From the hallowed halls of creatine creation a new performance-enhancer this way cometh. It’s simple. It’s natural. Its mechanism is understandable. And it’s research proven to substantially increase power output and anaerobic muscular endurance. In my humble opinion, this may be the next shining star on the sports supplement horizon. And you are the first to know about it..

Well, maybe not the first. The very first would be Roger Harris, Ph.D. While this name probably doesn’t ring a bell for you, it should. This is the dude from over the pond who performed much of the original research on creatine. He is arguably one of the world’s foremost researchers in exercise and supplementation science. He has a passion for figuring out which nutrients can make muscles work more efficiently. He did it once with creatine. Now he’s done it again with his latest baby, called beta-alanine.

Beta-alanine is an amino acid produced naturally in the body and found in foods such as chicken. In and of itself, it is a fairly innocuous little amino acid. But once it’s plugged into the metabolic pathway in your body it produces another biochemical called carnosine. And this is where things get interesting.

Carnosine is a powerful buffering agent. It has the ability to neutralize lactic acid build-up in your muscles, and it accounts for up to 60 percent of your body’s natural lactic acid buffering action. The build-up of lactic acid in muscles is one of the main limiting factors in muscular performance. Therefore, the more carnosine your muscles hold, the longer you’ll be able to delay the accumulation of lactic acid in your muscles during intense exercise, and the longer you’ll be able to exercise at peak levels.

One recent study demonstrated this effect when scientists correlated the bicycle sprint performance of subjects with their naturally-occurring muscle carnosine levels. They found that there is a very strong relationship between the amount of carnosine in the muscle and the ability to perform at peak levels throughout the sprint. Those with high levels of carnosine significantly outpaced their lower-carnosine counterparts in the sprint—especially in the last 10 seconds of a 30-second sprint. This type of reserve power when you really need it is what every athlete looks for.

And it doesn’t take much of beta-alanine to substantially raise your carnosine levels. Research shows that just 3.2 grams of beta-alanine taken over a four-week period can increase muscle carnosine content by up to 42 percent. And that’s enough to make a noticeable difference in the gym.

Now you want to hear something that’s really cool? Beta-alanine may actually help creatine work better in your body. And I’m not just talking about helping to stuff more creatine into your muscle cells. I’m talking about taking the creatine that’s there and making it act more effectively on your muscles.

Creatine only works within a very limited pH range. In other words, if your muscles become too acidic due to lactic acid build-up, creatine simply won’t work like it’s supposed to. So by effectively buffering lactic acid, carnosine (secondary to beta-alanine supplementation) supports optimal creatine effectiveness. Cool, huh?

But, of course, Doc Harris couldn’t just take this on faith. So he tested it. Two groups, one which supplemented with just creatine, and one with creatine plus beta-alanine, sprinted for four minutes on the bicyle ergometer. He found that subjects in the creatine plus beta-alanine group were able to perform twice as much work as those in the "creatine only" group.

It looks like this stuff is the real thing. I don’t think it’s available anywhere on the market yet. But keep your eyes peeled as I’m sure it will show up soon—probably mixed in a creatine product.