Key Topics Covered

Background

Beta-alanine is an amino acid, however is not used in the production of protein.
It is naturally produced by the liver.However, supplementation for some athletes can be beneficial
The benefits of beta-alanine supplementation don’t directly come from beta-alanine, they come from the increase in muscle carnosine that occurs.

Explained: When beta-alanine is consumed it is converted into carnosine by joining with histidine.Carnosine helps to maintain the acid-base equilibrium of the blood. Meaning, it helps prevent pH from dropping by buffering H+ ions, which in turn helps to reduce feelings of fatigue.
- Supplement carnosine? It appears that carnosine is metabolised too quickly before we can reap benefits from it.
- Supplement histidine? Humans already have enough histidine circulating in the body, so it’s not very beneficial.
Simplified: It helps prevent that feeling of “lactic acid build-up.”
This allows one to train at a higher intensity for longer.
It also aids vasodilatation a bit too.

Beta-alanine is most beneficial if training to near maximal capacity.
It seems to help most for exercise that is 60-240s. Realistically it can benefit anyone exercising at capacity for 1-10 minutes.
Example: CrossFit is where this supplement shines and is often used.

Dosages of 4-6g of beta-alanine per day have been shown to increase muscle carnosine by up to 64% after 4 weeks. This number increases to 80% after 10 weeks.
- It’s suspected that the longer Beta-alanine is taken, the greater the benefits. There are no long-term studies to show the benefits when MAX saturation is achieved at this moment.
Another study showed that consuming 12g/day for 2 weeks increased muscle carnosine by up to 64%.
For gym-goers, it appears that individuals are able to perform one or two additional reps in the gym when training in a range of 8-20 reps.
A meta-analysis on the topic found that athletes improved in performance by 2.85% on average. This is actually quite a bit in comparison to most supplements.
Time to exhaustion style studies show more benefit; >10% improvement in performance. But this is not really relevant for race condition sports.

- Paraesthesia is the main side effect and is completely safe, but may be uncomfortable. Some people experience this sensation in extreme amounts, others don’t feel it at all.
- This is probably the main limiting factor when studies are experimenting at higher dosages.

Taurine depletion might be a possible side effect, but that hasn’t been identified in practice yet.
Theoretically, studies are significantly underdosing beta-alanine since carnosine levels are almost always increasing still at the end of the study. The underdosing is to avoid the paraesthesia. Therefore, if you could have more, you might get more benefit than that 2.85% identified on average.
Slow-release beta-alanine could be another option to minimise paraesthesia.