Reclaim Your Fountain of Youth – With Carnosine

Remember being invincible at 16? You didn’t have a care in the world, you could party till 5.00 am, you never got ill, you had boundless energy and stress was a word your parent’s talked about.

What happened?  It is really very straight forward, you lost power. Which essentially means the body is forced to make some choices as to what systems take priority i.e. heart rate and respiration. The non essential life systems start to get passed by, and over time, can start to break down. We may start to notice we feel tired, our body no longer works at it’s optimum and we have lost that indestructible essence.

Now it is time to take back our power, and thanks to science we can now reclaim our body’s potential to regenerate, heal, and have the ability to feel free of pain and illness.

The magic ingredient is "carnosine".  At 16 we have more of it in our body than we will ever have again and it slowly starts to drop off as we get older.  Why is this important? Well it supports our mitochondria, which is part of every cell in our body that helps to create the power that we then turn into energy to run every resource in the body.

The Many Wonders of Carnosine:

Carnosine is a natural dipeptide produced in our body and made up of two amino acids beta-alanine and histidine. These break down bigger molecules into smaller parts so they can more easily enter a cell.

Carnosine is also a neuropeptide, which means it can influence the central nervous system.  The highest concentrations in our body can be found in the skeletal muscles, brain tissues and the heart muscle.

Some carnosine can be obtained through our food, meat being the main source.   However, we can only really absorb about 10% from food and this is generally via the small intestine, which is not enough to sustain us.  Research has shown that carnosine is vital for cell function.  It supports the physiochemical buffering in the skeletal muscles.  We all know if we stay too acidic over a long period of time, dipeptidases can lead to illnesses such as cancer.

Many years ago the scientist Severin [1] discovered the accumulation of lactic acid in our muscles responsible for making us sore, is actually regulated by carnosine. Supplementing with carnosine enables muscles to recover very quickly and gives them the ability to continue to work as if they were never exhausted. Carnosine positively affects the pH balance contributing to better endurance and muscle strength, whilst keeping the pH in the muscles neutral. This process of the rapid recovery of muscles aided by carnosine is known as “Severin’s phenomenon.”

A lack of carnosine can have a huge negative impact upon the mechanisms of the central nervous system. Doctors are now prescribing it to patients who suffer from cardiac ischemia (in simple terms they have decreased blood flow and oxygen to the heart muscle). Most medical authorities just prescribe beta blockers for these issues.

What Else Does Carnosine Do?

• We know from Severin’s research it restores the contractibility of fatigued muscles
• It helps regulate our ph balance
• It helps detoxify the body of metals
• It is a very strong anti-oxidant
• It helps inhibit glycation
• It helps inhibit carbonylation

Both glycation and carbonylation are related to oxidative stress

Carnosine helps to remove Aldehydes which are organic compounds [2] formed from the oxidation of alcohols such as Formaldehyde, Acetaldehyde Methanol. Carnosine contributes to the normal healthy function of these molecules and helps prevent their modification due to toxicity.

Carnosine powerfully supports neurotransmitter communication.  [3]  Neurotransmitters act as messengers in the central nervous system. They send information from the brain to the nerves. Carnosine can reduce the effects of pro-inflammatory cytokines in the body, which is important for those suffering with cancer. Inflammatory cytokines are harmful products which can be difficult to eliminate from the body, and can exacerbate disease.

Carnosine is a very powerful anti-oxidant, protecting and stabilising the cell membrane. It is a hydrosoluble molecule, meaning it is soluble in water. In this way carnosine can protect against harmful substances such as cytokines and aldehydes from attaching to the cell’s membrane and damaging it. If the cell were not protected in this way, harmful substances could easily enter the cell and damage it further creating a real risk of disease.

Free radicals produce oxidative stress, and carnosine can help prevent this by mixing with the reactive oxygen species. Not only does carnosine prevent the action of the free radicals, it can also thwart their harmful affects once they have been created. Malondialdehyde is a harmful marker of oxidative stress, it also causes cell destruction. Carnosine can attach to this compound and help to eliminate it from the body.

Carnosine can also prevent peroxidiation especially pertaining to lipids.  Lipid peroxidation is a chain reaction, which is created by free radicals influencing unsaturated fatty acids in cell membranes, leading to their damage.  The outcome from this, is the formation of aldehydes as mentioned before which, once again, the carnosine can protect us from.

Carnosine can help protect us from Glycation. Glycation is a chemical reaction between glucose and protein molecules that cause the body to age.  These become waste products in the body and have a large part to play in the way we age. Advanced glycation end products (AGEs), also known as glycotoxins, are harmful compounds that are formed when protein or fat combine with sugar in the bloodstream. Foods that have been exposed to high temperatures, such as in grilling, frying or toasting, tend to be very high in these compounds. AGE’s eventually cause degeneration of the blood vessels which then can lead to the degeneration of all of our organs.  Carnosine, prevents glycation by bonding to a molecule like AGE’s or a free radical and removing the glycated proteins from the cells.

Carnosine has a Neural Function:

Diseases of the blood vessels like stroke, haemorrhaging, dementia, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s can all be supported by carnosine because of its ability to help with glycation and carbonylation. The carnosine stops the process of protein destruction. In fact, it repairs protein structures and so helps prevent further disease states.

Take Alzheimers for instance. Amyloid plaques form in the brain. These plaques are dense, insoluble deposits of beta-amyloid peptide and cellular material outside and around neutrons. Neurofibrillary tangles can also affect the brain cells. Carnosine can attach to these and break them down, thus preventing further cell damage. [4]

Carnosine is found in the heart muscle [5] and studies show that when carnosine is taken regularly it can increase myocardial contractility. 

Carnosine has four main benefits for heart health:

• It can  increase the power of the heart muscle
• It can help regulate blood pressure. Baroreceptors in our body detect changed in the volume and pressure of the blood returning to the heart. There are important baroreceptors in the aorta. When they detect an increase in blood pressure, they relay the information to the brain. In turn the centre of the brain sends signals to the blood vessels to contract or stretch so that the appropriate blood pressure can be maintained. Carnosine being a neurotransmitter, can therefore improve the communication between the baroreceptors and the brain giving a stabilising effect on the blood pressure
• Carnosine can also protect against a lack of oxygen flow, which occurs after someone has suffered a heart attack or a case of angina caused when circulation in the coronary arteries is poor or obstructed
• Carnosine also lowers the level of leptin. This is a hormone, controlled by the brain, and it informs you when you are satiated. This can have a big impact on weight control

As you can see from the above, a life with a lack of carnosine impacts on our well being in a very big way.

However not all carnosines are the same. The average carnosine you buy over the counter is in and out of your body in 1.5 – 2 hours as it is degraded by an enzyme in the blood called carnosinase. Hence it has very little opportunity to achieve all the wonderful things it is capable of doing. Thanks to the brilliance of scientists today they have been able to come up with a formula that stays in the body for up to 12 hours.  Giving the body the potential to regenerate at a level that their years of age would not normally allow. This highly potentised formula means that if the average person takes 3 capsules twice a day and this can encourage their mitochondria to work at it’s optimum.

How do you get access to this formula? Make an appointment with a Mitochondrial Rescue Practitioner and have a Heart Rate Variability Test done. They check how your autonomic nervous system is working, how much power do you have and then these remarkable protocols may be given to you.

For more information or to make an appointment please go to:  www.mitochondrialrescue.com or www.liliasahmeira.com

Sources:  Dr Abraham Goran

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3257613/

[2] onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jms.381/abstract

[3] https://nootropicsexpert.com/l-carnosine/

[4] www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/10/2/147/html

[5] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0138707