Glycine Health Benefits

Glycine is a crucial amino acid for sleep, digestion, blood sugar and collagen formation. But most of us get none of it. Learn 6 health benefits plus how to get it, dosage and more.

You might notice the physical signs of aging: wrinkly skin, thinning hair and weak joints. 

You can do something about it now. But you have to know what to do right? That is what this article is for.

As you age, you need to do what you can to optimize collagen turnover. You need this turn over process in order to fight off the visible and non-visible effects of aging. 

What is Glycine?

Glycine is an amino acid produced in your body which is a crucial building block for making new collagen. It makes up one third of all of it.

Let me touch on it briefly.

Collagen is important for building and maintaining the structure of our bodies. From tissues to cells to joints and tendons, collagen is everywhere. It literally holds your body together.

Collagen helps to promote healthy skin, hair, teeth and nails. 

The absolute best natural source of it is bone broth. The highest quality one you'll find for this is made by the brand name Bluebird Provisions.

L Glycine Health Benefits

Why is it so important?

The issue is that our bodies natural collagen production slows as we age. When it is needed, glycine becomes a conditionally essential amino acid.

Supplementation is mainly used for those with schizophrenia. It is also used to help those with type 2 diabetes, sleep issues and anyone suffering from anxiety. I’ll discuss in detail each of these in depth below.

Getting more in your diet may benefit your sleep, productivity, mood, blood sugar control, digestion and longevity. Woah that’s a lot.

Research Supported Benefits

To start, let’s talk about glycine’s health benefits on sleep and mood.

Sleep and Energy Boost Neurotransmitter 

Glycine is quietly being touted as a potent fatigue fighter, sleep promotor and productivity booster. 

Evidence shows that when taken before bed, it improves the quality of your sleep (1). The good news is that it will not put you out like Xanax. 

Is also benefits your central nervous system, allowing you to relax and get a restful sleep. It does this by decreasing your core temperature and inhibiting muscle activity. 

Glycine supplementation also helps you sleep by boosting serotonin and GABA levels. These mood boosting neurotransmitters happens at the receptor level and gives us insight into why it may help you sleep. 

It acts as a relaxing (or inhibitory) neurotransmitter in our brain, much like GABA. 

It increases serotonin levels without increasing dopamine levels (2). This is crucial in maintaining optimal circadian rhythms leading to better sleep.

So we know that glycine sets the table for healthy sleep. What about fatigue, energy levels and anxiety? 

Well my friend, there is more. The amino acid is an immunomodulator good for anxiety. In fact it decreases anxiety related to work performance while also improving subjective feelings of fatigue throughout the day (3).

According to this research, those who took it also had better memory and energy during the day. Those with anxiety related to work reported reduction in uneasy feelings. 

What’s going on here? Well, it looks like it benefits anxiety by halting the release of adrenaline. This lowers panic and anxiety feelings before they get out of hand (4, 5).

So if you are sleepy during the day or have trouble falling asleep at night, consider eating glycine rich foods before bed. 

What's the correct glycine dose for sleep?

The correct glycine dose for sleep is 1.5 grams taken an hour before bedtime on an empty stomach. You can get this 1.5 grams by drinking 1/2 cup of bone broth.

In the morning, it can be taken in a smaller dose of 0.5 to 1 gram with breakfast or with other meals to avoid some of the side effects. More on those below.

I’m the type where my mind races as soon as my head hits the pillow. Personally, a cup of bone broth before bed puts me out. 

Couldn’t we all use a few more productive hours during the day. 

Brain Health and Calming Properties

The mood boosting effects of glycine extend further from sleep to brain health. Some say that it is the ultimate brain food. 

Why?

Glycine supplementation helps with brain-signalling to improve your cognition, memory and mood.

It does this by helping you synthesize certain nutrients that your brain uses to boost mood and energy. 

Of particular interest is in those who experience negative mental states. 

There are positive effects on patients with schizophrenia who take the supplement as part of their treatment plan. 

Want the highest concentration of it in a single food? Try bone broth.

Read our Bone Broth Buyers Guide.

Glycine appears to help with depression and mental fluency associated with schizophrenia. It also may improve psychotic symptoms (6, 7).

It’s worth noting that the dosage was very high: 25 grams. I’ll speak to dosage below.

The brain boosting effects of it might apply to other mood disorders. There is mechanistic evidence showing that glycine benefits depression and neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s.

It also showed a protective effect against neurological damage associated with strokes (8, 9).

It's brain altering benefits may extend to healthy people as well. 

For example, there’s improvements in memory, recall and sustained attention in those who consume the supplement.

Practically speaking, it can help you in high stress situations or where your performance may be affected by poor sleep (jet lag, shift work, etc) (10).

This area of research is early, but there is a lot to be excited about brain health.

Glycine Helps Control Insulin, Blood Sugar and Glucose

Around 8% of Canadians have diagnosed diabetes and 90% of that is type 2. Lifestyle and environmental factors contribute to type 2 diabetes (11). 

If you’re inactive or overweight then you are at an increased risk for it. What’s going on with type 2 diabetes? At the heart of type 2 diabetes is an impaired ability to use insulin and glucose efficiently.

Insulin is needed for your body to handle glucose properly. Glycine levels have a negative correlation with obesity and insulin resistance (12).

Studies show that 3-5 grams taken with meals can help control insulin and blood sugar in those with type 2 diabetes (13). 

The health benefits are not just for diabetics. The supplement can help you and I control our blood sugar better too.

Researchers show that taking 5g in the morning optimizes insulin levels in those who have a family history of type 2 diabetes. You could say these individuals are predisposed to diabetes (14). 

It seems as though glycine allows your body to use glucose more efficiently. It helps stabilize your blood sugar levels. One study showed that it cut the spike in blood sugar in half (15). Woah! 

How? It helps release a gut hormone to help digest glucose more efficiently. 

Better glucose control has massive health benefits for you and I. An ability to regulate blood sugar levels throughout the day helps with physical and mental health. You also might feel better after that big bowl of pasta. 

A Crucial Amino Acid For Anti-Aging

I believe that we (in the west) consume more meat than we need for health and longevity. 

The majority of the meat we do eat is not good for us. The call to ‘eat less meat’ completely misses the point if the meat we do eat is bad for us. 

This brings me to another amino acid called methionine.

Methionine appears in high amounts in muscle meats like steak and chicken breast. It is an essential amino acid; meaning that our bodies cannot make it from other things.

Methionine does crucial things like helping our bodies produce hormones and protecting our livers. 

However the big elephant in the room is that too much methionine is toxic to our bodies. It causes inflammation. 

How?

Methionine heavy diets are shown to expedite aging in animals (16).   

You might be thinking… “I can just eat less methionine and live longer.” While this is not a bad idea, it is not necessary. Let me explain why.

Glycine is a major regulator of inflammation in your body (17, 18). 

It is shown to counteract the effects of methionine. Meaning that if you consume the amino acid, it protects you from any negative effects of methionine (19).

If this seems like a stretch, let me explain.

Your liver uses it to deal with any surplus of methionine. If you have enough of it on board, then it’s no problem.

Your body says: “no worries methionine, I’ve got plenty of glycine to handle you...” or something to that effect.

The take home point is that the more steak or chicken breast (lean cuts of meat) you eat, the more you need to balance your methionine intake. 

The standard Canadian or American diet is well short of the 8-10 grams needed daily. Remember that gelatin and gelatinous bone broth are about ⅓ of it. So they are the best sources. 

For the meat that you consume, I’d recommend you consider eating slightly less and higher quality (grass finished, pasture raised, etc). 

Fattier cuts of meat and organ meats naturally have more than lean cuts. 

From here you can introduce meat with more connective tissue and less muscles. More connective tissue means more gelatin means more gelatin per serving. This also means long, slow cook times are needed to prepare the meat properly. 

How Do I Get More Glycine?

Foods high in glycine include bone broth, gelatin, beef liver, game meats, pork skin, chicken skin and crustaceans. There is no way to get your requirements from vegetables and there are no vegan sources.

Here’s the list of foods high in glycine. 

Dr. Chris Masterjohn recommends getting glycine from real food like bone broth first.

"To add extra glycine to your diet, the best foods are edible bones, such as those in canned fish; bone broth, as long as you can verify its protein content; hydrolyzed gelatin, and pure supplementation."

You can learn more about bone broth benefits in this article.

Glycine For Improved Digestion In Your Body

Glycine improves digestion by building new tissue and decreasing inflammation in your digestive tract (20). 

Let’s talk briefly about inflammation in your digestive system.

You and I have food intolerances that perhaps we are unaware of. These foods don’t produce enough inflammation to warrant a food allergy. But they are harmful over years of consumption. 

Repeatedly eating these foods causes inflammation which breaks down the tissue of our gut and intestines. 

Think your intestines for a second. They are lined with millions of tiny junctions that help us break down and absorb nutrients from food. 

After repeated inflammation from inflammatory foods, these junctions become more porous causing nasty side effects.

Things stop working properly from there. You may experience digestion / GI issues and you’ll surely not absorb nutrients from food efficiently.

After enough exposure to these foods, tiny food particles leak through our gut and intestines into our bloodstream. This kicks off a cascade of inflammation in the human body.

If you are familiar with leaky gut syndrome, this is what happens. 

The unique properties of glycine are necessary to produce the collagen needed to form new connective tissue in our gut lining. Think of it as a collagen precursor.

This helps reduce inflammation from harmful food particles. These porous junctions in your intestines and gut become tighter. 

Glycine is used to manage many inflammatory intestinal issues such as ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease and inflammatory bowel disease (21). 

Experts think that it's a compound that offers protective effects on intestinal cells in those with these issues. 

If you suffer from one of these diseases, you are best to consult your healthcare provider before trying any of the information in this article.

Learn more about Gut Health here in my ultimate guide.

Glycine Boost Antioxidants To Protect Your Lungs

You probably know that antioxidants are good for you. But how do they work? 

Let’s first talk about oxidants. Chronic oxidation produces cell damage in our bodies. Antioxidants prevent oxidation in the first place.

Oxidants are a natural process in our bodies. They are produced by your body to fend off bad microbes and viruses. However, if you make too many, then bad things happen like heart disease and cancer. 

We’re also exposed to oxidants in the environment throughout our day. That is, unless you live in a bubble.  

You and I are most likely deficient in antioxidants due to environmental factors like stress, aging, air pollution, GMO’s and more. 

Enter glutathione. Glutathione is the most potent antioxidant in our body. Research shows that glutathione is a key predictor for health and longevity (22, 23).

You might be asking: how do I get more glutathione in my cells?

Glycine supplementation benefits the production and availability of glutathione. It is one of the three amino acids needed to make it (24).

Without glycine, you make less glutathione. This can negatively affect your ability to fight off oxidative stress. Eventually you’ll get sick… Like a really bad illness.

Long term oxidative stress increases your risk for cancer, lung issues and musculoskeletal injuries (25, 26).

If you’re not getting adequate glycine from food then your collagen production suffers. This leads to very low glutathione levels. 

How does this lead to asthma?

You get respiratory issues (like asthma) when the mucus in your respiratory tract is not fluid enough. Oxidative stress contributes to inflammation causing thick mucus in your lungs. This is what limits your airway during breathing. 

Proper levels of glutathione protect against asthma and other lung conditions.

How? It helps maintain fluidity of mucus in your body (27). Sounds gross but bear with me. 

If you’re after health and longevity, it is a good idea to think about your glutathione status and glycine. 

The Bottom Line

You can benefit from more glycine in your daily diet. Glycine is not a cure all. It may help with sleep and mood, brain health, blood sugar control, digestion and more.

First consider eating proper foods instead of glycine supplementation.

Try making your own bone broth or else you can get the highest glycine chicken bone broth powder from Bluebird Provisions.

It tastes absolutely delicious and has 12 g protein per serving plus 300 mg potassium.

Finally, it is also a good idea to eat nose to tail in order to get more glycine without the methionine. 

It’s important to note that the research for many of the health benefits is early. We certainly need more research, however, the future looks bright for glycine. 

Are you take glycine powder? I’d love to hear how you like it. Leave a comment below.

FAQ’s About Glycine

Can you take glycine for weight loss?

Glycine might help you lose weight because it suppresses appetite. The glycine hormone is a key element in the brain's appetite-suppressing pathways. Glycine also increases the level of leptin, which tells your body that you are full.

Learn more about glycine and weight loss.

When should you take glycine?

You should take glycine one hour before bed for better sleep. Type two diabetics should take glycine with any meals. If you are looking for better insulin and blood glucose control then consider taking glycine with your high carbohydrate meals.

Is glycine safe to take?

Taking glycine is safe in appropriate amounts. The typical dose for you to consider taking is 3-5 grams per day. You can take glycine everyday. For comparison, some studies have used up to 90 grams of glycine per day without side effects (45).

What are some glycine deficiency symptoms?

Glycine deficiency symptoms include the following:

1. Increased risk of heart disease and stroke

2. Osteoporosis

3. Muscle weakness, fatigue, and cramps

4. Anxiety disorders such as depression or panic attacks

5. Impaired memory and cognitive function

6. Poor sleep quality

7. Digestive disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

Who should not take glycine?

You should take caution with glycine for people with liver or kidney disease, young children and pregnant or breastfeeding women. 

What are the Side Effects of Glycine?

The side effects of glycine are very few. The most common side effects are nausea, stomach pain and diarrhea. These can be easily managed by taking smaller doses at first until your body gets used to it.

Glycine is a very safe amino acid. It is used in hospitals to treat patients who have had heart attacks, strokes and other serious injuries.

Are there risks with taking too much glycine?

The risks of taking too much glycine are low, but it is still important to follow the recommended dosage.

The Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for glycine is 4 grams per day for women and 5 grams per day for men.

What happens when you Takeaway Glycine in the body?

When you takeaway glycine, your body is not getting a crucial amino acid that supports brain health, sleep, blood sugar and more. You will age faster and your body will deteriorate faster.

Is l glycine the same as glycine?

L glycine is the same as glycine. It is the simplest and smallest amino acid.

Great Skin Glycine: Does it work?

You can use glycine for great skin, strong nails, teeth and bones. It's also important for heart health and the production of energy in your body. Glycine is an amino acid that can be found in many foods including meats, fish, eggs, beans and soy products.

Should I take a glycine supplement?

You should consider taking a glycine supplement if you are not eating glycine rich foods. The best glycine rich food is bone broth, so if you struggle to drink bone broth then you might consider a supplement.

Glycine amino acid nutrition facts

The nutrition facts of glycine are limited, meaning there are virtually no calories in glycine supplements. You are looking at 3 g of protein per 3 g serving of glycine. There are no fats or carbs in glycine amino acid supplements.

How are glycine and choline related?

Choline and glycine are related through the role they each play in methyl metabolism. Choline gets metabolized to betaine which donates a methyl group to homocysteine, which forms methionine, which turns into dimethylglycine, which is then metabolized to glycine. 

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Disclaimer: This information is for educational purposes only and has not been evaluated by the CFIA or FDA. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Consult your healthcare provider before trying any advice in this article.