Originally Posted by
MoAlpha
I know nothing about beta alanine, other than that it's a non-essential amino acid, meaning our bodies synthesize it, which makes it sound pretty safe.
As far as the literature goes, this is not a high quality research area, due to sparse government funding and the fact that the FDA does not oversee supplement trials. As a result, supplement trials tend to be unsophisticated compared to drug trials and statistically underpowered (small samples), making positive results more likely to be random events. It also means investigators are not required to register trials in advance, making it easy to "desk drawer" negative results. All that said, rigorously performed meta-analyses are your best bet and a quick look at Pubmed found one one the first page. Bottom line was, it worked.
Too bad you didn't feel comfortable giving a link. A 2008 study of geezers showed up on my screen today:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18992136/
I've been taking a single dose of 2g daily for many years. I haven't done a scientific trial on myself, so I can't say if there's been a quantifiable benefit, but it looks like there should be, especially for older riders and particularly older vegetarian riders. It does seem that I haven't gotten as much slower as I should have over the decades.
2g did make me tingly for the first few months but not anymore. I buy the powder from Bulksupplements. I never use any of those branded compound supplements, only single ingredient stuff.