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Beta-alanine

Supplement amino acid fitness
Aka: beta alanine, β-alanine
Brands seen in Singapore: Myprotein, NOW Foods
Not medical advice. Check with your doctor or pharmacist before you start, stop or change the timing of anything you take.
How to use
What it’s for
Hard efforts of 1–4 min · buffers acid build-up in muscle
When to take
Divided doses through the day
Take with
Meals · more carnosine gained when taken with food
Studied for
2–4 weeks of loading matter
Pros & cons
Pros
  • Studies use 4–6 g a day for at least 2–4 weeks
  • Effects most pronounced in all-out efforts of 1–4 min
  • Appears safe at 1.6–6.4 g a day for up to 8 weeks
Cons
  • Tingling (paresthesia) from single doses of 800 mg+
  • No clear gain under 60 s · endurance data mixed
  • No safety data past 1 year · experts split on value
Sources
  1. NIH ODS — Dietary Supplements for Exercise and Athletic Performance (Health Professional), beta-alanine section · read 2026-08-27
    what it says
    “beta-alanine supplements (4–6 g/day consumed for at least 2–4 weeks) can improve high-intensity exercise performance that lasts more than 60 seconds … Beta-alanine supplementation appears to be safe at 1.6–6.4 g/day for up to 8 weeks … consuming a conventional dose of beta-alanine of at least 800 mg or exceeding 10 mg/kg body mass can provoke moderate to severe paresthesia … There are no safety data on use of the supplement for more than 1 year … There is insufficient expert consensus on the value of taking beta-alanine … It advises users to take beta-alanine supplements with meals to augment muscle carnosine levels”
  2. ISSN position stand: beta-alanine (Trexler et al., JISSN 2015) · read 2026-08-27
    what it says
    “Four weeks of beta-alanine supplementation (4–6 g daily) significantly augments muscle carnosine concentrations, thereby acting as an intracellular pH buffer … Beta-alanine supplementation currently appears to be safe in healthy populations at recommended doses … The only reported side effect is paraesthesia (tingling), but studies indicate this can be attenuated by using divided lower doses (1.6 g) or using a sustained-release formula … more pronounced effects in open end-point tasks/time trials lasting 1 to 4 min in duration … a chronic loading dose of 4 to 6 g daily in divided doses of 2 g or less, for a minimum of two weeks … Combining beta-alanine consumption with a meal during beta-alanine loading has also been shown to be effective for further augmenting muscle carnosine levels … Currently, there is no safety data on the long-term use of beta-alanine (i.e., > 1 year) … the body of literature suggests a modest additive effect when adding SB to beta-alanine supplementation … Individual responses to SB supplementation may vary, likely due to side effects including headache and gastrointestinal discomfort … Only creatine + beta-alanine improved body composition and weekly training volume for squat and bench press, but differences were not significantly greater than creatine alone … males of Asian descent may experience a reduced effect, with Asian females experiencing greater paraesthesia”
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Updated 2026-08-29. Every line above traces to a numbered source. Kozen-X is not a medical device and does not give medical advice. It lists what published sources have written down — nothing more. A pair not listed is unrecorded, not cleared. Before you start, stop or re-time anything, talk to your doctor or pharmacist.