L-Carnitine Review: Is it Good for Weight Loss?

What is L-Carnitine?

Weight loss supplements require all sorts of different ingredients to help you lose weight. While some contain whatever the trendiest super fruit happens to be, others attempt to influence your weight loss on a more cellular level, including naturally occurring compounds to help improve the way your body gains, maintains and loses weight. One naturally occurring compound that is commonly found in weight loss supplements is known as L-Carnitine. Responsible for assisting the transportation of fatty acids through your body, L-Carnitine may be capable of providing you with the extra energy you need to help you work out, lose weight and get in shape.

L-Carnitine definitely sounds like it could play a beneficial role in weight loss, but what kind of weight loss effects can an ingredient like this really have? Unfortunately, L-Carnitine may not possess the weight loss benefits that many used to believe, so let’s take a closer look at this ingredient and see what we can learn.

Who makes it?

L-Carnitine is used as an ingredient in a wide variety of weight loss and health products, developed and manufactured by various pharmaceutical corporations and supplement companies. Many of these companies sell L-Carnitine as a standalone product as well, if you’re interested in the ingredient by itself and don’t want to worry about any other ingredients.

How (and) does it work?

Even though it’s commonly included in weight loss supplements, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of a scientific explanation for how L-Carnitine may actually help you lose weight. Considering the fact that L-Carnitine assists in the delivery of fatty acids to the mitochondria in your cells, we can assume that the intended effect of increasing the L-Carnitine in your body is to improve this process, which would in turn result in more energy to improve your physical performance as you work out to lose weight and get in shape.

While weight loss supplement companies may want you to believe that L-Carnitine could possibly hold the answers to your weight loss prayers, health and medical experts actually disagree. Both the National Institutes of Health and the Institute of Medicine claim that the only amount of L-Carnitine appropriate for your system is the amount actually produced by your body. Excess amounts of the compound can even actually lead to dangerous results, such as a build-up of intestinal plaque that could result in such deadly complications as heart disease.

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Are there any side effects?

Typical side effects of L-Carnitine include minor side effects such as nausea, irritable bowel symptoms, headaches and cramps. However, users of L-Carnitine-based products have more to worry about than simple side effects such as this. When you ingest L-Carnitine, friendly bacteria in your stomach uses it to produce Trimethylamine N-oxide, which can accumulate as intestinal plaque and clog up your arteries, resulting in atherosclerosis (artery hardening) and even heart disease.

What’s good about it?

L-Carnitine and products containing the ingredient can be easily located and conveniently purchased from most supplement suppliers and online marketplaces.

What’s bad about it?

It would seem that health and medical professionals actually discourage the use of L-Carnitine, as the presence of excess L-Carnitine can result in a build-up of intestinal plaque that may potentially lead to atherosclerosis and heart disease.

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Wrap up

L-Carnitine is a naturally occurring compound commonly utilized as an ingredient in a variety of weight loss supplements. Responsible for assisting in the transportation of fatty acids in your body, the intended effect of L-Carnitine seems to be to provide you with extra energy to help you work out and lose weight. Unfortunately, health and medical experts warn against the use of L-Carnitine substances, claiming that the presence of excess L-Carnitine in the human body can lead to the build-up of intestinal plaque, atherosclerosis and heart disease.

Bottom line

Whether or not you should be taking L-Carnitine seems to come down to whether you believe respected health and medical experts and institutions or weight loss companies that are trying to convince you to buy their products. It really isn’t hard to see which of these two parties you should believe, but even if L-Carnitine didn’t run the risk of clogging up your arteries, it seems unlikely that simply using a supplement with this ingredient would be enough to result in significant weight loss. You’d probably at least be required to start eating a healthy diet, or incorporate regular exercise into your lifestyle’s routine. If you’re looking for a safe and effective weight loss supplement that won’t require you to change your life, L-Carnitine-based supplements are probably not the answer.

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