[This post is written by Justin Hardy who is currently working as a Sport Performance Intern at Athletic Lab]

In today’s vast market, the everyday consumer is constantly bombarded with advertisements about the newest health products. There are countless ridiculous ‘miracle pills’ that claim to slim your waistline by the day. Obviously, a lot of products are bogus, but there are some good ones out there that can aid performance or facilitate recovery.

Two of the most popular and researched supplements on the market are creatine and beta-alanine.

Creatine is a substance that is naturally found in meat products and is also synthesized by the body.

How Creatine Can Help:
The body naturally creates ATP (energy) through the combination of ADP and PhosphoCreatine (PCr). The enzyme that facilitates this process is creatine kinase. Supplementing with creatine can increase these stores of PCr, thus increasing the potential for energy production. The body uses this system to rapidly create energy in short, high intensity activities.

Dose and Benefits:
Twenty grams/day of creatine for 4 to 6 days has shown to increase creatine stores in the body by 20%. When ingested with carbohydrates there is potential for even greater increases in creatine stores. Studies show that this amount has positively increased short, repeated, intense exercise performances. It has not been shown to positively aid endurance events, as different energy production systems take precedence.

Side Effects:
There have been few long term studies on creatine; the only adverse effects found are occasional GI distress and temporary water mass gain during supplementation. Effects are reported to disappear once supplementation is stopped.

Beta-alanine is an amino acid that is found naturally in the body and is synthesized by the liver. It can be consumed in various meats such as beef, chicken, and turkey.

How Beta-Alanine Can Help:
When beta-alanine is consumed in a meal it is in a dipeptide form. The dipeptide carnosine (beta-alanine + amino acid histidine) is the primary form, and is what supplies the body with performance effects. Skeletal muscle has a relatively low concentration of beta-alanine, compared to histidine and carnosine, and is the rate-limiting factor.

Beta-alanine helps maintain the acid-base homeostasis within muscle through the buffering of Hydrogen ions (H+). It is estimated to buffer up to 40% of these ions in skeletal muscle, created by high intensity exercises. Carnosine is also located in other excitable tissue, other than skeletal muscle, such as the brain and heart. Some studies have shown that beta-alanine supplementation, which combines to form carnosine, could help protect the neurons in the tissue, protecting against degenerative diseases.

Dose and Benefits:
20 to 40 mg/kg of body weight has shown to significantly increase the blood’s beta-alanine levels, but were accompanied with adverse affects of tingling of the skin. A smaller dose of 10mg/kg was found to increase beta-alanine stores at a lower capacity, without the effect of skin tingling. Studies have shown that beta-alanine can delay fatigue in repeated exercise bouts lasting 60 to 240 seconds, such as 400m high intensity running, however it did not improve race time. Beta-alanine was shown to have no effect when activity was shorter than 60 seconds. Evidence lacks for significant gains in max strength such as lifts with a low number of repetitions.

Side Effects:
Paresthesia or skin tingling is the only known side effect.

Refrences:
1. Grande, B. (2005). Creatine Supplementation. Strength and Conditioning Jorunal, 27(1), 62.
2. Hoffman, JR., (2012). Beta-Alanine Supplementation, 11(4), 189.