Beta-alanine as carnosine precurser

Beta-alanine is the rate limiting amino in carnosine synthesis. Apparently many believe that most of carnosine just gets broken down into beta-alanine and histidine in the gut then recombined later to form carnosine elsewhere.

Supplementing with Beta-alanine has some new research in significantly increasing muscle carnosine(1). However, does it have the same AGE inhibition as carnosine? Pubmed studies(2) say it has some anti-glycation effects but not as strong as carnosine. But I wonder if longer term, once carnosine has built up, if it would have a similar effect. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Beta-alanine is much much cheaper than carnosine.

1) "Dietary supplementation with I) 3.2 and II) 6.4 g . d(-1) beta-alanine (as multiple doses of 400 or 800 mg) or III) L-carnosine (isomolar to II) for 4 w resulted in significant increases in muscle carnosine estimated at 42.1, 64.2 and 65.8%."
http://www.ncbi.nlm....t_uids=16554972

2) "beta-Alanine showed anti-crosslinking activity but less than that of carnosine"
http://www.ncbi.nlm....l=pubmed_docsum

Edit: Added some pubmed links

Edited by health_nutty, 11 January 2007 - 06:03 AM.

This is awesome news. I don't know about everyone else, but carnosine in Canada is fairly expensive, and I buy what I feel to be enough of the more expensive supplements as it is. I've been reading more about increasing carnosine lately and am interested in it.

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L-histidine is present in muscle as is hte enzyme that converts ba and l-hist to carnosine. Thus supplementing with beta-alanine will increase carnosine synthesis in muscle cells. Most of the studies focus on increasing carnosine in muscle tissue via ba supplementation. But there a few studies to show whether this same conversion occurs in other tissues. To my knowledge there is less lieklihood that BA supplemntation will elad to increased carnosine levels in other tissues, especially those of hte CNS. It doesn't appear that there is sufficient l-histidine or enzymes to allow ba to react to produce carnosine. Thus I think the AGE prevention is nto as great with ba as it is with carnosine. Unfortunately, carnosine is not very bio available, but hopefully someone will find some ester that is.

Since BA is bioavailable, has documented AGE inhibition, and is not cost prohibitive I'm going to be taking this instead of carnosine (until an bioavailable and affordable carnosine comes around).

Perhaps the best strategy would be to supplement with both BA and histidine? They are both relatively cheap and using both may give an advantage over using just one.

I dont think most people can deal with the side effects of histidine. This is a great find healthy nutty.

Perhaps the best strategy would be to supplement with both BA and histidine? They are both relatively cheap and using both may give an advantage over using just one.

This is actually a good idea if you can don't have a histamine reaction to histidine. Histidine has it's own AGE inhibition properties(1)(2).


1) "Histidine and carnosine delay diabetic deterioration in mice and protect human low density lipoprotein against oxidation and glycation."
http://www.ncbi.nlm....l=pubmed_docsum

2) "Interestingly, histidine, which has both alpha-amino and imidazolium groups, was more effective than carnosine [at anti-crosslinking activity]"
http://www.ncbi.nlm....l=pubmed_docsum

Edit: added pubmed quotes

Edited by health_nutty, 11 January 2007 - 08:03 PM.

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Would supplementation with BA that results to some extend in increased levels of carnosine by binding with l-histidine, therefore also have a histamine lowering effect?