Carnitine

What Is Carnitine?

Carnitine is a small molecule the body assembles from two amino acids, lysine and methionine, with vitamin C and iron doing part of the work. Most of what people eat comes from red meat. This is Carnipure L-carnitine, carried as the tartrate salt, at 500 mg per serving.

How It Works in the Body

Fat is burned inside mitochondria, the compartments that make cellular energy. Long-chain fatty acids cannot cross the inner mitochondrial membrane on their own. Carnitine is the ferry that takes them over.

It latches onto a fatty acid outside, carries it across, lets go inside, then comes back for the next one. Biochemists call that loop the carnitine shuttle. Without it, long-chain fat simply cannot be used as fuel.

What It Supports

• Fat metabolism: Long-chain fatty acids need carnitine to reach the mitochondria, so it plays a role in normal fat metabolism.
• Energy metabolism: The same shuttle feeds the pathway that turns fat into cellular energy, so carnitine contributes to normal energy metabolism.
• Muscle and heart tissue: Skeletal muscle and the heart hold most of the body's carnitine, and both lean heavily on fat for fuel.
• Training routines: The tartrate is the form sports nutrition has settled on, and it is the form here.

Who It May Suit

Carnitine is concentrated in red meat, so vegetarians and vegans take in very little and rely on what they make themselves. It also suits people who train hard and want to cover the amino acid side of fuel handling. The capsule is plant-based.

Good To Know

This is plain L-carnitine, not the acetyl form. Acetyl-L-Carnitine carries an extra acetyl group, which changes where the molecule travels and hands the body an acetyl unit it can burn. Talk with your healthcare provider before use if you take thyroid medication or a blood thinner, or if you have kidney disease, since carnitine and its byproducts leave through the kidneys.