Introducing Beta Alanine & Kre-Alkalyn

Per Eric’s advice, I started two new supplements, Beta Alanine & Kre-Alkalyn, on Tuesday.

Here is some additional info on Beta Alanine from WebMD:

• Beta-alanine is a non-essential amino acid. Non-essential amino acids can be made by the body, so they don’t have to be provided by food. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins.
• Beta-alanine is used for improving athletic performance and exercise capacity, and building lean muscle mass.
• How does it work?
• Beta-alanine is an amino acid. In the body it is converted to other chemicals that can affect muscle.

Kre-Alkalyn is basically Creatine with a pH buffer that allows it to work more efficiently than regular Creatine when it enters the body. According to a Kre-Alkalyn site:

• Ordinary Creatine supplements, with low pH level (below 6.9), allows for the almost immediate conversion of Creatine into Creatinine. This is why you have to "load" on traditional Creatines: your body is only able to absorb a small fraction of the total Creatine you are ingesting. In order to reach any appreciable level of Creatine in the blood and muscle, you have to take high amounts over long periods of time.

In other words, I don’t have to take 8 pills per day to receive a small amount of Creatine. I only have to take one or two pills.

What is Creatine, you ask? Well, according to WebMD:

• Creatine is a natural substance that turns into creatine phosphate in the body. Creatine phosphate helps make a substance called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). ATP provides the energy for muscle contractions.
• The body produces some of the creatine it uses. It also comes from protein-rich foods such as meat or fish.

Finally, according to Muscle & Strength.com:

• The effectiveness of creatine supplementation is well known. Creatine increases lean muscle mass, boosts strength, and provides you with more energy during intense workouts. Combine the effectiveness of creatine with the fact that it has no side effects, and you have a recipe for a best-selling supplement. It can’t get any better then this, right? Wrong. New research is revealing a synergistic, beneficial relationship between creatine and the popular bodybuilding supplement beta-alanine. The combination of creatine and beta-alanine just may be the best kept secret. This stack yields muscle gains, and improved strength and endurance.

The wildest thing about taking the Beta Alanine, is that within about 20 minutes, a tingling “pins and needles” sensation pulsates over different parts of the body. It’s not very intense, and it doesn’t last very long, but it is definitely a trip. In the medical arena, I guess it’s called “paraesthesia”

A pic of the two bottles of the brands I bought:

UPDATED on 08/29/2013:  It seems as though there is a fair amount of traffic directed to this particular entry about Kre-Alkalyn and Beta-Alanine, so I figured that I would update this post with a link to another entry that has even more information, reviews, and follow-ups about this stack. Kre-Alkalyn / Beta-Alanine / Optygen