The 2 Week Glycine Experiment that Recovers Liver Health

There's a popular amino acid that's considered non-essential because our body produces it. Therefore, it's not essential to consume. But when our health is failing, this very same non-essential amino acid may be drained from the body. So, could it become more important to supplement with it? I'm talking about the amino acid at glycine. And like I alluded, poor health like fatty liver disease is believed to rob the body of glycine as mentioned here. However, a recent study indicates that a two-week experiment using glycine may relieve the liver of disease. Now, if we look at the blood glycine levels in animals fed a western diet causing poor health, including the progression to liver disease, we can compare the blood amino acids listed on the left there between the healthy and unhealthy. If the color is more blue, that means that there's reduced amounts of those amino acids in the blood in the unhealthy. And if it's red, well, then there's more. And clearly, glycine at the very end there is significantly reduced. This speaks to the possibility that our glycine levels could be drained. But there's more to it than that. Because when we look at evidence in humans, there's a lot of corroborating evidence. For example, in the same study, we're looking at different synthesized sources of glycine. So, aside from consuming glycine directly, our body can produce it from the amino acid thrienine. and from the molecule sarcasene or from the amino acid seririne in what's known as a reversible reaction. Now if we briefly return to our first data, notice how seririne and thriionine are both elevated in the blood. This could be a signature that they are not being converted to glycine considering that glycine is simultaneously low. But that's three. If we return to the pathway, you'll notice that there is a fourth gioxilate. This is the focus here because glycine is converted to gioxilate by this DAO enzyme which is D amino acid oxidase when introduced at galas. So an already low glycine pool from a lack of conversion from thrienine and serarine is further diminished by DAO. Remember this is in humans. Finally, what about the replenishment of glycine? Well, as you can see in blue, there's this AGXT1 enzyme announced as sir alanine gioxilate amot transansferase at the gala. And this enzyme converts our gioxilate back to glycine. Unfortunately, what this graph is telling us beyond just detailing the pathways that contribute to the glycine pool is that the enzyme that diminishes the glycine pool, DAO, is more active and the replenishment enzyme, AGXT1, is less active. The main point that I'm trying to get across here is that we have multiple possible reasons for why glycine is low in people and animals with fatty liver disease and possibly poor health in general. Now in short less is being produced through its various production pathways and more is being taken out of the glycine pool by these enzymes. So that sets the stage for this relationship though associative that glycine may be a bigger player than we might think in disease. Still to actually prove that we can return to animals and cause gene deletions which can be simply just cutting out the genes. in this case, the very same AGXT1 gene. That means that the liver no longer has the ability to replenish its glycine stores through this gioxilate pathway. And sure enough, when we look at the fatty liver disease score, the higher the dots, the worse the liver health, we see that the knockout on the right and the liver is still able to replenish glycine on the left. Clearly, there's a difference. And we're only talking about eliminating this one pathway, not touching the other three. The point here is that we're not only seeing associations between glycine pathways and liver disease, we're seeing a direct cause of worsening liver health if glycine pathways are not intact. Then when glycine is supplemented directly, we also see significant improvements in liver disease. But we've been focused on animal research to tease out these specifics. So what about this 2 week glycine experiment? What can we take away based on this newest study in humans? Well, for one, if you're looking for how glycine enacts this protective effect on the liver, or a new peptide that's built out of glycine that is supposed to be better than glycine alone, or where to get reputable sources of glycine and actually all molecules that I cover, or learn some of the additional effects of glycine, then check out the extended video of the one that you're currently watching. It's included for all physionic insiders along with an accompanying article, shortened summary of the high-level

points, a podcast, and much more. It's all listed right here, though even this list is missing some of the perks. Anyway, you can join the Physionic Insiders using the link in the description. This study did a two-week experiment where the researchers measured liver health before and after merely two weeks of glycine supplementation. We could see that transformed here. The higher the bars are, the worse the liver health. After only two weeks, liver health improved, confirmed statistically. Plus, other liver measures also showed the same relationship. This tells us that glycine improves liver health rapidly and independent of fat loss, which is a big mover in liver health. Now, keep in mind that this is a small study and although it is in humans, which is great, there's no control group and these people are obese. So, would these results hold up when compared against, I don't know, a placebo group? Would this hold up in people who aren't overweight yet have liver disease? These are the kinds of questions that should hold us back from being overly definitive. More data is absolutely needed, even if this is a strong first step. This would be an incredibly simple experiment to run on yourself, though. If you have elevated liver markers like A and ALT, you could simply supplement with glycine at the dose used in the study, which was actually incredibly high, FYI, around 100 mg per kilogram of body weight, and then measure again 2 weeks later to compare. Now, fortunately, glycine is rather appetizing with a slightly sweet taste, so you won't have flashbacks of your parents forcing you to finish broccoli on your plate. We're talking early, somewhat speculative evidence that our glycine pool takes a hit when we're chronically sick. In this case, the liver and supplementing may correct the extremely tax pathways that suck up glycine. But there are many other areas of glycine research that I've covered in the past. If you're interested, then check them out right here. As always, I hope you found this as fascinating as I did. Thanks for nerding out with me. I'll catch you in the next one. Yes. Okay. I'll take your silence as a yes in this instance.