carnitine?

Question

how effective is carnitine in helping weight loss? I'm taking, it and i just was curious if it was at all effective. thanks.

Answer 1

It supports heart health. It will not make you lose weight.

Answer 2

you want to use Acetyl-L Carnitine (ALC) and with the right diet and training program is does help to increase fat loss. there's tons of peer reviewed medical studies to support that.

what it does is to help transport fatty acids across the cell membrane of brown fat cells so that they can be metabolized and converted into ATP.

the link is very scientific but if you browse through it you can pick up the basics of the role that ALC plays in fatty acid metabolism. and how stored fats are metabolized and converted iinto ATP which is the cellular energy source used for muscular contraction and for all anabolic and catabolic processes of the human body. stored carbohydrates (glycogen) are also converted to ATP by a different process but glycogen molecules yield far less units of ATP than does fatty acids. the main purpose of another supplement, creatine is also used to increase ATP stores. you can literally feel when your body has depleted ATP stores when performing resistance training exercises. when you are performing a set of repetitions and you get to the point when the muscle or muscles can no longer contract. that is because all available ATP stores have been depleted. you rest for a couple of minutes, the body will replenish ATP stores and you can perform another set. so when you here people talk about creative being used for building mass they are incorrect. it helps to increase ATP stores. the more ATP the more reps (sprints, etc.) you can perform. more reps the stronger you will get. when strength increases you can put more of a "load" on your muscles. higher loads equal more micro-trauma to skeletal muscle. the muscles get broken down and respond by increasing in size (hypertrophy) in order to adapt to the increases loads put on them.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=stryer.section.3050

* the biolavaialbility of ACL supplements is on the low side. so it can be an expensive supplement to use as you have to increase the dosage to compensate. if a ACL tablet is 500 mg you the body will only be able to use less than 20%. so I would get a minimum of 1 gram (up to 3grams) before training and another 12 hrs later or at bedtime.

I don't use ACL all year round anymore. just when I'm trying to drop the last bit of stubborn body fat when I'm trying to get down to mid single digit body fat levels. that's when I use supplements like ACL, L-Glutamine and BCAA's.