L-carnitine is a recipe the human soul produces in small amounts out of the amino acids lysine and methionine to facilitate the transfer of long uniting fatty acids into mitochondria for energy production. But most of the carnitine we use comes from the unprepossessing products we eat, particularly red meat, and if you really want a large dose you’ll need to supplement. And that’s what most people are referring to when they talk well-nigh L-carnitine: the supplement.
As a supplement, L-carnitine offers a host of benefits wideness a wide variety of physiological systems:
Weight loss
Body recomposition
Energy production
Hormone optimization
Endothelial function
Heart health
Liver health
Antioxidant status and oxidative stress
Cognitive function
Let’s explore these in increasingly detail.
Fat loss
L-carnitine increases fat utilization at the mitochondrial level, thereby reducing fat stores and increasing fat loss. Could it all be so simple? Yes, it unquestionably works. It’s not a wonder supplement. It’s not going to result in rapid fat loss and it’s no wonder weight loss drug. But it helps:
A meta-analysis of human studies found that L-carnitine supplementation has a modest effect on fat loss.
Another meta-analysis found similar results.
Body recomposition
Body recomposition ways improving the tissue distribution of your body—reducing soul fat and increasing lean mass, which includes muscle, bone, and connective tissue. Soul recomposition is unquestionably plane increasingly important than “weight loss,” since we all want to lose soul fat and build muscle, not just “lose weight.” Turns out that L-carnitine helps immensely with this.
Dialysis patients who take L-carnitine retain increasingly lean muscle mass while improving their worthiness to function in the world.
Children with a muscle wasting disease had much lower levels of carnitine in their blood.
Carnitine increases fat urgent in overweight subjects while maintaining lean mass and blocking the protein catabolism that normally accompanies fat loss.
In pancreatic cancer patients, those taking carnitine lived longer and gained weight, while those not taking L-carnitine died older and lost weight.
In elderly patients with rapid muscle fatigue, L-carnitine helps lower fat mass, increase strength, and increase lean muscle mass.
Recent guidelines plane stress the role of carnitine in red meat’s worthiness to counter sarcopenia, or muscle wasting.
Energy production
The vital physiological role of carnitine is to facilitate the production of ATP—the body’s energy currency—in the mitochondria. If you supplement with L-carnitine, it stands to reason that you will increase energy production. Does this happen in live humans? Do they unquestionably get increasingly energy and reduce fatigue?
In hypothyroid patients, L-carnitine has been shown to unstrap fatigue.
L-carnitine may reduce the neuromuscular fatigue that usually occurs with blood spritz restriction training.
It helps older adults who suffer from rapid muscular fatigue stick to a workout plan and get stronger, fitter, and leaner in the process.
Male hormone optimization
One of the most popular reasons men take L-carnitine is to modernize their hormonal milieu. Does it work?
L-carnitine increases androgen receptor activity. Without zippy androgen receptors, any testosterone you have has no where to go, no way to interact with the cells.
In infertile men, L-carnitine improves sperm motility and concentration as well as testosterone and luteinizing hormone levels.
Endothelial function
Endothelial dysfunction—characterized by poor thoroughbred flow, increased thoroughbred pressure, and low nitric oxide levels—is scrutinizingly unchangingly accompanied by carnitine deficiencies, leading researchess to explore if carnitine supplementatio could
Both unprepossessing models and human studies show that carnitine supplementation lowers thoroughbred pressure.
Carnitine supplementation has moreover been sown to prevent endothelial dysfunction.
By any marker of heart health, L-carnitine improves it.
It reduces LDL and triglycerides while increasing HDL.
When given to heart failure patients, it improves function and outcomes.
It plane improves thoroughbred pressure (itself a huge predictor of heart trouble).
Liver health
A recent meta-analysis found that L-carnitine unceasingly and reliably lowers liver enzyme levels, which is a strong indicator that it’s’ making the liver healthier. Once again, this comes lanugo to the compound’s worthiness to modernize mitochondrial energy production and respiration—when your power plants are running smoothly, everything else falls into place.
Oxidative stress
By increasing energy production at the mitochondrial level, L-carnitine improves resilience and lowers inflammation in the squatter of stress, expressly in people facing a lot of oxidative stress.
L-carnitine supplementation lowers CRP levels in heart disease patients, which indicates lower baseline inflammation
In critically ill patients, L-carnitine lowers inflammatory markers.
Cognitive function
A large recent review terminated that L-carnitine and other carnitine supplements are constructive at improving cognitive function wideness a wholesale range of dementias and cognitive degeneration diseases, primarily by improving mitochondrial respiration and ATP production. It appears to reduce age-related mitochondrial decay, reduce smart-ass lamina death, and lower smart-ass lamina stress.
Who should take L-carnitine?
Vegans and vegetarians. As red meat is the most well-healed source of L-carnitine in the human diet, those who refuse to eat any meat at all tend to be low in the nutrient. 1-2 grams per day is a smart concession for any plant-based dieter. Studies show that it’s far increasingly bioavailable in vegans/vegetarians than omnivores, which suggests they should be eating it—the soul profoundly desires it. There isn’t a ton of research on vegetarians taking the supplement, but those I’ve talked into taking it report having far increasingly energy than before.
Hypothyroid patients: As it’s been shown to unstrap fatigue in this population, L-carnitine is a no-brainer.
Seniors who don’t eat much meat: The increasingly frail an older person is, the lower their thoroughbred carnitine levels tend to be. Taking supplemental L-carnitine is an easy win.
Anyone under a lot of stress: Stress is stress is stress, and L-carnitine has been shown to help you wilt increasingly resilient when faced with it.
How much L-carnitine should you take?
Doses of 1-2 grams per day split into two are typical, but doses of up to 5-6 grams per day have been taken and towards to be safe.
If you want to stick to food, 100 grams of lean whinge contains virtually 150 mg of carnitine.
Should you worry well-nigh TMAO?
L-carnitine supplementation (or consumption via meat) increases a recipe tabbed TMAO, which is a metabolite gut yes-man produce without they come into contact with L-carnitine and other nutrients like choline. TMAO has been linked to atherosclerosis, which has led the frantic masses to worry well-nigh meat consumption and L-carnitine supplementation. Is this a legitimate worry? Can L-carnitine increase heart disease?
All the vestige we have suggests that L-carnitine reduces heart disease—just refer when to the benefits sections above. It improves the lipid profile, reducing LDL and triglycerides while increasing HDL. It improves all-cause mortality. It plane lowers soul weight and improves soul composition. All signs point to L-carnitine improving heart health, not worsening it. That it moreover increases TMAO suggests that people should stop worrying well-nigh TMAO, too.
However, if you are worried well-nigh TMAO levels, eat raw garlic every day. The allicin in garlic can reduce TMAO levels.https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35087050/">45 Crush or chop it and let it sit for ten minutes surpassing consuming it to indulge the allicin to proliferate.