Beta Alanine
Forty milligrams, the smallest entry on the panel, and the one this site is least inclined to oversell.
The smallest figure on the label, and the building block your body uses to make carnosine, which is stored mainly in muscle.
What it is
A non-essential amino acid, and the rate-limiting building block for carnosine, a dipeptide stored mainly in skeletal muscle where it helps buffer the acidity that builds during hard effort.
Why it is on a brain support label
Carnosine turns up in nervous tissue as well as muscle, and it has been studied as an antioxidant and metal chelator. That is the argument. It is a real line of research, and it is a long way from established.
The size of the figure
Forty milligrams. The studies people cite for beta alanine use somewhere between one and a half and six grams a day for weeks. This is a fortieth of the bottom of that range, on a good day. We would rather write that down than let the ingredient name do work the amount cannot.
On the panel it reads
Beta Alanine — 40 mg
No daily value established
Where it turns up in food
Beef, pork, poultry and fish, mostly arriving as carnosine rather than as free beta alanine. People who eat no meat take in markedly less.
About Beta Alanine
Will it cause the tingling people mention?
That sensation, paraesthesia, is a known effect of beta alanine at gram doses taken at once. At forty milligrams it would be a considerable surprise.
Is it pointless at this amount, then?
It is a small contribution. Whether small is the same as pointless depends on how you think about a formula as a whole, and reasonable people land in different places on that.
Where would I get more of it?
From meat and fish, mostly arriving as carnosine rather than free beta alanine. People who eat no meat carry measurably less carnosine in muscle.
The other six entries
Seven entries, all of them printed
No proprietary blend on this label, which is why a page like this one can exist at all.
Checkout, payment and delivery are the seller’s. Sixty days from the date of purchase to ask for your money back, empty bottles included.
