Beta Alanine, next staple supplement?

[GDavis]

What are peoples take on Beta Alanine? Who thinks it is the next creatine? I have noticed overall their tends to be a great deviation regarding dosing? How much would you recommend/when?

[Andrew732]

Its not the same as creatine, works synergestically with it, was developed to increase carsonine levels for more fast twitch muscle fibers, good stuff, studies suggest at least taking 2g daily for 3 months to see results.

[big.poppa.pump]

I am not sold on it. From what I have seen, it barely does anything with creatine. Its more for endurance atheletes than bodybuilders IMO. Fast twitch would be your Type 1 (endurance fibers) used primarily for endurance exercising

[Andrew732]

I am not sold on it. From what I have seen, it barely does anything with creatine. Its more for endurance atheletes than bodybuilders IMO. Fast twitch would be your Type 1 (endurance fibers) used primarily for endurance exercising
yup, its not a bbers sup, more of an athlete's supp, that I would agree with, works well on keto as well.

[big.poppa.pump]

yup, its not a bbers sup, more of an athlete's supp, that I would agree with, works well on keto as well.

How does it work well with keto?

[sweetjane57]

It is for STRENGTH as well

[GDavis]

Response to Andrew72

What I mean by next Creatine, is nothing more than next STAPLE supplement. Going along with a multi vit, creatine, glutamine, Whey protein.

[juiceinator3000]

its definitely nowhere near the next creatine. creatine is a supplement that time and time again, in every study, has proven to be effective. beta alanine is far from being nearly as time tested as creatine. i personally hate the stuff. i have to find preworkouts w/o it because it makes me nauseous

[Trixter]

I use it and certainly feel an improvement if I'm going higher reps at the time. Not a staple by any means, but an extra gram usually is enough for me to notice a difference.

[big.poppa.pump]

It is for STRENGTH as well

According to who?

[big.poppa.pump]

its definitely nowhere near the next creatine. creatine is a supplement that time and time again, in every study, has proven to be effective. beta alanine is far from being nearly as time tested as creatine. i personally hate the stuff. i have to find preworkouts w/o it because it makes me nauseous

It makes me shit water...I have heard that its a good pH buffer, but I haven't seen any studies supporting this theory. Its makes my skin red too, which I do not care for.

[juiceinator3000]

yea red and it feels like shit is crawling on me. ive thrown up multiple times on it. i drove over an hour to go to bev's one time took a preworkout with beta alanine and puked half an hour later. completely ruined my workout

[big.poppa.pump]

yea red and it feels like shit is crawling on me. ive thrown up multiple times on it. i drove over an hour to go to bev's one time took a preworkout with beta alanine and puked half an hour later. completely ruined my workout

Your skin turns red because the beta-alanine causes your nerve endings to fire off. The red skin is an idicator that it has a sufficient amount of BA in it. Its for endurance atheletes

[Youngguns]

Would it be good to take before sex then? That stuff made me tingle so much.

[big.poppa.pump]

Would it be good to take before sex then? That stuff made me tingle so much.

Haha its good for the type 1 muscle fibers

[Wolfpack]

I am not sold on it. From what I have seen, it barely does anything with creatine. Its more for endurance atheletes than bodybuilders IMO. Fast twitch would be your Type 1 (endurance fibers) used primarily for endurance exercising

What do you mean by "from what you've seen, it barely does anything with creatine?" As in working synergistically? See from a study or from experience?

[big.poppa.pump]

The study I have read, there was a 1.1% increase when added with creatine. I read it a few months back, I'll post it here in a bit

[vboissiere]

I have used it pre training when I rotate off of stimulants (to give my CNS) a bit of a break. Works well in that method. Does give an extreme engergy boost, but keeps enegery levels even thru out the session.

[big.poppa.pump]

I have used it pre training when I rotate off of stimulants (to give my CNS) a bit of a break. Works well in that method. Does give an extreme engergy boost, but keeps enegery levels even thru out the session.

Yeah, I did 3 months on, 1 month off, 3 months on. Didn't notice any benefits from it. I know some people swear by it, but I haven't seen any conclusive evidence that would persuade me to give it another try.

[juiceinator3000]

Your skin turns red because the beta-alanine causes your nerve endings to fire off. The red skin is an idicator that it has a sufficient amount of BA in it. Its for endurance atheletes

yea it's being marketed completely wrong which is annoying. it's becoming increasingly more difficult to find preworkout supps without it

[big.poppa.pump]

yea it's being marketed completely wrong which is annoying. it's becoming increasingly more difficult to find preworkout supps without it

Yeah, it increases carnosine levels which is suppose to increase energy levels and muscular endurance. IMO this supplement along with waxy maize should be pushed to endurance atheletes instead of the bodybuilding community.

[big.poppa.pump]

http://evidencebasedfitness.blogspot.com/2007/04/another-beta-alanine-study-dont-buy.html



Another beta-alanine study. Don't buy the hype. (http://evidencebasedfitness.blogspot.com/2007/04/another-beta-alanine-study-dont-buy.html)


Some day, I'm going to preface a review with a sentence like, "Today's study was really well done. I was impressed by the comprehensiveness of the reporting, the concise data analysis and the practical relevance of the trial."

Today is not going to be that day.

I really try hard not to be antagonistic in these write-ups. And I really hate the fact that I sound like a broken record in every review (too many significance tests, no primary research question, inappropriate statistics, inadequate reporting of trial details--can you see the glaringly obvious trend here?), but I don't make this stuff up. I don't think I could if I tried. Quite honestly, these kinds of studies just make me angry.

In keeping with the beta-alanine theme, here's my angry review of:

Hoffman J, Raramess N, Kang J, Mangine G, Faigenbaum A, Stout J. Effect of creatine and beta-alanine supplementation on performance and endocrine responses in strength/power athletes. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. 16: 430-446, 2006.

Part of the reason why I keep bringing the same points up is because we've seen Hoffman and Stout before in previous reviews. If anyone is looking for a methodologist, I'm available--and at pretty cheap rates too! Who am I kidding...I'm not making any friends with these reviews....

The purpose as stated by the authors was, "...to compare the effects of creatine plus beta-alanine to creatine alone on strength, power and body compositional changes during a 10-week resistance training program in collegiate football players. In addition, a secondary purposes of this study was to examine the effect of creatine and creatine plus beta-alanine supplementation on the hormonal responses to resistance training."

Unfortunately, this is not what they actually did. Or maybe they did, but it's not what they reported. Read on.

Methods:

Thirty-three male "strength power athletes" were recruited for this study. I guess football players are also strength power athletes--whatever that means. Subjects were not permitted to use any other nutritional supplement (again, not sure what goes in this category), and did not use steroids or other "anabolic agents". All subjects had at least 2 years experience with resistance training.

Subjects were randomly assigned to one of three groups. One group got creatine with beta-alanine (10.5g/day of creatine monohydrate and 3.2g/day of beta alanine); another group got creatine (10.5g/day of creatine monohydrate); and the last group got a placebo (10.5g of dextrose). All subjects had one drink in the morning (the powder packet mixed in 8-10 oz of water), and then within 1 hour of their workout, or in the late afternoon or evening if it was a non-gym day.

[Broken record note: There is no description of the method by which the randomization sequence was generated, who assigned people to their groups, who had access to the sequence, how allocation concealment was performed, nor how blinding was performed (they mentioned the "double-blind" word, but who was the other blinded party apart from the subjects? Why thirty-three subjects? Is this another one of those, "Oh, ten subjects per group should be enough," things?]

All subjects received the same workout (4 day upper/lower body split roughly). All workouts were supervised by study personnel. This study was done for 10 weeks.

Variables:

Strength: Subjects were tested for 1RM for squat and bench press.

Power: Subjects underwent Wingate anaerobic power testing. Wingate testing is a standard protocol of interval cycling (warm-up with some 5 sec sprints for 5 minutes, followed by 3 minutes stead state, followed by 30 second all out sprint, then 3 minutes steady state, 30 seconds sprint, 3 minutes steady state and 30 second sprint). In addition to the Wingate test, subjects also did an unvalidated "jump power" test, which involved performing 20 consecutive jumps off a portable force plate with the instruction to maximize the height of each jump with minimal time in contact with the force plate. Subjects had to keep their hands on their waist at all times. The data was processed by some unknown means, reported as, "Computer analysis was used to calculated peak power, mean power and a fatigue index."

[What the *bleep* is this fatigue index??]

Body composition: Body composition was measured using DEXA.

Biochemical outcomes: Blood was drawn as fasting samples (except for 9 subjects who had their levels drawn 2h post-pradially--after a meal, that is, because of class scheduling). They tested for serum testosterone, growth hormone, IGF-I, sex hormone binding globulin, and cortisol levels.

[Why they bothered to test for cortisol levels if the 9 subjects weren't fasting and first-thing in the morning is beyond me. This pretty much invalidates any cortisol analysis in this study--one third of subjects would have had an inappropriate, invalid cortisol level.]

Diet: Subjects used a 3 day recall method to track diet.

Statistics:

The authors used repeated-measures ANOVAs to make comparisons within groups. The used regular ANOVAs to make comparisons between groups. They also calculated an effect size, "...to determine the magnitude of treatment effects, and [the effect sizes] are reported with all statistically significant results as a measure of practical significance."

[Pet Peeve number 1: In a randomized controlled trials, we are not generally interested in whether the groups did better compared to themselves. It's usually interesting, but not very important, because the question we're trying to answer here is, "Does beta-alanine with creatine do better than creatine alone or a placebo?" not, "Does beta-alanine with creatine, creatine or a dextrose improve strength/body composition/etc?" The reason why it's interesting and not important is because even if dextrose doesn't improve anything and beta-alanine with creatine does improve everything, if their effects are not substantially different from one another, the fact that dextrose did nothing and BA with creatine did something is irrelevant.

Pet Peeve number 2: You should, as a researcher, never use a statistic (like a calculated effect size) to determine whether something is practically relevant or not. The statistic doesn't know what's important or not. It's just a number. If we were looking at an always-fatal disease and found that a therapy could save 20% of patients' lives, that would be practically relevant, despite an abysmal effect size. I refer to you back to a previous entry, "Different kinds of important."

Broken record note: Lots of variables means lots of tests. And a higher chance of making a type I error. Pick a primary variable already.]

Results:

[Broken record note: There was no mention as to how many subjects dropped out of the study or why. When I count the little dots on the horrible graph above, I count 30 dots. Whether this means that 3 people dropped out, or were lost to follow-up, or whether it means that 3 people's dots overlap 3 other dots, I have no idea.]

Apart from the weaknesses I've pointed out above, the results section in this paper was...hellish to read. Let me try to sort this out by variable.

Diet: No statistically significant difference was detected between any of three groups for caloric intake. What's evident is that there was MASSIVE variation within each group in terms of caloric intake. The mean caloric intake of the placebo group was 2991 calories (SD 809 kcal). The BA+Creatine group ate an average of 3222 calories (SD 856 kcal), and the creatine group ate 2999 calories (SD 546kcal).

[In a normal distribution (which is implied when you report a mean and standard deviation--although, not everyone knows this), 66% of all the observed values will lie within one standard deviation of the mean; 95% of all the observed values will lie within 2 standard deviations. So, for the BA+creatine group, 95% of the subjects in that group ate anywhere between 1510 calories to 4934 calories a day! Albeit, it doesn't look like the groups really differed from one another very much, so we are relatively assured that this doesn't really affect the final conclusion of this study, but that's still a very wide variance!]

Body composition: No significant differences were detected within groups from PRE to POST with respect to total body mass. Redundant testing of the change in total body mass also did not reveal and significant differences within groups.

This is where the reporting goes all wonky.

The authors report that significant differences were found for change in percent body fat, but only cite two numbers: -1.21 (SD 1.12) vs. 0.25 (SD 1.53). Err....there were THREE groups in this study. What's even more baffling is that they don't tell us which two of the three groups these number belong to! The same goes for the reported significant difference between two groups for change in lean body mass: 1.74 (SD 1.72) vs -0.44 (SD 1.62). What the hell is that?

There are three graphs as well, that look like this:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_HfG9wGRacNM/RhwxDkl_2HI/AAAAAAAAABc/P0nh-tZFEgA/s400/BA+Hoffman+graph (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_HfG9wGRacNM/RhwxDkl_2HI/AAAAAAAAABc/P0nh-tZFEgA/s1600-h/BA+Hoffman+graph)

The above graph is supposed to represent individual data for change in lean body mass. This has got to be one of the most useless graphs I have seen in a paper. The only thing it tells me is that the BA+Creatine group (CA) isn't normally distributed--they're all clustered up in the 2.5-3 kg range--which is good if you're trying to show BA+Creatine helps to build lean body mass, but bad if you're using summary statistics (i.e. mean and standard deviation) that are meant for normal distributions when your distribution clearly isn't normal. And also bad if you're using parametric statistical tests on non-parametric data. Just because a test is robust against violations of its assumptions, doesn't mean you should just go ahead and use it. The reason why we even bothered to figure out how robust it was, was because it was clear that a crapload of investigators were using inappropriate statistics and we didn't want the research to go to COMPLETE waste.

[What gets my goat though, is the fact that they found a significant difference between groups in change in percent body fat, but didn't find one in change in fat mass, but one of the "major" findings it that beta-alanine+creatine caused a greater decrease in percent body fat. So, basically, they picked the "significant p-value" to report as a major finding, while ignoring the disparate result that they failed to find a difference in change in ACTUAL fat mass. So does beta-alanine+creatine help you burn fat or not? Apparently it does if you use one number, but not if you use a different one--even though they measure the SAME THING. I suppose it's possible that BA+creatine increases lean body mass to the point where you'll see a difference in relative fat mass (which is what percent body fat is); but I don' t see any results for "percent lean body mass". ]

Strength: All three groups showed strength improvements in comparison to their initial 1RM's for both squat and bench press. Both the creatine and the BA+creatine groups did statistically better than the placebo group. The authors did not comment on how they did compared to each other. I can only assume that they failed to find a statistically significant difference between the two groups (at least that's how it looks in their graphs).

Power: No significant differences were detected within or between groups for any of the power tests.

Blood chemistry: No significant differences were detected between groups for any of the biochemical markers. They did find a significant difference within the creatine group for resting testosterone levels, but that's after more than 20 statistical tests. And again, no difference between groups, so it's pretty moot anyways.

Workout intensity/volume: The authors also did an unplanned analysis of workout intensity and volume. Intensity was measured by how close subjects lifted (for squat and bench press) to their 1RM. Volume was measured as the total weight lifted for bench press or squat. They found that both the creatine only and the BA+creatine group tended to have more intense workouts with higher volumes for squats, but only higher volumes for bench press.

[Unplanned analyses can be tricky. They're good for generating questions for future studies, but should never be taken at face value when the research question isn't being addressed.]

Discussion by the authors:

Before I delve into the authors' conclusions, I want to preface this section by saying I lost count of the number of significance tests performed on the data. All of the authors conclusions are based on significant values observed in the midst of a multitude of tests. There was virtually no effort on the part of the authors to explain all of the non-significant results. Instead, much of the focus was placed on the significant findings, despite the fact that they're all on a background of a plethora of tests and unadjusted for multiple testing. Additionally, even though the original stated purpose of the study was to compare creatine to creatine+beta-alanine, there was very little comment towards making conclusions to this comparison.

The major points by the authors were:

1) "The use of creatine and creatine with beta-alanine appeared to provide for a higher quality workout, and the addition of beta-alanine to creatine appeared to enhance training volume more so than supplementing with creatine alone."

If I ignore the background of multiple tests, then I could agree with the fact that both creatine and creatine with beta-alanine appeared to make for a better workout. However, there's nothing in this paper to support the idea that the addition of beta-alanine enhanced workout "quality" more than just creatine alone.

2) "In addition, beta-alanine supplementation appeared to have the greatest effect on lean tissue accruement and improvements in body fat composition."

I think I've already been through this one above.

3) "It does appear that the addition of beta-alanine to creatine provides an additive benefit in reducing fatigue rates during training sessions compared to creatine alone."

I have absolutely no idea where this conclusion comes from. It's true that just because you don't find a significant difference between groups that one doesn't actually exist in the larger population, but there's no evidence in this study to back-up this conclusion at all.

4) "No significant changes were seen during the 10wk training program in any of the power performance measures..."

The authors attribute this finding to the fact that the subjects did not train specifically for the Wingate test (i.e. the lifted weights, instead of doing interval cycling training), which begs the question of why they chose to use the test in the first place. Specificity is not exactly a new concept in training...

5) "A significant elevation in total testosterone concentrations was seen in this 10wk study for creatine only. In addition, a trend (P=0.056) was seen for a greater free testosterone index in creatine as well, suggesting a greater availability of testosterone to interact with androgen receptors. It is difficult to explain why resting testosterone concentrations were elevated for creatine but not for creatine with beta-alanine..."

If I thought I could swear on this blog without sounding unprofessional, I would (for those of you who will be at the JP Summit this weekend, you will likely get the full sensory experience that is "Bryan loses it.") a) It's not difficult to explain at all, if you consider how many tests were performed. Could this be a type I error? (The answer is most probably, "YES.") b) A p-value that is close to the critical level (in this case 0.05) does NOT, I repeat NOT indicated a "trend". You either meet the critical value or you don't. There is no meaning to the phrase, "The data approached p=0.05." At any rate, if we actually corrected for multiple tests, a p=0.056 wouldn't even come close to the adjusted critical alpha level. So this discussion point is moot.

The discussion rambles on, but I don't think I can stand picking apart the rest of it because it just makes me angry.

Both this study and the Stout study (from last week) come from the same research group and are both funded by EAS. I'm not saying that that invalidates the study--because there's so much more that does that, but I'm glad to see that it's in their disclaimer.

The Bottom Line:

If I ignore a lot of bad stuff, here's what I take away from this study:

1) There is weak evidence from this study to show that creatine and creatine with beta-alanine supplementation can have benefits to body composition, strength and workout quality.

2) There is NO evidence from this study to show that the addition of beta-alanine to creatine supplementation has any additional benefit to anything that was measured in this study.

3) I despair at the future of fitness research on a weekly basis.

So, if you're thinking of buying beta-alanine, stop. Serious. Just stop. I don't know how to get this point across any more effectively. Stick with your creatine and you'll be fine.

I really need a flashy anti-ad to compete with the beta-alanine hype.

[big.poppa.pump]

http://evidencebasedfitness.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Why I'm not writing about beta-alanine lately (http://evidencebasedfitness.blogspot.com/2008/02/why-im-not-writing-about-beta-alanine.html)


I've had a more than a few requests to write more reviews on beta-alanine, since it seems to be all the rage. It is so much the rage lately, that I get more hits on my reviews of the three beta-alanine studies than anything else, by a very large margin. The reviews have been linked by so many people that this blog is on the third page of a Google search for the term "beta alanine" (and this search includes hits from ALL of the supplement sites that SELL beta-alanine), and the FIRST hit when you search Google for "beta alanine studies". The. First. Hit. Holy. Crap.

However, I haven't been writing on beta-alanine for a few reasons:

1) This isn't the beta-alanine blog. There are other studies to review, and apart from reviewing for content, I like to review studies that also highlight particular common methodological mistakes, or, ones that highlight particular methodological strengths to build on the fact that good research in fitness IS possible (if we should just line up all the strengths seen in multiple studies into a single study).

2) I don't want to seem like I'm attacking the work of a single research group. Most of the beta-alanine studies come out of a small number of research centres. The authors of these studies often overlap with one another, or come up repetitively. What I did with the three reviews was pick out the ones that I thought would have the most relevance with respect to generalizability to the largest number of people, or would be considered foundational studies. To continue to review each and every beta-alanine study (which I have been challenged to do) makes it seem like I'm malicious towards people who are probably very nice and respectable.

3) There isn't anything in the other studies that would actually change the current level of evidence for beta-alanine supplementation from "There is inadequate evidence to support using beta-alanine," to "Beta-alanine is worth using." It seems repetitive and, frankly, a bit boring to review yet another beta-alanine study that does not add substantially to the existing body of knowledge regarding its efficacy or effectiveness. If a landmark study of higher AND sufficient quality is published, you can be sure I will definitely review it here. This has not yet happened.

Am I aware that there are new studies? Yes. However, these studies have not yet been indexed. Many of them have not yet been fully published in peer-reviewed journals. With the exception of the Trapp thesis, I generally only reviewed peer-reviewed articles. I think we all know what my feeling is on reviewing abstracts.

Am I aware that beta-alanine has been proven to increase muscle carnosine levels? Yes. However, the fact remains that DESPITE this "significant" increase in muscle carnosine levels, beta-alanine remains associated with non-meaningul (as statistically significant as they might be) changes in performance--except possibly at the highest elite level (which has not yet been adequately studied).

I understand that my blog makes it appear like I have a vendetta against beta-alanine, and there really isn't anything I can write here that would change the opinion of people who have that opinion of me. However, the standards I apply here to my reviews are the same standards that I would apply in a review of a submitted manuscript to the journals for which I am invited to be a peer-reviewer. They are consistent with international standards (such as a CONSORT statement on reporting standards for randomized clinical trials--which is openly linked in my link list.) I don't make the standards up, nor do I make the evidence up. The studies I review are available publicly in many university libraries, and are indexed as part of the Index Medicus (which anyone can access through PubMed.) I have no financial interest in seeing beta-alanine succeed or fail. I have no relationships with any supplement companies other than the fact that I buy supplements for myself. My only interest, with respect to this blog is to simply present the evidence in a critical and as unbiased a way as possible, so that others can make informed decisions about health decisions as they pertain to fitness.

I appreciate all of the feedback and notes that I have received throughout this blog's existence. Most of it has been very positive. And I appreciate all of the support that I have received so far. This blog is linked to many sites and I am flattered that people think it's worth reading to the point that they would recommend it to their friends and blog readers. I hope that someday, it will be more than "the beta-alanine blog", but I'll take whatever successes I can glean.

Thanks again for reading.


Posted by Bryan at 5:44 PM (http://evidencebasedfitness.blogspot.com/2008/02/why-im-not-writing-about-beta-alanine.html) 9 comments (https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7639147739765884139&postID=5588497747282707017) http://www.blogger.com/img/icon18_edit_allbkg.gif (http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=7639147739765884139&postID=5588497747282707017)
Labels: beta-alanine (http://evidencebasedfitness.blogspot.com/search/label/beta-alanine), editorial (http://evidencebasedfitness.blogspot.com/search/label/editorial)



Sunday, February 17, 2008

Rest vs. Active Recovery (http://evidencebasedfitness.blogspot.com/2008/02/rest-vs-active-recovery.html)


Lots of stuff happens when you're not doing anything. It's amazing. Your muscles rebuild (hopefully stronger than before). Your bones deteriorate less (if you've been doing weight bearing exercise). Britney does something silly (again). All while you're doing nothing! Rest is an integral part of any training program. Certainly, we know that inadequate recovery is responsible for a myriad of bad things, like decreased performance, and an increased risk of injury. But what about this thing called "active recovery"?

Active recovery can be loosely defined as a low-intensity activity (such as submaximal cycling or low-intensity weight training) used to enhance the recovery process between training sessions or competitions. The theory is that by increasing blood flow (your heart rate increases, therefore your blood is making more 'rounds' as it were), lactate and other 'waste products' are cleared faster, thereby minimizing their detrimental effects in tissues. This should translate practically to a faster recovery than if your blood were moving at its normal velocity. This would mean that you could train more frequently at sustained or higher intensity levels without exposing yourself to the risks of inadequate recovery. Sounds like a great idea, eh?

A recent study however, puts this translation of theory to practice into question. Its scope is somewhat limited, but worth looking at.

Andersson, H., et al. Neuromuscular fatigue and recovery in elite female soccer: Effects of active recovery. Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise. 40(2):372-80, 2008.

Before we even get into the guts of this study, you can probably tell that we are looking at two major limitations: 1) the results of this study are only generalizable to the sport of female soccer; and 2) elite soccer, at that. So, while this study does challenge the concept that active recovery is useful, it only challenges that concept in the context of elite female soccer players, which likely excludes most of you (It definitely excludes me, on all three levels).

Introduction

Soccer is a high-intensity sport, but we don't understand a lot about recovery, particularly after games, and particularly about female soccer players. Most of the studies to date have been either inconclusive or non-demonstrable in demonstrating many changes in the biochemistry of soccer players, despite an observed performance decrease after games. Active recovery has been studied in male soccer players, but not in female ones. Until now.

These researchers wanted to know a two things: 1) what happens neuromuscularly, and biochemically to elite female soccer players after a game, and 2) does the same things happen to them if they're on passive or active recovery?

Methods

To answer this question, they recruited 22 elite female soccer players from the highest division in Sweden and Norway. Only 17 of these players were studied, because two of them were goal-keepers (and while a very difficult and demanding position, not the same activity profile) and three of the remaining 20 were not available for testing. These 22 players played two 90-minute friendly games, 72 hours apart. The same players participated in both games and played the same positions each time. After the first game, each player was randomly assigned to either passive or active recovery, with balancing for age, height, weight, VO2 max, and field playing position.

[With that many balancing factors, one has to wonder how random it actually was]

Active recovery consisted of 2 recovery sessions, at 22 and 46 hours after the first game (20 minutes of cycling at 60% of their peak heart rate, 30 minutes of low-intensity resistance training and 10 minutes of 60% cycling again).

Prior to the first match, players were tested for 20 meter sprint time, countermovement jump, maximal isokinetic knee flexion and extension and perceived muscle soreness. Blood samples were taken 3 hours prior to the first game, immediately after the first game, and then at 21, 45, and 69 hours after the first game and again immediately after the second game.

The blood was analyzed for creatine kinase (otherwise, known as CK, a general inflammatory marker), urea, and uric acid (both waste products).

All players wore heart rate monitors during their games, and each player was filmed for the entire game. These films were later reviewed to tabulate the intensity of the game. Distance covered, running intensity as well as time spent at each running intensity was calculated to ensure that the players weren't slacking off when compared to one another.

All players were given a meal plan to attempt to standardize diet.

Statistics

The data was analysed with multiple repeated-measures two-way ANOVAs, with the Dunnett as the post hoc test.

[That's a lot of tests!]

Results

Work intensity: The average heart rate was significantly higher within the two groups in game 2 vs. game 1. But it was higher in both groups, so the groups remained comparable.

Physiology after the first game: All performance tests were worse after the first game. And all three biochemical markers were elevated too.

Recovery time: Almost everything was back to baseline by 69 hours after the first game, regardless of which group the subjects were in. Sprint time was the first to recover (5h). Knee extension strength recovered by 27 hours, and knee flexion strength at 51 hours. Countermovement jump (similar to vertical jump) never recovered in either group in time for the second game. CK calmed down by 69 hours, while urea and uric acid returned to baseline by 21 hours. Muscle soreness was reportedly gone by 69 hours.

Between groups: The researchers failed to find a difference between the two groups at any time point. If we consider sprint time to be the major variable of interest, at 69 hours post-game 1, which was before game 2 at 72 hours, the 20m sprint time for the active recovery group was 3.25 seconds (SE 0.03) and 3.23 seconds (SE 0.04) in the passive recovery group.

What I liked about this study is that the researchers went out of their way to determine that the groups remained comparable throughout the study, hopefully recognizing that their randomization scheme might not be enough. What I also liked about this study was that they showed that there was a detrimental effect to performance and biochemistry after the first game. We are unable to say that these soccer players were SO elite that a single game was insufficient to cause performance decreases from which they would have to recover.

Limitations (or, why some of the limitations you might think are here aren't):

The biggest limitations to this study are the ones I've already mentioned. You can't really use this study to justify why _you_ (or I) should sit on a couch--unless you happen to be an elite, female soccer player.

There were definitely some reporting issues. I definitely wonder about the quality of their randomization. If you have to balance for 5 things between 17 players, it's not going to be that random. How many choices are you going to have if you have to find another 22 year old, 5'8, 125 pound forward with a specific VO2 max? I suppose it's possible that elite female soccer players might be all very similar to one another...

We don't know anything about the blinding. And we definitely don't know about adherence. The paper doesn't mention whether the people doing the testing knew which group each player was in, though, with most of these measurements, you'd be hard pressed to bias one way or another short of deceptively entering a false number. However, we don't know what "passive" recovery meant for the passive recovery group. Did they sneak off to do some passive recovery on their own? In some ways this isn't a limitation, as it simply reformats the question to ask whether adding 2 sessions of structred active recovery aids in recovery from a game, as opposed to unstructured active recovery (which the non-active group may have done, on purpose or not).

However, adherence aside, the groups did remain comparable throughout the study for most of the variables we would consider as confounders. And ultimately, the goal of randomization is to create comparable groups.

One of the criticisms that I usually make is that there were multiple tests of significance. However, that's only really a problem if you find you have a significant result and focus on it as though you had set out to look specifically for it. In this case, there were none between the two groups. So despite the fact that the chance of seeing a statistically significant difference by random chance was higher, they failed to detect one.

Lastly, one might think that 17 players is too small a sample size and that that quality makes this a bad study. Remember that statistical significance does not dictate whether an effect size is important or not. You use a statistic to bolster the argument that the difference between two groups (which you have deemed important beforehand) is not one that you got purely by random chance alone. However, the differences observed between the two groups were always miniscule. One could argue that statistical testing is unecessary for such numbers because even if they were statistically "different", it wouldn't be enough of a practical difference to justify one behaviour over the other.

The argument one CAN make with a sample of 17, however, is that these 17 players are somehow not an accurate representative sample of all female elite soccer players. I can't speak to that, not knowing what female elite soccer players are like in general. Certainly, you could make a case that this study may even only apply to Scandanvian elite female soccer players (which, I found out to my embarrassment this past summer, does not include Icelandic elite female soccer players), if you could justify why other elite female soccer players from other countries are distinctly and substantially different than Scandanavian ones.

The bottom line:

Stricly speaking, you don't really get to use this study to change anything you do, unless you're a Scandanvian elite female soccer player. If you are, it might be okay for you to sit on the couch between games. For the rest of us, loosely, you can probably do whatever you like best, whether it's sitting on the couch, or getting some active recovery in, feeling relatively assured that it's probably not going to hurt you. But certainly, this study draws attention to question whether active recovery, though theoretically sound, is actually any more beneficial than passive recovery.

[big.poppa.pump]

http://evidencebasedfitness.blogspot.com/2007/04/beta-alanine-harris-study-this-is-what.html

Beta-alanine: The Harris Study (this is what grad students are actually used for) (http://evidencebasedfitness.blogspot.com/2007/04/beta-alanine-harris-study-this-is-what.html)


I was going to write a review of the Harris study on beta-alanine, but after reading it in detail, I realized it wasn't a randomized controlled trial at all, but rather a physiological study, with biochemical outcomes, but no "functional" ones. And despite the fact that one of their experiments was a "quasi" randomized controlled trial, I haven't got a lot to say about it because this was not a study to look at the effectiveness of BA, but rather to profile its effects. On the up side, there was a rather nice recipe for chicken broth--which is where they got their beta-alanine for one of the experimental groups:

"Fresh chicken breast (skinned and boned) was finely chopped and boiled for 15 min with water (1 litre for every 1.5kg of chicken). Residual chicken meat was removed for course filtration. The filtrate was flavoured by the addition of carrot, onion, celery, salt, pepper, basil, parsley and tomato pure, and re-boiled for a further 15 min and then cooled before final filtration through fine muslin at 4 C. The yield from 1.5kg chicken + 1 litre of water was 870ml of stock. A portion of the stock was assayed for total beta-alanyl-dipeptides (carnosine and anserine) and beta-alanine. Typical analyses were: total beta-alanyl-dipeptides, 74.4 mmol per litre; free beta-alanaine, 5.7 mml per litre. From this a dose estimated to yield 40 mg per kg body weight of beta-alanine was calculated and was provided hot to each subject."

All this and more, in: Harris RC, Tallon MJ, Dunnet M, Boobis L, Coakley J, Kim HJ, Fallowfield JL, Hill CA, Sale C, Wise JA. The absorption of orally supplied beta-alanine and its effects on muscle carnosine synthesis in human vastis lateralis. Amino Acids, 30: 279-289, 2006.

In brief, they did three experiments.

Experiment 1:

The original purpose of the first experiment was to look at the pharmacokinetics of taking 40mg beta-alanine per kg of body weight in the form of a beta-alanine drink (called Carnosyn) vs. the same dose in chicken broth vs. a drink with no beta-alanine. However, the first few subjects experienced really bad side-effects with the drink (not the broth)--symptoms of flushing, skin irritation and a prickly sensation, which began within 20 minutes of ingestion and lasted for up to an hour. Flushing was reported to occur on the ears, forehead, scalp, upper trunk, arms and back of hands, lower back and buttocks. These symptoms were unpleasant enough that 2 of the 6 subjects refused to take the 40mg/kg dose. So, the investigators decided to study beta-alanine at 20 and 10mg/kg instead. Subjects still had effects on 20mg/kg, but the symptoms were less intense. Only 2 of the 4 subjects who took the 10mg/kg dose had flushing symptoms. None of the subjects had flushing symptoms with the chicken broth, even though the dose of beta-alanine was 40mg/kg in the broth.

In the end, the researchers found that consuming beta-alanine increased the concentration of beta-alanine in the blood. The difference between the drink and the broth seemed to be that beta-alanine levels in the blood were about half for the broth compared to the drink, and took longer to peak with the broth than with the drink, but the total amount of beta-alanine detected was about the same.

There also appeared to be a non-linear relationship between the increase in peak concentration of beta-alanine in the blood, when compared with the dose given in the drink. The peak concentration of beta-alanine (BA) in the blood was 6-8 times higher when subjects drank 20mg/kg of BA than when they drink 10mg/kg of BA. But the peak concentration of BA in the blood was only 2.2 times higher when the subjects drank 40mg/kg of BA compared to when they drink 20mg/kg of BA. So there seems to be a trend of dimishing returns (i.e. every time you double the dose, the peak concentration of BA in the blood doesn't double, but progressively higher by smaller amounts).

Experiment 2:

The second study was done to see what would happen if the subjects took 10mg/kg of BA every three hours (for instance, did the body develop some sort of "tolerance" to the BA and clear it faster with repeated dosing?)

The peak concentration of BA did not change with each dose. And 3 hours was sufficient time for the subjects to return to baseline concentrations of BA before their next dose. Repeated dosing also did not produce significant side effects, other than occasional mild flushing.

Experiment 3:

The third study was done to see if 4 weeks of taking BA had any adverse effects on blood chemistry.

This study had 16 male subjects in it (the other two had only 6). The subjects were divided into 2 groups. Half the subjects took 800mg of BA, four times a day. Nothing bad happened to them. The other half got a placebo. Nothing bad happened to them either.

Experiment 3.5:

This study was lumped in with the description of experiment 3, but was a separate experiment. The purpose of this study was to look at the effects of BA on muscle. Twenty-one males were recruited. They were physically active and regularly ate meat. These subjects were divided into four groups:

Group 1 (n=5): 800mg of BA, four times a day.
Group 2 (n=5): More frequent dosing. Week one was every hour at doses of 800, 400, 400, 400, 800, 400, 400, and 400mg at 9, 10, 11, 12am and then at 3, 4, 5, 6pm. Week 2, saw an increase to 800mg for the 11 and 5 o'clock doses. Week 3, the 10 and 4 o'clock doses went up to 800mg, and in week 4, all the doses were 800mg.
Group 3 (n=5): L-carnosine in the same dosing regimen as Group 2, but 2000mg and 1000mg carnosine instead of 800mg and 400mg BA
Group 4 (n=6): Maltodextrin in the same dosing as Group 2.

A single muscle biopsy was taken from the vastus lateralis at the beginning and after 4 weeks of supplementation. Extracts were tested for BA, histidine, carnosine and taurine.

Flushing occured in week 2 for four of the five subjects in Group 2; and for 3 of the 5 subjects in Group 3 in week 4; and 1 subject in group 4 (yes, even placebos have side effects!)

BA was below the limit of detection in most muscle extracts both before and after supplementation. The mean carnosine content did increase in all groups, but only statistically significantly in Groups 1-3. No difference was detected between Groups 1-3 with respect to carnosine content.

No change was observed in body mass in any of the four groups.

Conclusions:

The authors concluded in this series of experiments that the maximum practical dose of BA should not exceed 10mg/kg per dose to avoid the unpleasant side effects. They also noted that none of the subjects had side effects when they took the BA through chicken broth and that the peak blood concentrations mimicked those of subjects who took 20mg/kg of the BA drink, despite there being 40mg/kg of BA in the broth. At 20mg/kg, many subjects still had undesired side-effects, so the recommendation from this study is to keep dosing at the 10mg/kg level, which is about 800mg for a guy.

They also concluded that there was a significant enough increase in muscular carnosine with BA supplementation to go to the next step--which would be to see if the increase in muscular carnosine would have effects on intracellular acid-base regulation, "...as a limiting factor to performance with different exercise modalities."

The Bottom Line:

The thing to take home from this study, is that if you're going to take BA, then make sure your dose doesn't exceed 10mg/kg to avoid flushing side-effects. BA is one of the precursors to carnosine, which is actually the molecule of interest in reducing fatigue. You might ask why we're not supplementing with carnosine instead of BA, and I'm afraid I don't have a good answer to that question--it may have to do with the pharmacokinetics of carnosine--definitely over the head of this humble methodologist. I know that Biotest makes a time-release version of BA, but how they are ensuring adequate dosing, I'm not entirely sure--because time-release formulations in general can be quite unpredictable. But again, not my field of expertise, so I can't reallly comment on it either way. Either way, it's not entirely clear why one would want a steady of level of BA in the blood throughout the day, if activity is restricted to only part of the day. I assuming that carnosine is possibly broken down if it's in "excess" so you're interested in keeping the "excess" constant--but why throughout the day, I'm not sure.

There's nothing in this study to support the use of BA in terms of improving the outcomes we're interested in (less fatigue, more intense workouts, bigger muscles, or less body fat). It's all fine to say that there's more carnosine in the muscle, but does that increase in carnosine translate to anything observable that might indicate that it's a worthwhile supplement to take? This is where the utility of the physiological study ends, and where clinical research picks up; and the authors of this study acknowledge that and state that there are sufficient physiological results to warrant looking at performance outcomes.

So, I'm going to end this series on beta-alanine here for now. My conclusion from the clinical trials is that there is insufficient evidence, and of the available evidence, there is insufficient quality of evidence to support the use of beta-alanine to produce performance benefits. This doesn't mean that beta-alanine doesn't work, but that we are lacking proof of benefit.

It's funny. We all violently denounce the spam on new "vitamins" or gels, or the use of raw, unpasturized milk as an anabolic agent (I swear, I found this thread on the JPFitness forum), but for some reason a hook gets created by someone somewhere that causes all-out blind acceptance hype for a pill that we should consider just as skeptically as the newest penile enlargement supplement.

I will go back to one my previous points in that my own philosophy is that every decision we make about fitness is a health decision, whether that's how we train, how we eat, what supplements we take, how we take care of injuries or how we recover from injuries. And that just because physicians don't take part in the vast majority of this aspect of health, it doesn't mean that we should hold these decisions to any less of a standard than the ones that physicians are involved in. If you're going to make the decision to take beta-alanine, then at least make an informed decision about the step that you're about to take. You should be aware that uncomfortable flushing of your ass is a possible side effect if you don't take the correct dose. You should also be aware that there is about as much evidence to support the use of beta-alanine in weight lifting as there is evidence to support the use of gel-caps filled with baby powder. Now, this evidence could change in the future--as more studies are done (if any), we will hopefully get a clearer and clearer picture of what role (if any) beta-alanine has in weight training (and other activities); but today, it's no different than baby powder.

[big.poppa.pump]

http://evidencebasedfitness.blogspot.com/2007/04/beta-alanine-vs-umstuff-no-one-really.html

Beta-alanine vs. um...stuff. No one really wins. (http://evidencebasedfitness.blogspot.com/2007/04/beta-alanine-vs-umstuff-no-one-really.html)

Ok, I'm behind the times. By about 3 months. But you know, it's 'cause I have to go searching for this stuff all by myself! Maybe we should consider this a bit of catch-up, since the blog was started only a month ago. If you see a good study, or mention of one, send me the freaking reference! Some "cutting edge" blogger I turned out to be, eh...

I picked this paper out after listening to the FitCast (http://www.thefitcast.com/) (yes, thank you again, Kevin) and hearing about beta-alanine. Of course, doing a quick search on JPFitness (http://forums.jpfitness.com/) revealed that people were talking about it in December, and that not only had it discussed on T-Nation already, with an article by Dr. Stout, I had inadvertently picked Dr. Stout's paper for this week's review. It's always risky to criticize a study that has already received fairly rave reviews, but...here goes.

Stout JR, Cramer JT, Mielke M, O'Kroy J, Toro DJ, Zoeller RF. Effects of twenty-eight days of beta-alanine and creatine monohydrate supplementation on the physical working capacity at neuromuscular fatigue threshold. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 20(4):923-931, 2006.

Rationale:

Beta-alanine has been shown to increase carnosine levels in the muscle. Increased levels of carnosine have been suggested to be associated with buffering action and may assist in decreasing "neuromuscular fatigue" by buffering hydrogen ions that are produced during muscular work. Creatine has also been shown to decrease neuromuscular fatigue, though this aspect of creatine benefit has been less studied than its other effects. So, the researchers decided to look at using both beta-alanine and creatine to look at whether there would be a combined effect. To this end, they used an incremental cycle ergometer test called the physical working capacity fatigue threshold (PWCft).

[Now, a note about the PWCft. Admittedly, I did not have the time to go and dig into the journal, Ergonomics, to find the original studies where the PWCft test was developed--mostly because it would have involved hoofing it to the library to grab the hard-cover bound copies of Ergonomics, because Ergonomics only goes back to 1996 in our electronic collection here.

BUT, according to Stout et al, the PWCft is a test that "...utilizes the relationship between EMG amplitude and fatigue during submaximal cycle ergometry to identify the power output that corresponds to the onset of neuromuscular fatigue. The PWCft represents the highest power output that results in a non-significant (p>0.05) increase in muscle activation of the vastus lateralis over time."

So, I have three immediate comments about this study before I've even read the methods section. Again, I will emphasize the fact that I have not gone back to read about the development of the PWCft, so the comment here is based solely on the authors' description of what it is:

1) It seems that PWCft is basically a probabalistic test, and operates under a fundamental fallacy that a p-value that is greater than 0.05 is equivocal to implying that "no difference" exists in muscle activation after a certain power output has been achieved, and thus, assigns that power output to mean that the neural component to force generation has tapered off, and calls that "neuromuscular fatigue". However, even in the face of a correct interpretation of a p-value greater than 0.05, which would be, "there is insufficient evidence to show that a difference exists," (which would not necessarily mean that one doesn't exist--we just can't tell), we're still looking at using a non-significant p-value in a series of repeated significance tests to delineate not-fatigued from fatigued. Now we know the error rate on a single significance test is 5% in terms of finding a significant difference when one does not truly exist, but what are the chances that we're going to make the opposite error, the Type II error, which is not finding a difference when one DOES truly exist? And that has more to do with power, or the beta level, than it does the alpha level. Perhaps I will discuss the beta level later this week. Either way, using a non-significant p-value to determine anything is dubious at best.

2) We're looking at surface EMG here. Now, I understand that the PWCft is validated, and reliable and sensitive to change (all important components to validity), but I find myself skeptical about it from the get-go, knowing that surface EMG is incredibly imprecise and can be affected massively by very small factors such as electrode placement, skin moisture, atmospheric moisture, subcutaneous body fat, and luck. For the most part, there seems to be a lot of work still being done to investigate processing methods to extrapolate more information than "muscle is on, muscle is off" from surface EMG data. I'm not an EMG expert though, so if this was a real peer-review, I would either defer to one, or consult one.

3) This is NOT, I repeat, NOT a study on weightlifting. It's a study on cycling. So before you get all excited about it, I'll ask you: If there was a study showing that six sets of 30 seccond all-out intervals of cycling made your legs stronger, would you start doing 6 sets of 30 second all-out intervals of squats? (The answer is, maybe, but not based on a running study!) IF we assume that the PWCft is a valid measure of fatigue, we are still looking at fatigue over time during submaximal cycling (i.e. a test where you sit on a bike and pedal with increasing resistance until you can't maintain a pre-set RPM), not periodic lifting (i.e. a situation in which you go through a short period of activity with a constant load, rest, and do another short period of activity with a constant load, which may or may not be different than the last one). There is a certain amount of "fatigue is fatigue" to this, but fatigue is also contextual--and in particular "neuromuscular" fatigue--whatever _that_ means (which could be influenced by things like neurotransmitter reuptake, vesicle release, kinetics in the synaptic cleft--all of which would be HUGELY affected by the fact that you take a minute of rest between sets).

So based on these issues, before I even delve into the guts of the study itself, I would be leery of starting beta-alanine supplementation based solely on this study for improvement in lifting performance. Especially if it's expensive and I'm poor. However, if it's cheap and I can afford it, I _might_ try it, but that decision would not be based on anything but anecdotal hype--which, so long as you know that's what your decision is based on, is fine. Hey, I'm just as desperate as the next guy.

And yes, the opening square bracket of this comment is waaaaay the hell up there, isn't it?]

Methods:

As a general comment, the reporting of this trial was actually quite sub-par. There was a lot of detail missing.

Subjects:
There was no mention of inclusion or exclusion criteria. The authors mentioned that none of the subjects had ingested creatine or any other dietary supplement for at least 12 weeks before the start of the study. What we don't know are things like training history, where the subjects were recruited from, how many subjects were considered but excluded, why subjects were excluded if they were excluded, etc. We don't know who this study was supposed to target, and so making statements of generalizability (i.e. the population to which we are supposed to most closely extend these results to) is difficult.

Randomization:
The method by which the randomization sequence was generated was not discussed, nor was randomziation concealment, who had access to the code, what the randomziation scheme itself was, and whether there were any stratifying factors.

Blinding:
The authors stated that the subjects were blinded because they got identical tasting and appearing supplements, and that they were randomized in a "double-blind" manner. Who the other blinded party was is not known (trainer? evaluator? investigator? supplier?)

Treatment groups:
There were four arms to this trial: 1) the placebo group (34g dextrose), 2) the creatine group (34g dextrose and 5.25g creatine), 3) the beta alanine group (34g dextrose, 1.6g beta alanine), 4) the combined group (34g dextrose, 5.25g creatine and 1.6g beta alanine). The groups took their assigned supplement dissolved in 16oz of water, 4 times per day for the first 6 days and then twice per day for the remaining 22 days.

[This doesn't happen very often, so it's probably not that important, but the weight of the supplement in each of these groups is different. There have been trials that have failed because of an oversight such as weight, and subjects unblinding themselves--or at least figuring out they're not on the active treatment arm. Mostly, this comment is a teaching point.]

Measurements:
The EMG electrode was placed on the vastis lateralis, in a standardized fashion (shave the skin, scrape it with sandpaper, make a standard measurement--in this case, midway between the greater trochanter and the lateral femoral condyle, and stick the electrode on. The PWCft was determined as described above. Subjects were asked to pedal at 60 W, and 70 rpm. The power output was increased every 2 minutes by 30 W until the subject couldn't maintain 70 rpms. The authors also did a spot sample of 12 subjects to test the reliability of the PWCft. They claim to have calculated the intraclass correlation coefficient, but called it "r", which is usually the symbol for a Pearson correlation coefficient, not an ICC (whose symbol is generally ICC). There's a reference to a study by Weir, which describes how to calculate r, but I haven't gotten a copy of it yet. Just for the record, an ICC is VERY different from an r. So, maybe it's an ICC, or maybe it's a Pearson correlation coefficient. When I get the Weir study, I'll find out. The major issue here is that an ICC is generally a good tool to determine test-retest reliability, while a simple correlation coefficient is completely inappropriate.

Statistics:
The authors performed two ANCOVAs with the pretest PWCft as the covariate. [An ANCOVA is an analysis of co-variance. You can use it like an ANOVA, but it's useful when you want to control for an extra variable--in this case, pre-test PWCft.] It's not entirely clear why they did two, because I only see one ANCOVA described in this section. The authors also described using a least squares regression to examine the linearity of the relationship between the pretest PWCft and the post-test PWCft within each of the treatment groups. In the case of a significant p-value from an ANCOVA, they used Bonferroni-corrected post-hoc tests to suss out where the differences were. [I really wish they had just told us WHICH post-hoc test they used, since I can think of 3 off the top of my head.] They also used a partial eta squared to calculated effect size.

[This is one of those statistical sections that makes very little sense to me, because I'm not aware of how you use regression analysis to determine linearity, because linearity is a REQUIREMENT of least-squares regression usually. I have a suspicion that what this means is that they fiddled with the regression equation with different transformations of the predictor variables, until they got the highest R^2 value, but I'm not sure. If that's what they did, then that's also totally inappropriate too, because the highest R^2 value doesn't imply that the relationship is linear either. The reference for two of their statistical methods was the manual for SPSS, which is a statistical analysis package. I'm not saying that this analysis was necessarily inappropriate, and I'm completely willing to concede that it's possible that it's just way over my head, but this is one the most confusing descriptions of statistical methods I've read in a paper, and gut-feeling-wise, is reminiscent of some pretty random stats.]

Results (finally):

Fifty-one subjects were recruited for this study. Thirteen in the placebo group, 12 in the creatine group, 12 in the beta alanine group, and 14 in the combined group. Presumably no one dropped out of the study or was lost to follow-up, but there are no "n's" or sample sizes published in the statistical reporting, and no report on whether there were any drop-outs or losses to follow-up, so it's hard to tell.

Results were reported as means with standard errors.

[Unfortunately, a standard error is not a very useful measure of variance, because it's more a measure of precision (the standard error is derived by dividing the standard deviation by the square root of the sample size--in other words, the standard error is roughly the standard deviation adjusted per person). Equally unfortunately, is the lack of a published sample size in each group, because it's impossible to calculated the standard deviation from the standard error without the sample size, so I really have no good way to tell you much about this data or these results. And I refuse to make the assumption that there were no drop-outs to calculate the standard deviation using the original sample sizes. Why they chose to report the data this way is completely mind-boggling to me, and only re-enforces my notion that there were some pretty random decisions made with respect to the statistical analysis.]

I'm sorely tempted to stop the review here, because telling you the rest of the results can only be done in a pretty tainted kind of way. There's a lot of random reported things in the results section that, again, are either WAY over my head, or just downright inappropriate. There is no good reason why the analysis was as complicated as it was reported to be.

So, taintedly, here are what I think are the important results--and I'll just spare you from the rest of this mess. Keep in mind that reporting these results in this way, goes against every statistical fibre in my body and that in NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM, should you attempt to take these results as strong, or even moderate evidence for anything.

The primary outcome of this study was the PWCft.

The placebo group went from a mean of 215.8 to 211.2 W. Total mean change: -4.6 W

The creatine group went from a mean of 172.5 to 183.8 W. Total mean change: 11.3 W

The beta-alanine group went from a mean of 170 to 198.8 W. Total mean change: 28.8 W

The combined group went from a mean of 190.7 to 214.3 W. Total mean change: 24.4 W

Notice that I did not report the standard errors here. I will just say that given that the standard errors were in the ballpark of between 11 and 23, that the standard deviations would have been HUGE if the sample sizes were anywhere close to the sizes that they were at the start of the trial.

Nonetheless, significant differences were detected between the beta-alanine group and placebo group; and between the combined group and the placebo group. No significant difference was detected (which does NOT mean that there was no difference) between the creatine group and the placebo group; or between the creatine group and the beta-alanine group; or between the creatine and combined group.

Lastly, I think it's worth mentioning that interpreting what a PWCft actually MEANS is very difficult, particularly in the context of comparisons between groups. What is a practically important difference (see my entry of Different Kinds of Important) in PWCft? Is 28.8 W a difference that reflects a PRACTICAL improvement in performance? That's a questions that I'm really at a loss to answer and would also defer to someone more qualified.

The bottom line:

So the bottom line, if we take the data at its face value (which I am VEHEMENTLY opposed to doing, but I know people will, so I may as well interpret it with this caveat of EXTREME CAUTION)--and keep in mind that we're NOT looking at weightlifting trial here, so it all applies to "neuromuscular fatigue" in the context of submaximal cycling.

1) There is some evidence to demonstrate that beta-alanine, with or without creatine, is better than a placebo in decreasing "neuromuscular fatigue".
2) There is no evidence to demonstrate that beta-alanine is better than creatine in decreasing "neuromuscular fatigue".
3) There is no evidence to demonstrate that there is any combined effect to taking beta-alanine and creatine together in decreasing "neuromuscular fatigue".

So, the best case scenario is that I'm a doofus, and that the data can be taken at face value as I've told you above. The real-case scenario is that this study (given the way it was reported) was a dog's breakfast of statistics, and that there were MASSIVE GAPING holes in reporting, such that comprehensive and concise interpretation of the results is impossible; AND there's the additional problem of whether the PWCft is a valid outcome or not and whether the observed changes in PWCft were meaningful or not. Either way, I would say that if you're already taking creatine, then keep doing it because creatine is well studied and its effects are well documented with some pretty good and robust studies out there. And if you're thinking of taking beta-alanine instead of creatine, consider taking creatine instead, because if this study is the reason why you're thinking of beta-alanine, you'd be making an unsupported faith decision. And if you're thinking of taking both, think again, and consider just taking creatine because the best-case scenario indicates that there is no evidence to support taking both.

And if you're considering the real-case scenario, you'd need a better study.

All in all, a very disappointing paper.

[big.poppa.pump]

I hope you guys don't consider this spam. This guy's blog is a really good read and he challenges a lot the studies done on today's trendy new supplements.

[apex23]

It is for STRENGTH as well


According to me!!!! Beta-alanine is a great supplement. It allows me to crank out extra reps too.

I notice the effects of Beta-Alanine pretty quickly.

The BB that I know love it too.

[big.poppa.pump]

According to me!!!! Beta-alanine is a great supplement. It allows me to crank out extra reps too.

I notice the effects of Beta-Alanine pretty quickly.

The BB that I know love it too.

yes, it will help you get more reps in the HIGHER rep ranges. Higher rep ranges use Type 1 muscle fibers which are for endurance. In bodybuilding, you primarily want to hit the type 2a and 2b muscle fibers. These fibers have the most potential for growth. So Beta Alanine can work depending on your fitness goals. The studies that were done on Beta Alanine were primarily done with atheletes who were performing aerobic exercise. In some of the abstracts of the studies, they bridge aerobic exercise to anerobic exercise, but we all know that this does not always transfer over.

[juiceinator3000]

i read your synopses on all the articles and completely agree with you. i put BA in the same category as WMS; essentially useless for bodybuilding goals. i respect your knowledge.

[juiceinator3000]

According to me!!!! Beta-alanine is a great supplement. It allows me to crank out extra reps too.

I notice the effects of Beta-Alanine pretty quickly.

The BB that I know love it too.

are you taking pure beta alanine? or is it a supplement containing other ingredients?

[big.poppa.pump]

i read your synopses on all the articles and completely agree with you. i put BA in the same category as WMS; essentially useless for bodybuilding goals. i respect your knowledge.

Thanks. I try to research all supplements that try to act like they are the next big thing. The sad thing is that the supplements that actually work like beta ecdystrone; 3,3' Diiodo-L-Thyronine or 3,5-Diiodo-L-Thyronine don't get very much publicity. They are included in many products that are on the market, but aren't given the same publicity as a crappy supplement, such as creatine ethyl ester or snake oil.

[big.poppa.pump]

are you taking pure beta alanine? or is it a supplement containing other ingredients?

BA should be stacked with Histidine if you want your carnosine levels raised

[juiceinator3000]

Thanks. I try to research all supplements that try to act like they are the next big thing. The sad thing is that the supplements that actually work like beta ecdystrone; 3,3' Diiodo-L-Thyronine or 3,5-Diiodo-L-Thyronine don't get very much publicity. They are included in many products that are on the market, but aren't given the same publicity as a crappy supplement, such as creatine ethyl ester or snake oil.

effectiveness vs. bulgarian tribulis? also does it affect T/E levels particularly above 6:1?

lmao never even heard of snake oil thank god

[DICE]

beta alanine is great. Works well with creatine and on paper is more effective. I'm not gonna cut and paste a bunch of shit, but u can google it up and read up urself if interested. I use 3.5 grams b4 and 3.5 grams post.it's cheap too, and like many supps it really starts to become more effective after continued use.

[big.poppa.pump]

effectiveness vs. bulgarian tribulis? also does it affect T/E levels particularly above 6:1?

lmao never even heard of snake oil thank god

Its non-steroidal. It increases protein syn up to 20% if dosed right.

If interested, search here

http://www.nutritionalreviews.org/betaecdysterone.htm#How_to_take_beta_ecdysterone

[juiceinator3000]

Its non-steroidal. It increases protein syn up to 20% if dosed right.

If interested, search here

http://www.nutritionalreviews.org/betaecdysterone.htm#How_to_take_beta_ecdysterone

looks legit. at 35$ for 60 doses its certainly affordable.

[big.poppa.pump]

looks legit. at 35$ for 60 doses its certainly affordable.

go to bulknutrition and you can get like 60 servings for $15. It is on back order though, waiting for my second jug in the mail

[juiceinator3000]

go to bulknutrition and you can get like 60 servings for $15. It is on back order though, waiting for my second jug in the mail
who's the manufacturer? it came up with no results in the search

[big.poppa.pump]

who's the manufacturer? it came up with no results in the search

It can be labeled a ton of different names....here is the link:
http://www.bulknutrition.com/?products_id=1690

[juiceinator3000]

thanks i appreciate it

[big.poppa.pump]

No problem dude

[vboissiere]

i read your synopses on all the articles and completely agree with you. i put BA in the same category as WMS; essentially useless for bodybuilding goals. i respect your knowledge.

Even if agree with his findings about the supplement, that doesn't make it useless. What about in the application of high rep and/ or high rep training. Also, what about for the dieting athlete who has to endour cardio?

[Abraxas]

According to me!!!! Beta-alanine is a great supplement. It allows me to crank out extra reps too.

I notice the effects of Beta-Alanine pretty quickly.

The BB that I know love it too.

Placebo effect.
What exactly do you notice anyway?

[big.poppa.pump]

Even if agree with his findings about the supplement, that doesn't make it useless. What about in the application of high rep and/ or high rep training. Also, what about for the dieting athlete who has to endour cardio?

I agree. It is quite effective for type 1 muscle fibers and your higher rep ranges, but to say its a staple supplement for bodybuilding is misleading. A lot of supplements are good for you as long as you apply it right. I wouldn't say its a worthless supplement like glutamine.

[big.poppa.pump]

beta alanine is great. Works well with creatine and on paper is more effective. I'm not gonna cut and paste a bunch of shit, but u can google it up and read up urself if interested. I use 3.5 grams b4 and 3.5 grams post.it's cheap too, and like many supps it really starts to become more effective after continued use.

I respect your opinion but I researched again and have yet to see any studies that show a large improvement that contribute to bodybuilding besides the high rep ranges and for those who do High Intensity Interval cardio

[apex23]

Pure Beta Alanine. I take 3 grams pre-worket and 3 grams post workout.

I am not a fan of proprietary blends.

[apex23]

Placebo effect.
What exactly do you notice anyway?


Read my past post and you will see what I experience. I will tell you that I do notice better training endurance, pumps and possible recovery.

If you have money give it a try and see if it works for you. It really isn't that expensive.