What Is Calcium Pyruvate?
Calcium pyruvate (also known as citrate) is a simple sugar molecule which occurs naturally in certain foods such as fruit, vegetables, milk products and meat. In fact it’s one of the most common compounds found in nature. It’s used mainly in animal feed supplements to increase growth rates and prevent disease. It is also used to make some medicines like antibiotics and anti-cancer drugs.
In the human body, it plays several important roles:
It helps maintain normal blood pressure levels. It increases the amount of red blood cells in your bloodstream. It contributes to healthy bones and teeth.
It is involved in cell metabolism, especially when consumed with protein and fat.
How Does Calcium Pyruvate Work?
The main function of citrate is to support the absorption of other nutrients from food into your body. Citrate works by helping to stabilize the pH level of your blood. This helps to keep your blood vessels elastic and prevents them from narrowing down.
When you consume citrate, it binds to certain proteins in your stomach lining and then passes through your small intestine into the large intestine where it is absorbed into the bloodstream. Your liver breaks up the citrate molecules so they are not broken down too much during their passage through your digestive system.
Once inside the liver, the citrate is combined with amino acids to form a completely different compound called oxaloacetate or OAA. This substance is then transported around the body where it enters the mitochondria (the powerhouses) of cells where it participates in the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle.
Because oxaloacetate participates in the TCA cycle, it is an important component of energy production and plays a key role in how your body handles the food you eat. The citrate molecule, when combined with amino acids to form oxaloacetate, has been found to help slow the aging process and support a wide range of important biological functions.
What Are The Health Benefits Of Calcium Pyruvate?
There are several important health benefits of using a supplement that contains citrate or pyruvate, and these are known to help with the following conditions:
Anxiety and Stress
Elevated levels of stress hormones can contribute to anxiety, nervousness, restlessness, depression and irritability. It has been found that supplementing with calcium pyruvate can normalize the levels of stress hormones, and this can help to reduce their negative effects on your mood.
Depression
There is evidence that taking a supplement that contains citrate can have a positive effect on people who suffer from depression. Several double-blind studies have found that when people are given citrate, they report a reduction in both symptoms and severity of the disease. In many cases, this has lead to a complete remission of the patient’s depression.
Calcium pyruvate supplements may also help to reduce the symptoms of premenstrual syndrome (PMS), especially the physical and psychological symptoms associated with it.
Obesity
Abdominal fat is a serious health risk as it is strongly linked to heart disease and diabetes. When citrate is converted to oxaloacetate in the mitochondrial matrix of your cells, it helps to prevent fat from being stored there and instead causes it to be burned for energy. This process may help to reduce the likelihood of developing metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
This effect is enhanced when pyruvate is combined with a diet low in carbohydrates and rich in green leafy vegetables and healthy fats.
What Are The Side Effects Of Calcium Pyruvate?
When supplementing with pyruvate or citrate, you may experience some minor and temporary side effects such as:
Nausea
Diarrhea
Flatulence
These side effects are rare and should pass within a week of beginning to take the supplement. If you experience any other unusual symptoms after taking the supplement, then you should speak to your doctor immediately.
Sources & references used in this article:
Calcium pyruvate exerts beneficial effects in an experimental model of irritable bowel disease induced by DCA in rats by A Rodríguez-Nogales, F Algieri, T Vezza… – Nutrients, 2019 – mdpi.com
Effects of calcium pyruvate supplementation on exercise ability in mice. by Y Guo, DZ Gong, X Li, LL Cui, M Wei, JY Hu… – Journal of Dalian …, 2009 – cabdirect.org
Thread: Pyruvate and Dihydroxyacetone by ER Burke – elitefitness.com
