabeth3333]

I've been taking it for a while and it's one of the few things that help me. I'm having a lot of issues figuring out the optimal dosage and times to give a day though. Anyone have any advice?

 

[Wishful]

For me, l-carnitine prevented worsening of symptoms from eating meat fats (probably palmitic acid). I think I took half a tsp, maybe less, with the meal. Carnitine didn't seem to provide any other benefits for me. After some months of taking it, I no longer reacted to meat fats. I take some of the remainder occasionally, to see if it has any effect, but so far it hasn't.

ME is a disorder where it varies too much between individuals to follow someone else's optimum dosage. I suggest experimenting with dosages and time, and recording that, to figure out what is your optimum dosage and timing. I also suggest recording foods, activities, and symptoms, with times, to help figure out which foods and activities affect your symptoms. Keeping that journal has been the most useful advice I've received about dealing with ME.

 

[Richard7]

I use 2g of ALCAR each day divided into a morning and afternoon dose

https://examine.com/supplements/l-carnitine/
says

The standard dose for L-carnitine is between 500-2,000mg.

There are various forms of carnitine supplementation available. Acetyl-L-Carnitine (ALCAR) is used for cognitive enhancement. L-Carnitine L-Tartrate (LCLT) is typically used for physical performance and power output. Glycine Propionyl L-Carnitine (GPLC) is used to alleviate intermittent claudication and blood flow issues.

L-carnitine is supplemented daily.

The equivalent dosage range for other forms of L-carnitine are as follows: 630-2,500mg (ALCAR), 1,000-4,000mg (LCLT) and 1,000-4,000mg (GPLC).

 

[Busson]

For me, l-carnitine prevented worsening of symptoms from eating meat fats (probably palmitic acid).

@Richard7 I too found l-carnitine was useful if I ate too much meat or any protein for that matter. In my case it turns out that l-carntine helps to flush out the toxins from excess propionic acid. Propionic acid along with methylmalonic acid is formed when one of the two pathways which depends on B12 is blocked by deficiency.

Propionic acid gives me a lot of brain fog and makes me feel generally very unwell especially an hour after eating protein. When my symptoms are severe I think ammonia is also accumulating and 5g arginine also helps.

All this is only dealing with the symptoms and the real answer for me is to deal with the B12 shortage.

 

[Richard7]

@Busson that is interesting.

Over production of propionate in the descending colon is considered to be a problem in autism by Derrick MacFabe.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4451098/

At the moment I am trying keto in the hope that it will provide me with some energy, reduce inflammation and that the BHOB will out-compete the propionate at the blood brain barrier.

The most obvious effect I found when taking ALCAR was that it pretty much eliminated muscle soreness. They still hurt when I do too much, and indeed they have been hurting more on the ketogenic diet, but they used to hurt all the time no matter what I did.

 

[Wishful]

I assumed that my issues with fatty acids had to do with transport across the mitochondrial membrane. L-carnitine does the transporting. I didn't know why elevated palmitic acid in the cytoplasm but not transported into the mitochondria would cause symptoms, but it seemed like a reasonable hypothesis. I'm not sure whether excess propionic acid fits the observations, but I'll think about it.

 

[Busson]

I assumed that my issues with fatty acids had to do with transport across the mitochondrial membrane. L-carnitine does the transporting. I didn't know why elevated palmitic acid in the cytoplasm but not transported into the mitochondria would cause symptoms, but it seemed like a reasonable hypothesis. I'm not sure whether excess propionic acid fits the observations, but I'll think about it.

@Wishful I'm no expert at all and I can only say what I found in myself.

Interestingly, meat fat and dairy products contain odd chain fatty acids which will cause raised propionic and methylmalonic acid. The role of carnitine for this condition is described in section 4B of this paper. In my case this is one of the symptoms of a rare vitamin B12 disorder although in your case it may be something completely different.

http://newenglandconsortium.org/for...rganic-acid-disorders/methylmalonic-acidemia/

l-carnitine prevented worsening of symptoms from eating meat fats

It took me 10 years of severely declining health to realise the full significance of that observation, which is almost identical to one I made. As my metabolism gets better and worse over a period of months, this response can come and go which made it hard to observe.

 

[Wishful]

Okay, MMA doesn't seem to fit me. No nausea, no liver problems. I seem quite healthy apart from ME symptoms. I think my issues were with palmitic acid alone, but I wasn't able to find a source of mostly-palmitic acid to experiment with to verify that. The foods that bothered me (without supplemental carnitine) were all high in palmitic; oily foods that didn't bother me were low in palmitic acid.

I got lucky with figuring out the carnitine link. I could tolerate about 200 g of beef, <30 g of pork, and not even a bite of chicken. While looking into something else, I came across a list of foods containing carnitine, and noticed that beef had lots, pork had about 1/6th the amount, and chicken had almost none. Correlation! Based on that, I bought some carnitine, and a tsp of that allowed me to eat half a chicken without symptoms. I could enjoy meat again!

I think most discoveries are accidental. Hard work in research just makes those accidents more likely.

 

[Busson]

These metabolic disorders are notorious hard to identify. Palmitic acid does not seem a particularly strong candidate as the body normally has large amounts of it without toxicity.

There are some metabolic conditions which alone deplete carntine to deficient levels.

The adverse reaction to chicken is striking. When I was very ill, I reacted particularly badly to chicken and also fish got stroke-like symptoms. Beef and pork were okay.

I wonder if antibiotics, when you take them, really pick you up more than other people experience.

 

[Seven7]

I saw on a mito video to do 1,000mg a day. I take the GNC l cartinine w ALA two pills a day!!! Do great for energy and as a bonus is takes care of brain burning that is sooo bad.

 

[Lolinda]

Hey guys, why do you not measure serum carnitine levels? They are well measurable, the tests are accessible in any Western country having proper medicine, and not expensive (There are rare exceptions when the measurements are not valid: in exceptional cases, muscle or neuronal carnitine can be low without serum carnitine being low.) Here where I live, any family doctor can order a carnitine test in any lab that can freeze. They send it to a specialty lab and I get the result in 1 week. All paid by health insurance. Just make sure you have a phlebotomist that can immediately centrifuge + freeze. And one has to find an openminded doctor because they are not trained on carnitine in spite of quite some people having issues.

Why take the test?
1) because supplementation increases the amount you pee out and so you can get a deficiency in the end of the day if you supplement on the morning (so usually 2x per day is recommended)
2) Supplementation results in haphazard levels of carnitine. Details:
for oral supplements your find any numbers for absorption you want, but usually absorption is badly low (15-18%, but you find numbers from 10% to well above, depending on x y z ... circumstances)
You may want to avoid oral supplementation altogether because it worsens gut dysbiosis (in mice as fast as 2 weeks, in me just alike ... somaybe I am a lab mouse .. or what ). It increases just the prevotella Dr Meirleir eradicates to cure CFS (successfully in a few people, not successfully in others.) Then your alternative is: eating meat high in carnitine (kangaroo ) together with animal fat (which desinfects the gut, I have research on that if you are interested). Or use curcumin to increase OCTN2 expression, which increases kidney retention of carnitine (ask me for research, I have that somewhere and I like people who like research). BUT, bigggg but, these measures are haphazard in that they are underresearched and nobody knows how much the effect is unless you measure. And whatever you do, it is haphazard anywise bc carnitine needs differ among people like hell depending on fat intake, organic acidurias, sports done or not done, and whatnot. (I do have research for all things I state in all this post, except for this one: I wish to see a good table of "this type of guy needs this many carnitine". Have you ever seen any research / experiences on this?))
3) Recovery times take months in various diseases (it helps somewhat with CFS, fibro, macular degeneration, and many many more, I collected all the studies and will post a summary one day if I have the time). But imagine that you supplement, accept some damage to your gut microbiota and do not reach good levels for recovery because you pee it out or it does poorly absorb , or or or... wouldn't that be a waste of your months of life? As an example, in neuropathy, the maximum achievable recovery can be up to 24 months. Wanna wait in vain bc you didn't measure and absorbed little?

I do not earn money from your testing, and I do not hold shares in any specialty lab... I wish I would ... I just wrote the above in the hope it helps you. Here is my new thread for those who do have carnitine levels tested so we can share experiences and discuss recoveries related to our levels of deficiencies, symptoms, etc:
https://forums.phoenixrising.me/thr...-from-a-diagnosed-carnitine-deficiency.79915/

@Richard7 I too found l-carnitine was useful if I ate too much meat or any protein for that matter. In my case it turns out that l-carntine helps to flush out the toxins from excess propionic acid. Propionic acid along with methylmalonic acid is formed when one of the two pathways which depends on B12 is blocked by deficiency.
Propionic acid gives me a lot of brain fog and makes me feel generally very unwell especially an hour after eating protein

precious lines! @Emootje