Brain Science:
If you know the answer to that you probably frequent a health supplement store. Glycine itself is sold as a nutritional supplement billed as improving mood. People use glycine for schizophrenia, stroke, memory and thinking skills, insomnia, and many other purposes, but previously there has been no good scientific evidence to support most of these uses. However, glycine is a basic building block protein and affects many different cell types, sometimes in complex ways. In some cells, it sends slow-down signals, while in other cell types, it sends excitatory signals. Glycine is an amino acid. The body can make glycine on its own, but it is also consumed in the diet. Sources include meat, fish, dairy, and legumes.
Depression is among the world's most urgent health needs. Its numbers have surged in recent years, especially among young adults. Most medications for people with depression take weeks before they kick in, if they do at all. New and better options are really needed as we stated in the last blog. This blog suggests that glycine research may provide help.
Our last blog was about the possibility of using psychedelic drugs as a future treatment. In this one we look at glycine. Scientists have recently discovered that a common amino acid, glycine, can deliver a "slow-down" signal to the brain, likely contributing to major depression, anxiety and other mood disorders in some people. The discovery, improves understanding of the biological causes of major depression and could accelerate efforts to develop new, faster-acting medications for such hard-to-treat mood disorders.
Like our discussion on Psychedelics, the key to this discovery was being able to understand how brain cells receive and transmit signals into other brain cells. You may remember that we have proteins (neurotransmitters), or chemical substances that either inhibit signal transfer or we have substances that accelerate signal transfer. With psychedelics we have identified the fact that certain receptors are enhanced by the drugs. We also discovered that Glycine has a similar effect. It exists in a natural form in the brain as a neurotransmitter and therefore aides or deters signal transfer. . As recently as last month, scientists have reported that within glycine we have identified the specific protein receptor that accelerates the depression reaction. The newly discovered receptor, for what it's worth, it is called GPR158. They have further discovered that if that protein (glycine) is lacking in that certain receptor gene (GPR158) that nerve area was surprisingly resilient to chronic stress. What they have now discovered is that the receptor combined with another proteine actually becomes an inhibitor. So research is now going on to regulate the glycine by therapeutically controlling the degree of inhibiting and accelerating the glycine in cells specific to depression. ( Originally it was thought there are only about 20 ,that has been adjusted to just one.) So studies are now around how to do this. More research is needed to understand how the body maintains the right balance of mGlyR receptors (brain cells with glycine as the neurotransmitter) and how brain cell activity in the aggregate is affected. Last months discovery found a protein that can attach to the glycine protein like a clamp and turn it into a inhibitor of the cell signal, in effect turning off the depression related brain cells.
Brain Facts:
As depression advances to disability, suicide numbers and medical expenses have climbed, a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2021 put its economic burden at $326 billion annually in the United States.
Some studies have linked out of control glycine to the growth of invasive prostate cancer.
In 2018 scientists, the Martemyanov team, found the new receptor that was involved in stress-induced depression. If mice lacked the gene for the receptor, called GPR158, they proved surprisingly resilient to chronic stress.
A breakthrough came in 2021, when a research team solved the structure of GPR158 the receptor in Glycine that accelerates brain cell signal transfer. The GPR158 receptor looked like a microscopic clamp with a compartment—akin to something they had seen in bacteria, not human cells.
People use glycine in a natural state for schizophrenia, stroke, memory and thinking skills, insomnia, and many other purposes, but there is no good scientific evidence at this point to support most of these uses. More research is needed.
So What:
"What goes around comes around", have you ever heard that statement. It generally means that things in your past come back to haunt you. For two blogs now we are learning that things that we thought were scientifically out of bounds (Unprovable) as far as real health value are now being studied as a real health value. Glycine is sold in health food stores. Research is proving it's value. However research is also proving there is a need to genetically alter it in order to be used effectively as a treatment for depression. As with all the that we talk about in this blog about the future let's see what actually turns out to be useful. It is just interesting that Glycine is used on both ends of the scientific research scale.
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