Alpha Lipoic Acid

What Is Alpha Lipoic Acid?

An eight-carbon fatty acid with an unusual tail: two sulfur atoms closed into a five-membered ring. That ring is the whole point of the molecule. The body makes small amounts in its own mitochondria, and traces turn up in spinach and organ meats. There is 250 mg per serving.

How It Works in the Body

Most lipoic acid in the body is not floating free. It is bonded to a lysine side chain on the enzyme it serves, where it is called lipoamide. In that form it sits on the core of the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex and the glycine cleavage system. Its job is to swing between two states: the closed ring with its sulfur-sulfur bond, and the open dithiol known as dihydrolipoic acid. Each swing moves an acyl group one way and reducing equivalents the other.

What It Supports

• Energy metabolism: Pyruvate dehydrogenase cannot run without lipoamide, and that complex is the gate between glycolysis and the citric acid cycle.
• Carbohydrate handling: Supports glucose metabolism already in the normal range, since lipoamide serves the pyruvate step where carbohydrate fuel enters the mitochondria.
• Both compartments: The ring end is fat-friendly and the acid end water-friendly, so the molecule moves through oily and watery surroundings.
• Redox partners: In its dithiol form it helps maintain vitamin C and glutathione in their reduced forms.

Who It May Suit

People who want one ingredient rather than an antioxidant blend, and anyone already taking B vitamins who wants the rest of the mitochondrial cofactor set. The capsule is hypromellose and the filler rice flour, so it fits a vegan diet.

Good To Know

Supplemental alpha lipoic acid is normally a mix of R and S forms, though the body builds only the R form into its enzymes. Talk with your provider before use if you take medication for diabetes or thyroid hormone, since alpha lipoic acid can affect blood sugar and has been reported to interact with thyroid medicine.