What do your brain, heart, muscles, metabolism and cells all have in common?
An amino-acid-like compound that’s related to the B vitamin family – L-carnitine. While it’s more an amino acid, it’s so similar to a vitamin that researchers referred to L-carnitine as “vitamin BT” when they first started studying it in the 1950s.
While there are different forms of carnitine, L-carnitine is the biologically active form found in your body.
L-carnitine helps your body produce cellular energy. It’s important for muscle movement, heart and brain function, and many other essential body functions.
Often viewed as one of the most important nutrients for muscle health and sports nutrition, L-carnitine is essential for far more than physical performance. While it enables your cells to burn fat for energy to fuel your body, it plays a key role throughout your body.
L-carnitine is made in your liver and kidneys from amino acids and is stored primarily in your muscles, heart and brain. About 98% of the L-carnitine in your body is found in your muscles, including your heart muscle.
Another form of L-carnitine, acetyl L-carnitine, is found throughout your central nervous system. This form is considered the best for supporting your brain.* Combining these two superior forms of L-carnitine offers many complementary benefits.
Why Your Mitochondria Can’t Thrive Without L-Carnitine
The primary action of L-carnitine in your body is to shuttle fatty acids from your diet into your cells’ powerhouses, known as the mitochondria. There they are burned as fuel in the form of adenosine triphosphate, or ATP.
Your body naturally produces carnitine, but if it doesn’t have enough, health issues can arise. Some of the factors that can lead to lower levels of carnitine include:
- Aging
- Obesity
- Vitamin C deficiency
- Vegan and vegetarian diets
- Certain genetic issues
Total carnitine levels in older individuals are about 20% lower than they are in younger people. Reduced levels of carnitine can leave mitochondria vulnerable to damage. Along with lower carnitine levels, the number of functioning mitochondria also decreases with age.
Could there be a connection between the two?
Your mitochondria depend upon carnitine to take in the fuel from the fats in your diet, so insufficient carnitine levels can ultimately lead to a decrease in your mitochondrial energy levels.
When your energy production drops, your mitochondria become energy starved, leading to malfunction and die off. When the number of functioning mitochondria declines, symptoms of cellular aging increase. The decline in mitochondrial function is a major contributor to the cellular aging process.
Cellular aging is directly related to the decline in the function of your cells’ mitochondria.
Even poorly-functioning mitochondria put a drain on your cells, along with cellular wastes. They can’t supply enough energy, so oxidative stress increases – which can lead to cellular damage and premature death.
How L-Carnitine Can Help Rescue Troubled Cells*
Clearly, to keep your cells’ mitochondria thriving, they need adequate levels of carnitine. And that’s particularly true for the parts of your body with the highest concentration of mitochondria – your heart, brain and muscles.
L-carnitine supports mitochondrial health two ways – by facilitating energy production and providing antioxidant protection to help guard against damaging oxidative stress.*
Fortunately, supplemental L-carnitine may be able to help restore youthful levels of carnitine in the body, especially in older individuals.*
Supplemental L-carnitine transports long-chain fatty acids into the part of the cell called the ‘mitochondrial matrix’ for beta-oxidation. Beta-oxidation is the metabolic pathway for using fat stores as an energy source for your cells.
By increasing energy to all your tissues with L-carnitine, you help replenish the energy your mitochondria need to thrive and function properly. That, in turn, supports your muscles, heart, brain, liver, overall energy levels and much more.*
Not only does supplemental L-carnitine help your mitochondria burn fat more efficiently as energy, but it also helps remove mitochondrial waste products. This is key for supporting a healthy metabolism.*
Because both aging and obesity can lower carnitine levels and impact mitochondrial function, supplementing with L-carnitine helps interrupt this dangerous cycle. Plus, carnitine requirements may actually increase when the body is stressed metabolically.*
In a study with rodents fed a lifelong high-fat diet, lower carnitine levels were noted in the muscle of the obese rats. Mitochondrial abnormalities and faulty metabolism were also observed. Eight weeks of oral carnitine supplementation had a significant impact on mitochondrial health.*
The Effects of L-Carnitine on Body Composition and Exercise Recovery
To review, several factors can work against you as you age:
- Your body’s ability to produce L-carnitine decreases with age.
- Your metabolism, or burning, of fat slows with age.
- You lose protein from your muscles, resulting in a loss of valuable muscle mass.
- Vegan and vegetarian diets
- You gain more fat, which puts an additional burden on your body.
Because L-carnitine supports healthy fat metabolism and your ability to burn fat, it’s an especially important nutrient for maintaining healthy body composition and overall health as you age.*
With L-carnitine playing a key role in your body’s production of energy, it can be used to help boost your endurance and energy levels while working out.
L-carnitine also plays an important role in aiding in recovery from physical activity, or the healing of muscle breakdown from exercise. It helps protect cells deficient in L-carnitine, reduces tissue damage and muscle soreness, and improves recovery time.*
Metabolic stress markers, caused by the lack of oxygen during intense physical activity, are also improved with L-carnitine. The free radicals generated by metabolic stress can impact blood vessel wall function and blood flow, so L-carnitine supports healthy blood flow and endothelial cell function, and optimizes oxygen consumption by your muscles.*
L-carnitine also has a positive effect on your body’s nitric oxide (NO) – an important gas that supports healthy blood flow throughout your body. L-carnitine reduces oxidative damage and supports your body’s production of NO, resulting in higher blood levels. This, in turn, helps fuel your workouts and muscle recovery.*
How L-Carnitine Can Support Your Heart Health*
Your heart is one of your body’s most important muscles, as it works to pump blood tirelessly 24 hours a day, never pausing to rest. Obviously, your heart requires loads of energy to do this.
Most people, even many doctors, don’t realize that your heart muscle uses fat, not sugar or carbs, as its primary energy source, with fatty acids supplying about 70% of its energy.
Because your heart needs a continuous transfer of fatty acids into the mitochondria, it requires a high level of L-carnitine to help make that happen. Your heart can’t produce L-carnitine, so it must get an adequate supply from your blood.
L-carnitine is important for providing your heart with all the fat energy it needs to function optimally. Many studies have documented the beneficial effects of supplemental L-carnitine on heart health.*
In one study of 47 patients taking 1,000 mg of L-carnitine daily for 12 weeks, positive effects were seen in heart health.*
Acetyl-L-Carnitine: The Ideal Form of Carnitine for Supporting Cognitive Function*
Did you know that age-related cognitive decline is related to faulty mitochondria in your brain tissue – mitochondria that can no longer function properly?
Because of its large requirement for energy, your brain contains some of the highest concentrations of mitochondria (right up there with your heart and muscles). Carnitine helps protect against cellular damage and supports mitochondrial health.*
Researchers have found that acetyl-L-carnitine, or ALCAR, may be the best form of L-carnitine for supporting your brain health and muscle metabolism.* It is found throughout your central nervous system where it plays a key role in producing energy and the important neurotransmitter acetylcholine.
Studies show that ALCAR:
- Helps improve energy levels and muscle strength.*
- May help promote a positive mood.*
Acetyl-L-carnitine moves fat molecules across the mitochondrial membrane like other forms of L-carnitine. However, the acetyl group attached to the carnitine molecule allows it to cross your blood-brain barrier, enter your brain and provide additional energy directly to brain cells.*
This unique ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and provide energy to the cells enhances acetyl-L-carnitine’s ability to support healthy cellular aging in your brain.* Like L-carnitine, acetyl-L-carnitine also acts as a powerful antioxidant to help protect mitochondria against oxidative damage.*
Who Can Potentially Benefit from L-Carnitine and Acetyl-L-Carnitine?
These groups of people can potentially benefit from supplementing with L-carnitine and its derivative, acetyl-L-carnitine:
- Anyone who wants to help maintain their health as they age
- Individuals over 55, when muscle mass and function begin to decline
- Individuals engaging in endurance or strength training
- People following weight-management regimens
- Vegans, vegetarians and people who eat very little meat
The majority of the population are metabolically inflexible, which means they are unable to easily switch between burning fats and carbs as their primary fuel. Because that affects their mitochondrial function, they are great candidates for carnitine supplementation.
Another group that can potentially benefit from L-carnitine supplements would be those who chose to avoid eating animal products.
Vegan and vegetarian diets are very low both in L-carnitine and in the precursors needed to produce L-carnitine in the body. Studies show vegetarians may have lower blood levels of L-carnitine.
While some plant foods contain small amounts of carnitine, like avocado and soybeans, meat is the best source – and the redder the meat, the better. I believe nearly everyone who limits or avoids animal products would benefit from carnitine supplementation.
Carnitine supplementation is also beneficial for all age groups as it helps decrease the production of free radicals that can increase cellular aging in the brain, heart, muscles and throughout the body.
Introducing Our Unique Blend of L-Carnitine and Acetyl-L-Carnitine – Carnitine Complex
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Rarely do you find L-carnitine and acetyl L-carnitine in combination with one another in a single supplement.
Because each form provides its own array of multiple, complementary benefits, we’ve created Carnitine Complex, a unique supplement that combines both pure L-Carnitine and its derivative, Acetyl-L-Carnitine to support your overall health and well-being.*
By combining both forms of carnitine, you receive the potential benefits from both in one capsule:
- L-Carnitine is the biologically active form of carnitine that offers important mitochondrial support to energy-hungry tissues and organs, like your heart, brain and muscles.*
- Acetyl-L-Carnitine helps move fat molecules across the mitochondrial membrane and through your blood-brain barrier to provide extra energy directly to your brain cells to help support cognitive function.*
With each one-capsule dose of Carnitine Complex, you receive 250 mg each of both L-Carnitine and Acetyl-L-Carnitine. I recommend taking two capsules daily for optimal benefits – ideally staggering your dosing for better
absorption.*
Another impressive feature: Each Carnitine Complex capsule contains a “freshness bubble” – an inside-the-capsule bubble of nitrogen to help prevent oxidation and degradation of the contents.
Help Provide the Energy Your Mitochondria Need for Healthy Cellular Aging With Carnitine Complex*
We’ve seen how many factors can seriously jeopardize your cells’ ability to produce the energy they need for healthy whole-body functioning.
Your mitochondria depend upon carnitine to get the fuel they need from the healthy fats in your diet. Aging, obesity, vegetarian diets, vitamin deficiencies and genetic issues can all lower your carnitine levels.
Insufficient carnitine can lead to mitochondria that will fail to provide you with the energy you need, which in turn increases cellular aging and the breakdown of tissues and organs. Ultimately, low levels of carnitine can lead to a vicious downward health cycle.
Supplementing with L-carnitine can help disrupt that cycle. That’s why we’ve created Carnitine Complex with the two most valuable forms of L-carnitine – L-Carnitine and Acetyl-L-Carnitine to support cellular, muscle, heart and brain health.*
Most everyone is a candidate for L-carnitine supplementation, so why not try our Carnitine Complex, and see what it can do for you? Support your body’s healthy cellular aging and vitality,* and order your supply today.