AOR guarantees that no ingredients not listed on the label have been added to the product. Contains no wheat, gluten, corn, nuts, dairy, soy, eggs, fish or shellfish.

Suggested Use
For healthy thought patterns or healthy cell development and blood vessel formation, take 15-60 g (~ 1-4 T). For general healthy brain function, dissolve 5 g (~1 tsp) under your tongue and hold for one minute twice daily. For hGH release, dissolve 5 g (~1 tsp) under your tongue and hold for one minute, 45 minutes before bed, breakfast, or exhaustive weight-bearing exercise. For the above uses, take on an empty stomach. For healthy metabolism of meal carbohydrates, take 5 g after a meal. Or as directed by a qualified health consultant.

Main Applications
As reported by literature:
• Cognitive support.
• Neuroprotection.
• Cytoprotection.
• Supports normal cell growth and differentiation
• Supports healthy thought patterns
• Supports growth hormone release
• Supports healthy glucose metabolism
• Supports bone health

Source
pharmaceutical synthesis.

Pregnancy / Nursing
Safe at 2 g/day.

Cautions
None.

*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Glycine, NMDA, and Memory
The importance of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor to memory was shown dramatically with the "Doogie" mouse, which has an extra copy of one subcomponent of the receptor. These mice have a significantly boosted performance on a wide range of learning and memory tasks, including an improved ability to solve mazes, to learn from the sights and sounds in their environment, and to retain that knowledge; perhaps more importantly, they retain superior memory into ages when memory in normal mice is falling.

The problem with the NMDA receptor is that its main activator is glutamate, an excitatory amino acid with a dark side. Excessive stimulation of the NMDA receptor by glutamate causes a deadly overstimulation of the neuron called excitotoxicity, which eventually burns the brain cell out. Overactivation of the glutamate site is believed to underlie a great deal of the damage wrought on brain cells in Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, strokes, and other neurological disorders.

Neurodegenerative conditions
Fortunately, there is another site on the NMDA receptor complex which allows for the safer activation of this key receptor. This "co-agonist" site is activated by Glycine instead of glutamate. Unlike the glutamate binding site, activating the glycine binding site does not trigger the opening of the receptor - but the receptor can't open if the site is not activated. Studies in humans and animals show that glycine itself - or drugs that work by activating the glycine co-agonist site, such as Milacemide - enhance long-term potentiation of memory, without producing neurotoxicity.

In one randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, a glycine sublingual formulation was tested for its effects on memory in healthy students and in middle-aged men. The sublingual glycine formulation "significantly improved retrieval from episodic memory" in all subjects; glycine also significantly improved sustained attention in the middle-aged participants. The researchers noted that the effects of glycine were unique, because they don't involve a stimulant effect and don't affect mood, and suggest that sublingual glycine "is likely to be of benefit in ... situations where high retrieval of information is needed or when performance is impaired by jet lag, shift work, or disrupted sleep."

While special glycine formulations or prodrugs are effective at only a few hundred milligrams, glycine itself has a hard time crossing the blood-brain barrier. Experimenting with from five to ten grams - and more, up to a maximum of 60 grams in divided doses - held under the tongue for a minute before swallowing, should tell you if glycine will do the trick for you, and at what doses.

Glycine, NMDA, and Schizophrenia
The first hints of the importance of glycine in schizophrenia came from the discovery that Phencyclidine ("angel dust" or PCP - a nasty street drug which causes serious schizophrenic-like hallucinations in healthy people and worsens symptoms in schizophrenics even if they have gone into remission) - does its damage by blocking the glycine modulatory site on the NMDA receptor. Interest quickened when it was found that glycine could reverse most of the behavioral and neurochemical abnormalities in animals administered PCP.

Several trials have now shown that high-dose glycine supplementation improves the "negative symptoms" of schizophrenia (such as "flat" emotional expression, depression, poverty of speech, apathy, and social withdrawal). This is an important result, since most schizophrenia medications only affect the "positive symptoms" of the disease, such as the hallucinations. Glycine also appears to boost the efficacy, and reduce the side-effects, of some schizophrenia medications. (One exception is the drug clozapine, perhaps because the drug itself may work by modulating the NMDA receptor). Limited success has been observed at doses of 10 grams per day; better results are seen at 30 or 60 grams.

Glycine and Growth Hormone (hGH)
In addition to is exciting potential for supporting the healthy functioning of the brain, Glycine may provide us with part of the key to reversing some of the more visible symptoms of the aging body. For some time, research has been focusing in on the age-related loss of human growth hormone (hGH, or somatotropin) as a major source of the symptoms of aging. hGH helps keep our bones strong, our immune systems vigorous, our wound-healing abilities optimal. It builds muscle and burns fat. Its levels are high in our youth, when all of these functions are at their peak, and their decline follows the decline in many aspects of youthful function. As experiments by Dr. Daniel Rudman and others have shown, administration of hGH to aging humans can bring about changes in body composition which are "equivalent in magnitude to the changes incurred during 10-20 years of aging."

While many substances are touted as hGH precursors or secretagogues, few are actually documented to boost levels of the hormone - and of those that are, many are marketed in formulas in which they are mixed in with other factors that blunt their effectiveness, or are only effective at doses significantly higher than the recommended dose. But less than 6 grams of glycine has been shown to more than triple hGH levels in normal, healthy men and wormen. This effect is again likely connected to glycine's role as a coagonist of the NMDA receptor.

Glucose Metabolism
The surge of blood sugar that happens following a meal - especially one high in carbohydrates and/or in glycemic index - is a metabolic roller coaster, leading to sugar ‘highs' and crashes, carb cravings, metabolic dysregulation, and ultimately insulin resistance and ill-health. Finding new ways to control this post-meal jump in blood sugar is an important part of maintaining our health.

A recent study suggests that Glycine may be the next tool at our disposal to keep blood sugar on an even keel. In this study, healthy men and women were tested on four separate occasions, in which they were given 25 grams of glucose alone; glucose with 5 grams of glycine; glycine alone; or plain water. The plain glucose, unsurprisingly, rushed into the volunteers' bloodstreams, leading to a huge blood sugar ‘spike;' but glycine supplementation reduced the total increase in blood glucose by a remarkable 50%. Importantly, this channeling of the glucose surge was not accompanied by any increase in insulin levels, nor did it push fasting glucose levels down into hypoglycemia: the mechanism remains unknown, and the effect was so distinct from other glucose-lowering agents that the researchers who reported the result even speculate that the result may lead to the discovery of a new gut hormone regulating glucose metabolism.

Cancer
Researchers at the Curriculum in Toxicology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, have reported some impressive results using high-dose glycine to fight the scourge of cancer. In one study, experimental animals were fed diets containing the carcinogenic drug WY-14643 along with conventional lab chow or glycine-supplemented diets. Glycine had no effect on the microhormonal effects of the drug, or on the incidence or numbers of early, abnormal cell lesions in the animals' livers. But nearly a year later, as the animals were developing actual tumors, glycine supplementation prevented the formation of small, medium, and large liver tumors by 23%, 64%, and an astonishing 80%, respectively! In other words, glycine demonstrated the power to directly inhibit the progression of early, precancerous lesions into full-blown tumors.

In a later study, the UNC researchers expanded these findings and identified one possible mechanism for the remarkable anti-cancer effects they had observed. In this experiment, laboratory animals were implanted with melanoma tumors and given either conventional diets or a diet supplemented with high-dose glycine. The scientists watched as the tumors grew rapidly in the animals eating the conventional diets - but in those consuming the supplemental glycine, tumors were 50 to 75% smaller; likewise, the tumors weighed about two-thirds less in animals benefiting from the glycine supplements.

To find out what was going on, the scientists tried growing the cancer cells in test tubes containing increasingly high doses of glycine, to no effect. Instead, as researchers discovered after implantation, glycine slows the growth of these cancer cells by inhibiting angiogenesis - the process by which cancers attract new blood vessels to themselves to feed their uncontrolled growth.

Good Things Come in Small Packages
We haven't had space to discuss the many other new discoveries about glycine made in the last few years: its cytoprotective, immunomodulating, and antithrombotic effects; its suppression of inflammatory responses in some immune cells; its ability to protect the brain from stroke damage and help the brain heal after a stroke; the animal evidence supporting glycine's ability to help the liver heal after liver fibrosis and improve outcomes after organ transplantation; the importance of glycine in bone health; or its role as an extracellular signaling molecule, regulator of ion channels. In packing so many benefits into so small a biomolecule as glycine, Nature seems to have been following the "KISS" rule: "Keep It Simple, Stupid."

References

Zhong Z, Wheeler MD, Li X, Froh M, Schemmer P, Yin M, Bunzendaul H, Bradford B, Lemasters JJ. L-Glycine: a novel antiinflammatory, immunomodulatory, and cytoprotective agent. Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2003 Mar;6(2):229-40.

File SE, Fluck E, Fernandes C. Beneficial effects of glycine (bioglycin) on memory and attention in young and middle-aged adults. J Clin Psychopharmacol. 1999 Dec;19(6):506-12.

Heresco-Levy U, Javitt DC, Ermilov M, Mordel C, Silipo G, Lichtenstein M. Efficacy of high-dose glycine in the treatment of enduring negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1999 Jan;56(1):29-36.

Kasai K, Kobayashi M, Shimoda SI. Stimulatory effect of glycine on human growth hormone secretion. Metabolism. 1978 Feb;27(2):201-8.

Rose ML, Cattley RC, Dunn C, Wong V, Li X, Thurman RG. Dietary glycine prevents the development of liver tumors caused by the peroxisome proliferator WY-14,643. Carcinogenesis. 1999 Nov;20(11):2075-81.