What is beta-alanine?
Beta-alanine is also known as 3-aminopropanic acid and is a natural, substitutable amino acid. Beta-alanine is a very common ingredient in sports energy drink powders for better physical performance and improvement of endurance indicators.
Beta-alanine has proven its beneficial effect for athletes and sports enthusiasts who want to prevent muscle fatigue and squeeze as much as possible out of their workout, especially in high-intensity anaerobic exercise.
This means that you are able to lift more weight in the gym, make more repetitions or run longer before reaching a feeling of tiredness or exhaustion.
What are the benefits of Beta-alanine?
- Improves physical performance;
- Delays the onse of muscle fatigue;
- Promotes muscle performance;
- Increases resistance.
Beta-alanine & Carnosine
Beta-alanine is also known as 3-aminopropanic acid and is a natural, substitutable amino acid. Your body can synthesize it or you can get it with food, using protein-rich products such as poultry, beef, pork and fish.
An effective way to improve your beta-alanine intake is to additionally take it with dietary supplements.
Beta-alanine is classified as an amino acid of bezolbaltumin, which means that its task is not the synthesis of proteins. Conversely, it participates in other metabolic processes. This dipeptide carnaosine precursor along with L-histidine.
The availability of beta-alanine is a factor limiting the synthesis of carnosine, which means that as the beta-alanine reserves run out, the possibility of the body producing carnosine as well is running out.
How it improves muscle function
Beta-alanine indirectly improves muscle function by stepping up the synthesis of carnosine. Carnosin plays a very important role in muscle function processes since it controls the level of acidic environment in the body's cells.
During high-intensity physical activity, the process of anaerobic glycolysis is a primary source of energy. As a result, lactic acid is formed, which is immediately broken down into lactate and hydrogen ions (H+).
As a result of the load, H+ ions from lactic acid decomposition processes exceed the capacity of intracellular buffering, which leads to a decrease in the pH of the muscle muscles, contributing to the acidosis process in them. This process takes place regardless of your subjective well-being, feeling burning sensation in the muscles.
Acidosis negatively affects muscle function, reducing the capacity of force formation in them, as well as inhibiting processes that support prolonged high intensity loads.
Finally, acidosis leads to muscle fatigue.
Carnosine acts as a buffering agent that neutralizes this acidic environment in muscle. By restoring the pH of normal muscle tissue, carnosine helps to delay the onslation of muscle fatigue.
Thus, higher concentrations of carnosine in muscle contribute to intracellular bufferability, which in turn better protects muscle from their rapid fatigue and reduced performance.
Food supplements
Faced with the positive properties of carnaosin, you definitely imagine why you can't take it directly instead of ingesting beta-alanine to promote its production in the body. That would be easier!
However, it would not be as effective in promoting carnaosinlike taking beta-alanine. It would also take more time and energy to process the same dose of a dietary supplement.
When carnaosin is ingested directly, most of it decomposes in the stomach-intestinal tract into two of its forming amino acids, beta-alanine and L-histidine.
These amino acids are processed into muscle and then converted back into carnaosine. However, since the availability of beta-alanine is a factor influencing the synthesis rate of carnosine, it should be said that it is more valuable to ingest beta-alanine, which is released by hydrolysis.
Thus, if you want to increase your carnosine levels effectively, while reducing excess energy, you should take beta-alanine.
Beta-alanine&Creatine
Beta-alanine and creatine form one of the best and favorite combinations among athletes in terms of dietary supplements. This combination improves overall physical performance:
- beta-alanine helps prevent muscle fatigue and promotes muscle performance;
- creatine promotes muscle strength and endurance.
Summary
- Beta-alanine is a precursor of carnosin, a substance responsible for buffering muscle acidosis;
- Muscle acidosis contributes to muscle fatigue and inhibits the effective functioning of muscles;
- By neutralizing acidosis, carrosine helps to prevent muscle fatigue and promote the effective functioning of muscle tissue;
- The intake of beta-alanine with dietary supplements contributes to the synthesis of carnaosine, thereby increasing the concentration of muscle carnosine and promoting their action;
- Beta-alanine can be combined with creatine to improve its strength scores.
