L- Carnitine L- Tartrate

 

Carnitine has been taking the fitness industry by storm due to its effectiveness in improving muscle fuel metabolism and oxygen utilization resulting in a significant reduction in the recovery time of highly trained athletes.

However, it is important to note that these benefits have mainly been limited to the tartrate form. Formally known as L- Carnitine-L-Tartrate, it is slightly different chemically than L-carnitine due to being bound to tartaric acid.This slight chemical difference drastically improves its absorption, and is the reason why you’ll find it in Muscle and Joint Recovery™. 

Overall there are four different forms of L-carnitine

L-Carnitine

This is the naturally occurring amino acid is commonly found in meat and dairy products. L-Carnitine can also be produced in your body if there is enough lysine and methionine, two other amino acids present to drive the reaction forward.  

L-Carnitine is known to be involved in fatty acid metabolism by transporting the chains of fatty acids into the mitochondrial matrix, basically like a food delivery service. In theory this allows stored fat to be utilized as energy, but so far clinical studies haven’t been able to directly correlate L-carnitine to weight loss. This lack of effectiveness has been attributed to L-carnitines poor bioavailability of only 14-18% of the dose in dietary supplements.

L-Carnitine-L-Tartrate (LCLT)

L-Carnitine-L-Tartrate (LCLT) is the most effective form of carnitine for increasing the rate of muscle recovery in highly trained athletes. Although molecularly similar to L-carnitine, the addition of the tartaric acid to L-carnitine molecule greatly increases its bioavailability, allowing it to be more effective in regulating muscle fuel metabolism.

How it Works

Upon absorption, L-carnitine-L-tartrate has been shown to decrease the key biochemical markers of physical exertion, purine catabolism, xanthine oxidase, serum uric acid and plasma malondialdehyde. The reduction of these soreness inducing biochemical markers results in the trained athletes experiencing a reduction of the area of soreness by over 50 %.

These benefits haven’t been excluded to only to the younger audience as LCLT supplementation on active middle aged men and women has yielded similar results, with decreased muscle soreness after exercise decreased muscle soreness after exercise.

The mechanism behind these benefits is has been suggested to be initiated by LCLT’s ability to enhance muscle oxygen utilization while also impacting the mitochondrial pyruvate dehydrogenase complex (PDC).

The PDC controls the rate of glycogen utilization in your muscles, and LCLT supplementation has resulted in sparingly using muscle glycogen during low intensity exercise, but  during high intensity exercise it has  the opposite effect and significantly increases muscle PDC activation to increase ATP production and work output increase ATP production and work output.

Additionally, three weeks of LCLT supplementation was found to increase the concentration of the anabolic hormone IGFBP-3 formally known as insulin-like growth factor-binding protein-3 .

IGFBP-3 is the main insulin growth factor transport protein in the bloodstream, where it carries the growth factors IGF-1 or IGF-2, and a third protein called the acid-labile subunit or ALS.

 Acetyl-L- Carnitine

Acetyl-L-Carnitine, commonly referred to as "ALCAR" is an L-carnitine molecule that undergoes acetylation resulting in the displacement of a hydrogen bond on the central hydroxyl group and its replacement with an acetyl group.

This slight chemical change allows acetyl-L-carnitine to be transferred across the transferred across the blood brain barrier and induce positive neuropathic effects such improving mood and energy levels.

Although several studies have noted the positive effect of acetyl-L-carnitine on depression symptoms these studies have been limited to either mice or patients suffering from depression induced by specific neuropathic pain cases.

Glycine Propionyl L-Carnitine (GPLC)

Glycine Propionyl L-Carnitine or GPLC is an acetyl-L-carnitine molecule with an additional glycine component. GLPC is an antioxidant and recent studies have started to suggest it may play a role as a nitric oxide booster , but the mechanism in how it works is still unclear.

For healthy resistance trained males the effective dose of GPLC for increasing performance has been determined to be 4.5g per day, but additional research is needed to verify these results