#356 Glycine for Longevity Masterclass

Siim Land (0:00)

So I've been talking about glycine for a long time, and it is one of my favorite supplements in terms of the benefits that it has. And the reason I decided to do this particular video has to do with this study published on 31st March, 2023 So very new.

It's called Glycine and Aging Evidence and Mechanisms. So it's giving you a very nice overview about the longevity benefits of glycine and how it can affect aging and lifespan. So here are the highlights of this paper. The simple amino acid glycine extends lifespan in worms, mice, and rats.

Glycine also improves aspects of health and mammalian models of age-related disease.

Glycine is the acceptor of GNMT, an enzyme responsible for methionine clearance.

GNMT also converts glycine to sarcosine and autophagy-inducing metabolite.

Glycine may prolong life by inducing autophagy and mimicking methionine restriction. If you do want to learn everything about the benefits of glycine and how to take it, and when and in what amounts, then check out my book with Dr. James DeNickel-Antonio called The Collagen Cure on Amazon. So glycine has many other benefits beyond just mentioned here, but when it comes to actual, you know, these lifespan extension in these model organisms, then it comes down to primarily two things, which is increasing autophagy and mimicking methionine restriction. And when it comes to methionine restriction, then this is something that also has been shown to be very beneficial for longevity, at least in rats and other animals. So excess methionine, it can disrupt methylation and even raise your homocysteine levels, which will increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. So methionine is one of the most abundant amino acids in the diet. You get it from eggs, meat, and other animal protein sources primarily. And excess methionine, yeah, is associated with shorter lifespans. Methionine restriction has been found to be able to extend the lifespan in rodents by 30 to 40%.

And the way it does so is by also inhibiting some of the mTOR expression. So methionine helps to pretty much stimulate mTOR, the growth pathway in the body.

And yeah, it can have like a negative effect on the speed of your aging. And yeah, like methionine restriction is clearly has been shown to be beneficial for longevity and slowing down aging. And glycine can pretty much mimic the effects of methionine restriction without necessarily needing to restrict methionine, which is great, because it's very hard to like restrict methionine unless you are on a very zero animal protein diet.

And glycine pretty much helps to buffer against methionine toxicity and supports the methylation that prevents the rise in homocysteine.

And also like just pretty much inhibits the excessive toxicity effects of methionine in too large amounts. So it matters more the ratio between methionine to glycine.

And obviously, methionine is essential. Glycine is actually considered non-essential, but it's still like, it should be essential given the role of glycine in balancing the methionine. In mice consuming a diet of about 8% glycine can increase the lifespan of these mice by 4 to 6%, which isn't substantially very large, but I mean, I think it's still pretty awesome to see those kind of effects. Let's take a quick step back to this new study, and they have a very good overview of the studies linking the use of glycine, and they have a pretty good overview of those studies here. So in rats, a diet containing 8% or 12% of glycine resulted in 28.4% median increase in the male's lifespan, which is very significant in worms. Diet containing one millimole of glycine, 10% mean increase in lifespan. In flies, it over-expressing the GnMT enzyme, which kind of limits the synthesis of glycine. So over-expressing that increased lifespan by 9.3% in females and 13.3% in males.

There's also the aspect of age-related diseases and health span of how glycine can slow down the development of these different age-related diseases.

And the supplementing mice with glycine prior to implantation with melanoma cells suppressed tumor growth. Long-term supplementation with glycine decreased fasting glucose, insulin, triglyceride, and IGF-1 levels in male rats.

Vascular endothelial function is improved by the oral administration of glycine in older rats. In obese male mice with glucose intolerance, glycine supplementation in addition to calorie restriction enhanced fat loss while preserving lean mass.

But of course, these are model organisms, and we should definitely look at more in the human clinical trials. So in a cohort of 72 type 2 diabetic patients, 5,000 milligrams a day, so five grams of glycine a day over three months, led to a reduction in pro-entameter cytokines and hemoglobin A1C.

In a separate clinical study involving 60 metabolic syndrome patients, systolic blood pressure was decreased in response to 15 grams a day of glycine for three months.