CA-AKG benefits
Health Benefits of CA-AKG
What is CA-AKG?
CA-AKG, or Calcium Alpha-ketoglutarate, is a compound derived from the standard AKG that is a vital component of a diet geared towards ageing healthily. AKG itself is found naturally in the body, and CA-AKG is a calcium salt that has been specifically created to maximise the beneficial properties of alpha-ketoglutarate itself through enhancing AKG’s absorption and stability1. The most common things we find ourselves worrying about as we age, such as our cognitive function, or muscle and bone health, and our decreasing energy levels, benefit from taking a regular dose of CA-AKG. One of the ways in which it’s able to do this is through its role in the Krebs cycle (also called the citric acid cycle): a metabolic cycle that takes place on a cellular level within the mitochondria and is vital to the energy levels of our cells2.
To find out how else CA-AKG can benefit your journey towards a healthier lifestyle, read more below.
CA-AKG’s effect on longevity and biological age
CA-AKG has the potential to increase your lifespan because of its anti-inflammatory properties and the boost it’s shown to give your body’s autophagy process. Autophagy is your body’s cellular recycling system: it’s a degradation process where cells are able to recover damaged cellular components and recycle them to generate more energy. Autophagy is a process that naturally occurs in our body, but its efficiency decreases as we age. CA-AKG can continue to facilitate this process to help it run more smoothly as we get older, allowing our cells to continue generating energy and remain healthy for a longer time3.
Additionally, CA-AKG’s anti-inflammatory effects are vital in increasing your longevity. While inflammation is a natural bodily response and not inherently harmful, chronic inflammation is detrimental to our health. It’s one of the biggest contributors to a number of age-related diseases, which decrease our overall lifespan. Through fighting inflammation in your body, CA-AKG lowers the damage done to your cells and lowers your risk of developing illnesses in old age4.
All of this combined makes CA-AKG an incredibly useful supplement to help lower your biological age. Your biological age, determined by the condition of your cell function and epigenetic factors, doesn’t necessarily reflect your age as determined by your date of birth. Lowering your biological age through a healthy lifestyle and compounds that help you manage your health better, is vital if you want to live a longer and healthier life.
How CA-AKG affects your muscle and bone health
AKG, of which CA-AKG is an improved variety, has been commonly used as a sports supplement for athletes’ muscle growth and recovery. CA-AKG inhibits the breakdown of proteins, preventing the breakdown of muscular protein, which makes your muscles stronger and more resilient. CA-AKG also reduces muscle fatigue, which it achieves by lowering the build-up of lactic acid in your muscles during intense exercise5. If you’re looking for a way to remain active but feel your muscles declining, CA-AKG might just be the perfect solution for your problem!
In addition to improving your muscle function, CA-AKG also helps you stay active and mobile by improving your bone health. CA-AKG slows down bone breakdown and loss, giving your bones a stronger protection against age-related damage6. CA-AKG is a calcium salt, and it helps your body to absorb more calcium too; this increases absorption of calcium improves your bone density, which makes your bones stronger and fights off the brittleness and proneness to bone fractures we associate with old age.
CA-AKG increases your energy levels
As mentioned before, CA-AKG is very important to the Krebs cycle, a cycle in our cells’ mitochondria which is responsible for our cells’ energy levels. How it actually works is quite interesting: because CA-AKG is an improved form of AKG, it also gives our body an increased amount of the AKG it normally produces. AKG is used in our bodies as fuel for the mitochondria, very commonly known as the powerhouses of cells, and by increasing the amount of it in our bodies we can increase the productivity in our cells7. By increasing these cellular energy levels and our AKG levels at the same time, we give a boost to our cells’ ability to convert cellular energy into ATP (adenosine triphosphate). ATP increases our general energy levels and fuels cellular processes such as our muscle contraction and nerve impulses.
If all of that sounds a little complicated, it comes down to this: the increase of CA-AKG allows our body to transform that CA-AKG into necessary compounds like AKG and ATP which gives both your cells and everything your cells fuel more energy than before. You will feel yourself become more energetic and less fatigued than before, thanks to CA-AKG.
CA-AKG’s antioxidant properties and your cognitive function
The previously mentioned increase of ATP as a result of adding more CA-AKG and therefore AKG into the all-important Krebs cycle, also works to support your brain the same way it does your body. It gives your brain a constant and effective source of energy, allowing it to be more alert, focused, and function overall better than before. On a similar level, CA-AKG supports glucose metabolism, which more effectively converts glucose into energy and increases the production of ATP, once again giving your brain more of the energy it needs to function efficiently and preventing mental fatigue.
Additionally, CA-AKG has strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, both of which protect your brain from damage and old age8. Oxidative stress, caused by a lack of balance between free radicals and antioxidants that lets free radicals wreak havoc against your cells, as well as chronic inflammation, can do incredible damage to your brain. They’re a leading cause of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. By fighting off oxidative stress and inflammation, CA-AKG protects your brain from long-term damage. This also helps to protect your brain from neurological damage sometimes associated with old age, like a lack of focus or increasing forgetfulness.
CA-AKG doesn’t only prevent your brain from sustaining damage! It also actively works to increase your brain’s function beyond its standard ability. CA-AKG helps to balance neurotransmitters like GABA (Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid) and glutamate9. CA-AKG helps your brain to regulate the balance between these neurotransmitters10, which helps them regulate your mood, but also supports your brain’s cognitive functions such as memory and your ability to learn new things.
CA-AKG boosts your heart health
Part of what helps CA-AKG give a wonderful boost to your heart health is through its previously explained antioxidant properties and how CA-AKG affects the Krebs cycle. Oxidative stress can do a lot of damage to your heart and the rest of your cardiovascular system, and CA-AKG’s effective way of reducing the amount of oxidative damage your heart takes can ease the strain it would otherwise put on your heart. Similarly, the Krebs cycle is vital to a healthy heart because of its delivery of energy to your cells and how it aids your body in balancing antioxidants and radicals. If the Krebs cycle stops being as effective, it can lead to ischemic heart disease or heart failure because of the lack of energy your heart receives to function properly11. CA-AKG is of great use to the Krebs cycle, making its metabolism of proteins and energy on a cellular level more effective, and therefore providing better protection against heart failure and other heart health issues.
Additionally, CA-AKG has been studied for its positive effects on blood vessel elasticity12. Your blood vessel elasticity is what allows your veins and arteries to expand and contract based on changes in your blood pressure. Proper blood vessel elasticity is what you need to maintain a healthy blood flow from and towards your heart as well as reduce your heart’s overall workload, lowering your risk of heart attacks and strokes. Oxidative stress, inflammation, but importantly also a lack of calcium, can have a poor effect on your blood vessel elasticity. CA-AKG benefits all three of these factors, giving your heart a better fighting chance.
CA-AKG’s safe dosage and potential side-effects
Doses of CA-AKG supplements range from 300 to 1000 mg a day, with some studies using doses of 1 or 2 grams (1000 to 2000 mg) a day during research periods. The recommended and most commonly used daily dose for regular use is 300 to 500 mg. It’s recommended that you take the supplement around the same time every day to ensure consistent levels in your bloodstream; an easy way to do this is to take it with any other medication you might be on, or to take it with the same meal every day.
CA-AKG is considered a generally safe supplement to take, as it’s derived from a compound naturally found in your body. There’s a potential for nausea, stomach cramps, or other gastrointestinal issues as side effects when you start taking CA-AKG, but these are usually mild symptoms. These side effects can potentially be avoided by taking the CA-AKG supplements alongside a meal instead of on an empty stomach, though if you’re not experiencing any problems it is safe to take them without food, too.
As with any form of medication or supplement, it’s important to talk to your healthcare provider (such as a GP or your pharmacist) about incorporating a new supplement into your diet. It’s also important to keep in mind that CA-AKG should not be taken to replace a healthy diet or an active lifestyle; ideally, it should be combined with a healthy and varied diet to help support your efforts to live healthier.
Conclusion: CA-AKG for improved muscle, bone, and heart function
As we get older, we’ll run into a growing number of activities that were once easy to accomplish and are now increasingly less so. We tire more easily, our muscles and bones don’t function the way we expect them to anymore, or our heart doesn’t hold up the way it once did. Thankfully, CA-AKG can alleviate a lot of these symptoms of old age. It provides your body with a much-appreciated boost in energy levels, to your cells and to everything those cells run inside your body; it improves your heart health and your muscle function, it strengthens your bones and protects your brain from cognitive decline, and it does all this while continuing to balance the important antioxidants in your body.
If you’re looking for a supplement to help you age while maintaining a healthy and active lifestyle without exhaustion or fatigued muscles holding you back, CA-AKG might just be the right solution for you.
If you have any questions about CA-AKG, contact your own healthcare provider, or ask your questions directly to boinca.
References
1, 2: “Calcium Salt: Scientific Evidence.” Health News, https://healthnews.com/longevity/longevity-supplements/calcium-salt-scientific-evidence/.
3, 4: Sandalova, E., Goh, J., Lim, Z.X. et al. “Alpha-ketoglutarate supplementation and BiologicaL agE in middle-aged adults (ABLE)—intervention study protocol.” GeroScience 45, 2897–2907 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-023-00813-6.
5: “Healthy Aging with Calcium Alpha-Ketoglutarate: How This Compound Supports Bone, Muscle, and Heart Health.” ProHealth, https://www.prohealth.com/blogs/control-how-you-age/healthy-aging-with-calcium-alpha-ketoglutarate-how-this-compound-supports-bone-muscle-and-heart-health.
6: “AKG Shown to Prevent Age-Related Bone Loss.” Longevity Technology, https://longevity.technology/news/akg-shown-to-prevent-age-related-bone-loss/.
7, 10, 12: “Calcium Alpha-Ketoglutarate.” Rescence, https://rescence.com/calcium-alpha-ketoglutarate/.
8: Shariati, M., et al. “Metabolic Regulation of Aging by Calcium Alpha-Ketoglutarate.” Frontiers in Physiology, vol. 9, 2018, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5884300/.
9: Tapiero H, Mathé G, Couvreur P, Tew KD. “II. Glutamine and glutamate.” Biomed Pharmacother. 2002. doi: 10.1016/s0753-3322(02)00285-8.
11: Schroeder MA, Atherton et al. “Real-time assessment of Krebs cycle metabolism using hyperpolarized 13C magnetic resonance spectroscopy.” FASEB J. 2009. doi: 10.1096/fj.09-129171.