People are gobbling down l-carnitine like there’s no tomorrow. But is it safe? Is it a good idea to take l-carnitine?
I believe it is safe, but I believe that you may not want to take any l-carnitine once you understand what’s in this newsletter.
L-carnitine is an amino acid naturally found in proteins. The body can make l-carnitine, but you can also take extra supplemental l-carnitine.
What effect does supplementing l-carnitine have?
A lot of people are supplementing with l-carnitine today, including bodybuilders, weightlifters, and just regular people especially people trying to avoid dementia or trying to sharpen up their brains.
When you supplement l-carnitine, you’re getting the free amino acid. This is not the same as getting the amino acid bound up in food.
Free amino acids have very powerful actions
Also with a supplement, you can begin to take impurities that you’re unaware of.
The l-carnitine that you get is generally made in China with very little manufacturing oversight.
The manufacturer of the “raws” must send it to the manufacturer whose name is on the bottle or bag. Hopefully, you trust them to test the product for lead, arsenic, purity, etc.
When you just get l-carnitine in food, it is probably safe, or, at least, as safe as your food.
So this study actually looks at an action of l-carnitine that most people are not aware of.
L-carnitine lowers your thyroid activity
The study looked at the effects of supplemental l-carnitine clearly found that l-carnitine suppresses thyroid activity.
Is there a difference between l-carnitine and acetyl l-carnitine?
This is the molecule for l-carnitine, and the molecule for acetyl l-carnitine:
You can see that there’s not much of a difference looking at the chemical diagram.
They are almost the same, in fact in the body acetyl l-carnitine is turned into l-carnitine, and l-carnitine can be turned into acetyl l-carnitine.
So what applies to one applies to the other– they are both anti-thyroid
If you take 2g or so per day, your thyroid function will diminish.
Since many if not most people now especially older people are low in thyroid, l-carnitine is not a very good supplement to take.
This illustrates the dangers of supplementing
When you take one thing, it can throw something else off.
In the case of l-carnitine, it throws off your thyroid and lowers your overall metabolism.
There may still be reasons to take l-carnitine, but I wouldn’t gobble it up or try it at all, except in very specific cases.
If you’re already high in thyroid activity
If you’re very high in thyroid, you may want to try l-carnitine.
People whose morning wakeup temperatures are 99 Fahrenheit or 37.8+ Celsius may find that they benefit from l-carnitine’s antithyroid behavior.
These folks are probably a bit high in thyroid function and the easiest way to suppress the thyroid is to take l-carnitine.
Citations
http://press.endocrine.org/doi/full/10.1210/jcem.86.8.7747
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