What is Beta-Alanine?
Beta-alanine is one of the two amino acids (histidine being the other) that make up the protein carnosine. Carnosine is found throughout the body, but specifically in skeletal muscle. Research shows that skeletal muscle carnosine levels are correlated with performance during high-intensity exercise (Suzuki, 2002); higher carnosine levels lead to better performance. Beta-Alanine availability is the limiting factor in muscle carnosine synthesis (Hill, 2007). Carnosine is an important metabolic buffer in skeletal muscle (Suzuki, 2002), which means it helps maintain the acid-base balance in the presence of high H+ (hydrogen ion) concentrations. H+ is a byproduct of energy metabolism and lactic acid production, which causes a burning sensation in yours muscles when you workout (such as during high-rep leg extensions). During exercise H+ levels increase, which causes fatigue and decreases performance. If one could keep H+ levels down during exercise they could delay fatigue and increase performance; this can be accomplished with Beta-alanine supplementation.

What does Beta Alanine do?
According to recent research the following has been found about Beta-Alanine:

Increase Muscular Strength & Power Output.
Increases Muscle Mass
Increase Anaerobic Endurance
Increases Aerobic Endurance
Delay Muscular Fatigue- Train Harder & Longer

Who should use Beta Alanine?
Any athlete or health conscious adult looking to improve strength, performance, or gain muscle will benefit from taking Beta-Alanine.

When/How should I take Beta Alanine?
Research studies have dosed Beta-Alanine at 3.2-6.4 grams/day. The most effective way to take Beta-Alanine would be 2 grams prior to exercise and 2 grams 8 hours before or after exercise.

What supplements can I stack with Beta Alanine to increase results?
Beta-Alanine has been shown to work synergistically with creatine. Citrulline Malate, arginine, and BCAA would also stack well with Beta-Alanine.

Does Beta-Alanine have any side effects?
Supplementing with Beta-Alanine can cause tingling of the skin. This effect usually disappears after 2 weeks of use.

Will Beta-Alanine cause me to fail a drug test for natural bodybuilding competitions?
No. Beta-Alanine contains all natural ingredients and no hormones. It will not cause you to fail a drug test

Beta-Alanine efficacy is backed by major university, peer-reviewed studies performed on humans, not a cell, rat or goat study upon which other products typically base claims. The science behind beta-alanine is simple, it makes sense and it works. The information on this site, was designed to be used as a beta-alanine guide and is organized in a hands-on, easy-to-follow approach manner- with no fancy biochemistry or confusing graphs.

Beta-Alanine is a non-essential amino acid and is the only naturally occurring beta-amino acid. Not to be confused with regular alanine, beta- alanine is classified as a non-proteinogenic amino acid, as it is not believed to be used in the building of proteins.

The greatest natural dietary sources of beta-alanine are believed to be obtained through ingesting the beta-alanine containing dipeptides: carnosine, anserine and balenine, rather than directly ingesting beta-alanine. These dipeptides are found in protein rich foods such as chicken, beef, pork and fish. It is predominantly through ingesting the dipeptide carnosine that we ingest most of our beta-alanine, as the two other dipeptides are not found nearly as plentiful in our typical coniferous diet. However, obtaining beta-alanine through these dipeptides is not the only way, as our bodies can synthesize it in the liver from the catabolism of pyrimidine nucleotides which are broken down into uracil and thymine and then metabolized into beta-alanine and B-aminoisobutyrate. Of course, it can also be ingested through direct supplementation such as PRIMAFORCE BETA-ALANINE POWDER

Below is a list of the benefits from beta-alanine, supported by peer-reviewed university research, published in reputable science journals.

Benefits of Beta-Alanine as supported by scientific studies:
 

• Beta-Alanine availability is the limiting factor in muscle carnosine synthesis.
• Muscle carnosine levels were higher after 10 weeks of beta-alanine supplementation than after 4 weeks, showing that beta-alanine’s effects are best experienced over long term supplementation.
• Beta-alanine supplementation increases total work done during aerobic exercise.
• Adding beta-alanine to creatine supplementation leads to greater increases in lean mass than creatine supplementation alone.
• Beta-alanine may increase endurance performance.
• Beta-alanine may delay neuromuscular fatigue, which would allow one to workout longer and more intensely.
• Beta-alanine delays fatigue.
• Beta-alanine delays onset of reaching ones ventilatory threshold, which is the point where ventilation increases non-linearly due to blood and muscle acidosis.
• Beta-alanine increases time to exhaustion.

When we exercise, especially when it’s high intensity exercise, our bodies accumulate a large amount of hydrogen ions (H+), causing our muscles’ pH to drop (become more acidic). This process is occurring whether you feel a burn or not.


The breakdown of ATP and the subsequent rise in H+ concentrations occur in all of our energy systems but H+ buildup is most prevalent in an energy system called glycolysis, which also produces lactic acid. At physiological pH, lactic acid dissociates H+ and is the primary source of released H+ ions during exercise, causing pH to drop. It is the released H+ from lactic acid that causes muscular performance problems, not the leftover lactate ions as many incorrectly believe. While lactic acid is the primary source of released H+, it is not the only source. H+ ions are also being released at a rapid rate when you break down the high energy compound ATP during exercise. With the presence of many sources during energy production releasing H+, pH drops quickly.


As our muscles pH quickly drops, so does their ability to contract forcibly and maintain a high level of performance throughout your workout session. Not being able to perform and maintain forceful muscular contractions and push your body to the limit during your workout session, seriously hampers your ability to maximally overload your muscles and force new muscle gains.


In a nutshell, H+ causes your muscles pH to drop, in tern decreasing your strength and causing you to fatigue faster. These limitations stop you from adequately overloading your muscles and forcing NEW muscle gains

So how can beta-alanine help us overcome this drop in pH that limits exercise performance?

To understand how beta-alanine works to fight the drop in pH within our muscle, you must first understand how carnosine works. The reason being is, beta-alanine’s performance benefits are not direct but realized through its ability to boost the synthesis of carnosine. The Russian scientist Gulewitsch was the first to identify carnosine in 1900. Eleven years later, he would discover and identify its constituent amino acids, beta-alanine and histidine. Seven years later, Barger and Tutin and Baumann and Ingvaldsen confirmed Gulewitsch’s findings. However, it wasn’t until 1938 that the first research on carnosine and its effects on muscle buffering were published. Carnosine is a naturally occurring di-peptide that is found in both type 1 and type 2 muscle fibers, but is in significantly higher concentrations in type 2 fibers. Type 2 muscle fibers are primarily used in high intensity strength workouts and are most responsive to muscular growth.


There are a handful of ways carnosine is thought to impact performance but its most studied function, and the focus of this article, is its role as an intracellular buffer. Carnosine helps stabilize muscular pH by soaking up hydrogen ions (H+) that are released at an accelerated rate during exercise.

Our bodies work to keep our pH in balance by utilizing various buffering systems. Buffers largely work by soaking up H+ to maintain optimal pH balance, which we need to function most effectively. As mentioned above, our muscles function best in a specific pH range. When pH drops below that range, so does muscular performance. By helping to keep us in a more optimal pH range, our muscles can continue to contract forcibly for a longer time.

There are a handful of buffering systems that work in our bodies. Some maintain pH in extra cellular fluids (ECF) outside of the cell, while others perform their duties in intracellular fluids (ICF) inside the cell and some perform in both. Our focus in this article is on exercise performance and, as mentioned above, the primary source of H+ released during exercise is from lactic acid and ATP breakdown. Take a guess where this breakdown and release of H+ is occurring? If you guessed inside our muscles or intracellular, you would be correct. As a result, the first line of defense in absorbing the H+ is going to be the cell from intracellular buffers such as carnosine, not from extra cellular buffers.

Aside from carnosine being just where we need it, buffering H+ inside our cells, it has additional, unique attributes that make it really shine. Carnosine is unique; in that, other natural buffering systems our bodies use are also used in many other cellular reactions aside from buffering, watering down much of their buffering abilities. However, what makes carnosine really exciting, is that by supplementing with extra beta-alanine, we can specifically and dramatically increase carnosine levels. How much, you ask?

Researchers have shown that when supplementing with beta-alanine for just 4 weeks, we can increase our carnosine concentration by 42-65%. Longer beta-alanine studies going up to 10-12 weeks, show carnosine concentrations increased up to 80%. This is a tremendous increase in an already powerful intracellular buffer. It is this large increase in buffering capacity within our muscles that is largely responsible for the strength, lean body mass, power and muscular endurance gains that researchers are seeing from beta-alanine studies.


Taking it one step further ------Beta-Alanine + Creatine

While it may seem probable for a variety of reasons why Beta-Alanine and creatine would have synergy and maybe future research will show they do. As of now, the performance studies show they do NOT have synergistic effects.

Regardless of synergy, taking Beta-Alanine with creatine is simply a great stack, from a strength/power/lean muscle standpoint.

The performance studies that use Beta-Alanine,creatine(BA+C), have basically shown that when BA is taken with C, they are better together than either alone. This leads people to believe there is synergy between the two, but it’s not that simple, nor is it accurate to say this.

While it is true the two taken together on MOST performance tests are going to be more effective than either one taken alone, but the research does not support a synergistic effect when they are taken together.

For example, beta-alanine increases performance to a certain level, we can use 1% as an arbitrary number and creatine increases performance by 1% on its own, also arbitrary. When they are taken together their respective performance improves to the same degree as each one does when taken alone, giving us a 2% increase.

If they were shown to work synergistically when combined, their overall performance increase would be greater than greater then 2%. If they were synergistic, the sum of the two when combined, would be greater than either ingredients individual value. So far the performance research is not showing this to be case and study after study is stating NO synergistic effects between the two.
Creatine does work within a limited pH range, so one would think beta-alanine by helping maintain optimal pH would enhance creatine, but this has not paned out in the research as of yet.




Frequently asked questions


Who can benefit from beta-alanine?

1. Individuals participating in weight training looking to gain muscle mass and increase strength.

2. Any individual involved in athletic activities where strength,power and muscular endurance are needed

3. Exercise enthusiasts who have reached a training plateau and are looking for a supplement to take them to the next level


Is beta-alanine safe?

While this is not a frequently asked question, it should be. We understand many people care most about gaining muscle, looking great and performing at their best. But safety should not be overlooked. We believe it should actually be the first question asked when considering a new supplement, even before you question efficacy.

The answer to the safety question is a resounding YES. Studies, going up to 12 weeks of continued beta-alanine use, have looked at a large array of blood biochemical, hematological and hormonal markers and no negative changes have occurred whatsoever. While it is impossible to say beta-alanine is one hundred percent safe until longer term studies are complete, we do know that up to 12 weeks of continued beta-alanine supplementation is indeed safe.


Why not just take carnosine instead of beta-alanine?

When you ingest carnosine intact, most of it is broken down in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract into its constituent amino acids, beta-alanine and histidine. Some intact carnosine does escape the GI tract freely but even that amount is quickly broken down in our blood by the enzyme carnosinase. In a very short time, all the carnosine you just ingested is either eliminated or broken down into beta-alanine and histidine. These two amino acids are then taken into the muscle, where they are converted back into carnosine with the help of the enzyme carnosine synthetase.

Unfortunately, only about 40% of the carnosine you take actually contains beta-alanine, making it an inefficient source at best. You are better off, from both efficiency and a financial standpoint, taking beta-alanine directly. You would have to take substantially more carnosine just to approach the increased concentrations of carnosine achieved by taking the scientifically recommended dose of beta-alanine. Clearly, taking beta-alanine is the superior solution to increasing carnosine levels.



How much Beta-Alanine is needed to cause performance increases?

Research has shown that you can take an amount between 3.2 grams and 6.4 grams per day to significantly boost carnosine levels and improve performance. The most recent research, now using 4-5 grams a day, is showing comparable carnosine concentration and performance improvements to those using 6.4 g daily. Based off the current research, we suggest 4 grams of beta-alanine a day, with an “optional” 2 week loading phase of 6 grams a day during the first month of use.

How long will it take to start noticing benefits?

Performance benefits typically occur in as little as two weeks, although some individuals will notice benefits within one week. As carnosine levels increase, the benefits will follow. The most dramatic results are generally experienced within the 3-4 week range but they don’t stop there. Recent research is now showing carnosine levels continue to increase for a minimum of 12 weeks which is why we recommend staying on Beta-Alanine for at least three months to optimize your carnosine levels.

Immediate benefits: Many users experience intense vasodilatation/pumps from the very first dose of Beta-Alanine. Because Beta-Alanine increases carnosine and carnosine is a powerful precursor in generating nitric oxide synthase (a group of enzymes necessary for making the powerful vasodilator nitric oxide), this is an added, immediate benefit of Beta-Alanine.



 

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