The effects of β-alanine supplementation in aerobic exercise - A way to delay the onset of muscular fatigue?

Abstract: Muscle fatigue has always been of vital importance in most sports. A few possible factors have been reported to be the cause of muscular fatigue during high intensity exercise; depletion of glycogen, oxidative stress, disruption of contractile mechanisms and accumulation of metabolites. One of the theories of the cause of muscular fatigue, both in endurance and intermittent sports, is decreased pH levels due to increased concentration of H+ ions dissociated from lactic acid in muscle. Carnosine, a fairly unnoticed ergogenic aid, taken in the form of β-alanine has shown to potentially delay the onset of fatigue. Supplementation of β-alanine, would increase carnosine levels in muscle and may counteract the decrease in pH since carnosine functions as a H+ buffer. The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of 8 weeks supplementation of β-alanine in distance runners and Swedish division four soccer players on aerobic capacity, intermittent recovery and muscular fatigue. The runners (n = 15) were tested in lactate profiling tests and the soccer players (n = 22) were tested in the Yo-Yo intermittent endurance test pre and post the 8-week test-period. The yo-yo test did not result in significant difference between the soccer players’ β-group and control-group (p = 0,29). Neither did the lactate test result in significant differences between the distance runners’ β-group and control-group in any of the five variables measured. However, a trend in difference was seen between groups in both velocity at lactate threshold (VLT) (p = 0,11) and recovery blood lactate (RBL) (p = 0,14) where the β-group had increased slightly from 16,8 ± 1,6 km/h to 17,0 ± 1,2 km/h in VLT and decreased from 4,5 ± 1,6 mmol∙L-1 to 3,1 ± 1,0 mmol∙L-1 in RBL. The results suggested that β-alanine may delay the onset of fatigue and improve performance in endurance sports such as running by increasing the removal of lactate acid from muscle.