Investigate peer-reviewed scientific studies
about any sport supplement you plan on
taking. © Imagery Majestic - Fotolia.com
Every couple of months the marketing mongers (especially the ones who advertise in the sidebars of your favorite web sites – ehem!) seem to stumble upon a new endurance "miracle" supplement that will make you faster, younger, thinner, stronger, and probably richer and irresistible to the opposite sex as well. Alpha lipoic acid (ALA) and acetyl L-carnetine (ALC) may be two of those supplements, if they survive leap from lab rats and racehorses to human testing.
Andrew Hamilton BSc, MRSC, editor of the Peak Performance newsletter, chemist, fitness consultant, and science writer is willing to "jump the scientific gun" as he puts it. Hamilton has published a reference-heavy article about alpha lipoic acid (ALA) and acetyl L-carnetine (ALC) on Peak Performance's web site (a sports publication which repeatedly touts its non-biased and science-based advice) and in their book Nutritional Supplements for Athletes. Hamilton goes so far as to use the term "elixir of life" to describe the combination of these two supplements, a term that smacks of snake oil scams. If you are the kind who is intrigued by fringe nutritional trends, then read on. If not, sit back and wait for alpha lipoic acid (ALA) and acetyl L-carnetine (ALC) to turn up in your sidebar and the primetime news before making your decision.
What the rats tell us
In 1999 some scientists at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute started feeding rats a combination of ALC and ALA to test a theory that free radical damage causes mitochondrial decline with age. What they found made their piers sit at attention when they published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2002. The old, fat, lazy rats that they fed the ALC/ALA cocktail had more energy, performed better on memory tests, and had higher functioning mitochondria than the control group. In other words, these old farts' aging process was reversed to the levels of rats half their age. "The old rats became so full of energy, they got up and did the Macarena," said the professor overseeing the study.
First, a note about free radicals and mitochondria
When we breathe, oxygen is delivered to the mitochondria to help with energy metabolism. As you might remember from high school biology class, the mitochondria are the "powerhouses of the cell," creating the energy currency of the cells: ATP. In the process of breaking down oxygen to produce energy, sometimes electrons–free radicals–escape and run amok in the body (a process called "oxidative stress"). Over time, as free radicals build up, they do irreversible damage to the cells. This damage is responsible for many of the phenomena which we associate with the "aging process." Antioxidants are like the police, responsible for cleaning up the neighborhood by going through your body and rounding up the vandalizing free radicals and throwing them out of town. The mitochondria, which are ground zero for free radical explosions, suffer especially from free radical damage; or so the Mitochondrial Decline Theory goes. As you age, free radical damage causes the number and efficiency of your mitochondria to drop, meaning less ATP, meaning less energy. Since athletes have elevated oxygen consumption levels (we breathe more), they suffer more oxidative stress from free radicals.
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