L-Alanine

Alanine is a non-essential amino acid that acts as a building block for many proteins in the body. As a supplement, L-alanine isn’t very popular and there aren’t many studies on its effects. This article is about the main benefits of alanine, its potential side effects, the best time to take it, and more.

Since alanine is a non-essential amino acid, you do not need to consume it to survive. However, this amino acid still plays a significant role in human health.

L-alanine is proteinergic and helps build many proteins in the body.

L-alanine is related to more popular beta-alanine. Beta-alanine works in the liver with histidine to form L-carnosine, which helps buffer acid in muscles. This can increase exercise performance, especially when it comes to resistance training or anaerobic exercises.

Carnosine also plays a role in healthy aging. It acts as an antioxidant, an antiglycation agent, and a chelator of toxins.

The benefits mentioned below are dose-dependent. Generally, the higher the dose, the more pronounced the effects are. However, they do reach a plateau at a certain point. We will discuss the best dosing protocol later in this article.

Major benefits

    Correcting an alanine deficiency – Alanine deficiency is rare but can happen to people with specific conditions or those who eat very little protein. Deficiency can lead to weak muscles, fatigue, dizziness, faintness, and more.

Minor benefits

Increased muscular endurance – Beta-alanine supplementation increases muscular endurance and time to exhaustion by about 2.85%. This effect was observed when exercising for 1-10 minutes and mainly applies to anaerobic exercise sessions (such as sprints and heavy resistance training). Whether or not this benefit applies to L-alanine as well is not yet clear.

These side effects are dose-dependent. The risk for them increases (often linearly but sometimes exponentially) as you increase the dose. Some of the side effects only apply to very high doses.

Nausea

Diarrhea

Taurine deficiency – Taurine and alanine share the same transporter and should be kept in balance as too much of one can cause a deficiency in the other.

Paresthesia – This is a relatively harmless tingling feeling caused by high doses of L-alanine. You can prevent this side effect by lowering the dose or spreading it evenly throughout the day.

Toxicity – While acute toxicity is extremely rare, taking high amounts of L-alanine could lead to chronic toxicity and cause some health problems. To prevent chronic toxicity, it is best to stay below 2 grams a day unless you have a great reason to take more.

Contamination – Contaminated supplements are uncommon in the USA and other well-regulated countries. However, if you wish to buy products from China, India, or other countries without strict regulations, beware that the supplements may be contaminated. Either way, you need to choose the brand you order from wisely. It is highly recommended to check the certificates or read through some reviews for the specific product before you buy it. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has the power to regulate dietary supplements but can only do so after they have been on the market for a while. That’s because supplement companies are not obligated to announce to the FDA when releasing a new product on the market. The FDA has to discover the product and test it for potential impurities, which can take a lot of time. During that time, the supplement can be sold on the market even if it’s impure. Also, supplement companies can change their manufacturers without announcing it to the FDA.

You should probably avoid taking the supplement if you:

experience a severe adverse reaction after taking the amino acid

do not exercise much

are on a tight supplement budget (since there are more cost-effective supplements on the market for most people)

You should consider taking the supplement if you:

consume very little protein (less than 0.3 grams/pound of body weight)

work out a lot and wish to optimize muscle growth

are a diabetic

are on a plant-based diet

take taurine

If you plan to take L-alanine as a supplement, 1-2 grams appears to be the best daily dose for most people. This amount should provide most of the benefits without meaningful side effects.

Some people may benefit from doses higher than 2 grams. These include diabetics and people taking high doses of taurine.

The upper safety limit for L-alanine is not well-established. To stay on the safe side, don’t take more than 2 grams daily unless you have a great reason to do so. Higher amounts may cause problems if you take the supplement for a prolonged period.

Like most other amino acids, L-alanine is water-soluble, so you don’t have to take it with food to absorb it well. To maximize absorption, take the supplement at least an hour before or after a meal so it doesn’t compete for absorption with other amino acids.

L-alanine is often taken before a workout but it doesn’t have to be. When you take the supplement doesn’t have much impact on how beneficial it is if any.

Whether you take the supplement in the morning or the evening doesn’t matter much. It should not interrupt your sleep in any way.

If you practice time-restricted eating, take this amino acid during your eating window to guarantee it won’t break your fast.

Unless it feels too impractical, spread the daily dose into 2+ smaller doses throughout the day.

Taurine
Taurine and L-alanine share the same transporter and should be kept in balance as too much of one can cause a deficiency in the other.

Other amino acids
Essential and non-essential amino acids should be kept in balance as they act synergistically in many ways. Too much of one amino acid can sometimes cause side effects if there isn’t enough of another amino acid. For example, this principle applies to glycine and methionine, lysine and arginine, and the BCAA trio. There are many other proven and unproven examples. Food or a protein powder is usually a better choice for getting enough amino acids unless you have a specific goal in mind targeted by a particular amino acid/s.