is carnosine gel just menthol

Is it just the menthol?

Someone tested this properly: a placebo matched for menthol, on world-class athletes, triple-blind. Here is what it found.

By Keegan Smith · Coach educator · founder, RealMVMT · updated

Short answer

Carnosine gel is not just the menthol, and one trial settled it. In 2025 researchers filled one unlabelled bottle with ultrasound gel spiked with 1.25% menthol and the other with LactiGo, then ran seven world-class rugby sevens players through twelve maximal sprints on each. Both bottles tingled identically. Peak power was still higher on the carnosine arm in the three sprints that reached significance: +7.6% in sprint 2, +8.3% in sprint 4 and +12.3% in sprint 7, with effect sizes of 0.99, 0.74 and 0.98. Four of the seven athletes finished believing the placebo day had been their better one, which means the difference did not come from anyone guessing which bottle was real. Menthol alone is worth something — sixteen studies covering 191 participants put it at g = 0.27 — but it moves endurance through perceived cooling, not peak power. Different variable.

Where the objection comes from

A cyclist on a forum put gel on one leg and a $16 menthol rub on the other, rode, and felt no difference. That test is still the lead citation in Google’s AI answer for the brand. It is a fair objection and you should take it seriously, because menthol has a real, documented analgesic effect. Rub any menthol product on a working muscle and it will feel different.

Which makes it a textbook confound. Compare a menthol gel against nothing and you have measured menthol. Everything hinges on what you put in the other bottle.

What the 2025 trial put in the other bottle

Aquasonic 100 ultrasound gel with 1.25% menthol added — matched to the odour and the stated menthol concentration of the real product. Both went into unlabelled bottles, one yellow and one red, and the person who filled them took no part in running the sessions or analysing the numbers.

  • Triple-blind: athletes, testers and analysts all blind until the stats were finished.
  • Crossover: every athlete did both conditions seven days apart, order counterbalanced.
  • Protocol: 12 × (24 s at 3 W/kg, 6 s flat out, 30 s rest), two-minute break after the sixth.
  • Four of seven players finished convinced the placebo day was their better one.
Peak power was higher on the gel in the three sprints that reached statistical significance: 7.6 percent in sprint 2, 8.3 percent in sprint 4 and 12.3 percent in sprint 7. Mean power, heart rate and perceived exertion were unchanged. All four were measured in the same trial.no changePeak power, sprints 2, 4 and 7+7.6 to +12.3%Mean powerno changeHeart rateno changePerceived exertionno change0+5%+10%
Seven world-class rugby sevens players, against a placebo matched for menthol. The peak power bar spans the three sprints that reached significance — +7.6% (d = 0.99), +8.3% (d = 0.74) and +12.3% (d = 0.98). Across all twelve the difference ran from +4.1% to +12.3%. The other three measures are on the chart too, sitting on zero, because showing everything a trial measured is what makes the one that moved believable. Beaven et al. 2025, JISSN.

What it actually found

Peak power was higher on the gel in sprint 2 (1433 W vs 1332 W), sprint 4 (1347 W vs 1244 W) and sprint 7 (1426 W vs 1270 W). The effect sizes were moderate to large. The highlights put the range at 5–10%.

Now read the other half. Average power did not move. Heart rate did not move. Perceived exertion did not move. Three sprints out of twelve reached significance, in seven athletes. This is a real signal in a narrow test, not a general performance claim, and anyone selling it as one is ahead of the data.

The argument against

An independent trial in trained cyclists found nothing on repeated Wingates. The 2025 authors offer two explanations: the cyclists’ peak wattages fell outside the accurate measuring range of the power meter used, and athletes built around repeated short sprints may simply respond differently from endurance-trained ones. Both are plausible. Neither has been demonstrated.

And the mechanism is still inferred. Nobody has measured intramuscular carnosine in a human after applying the gel. The only direct absorption evidence is from horses, in a paper sharing two authors with a manufacturer-linked human study. The 2025 authors say so themselves and call for the measurement to be done.

Sources

  1. Topical carnosine gel improves intermittent high-intensity exercise performance in world-class rugby sevens players (Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2025) (opens in a new tab) PMC12427510

    The triple-blind trial whose placebo was matched for 1.25% menthol, and the source of the 8–12% peak power figure and the four-of-seven guessing result.

  2. Transdermal carnosine gel fails to improve repeated Wingate performance in trained male cyclists (Journal of Sports Science and Nutrition, 2023) (opens in a new tab) 10.33545/27077012.2023.v4.i2b.193

    The independent trial in trained cyclists that found no effect on any measure.

  3. Acute topical menthol application and exercise performance — systematic review and meta-analysis (opens in a new tab) ro.ecu.edu.au

    Sixteen studies, 191 participants: rub-on menthol on its own is worth a small performance gain (g = 0.27), mostly in aerobic endurance and mostly through perceived cooling. That is the confound the 2025 placebo was built to cancel — and note it is a different variable from the peak power the carnosine arm moved.

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Is carnosine gel just menthol? — Topical Carnosine