Have you ever wondered why some people look and feel older than others of the same age?
The cellular aging process has long intrigued scientists. One thing they’ve discovered is how natural processes in the body can speed up normal cellular aging and make cells and tissues age faster than they should.
While some of these processes are beyond your control, such as your body’s energy production at the cellular level, others, like diet and stress, are factors you can influence.
A major target of these aging processes are the proteins in your body. This matters because just about every function of your cells and tissues depends on the survival and well–being of these large, complex molecules – functions like the:
- Firmness and tone of your skin and muscles.
- Health of your eyes and brain.
- Transportation of nutrients to your cells and organs.
- Production of antibodies to protect your body.
- Availability of enzymes to carry out thousands of chemical reactions.
Wherever there’s protein in your body, there’s always a risk for protein degradation or breakdown – and that only increases with age.
So how exactly do your body’s proteins come under siege, and is there anything you can do to help protect them from these destructive processes?
The Natural Processes That Can Add Years to Your Age
Glycation is one way proteins can be damaged or destroyed.
Protein glycation is when excess amounts of sugars in your diet, such as glucose and fructose, bind with the proteins in your body. Glycated proteins are especially threatening to your well–being, as they generate many destructive free radicals.
The binding of sugars to the proteins in your body can also lead to a process called cross–linking, where the proteins stick together.
Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) can also form in your bloodstream when proteins or fats combine with sugar.
Protein glycation, cross-linking and AGEs promote faster cellular aging and make you feel and look older than you actually are.
When too many of your proteins lose their ability to function properly, your body can become vulnerable to degenerative disease and premature cellular aging.
One of the hallmarks of aging is sagging and tired-looking skin. By age 80, the number of fibroblasts, or connective tissue cells, in the inner layer of your skin is typically reduced by half.
Protein degradation takes a toll on both your inner and outer layers of skin, showing up as a loss of elasticity and firmness as well as a reduced capacity for wound healing.
The loss of protein affects more than the appearance of your skin. Glycation and the formation of AGEs can lead to cross-linking in your collagen, the protein found in all of your connective tissue.
How Carnosine Promotes Youthfulness*
As threatening as all this may sound, it’s good to know there’s an amino acid compound that can help protect against the age-related destruction of the proteins in your body.*
L-carnosine, or simply carnosine, is made from two amino acids – alanine and histidine. This amino acid compound helps protect the proteins in your body in multiple ways.*
One of the ways carnosine helps protect your body is through its antioxidant properties. Carnosine’s antioxidant properties allow it to neutralize free radicals that can harm your cells and tissues.*
Free radicals are molecules with an uneven number of electrons, so when antioxidants such as carnosine “donate” extra electrons, these molecules become more stable, less reactive and less damaging.
For proteins, the most destructive free radical threat comes from the hydroxyl radical. Carnosine not only quenches this type of free radical, but it is the only antioxidant that can protect your cells’ chromosomes from free radical and oxidative damage.*
But here’s the thing… Carnosine isn’t even the most powerful antioxidant in your body. And antioxidants don’t normally stop the cross-linking of collagen by AGEs, but carnosine does.*
So what else does carnosine do to protect proteins and promote youthfulness?
Carnosine is involved in several other processes to help you enjoy optimal health, look your youthful best and move with comfort and ease:*
- Glycation – Carnosine helps control damage to proteins by binding with excess glucose and other sugars in your diet at sites that closely resemble those where sugars bind to proteins during glycation and cross-linking.*
- Cross-linking and AGE formation – Through its binding action, carnosine helps guard against protein cross-linking and AGE formation.*
- Mitochondrial dysfunction – Cells die when they don’t receive enough energy or are harmed by oxidation or excess copper, iron or zinc. Carnosine’s free radical scavenging and chelating properties promote healthy, functioning mitochondria.*
- Cellular aging – Telomeres play a key role in protecting your chromosomes and cellular genetic material. With each replication of DNA, your telomeres become shortened. When they become too short, cells die. Studies show carnosine can slow the rate of telomere shortening and reduce their damage.*
- Rejuvenation of fibroblasts – Carnosine supports the health and rejuvenation of fibroblasts, or your connective tissue, and actually positively impacts their longevity.*
- Buffers pH to protect muscle cells – High-intensity exercise can result in the accumulation of acid in the muscle, leading to fatigue and pain. Carnosine supports exercise performance by helping to buffer acid in muscles.*
Where Carnosine Matters Most – Your Heart and Brain
Concentrations of carnosine are highest in your most energy-hungry tissues – your muscles, heart and brain. Likely not a coincidence, this may be nature’s way of protecting these vital areas from the oxidative effects of energy production.*
Your muscles, heart and brain can especially benefit from carnosine’s protective effects, along with your eyes and the mitochondria in all your cells. However, carnosine’s effects are especially noticeable in your heart and blood vessels.*
Glycation is linked to cardiovascular health concerns. So, through carnosine’s protective actions on the cells it can help support normal cardiovascular function.*
Animal studies suggest carnosine can help support normal blood flow in the heart, due to its antioxidant and membrane-protecting properties. Plus, it appears to support normal arterial function, important for healthy blood flow.*
Carnosine also promotes a normal inflammatory response.*
Researchers have found that individuals with cognitive concerns tend to have lower levels of carnosine in their brains and spinal fluid than even older adults.
Why You May Be Low in Carnosine
Younger people typically have high levels of carnosine, especially in their energy-hungry tissues, like their muscles, heart and brain.
However, carnosine levels decrease with age. As you grow older, your body makes less carnosine and what you do have becomes more susceptible to damage. By age 70, levels of carnosine in muscle decrease more than 60%, which may explain the muscle wastage and reduced muscle mass often seen in older individuals.
Strict vegetarians are also at greater risk of protein damage due to low carnosine. Carnosine comes primarily from meat, so it’s no surprise that vegetarians would have lower levels. They also tend to have more glycosylated proteins in their bodies, likely because of a lower dietary intake of carnosine.
Studies show supplementing with carnosine can help increase carnosine levels in muscle tissue, and also help restore healthy, youthful levels in tissues throughout your body.*
The Link Between Iron Intake, Omega-6 Fats and Carnosine
There’s one more risk to your health that’s dietary related – and potentially helped with increased levels of carnosine.*
Most people get far too much omega–6 and too little omega–3 in their diets, ending up with a lopsided ratio of essential fats. It’s this ratio that can negatively impact your health.
Your best way to fix this ratio – and improve your health – is to reduce your intake of omega-6 fats from processed foods and refined seed oils.
Making up between 60 and 80% of omega-6, linoleic acid (LA) is really the culprit. LA is a polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA), or missing hydrogen atoms. This makes LA – and omega-6s – highly susceptible to oxidation, which means the fat breaks down into harmful metabolites.
LA metabolites are extremely hazardous to health – far more damaging than even excess sugar. This is because PUFAs oxidize whereas sugar doesn’t.
A high intake of iron, especially from iron-fortified foods, only compounds the problem of too much LA and omega-6s.
At a molecular level, excess omega-6 fats damage your metabolism and interfere with your body’s ability to generate energy in your cells’ mitochondria. In addition to your metabolism, your heart and cells are especially at risk.
Carnosine can help prevent the destruction of cells caused by iron intake in the presence of too many omega-6s by scavenging the oxidative end products that can damage fats and proteins.
We’ve learned all about how carnosine promotes health and a youthful appearance. Now let’s take a look at another antioxidant that’s been found to work synergistically with carnosine.
4 Ways This Mitochondrial Super-Antioxidant Supports a Healthy Body and Brain*
Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA) is a powerful antioxidant and one of the most effective free radical scavengers. Considered the universal antioxidant, ALA is the only antioxidant known to be easily transported into your brain by crossing the blood-brain barrier.
Naturally, ALA is found in the mitochondria of all your cells and is best known for its role in converting glucose to ATP, or energy, in the cells.
ALA is a combination of the two different forms of ALA – R-Alpha Lipoic Acid (R-ALA) and S-Alpha Lipoic Acid (S-ALA). The R form is found in nature whereas S is the synthetic form that was chemically synthesized in 1952.
R–ALA occurs naturally in plants, animals and the human body. It is identical to the form of alpha lipoic acid in your body and is known to promote health in at least four different ways:
- Supports healthy mitochondrial function as it is the only form that functions as a co-factor for the conversion of glucose to ATP.*
- Promotes youthful cellular energy levels.*
- Protects your body’s proteins against oxidative stress and damage from free radicals.*
- Supports a healthy, normal inflammatory response.*
Most ALA supplements on the market contain both R-ALA and S-ALA because, by itself, “pure” R-ALA is unstable and challenging to deliver in a form that your body can use.
However, the problem with the commonly available ALA supplements is that S-ALA can inhibit the most essential properties of R-ALA, including its beneficial interactions with proteins, enzymes and genes. And with regular ALA, only 20-30% of the ALA actually makes its way into your bloodstream because of S-ALA’s low bioavailability.
Most of the beneficial effects of ALA come from R-ALA, so it would be the most ideal form of Alpha Lipoic Acid if it could be stabilized and made more absorbable.
Introducing R-ALA From Sodium R-Lipoate – The Enhanced Powerhouse Antioxidant
I’m excited to tell you that we have found a stabilized R-ALA that’s formulated using a unique process to ensure greater absorbability and bioavailability. And now, we’ve combined it with L-Carnosine in L-Carnosine with R-Alpha Lipoic Acid.
Designed for superior gastrointestinal absorption, Sodium R-Lipoate is made with naturally occurring R-Lipoic Acid salts. It’s totally free of chemical additives and excipients and doesn’t cause stomach discomfort like unstabilized R-Lipoic Acid can.
Peer-reviewed scientific studies show that this enhanced form of stabilized R-ALA is the most bioavailable form of lipoic acid on the market.
Study subjects who took this uniquely processed stabilized R-Alpha Lipoic Acid achieved blood concentrations of lipoic acid 40 times higher than those who took R-ALA that wasn’t stabilized.
Not only did study participants reach higher peak blood levels, but they also achieved them sooner, ensuring rapid uptake from the plasma into the tissues.
In another study, volunteers were given 600 mg of regular ALA (containing both R-ALA and S-ALA). Plasma concentrations of R-ALA were 40-50% higher than S-ALA, suggesting the S form was either not optimally absorbed or was more rapidly cleared from the body than the more beneficial form, R-ALA.*
Why is it made with salts? The water-soluble salt helps to rapidly achieve high tissue and blood levels of R-ALA. R-Lipoic Acid in the form of sodium salt (Na-RALA) contains only a small amount of salt, around 8-9%. The sodium salt increases its bioavailability simply because it’s the exact form that your body requires.*
L-Carnosine with R-Alpha Lipoic Acid provides only the superior stabilized R-Lipoic Acid and none of the less-biologically active S-ALA, as what’s found in many ALA supplements.
The Synergy Between L-Carnosine and R-Lipoic Acid Provides Even More Potential Benefits*
This enhanced R-Lipoic Acid, along with L-Carnosine:
- Provides antioxidant protection against oxidative stress and helps rejuvenate your body’s cells.*
- Supports cellular and mitochondrial health by increasing energy conversion in cells.*
- Promotes healthy, normal insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism for optimal metabolic health.*
- Helps protect and promote youthful aging of your cells, tissues and organs, including your heart, brain, muscles and your connective tissue.*
- Supports healthy T-cell (immune) function.*
- Regenerates consumed vitamins and glutathione – your cells’ own antioxidant – and restores their usefulness.*
- Supports a healthy, normal inflammatory response in cells and tissues.*
When combined with L-Carnosine, R-Lipoic Acid’s antioxidant status improves even further as there appears to be a special synergy between the two nutrients, especially for cardiovascular and metabolic health.*
Animal studies using both Carnosine and Alpha Lipoic Acid showed an increase in superoxide dismutase (SOD), one of your body’s most important antioxidant defenses against free radical damage associated with various health concerns.*
At the same time, this unique combination reduced the oxidation of fats in the serum, skin and liver of study participants, and improved serum lipid profiles.*
Take Action Now, and Help Keep Your Body and Brain Healthy and Youthful*
The cellular aging process isn’t always your best friend, especially if you are like the majority of Americans who are metabolically unfit.
Increased levels of L-Carnosine with R-Alpha Lipoic Acid can support youthful-looking skin as well as muscle and cardiovascular health by helping to guard your cells and tissues from the harmful effects of free radicals.*
Through their synergistic actions, L-Carnosine with R-Alpha Lipoic Acid provide powerful antioxidant defense for supporting your health, including your heart, brain, eyes, muscles, metabolic and immune health.*
Look and feel younger by taking control of some of the most damaging natural cellular aging processes in your body, and order L-Carnosine with R-Alpha Lipoic Acid today.