As you already know from the article about l-carnitine, this miracle supplement has a ton of benefits. According to the manufacturers, you simply cannot live without l-carnitine, it helps in everything from weight loss to heart and reproductive system health. However, all positive effects can be controversial. First, let’s figure out how l-carnitine works.
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Lie №1 – L-carnitine has a fat burning effect
L-carnitine refers to lipotropic fat burners. Lipotropics are fat burners aimed at accelerating the process of lipolysis (the breakdown of fat into individual fatty acids). That is, by itself, l-carnitine cannot start the process of fat burning, it can only slightly help it. By the way, there is a separate article about how to start the fat burning process, I highly recommend you to read it.
So, when the process of fat burning is already running, fat begins to break down into fatty acids. Then, with the help of l-carnitine (levocarnitine), these fatty acids are delivered to muscle cells, or to be more precise, to mitochondria, where they are subsequently burned. In fact, l-carnitine performs only a transport function in the entire fat burning process. In addition, carnitine accumulates in the kidneys. People who follow a balanced diet, with a high content of protein food in the diet, do not need additional intake of l-carnitine (for fat burning purposes). Such a need is only for people who do not get enough l-carnitine with food, for example, vegetarians.
Also, there are often situations when overweight women buy a desired jar of l-carnitine, take it for a month and as a result do not get anything from it, even losing a single kilogram during this month. If you have not lost even a kilogram in a month, then the process of fat burning in the body has not been started at all. No l-carnitines will help you with this. First of all, you must fix your diet.
Lie №2 – L-carnitine increases performance during workout and accelerates recovery after
Many athletes use l-carnitine to increase the performance of their workouts, as well as speed up recovery after them. However, many years of research (dated 1998, 2000, 2004 years) of this drug do not find evidence for these effects.
Lie №3 – L-carnitine protects the cardiovascular system, improves its functioning and slows down aging
There have also been many studies on these effects. Talking about aging, the studies (dated 2002 year) were carried out only on elderly rats. Currently, there are no such studies in humans.
Regarding studies (dated 2004, 2013 years) of the effect of l-carnitine on the cardiovascular system, I can say that it really improves its functioning. But only for people with heart failure or people who have had a myocardial infarction. For healthy people, additional intake of l-carnitine does not lead to any of the above positive effects.
Therefore, after listening to or seeing enough advertising, think twice, is it worth spending money on this useless supplement?
