PowerBar® High Intensity Sustained Release Beta Alanine dietary supplement offers a research-supported, sustained-release beta-alanine formulation that prolongs circulating beta-alanine concentrations for greater muscle uptake. To push the limits of your intense performance, use PowerBar High Intensity Sustained Release Beta Alanine dietary supplement in conjunction with training.
Imagine the difference it would make if you could hold your top speed for just a few more seconds, had the energy to go all out just one more time, or could somehow manage to lift even a little extra weight during a workout.
How much better of an athlete could you be?
This isn't just wishful thinking. Exercise scientists are on the cusp of a new breakthrough in human performance. Cutting-edge research has identified a unique, fatigue-fighting amino acid that has the potential to expand the limits of your ability to perform at high intensity when training and competing.(1,2,3)
Figuring Out Fatigue
Fatigue during exercise has many causes, and it varies by sport or event.
For endurance athletes such as marathon runners and triathletes, who primarily rely on aerobic metabolism, fatigue can occur an hour or two into a competition or workout, when muscle and liver glycogen stores run dry and blood glucose begins to drop.
For sports that are mostly anaerobic, such as weight lifting, or those that feature anaerobic intervals, such as long sprints or middle distances in track, going full speed on the pitch during a soccer match or on the court during a basketball game, or powering to the finish in a bike race, fatigue has little to do with depleted glycogen stores. Instead, a major contributor to the fatigue you feel during these activities is a buildup of acid in your hardworking muscles.
High-intensity exercise is fueled by anaerobic metabolism. And while that process rapidly generates muscle-fueling energy in the form of ATP, the metabolic price to be paid is a buildup of lactic acid in your muscles. As lactic acid forms, it separates into lactate and hydrogen ions; it's actually the accumulation of hydrogen ions, not the lactate, that causes muscles to become acidic.
High-acid environments and high performance don't make for a good mix. Not only does too much lactic acid produce that all-too-familiar burning sensation in your muscles, it also impairs muscle contraction. The end result is that you're not able to continue to generate the force needed to maintain your speed or lift that weight. And that's when you get passed just a few strides from the finish or can't muster the extra push to get to where you need to be.
Now, imagine that you had a metabolic weapon that could help neutralize the lactic acid buildup. It would enable you to train harder and longer and to reap the performance benefits that come from pushing the limits of your high-intensity training. Your very own muscles do have this weapon at their disposal. And believe it or not, new research says that the strength of that arsenal is something that you can control.
Fighting on Your Side
Your ability to sustain high-intensity exercise and hold fatigue at bay is in part determined by the amount of a natural biochemical, called carnosine, in your muscles.
Carnosine's presence in muscle tissue has been known for over 100 years, but scientists are just now beginning to appreciate its range of functions — and fighting off fatigue is high on the list. Exactly how carnosine helps you resist fatigue is not completely understood, but buffering or neutralizing lactic acid buildup in muscle is believed to be its primary mechanism.
Decreasing oxidative stress is another probable route to performance benefit. High-intensity exercise leads to oxidative stress and to the production of highly reactive biochemicals called free radicals that compromise muscle function. Carnosine acts as a natural antioxidant and neutralizes these exercise-induced free radicals.
By buffering lactic acid buildup and decreasing oxidative stress, carnosine helps to delay the impaired muscle contractions that inevitably occur during high-intensity exercise. With an adequate supply of carnosine in your muscle tissue, you're able to generate the force needed to maintain your top speed a little longer, lift that extra measure of weight, or dig deep for an all-out charge to the finish.
Fighting Fatigue
Animals that differ dramatically in their activity levels have very different muscle tissue stores of carnosine. For example, migratory birds that fly great distances are endurance machines. Relying primarily on aerobic metabolism for energy, they don't produce much in the way of lactic acid and they don't have high tissue levels of carnosine. However, whales are at the other extreme: These animals dive deep into the ocean and travel for sustained periods without surfacing for air. Accordingly, they rely heavily on anaerobic metabolism to fuel their underwater exploits. And — no surprise — whales have some of the highest tissue levels of carnosine ever recorded.
The same contrast holds true for athletes. Trained sprinters have markedly high muscle carnosine levels, whereas endurance runners have much lower levels. Knowing this, researchers attempted to boost muscle carnosine levels in athletes through training. Unfortunately, despite weeks of arduous high-intensity exercise, muscle carnosine levels barely budged.
Faced with these discouraging results, researchers decided to switch gears and see whether they could alter carnosine levels by providing the nutritional building blocks used to make carnosine. This time, the results were dramatic!
Carnosine is made up of two amino acid building blocks — histidine and beta-alanine. Histidine is a common amino acid found in many of the proteins that exist throughout your body; you have lots of it around. So when researchers gave their study subjects extra histidine, muscle carnosine levels were not affected.
But providing extra beta-alanine proved to be another story altogether. Beta-alanine is a unique amino acid that is not really used to make proteins, so we have much less of it available in our bodies. When researchers gave beta-alanine supplements to their study subjects, muscle carnosine concentrations soared! In fact, levels rose by as much as 80% in a matter of weeks.(4)
Finally, when histidine and beta-alanine were provided together, they produced the same effect on muscle carnosine levels as giving beta-alanine alone.(5,6) This supports that when it comes to boosting muscle carnosine concentration, beta-alanine is the crucial amino acid building block. So far, supplemental beta-alanine has been tested at doses of 1.6–6.4 grams per day, and it's clear that there is a dose effect. For example, in one study, 3.2 grams of beta-alanine daily for 28 days produced a 42% increase in carnosine concentration in the quadriceps muscles, whereas 6.4 grams per day produced a 64% increase.(6) The duration of supplementation also has an impact. Supplementing with 3.6–6.4 grams per day raised muscle carnosine concentrations by about 59% after 4 weeks and 80% after 10 weeks.(4)
High-Intensity Performance
Boosting muscle carnosine concentration is one thing, but does more carnosine have an impact on exercise performance?
That was the next hurdle for scientists, and it was no easy task.
For an athlete or coach, something as small as a 1% improvement in performance can be huge — it may be the difference between a world record and just another race. But being able to detect performance differences in a research setting can be difficult, so it's not surprising that a few of the early studies on beta-alanine didn't report performance benefits. But now, as more and more research findings are being reported, the benefits of beta-alanine are steadily piling up — and this has scientists, coaches, and athletes taking notice. The following are just a few examples:
- In resistance-trained men placed on a 30-day, high-intensity weight training regimen with 90-second rests between sets, taking in 4.5 grams of beta-alanine daily led to a 22% increase in total training volume per workout.(7)
- In a study where men were asked to cycle at 110% of their average power output during the final stretch of intermittent interval training, time to exhaustion was increased by 12% after 4 weeks of supplementing with beta-alanine.(4)
- In men and women engaged in endurance exercise, daily beta-alanine supplementation for a month produced a 13–16% increase in physical working capacity.(8,9)
Beta-Alanine Safety
No adverse effects on muscle function or health have been reported in studies conducted to date on beta-alanine supplementation. However, large doses taken at one time can produce a transient flushing effect and tingling sensation that typically lasts for a few hours. While this temporary effect is not considered harmful, it can be avoided by following the right supplementation protocol — taking smaller amounts of beta-alanine more frequently. This enables muscle uptake to be sustained without the occurrence of flushing symptoms.
Cutting-Edge Beta-Alanine Supplementation with New PowerBar® High Intensity Sustained Release Beta Alanine Dietary Supplement
PowerBar
® makes it easy to get the beta-alanine that you need in order to support your training with new
PowerBar High Intensity Sustained Release Beta Alanine tablets. This product offers a research-supported, sustained-release beta-alanine formulation. A slower, steady release of beta-alanine from the digestive tract prolongs circulating beta-alanine concentrations for greater muscle uptake.
Each PowerBar High Intensity Sustained Release two-tablet serving provides 1.6 grams of beta-alanine. Adhere to the following protocol below to supplement effectively:
- During the first 4 weeks, take two tablets, twice daily.
- After 4 weeks of use, take two tablets once daily.
Consider cycling your beta-alanine supplementation in conjunction with a periodized training program. For example, supplement with
PowerBar High Intensity Sustained Release Beta Alanine dietary supplement for at least 4–6 weeks — optimally 10–12 weeks — before key competitions or events, and then discontinue use during the off-season.
Also, research indicates that carnosine levels remain elevated for up to about 9 weeks after beta-alanine supplementation is discontinued.(10)
Getting Maximum Benefit
The beneficial effects of beta-alanine supplementation appear to be optimized when lactic acid production is at its highest during training. This will vary based on your training and sport.
Resistance training athletes will most likely experience the greatest increases in workout volume and strength with moderate high-intensity training sessions, rather than sessions that are more intense. So doing 8–12 reps at 60–85% of your repetition maximum will likely lead to better results than doing 1–5 reps at 85–100% of repetition maximum.(1)
For athletes involved in intermittent high-intensity team sports and interval training, greater gains can be expected when performing at high intensity over 30–90 seconds than performing even higher-intensity exercise lasting 15 seconds or less.(1) So a shift playing ice hockey has the edge over sprinting 100 meters.
Finally, if you are an endurance athlete, you'll likely benefit more when training or performing close to your lactate threshold, or at that point where if you go any harder, lactic acid will start to accumulate in your muscles.(1)
Leveraging the Power of High-Intensity Training
The goal of supplementing with beta-alanine is to increase your muscle carnosine levels. This in turn will enhance your ability to perform at a higher intensity for longer periods of time. Carnosine in muscle is believed to help fight off fatigue primarily by buffering the acid produced during high-intensity exercise. New
PowerBar High Intensity Sustained Release Beta Alanine dietary supplement offers a research-supported, sustained-release beta-alanine formulation that prolongs circulating beta-alanine concentrations for greater muscle uptake. To push the limits of your intense performance, use PowerBar High Intensity Sustained Release Beta Alanine dietary supplement in conjunction with training.
References:
1. Wilson JM, Wilson GJ, Zourdos MC, Smith AE, Stout JR. Beta-Alanine Supplementation Improves Aerobic and Anaerobic Indices of Performance. National Strength Conditioning Journal 2010; 32: 71–78.
2. Derave W, Everaert I, Beeckman S, Baguet A. Muscle Carnosine Metabolism and β-Alanine Supplementation in Relation to Exercise and Training. Sports Med 2010; 40: 247–263.
3. Giannini Artioli G, Gualano B, Smith A, Stout J, Herbert Lancha A Junior. The Role of Beta-Alanine Supplementation on Muscle Carnosine and Exercise Performance. Med Sci Sports Exerc 2009 Dec 9. [Epub ahead of print].
4. Hill CA, Harris RC, Kim HJ, Harris BD, Sale C, Boobis LH, Kim CK, Wise JA. Influence of Beta-Alanine Supplementation on Skeletal Muscle Carnosine Concentrations and High Intensity Cycling Capacity. Amino Acids 2007; 32:225–233.
5. Dunnett M, Harris RC. Influence of Oral Beta-Alanine and L-histidine Supplementation on the Carnosine Content of the Gluteus Medius. Equine Vet J Suppl 1999; 30: 499–504.
6. Harris RC, Tallon MJ, Dunnett M, Boobis L, Coakley J, Kim HJ, Fallowfield JL, Hill CA, Sale C, Wise JA. The Absorption of Orally Supplied Beta-Alanine and Its Effect on Muscle Carnosine Synthesis in Human Vastus Lateralis. Amino Acids 2006; 30: 279–289.
7. Hoffman JR, Ratamess NA, Faigenbaum AD, Ross R, Kang J, Stout JR, Wise JA. Short-Duration Beta-Alanine Supplementation Increases Training Volume and Reduces Subjective Feelings of Fatigue in College Football Players. Nutr Res 2008; 28: 31–35.
8. Stout JR, Cramer JT, Mielke M, O'Kroy J, Torok DJ, Zoeller RF. Effects of Twenty-Eight Days of Beta-Alanine and Creatine Monohydrate Supplementation on the Physical Working Capacity at Neuromuscular Fatigue Threshold. J Strength Cond Res 2006; 20: 928–931.
9. Stout JR, Cramer JT, Zoeller RF, Torok D, Costa P, Hoffman JR, Harris RC, O'Kroy J. Effects of Beta-Alanine Supplementation on the Onset of Neuromuscular Fatigue and Ventilatory Threshold in Women. Amino Acids 2007; 32: 381–386.
10. Baguet A, Reyngoudt H, Pottier A, Everaert I, Callens S, Achten E, Derave W. Carnosine Loading and Washout in Human Skeletal Muscles. J Appl Physiol 2009; 106: 837–842.
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