hi i'm dr barry for the next few minutes let's discuss glycine now a lot of people think that glycine is this boring non-essential amino acid but actually nothing could be further from the truth and in this video i'm going to give you some exciting information about glycine why you should care who should really try to get more glycine in their diet and at the end of this video i'm going to tell you about some delicious ways you can skyrocket your glycine intake and it's delicious and nutritious one of the major reasons that dietitians and nutritionists think that glycine is non-essential is because we we make glycine in our body most people make about three grams of glycine a day and in the average standard diet you eat about three grams of glycine a day so for the average person you're making three grams and eating three grams you're getting about six grams a day the problem is is that many people don't make enough glycine they have trouble making it and there are certain conditions both uh medical conditions pathological conditions and normal physiological conditions that require you to have a much higher dosage of glycine in your diet most experts who have looked into this glycine question feel like we need somewhere between 10 grams a day all the way up to 60 grams a day continue based on your health your age and what medical conditions you may suffer from now this apparent glycine deficiency is a modern human problem you see for the past two million years our ancestors have been nose to tail super carnivores about 70 percent of their diet came from meat this is well established in the paleo anthropological literature and they didn't just eat the mussel meat of the animals like many of us today do they ate the connective tissue the bone marrow the organs the skin they hate it all and so they didn't need to make much more than three grams of glycine a day because they were eating so much in their diet but with today's modern diets especially plant-based diets it's going to be very very difficult to get 10 grams of glycine a day in your diet if you're trying to eat a plant-based diet that's just not going to happen and then even for some of my carnivore friends who are eating just muscle meat just the red meat of animals there is some glycine in there but it may not be enough depending on the things i'm about to tell you about if you're young and healthy and skinny then 10 grams of glycine a day 3 grams you make seven grams you eat that's probably going to be enough for you right now but as you get older if you have any autoimmune conditions if you're overweight if you're diabetic if you have any chronic medical conditions if you're pregnant or if you're a growing child so really any condition that is characterized by rapid growth like pregnancy or being a young child or is characterized by chronic disease like diabetes like autoimmune conditions you need a lot more glycine in your diet some authorities say you might need up to 60 grams a day in order to give your body everything it needs to grow to heal and to repair so why is glycine so important what is your body needed for what does it do with it i'm glad you asked there's a list and i'm going to go through them quickly first of all glycine actually acts as an inhibitory neurotransmitter in your brain and this is why it seems if you get it in sufficient quantity it it helps people with their sleep it helps people with anxiety disorders it helps people with ocd it just calms down the nervous system and that's a good thing you don't want it to be too exciting it also helps calm gut inflammation people who get adequate amounts of glycine have reported that their leaky gut their symptoms of sibo and their symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome get substantially better and indeed this may be one of the reasons that people with gut issues when they convert to a carnivore diet their gut issues go almost completely away glycine obviously is a building block of collagen and it is also a building block of creatine and so it's going to help with muscle both muscle growth it's going to help keep your bones as strong as they can possibly be it's also going to help your joint health by helping to keep cartilage tendons and ligaments strong and to help repair them as quickly as possible it's also going to help you regulate your blood sugar and insulin that's a big deal it is going to help you fight skin aging and wrinkles your skin the reason that as we get older our skin gets wrinkly and droopy is because our collagen loses its elasticity we don't have as much collagen as we used to and that's one of the major reasons there's some research showing that that getting good sources of collagen of which a major component is glycine really helps to make fine lines and wrinkles get less noticeable i think again this is the reason that many of my carnivore friends look anywhere from five to twenty years younger than their chronological ages they're getting this rich source of glycine in their daily diet glycine also helps tremendously to fight inflammation because it's one of the building blocks of glutathione which is the preeminent anti-inflammatory molecule in the human body glutathione helps fight all bad inflammation all chronic inappropriate inflammation glutathione is going to fight that and one of the building blocks of glutathione is glycine as always i've included links to this research down in the show notes so that you can read further for yourself i think that anybody who is a vegan or is trying to eat a predominantly plant-based diet should 100 supplement glycine and other collagen building blocks in their diet because you're just never going to get enough from your diet and indeed we see this in people who have been vegan for for three years five years 10 years 15 years they very often look much older than their chronological age and that's because the collagen in their skin and in their connective tissue is just not what it should be because they're not getting enough of the collagen building backbone of glycine now let's talk about some great sources of glycine in your diet the i'm going to go roughly in order from good sources but not great and then the last ones i'm going to talk about are absolutely phenomenal sources of glycine so the eggs of any bird so chicken quail turkey any egg duck eggs they're all going to be great sources of glycine and most of the glycine will be in the white of the egg not the yolk this is one of those rare instances where the white is actually a better source of this nutrient than the yolk any seafood whatsoever is going to be a good source of glycine now we're going to start talking about better sources of glycine any cut of meat whatsoever from beef to pork to chicken to turkey all of these are going to be great sources of glycine even while game is a great source of glycine now let's talk about the superfoods with relation to to glycine bone broth you see one of the reasons our ancestors didn't need to make much glycine is that they were always eating the tendon and the cartilage and the sinew and the connective tissue they were always cooking the bones and eating the broth they were eating the brains they were eating all of this connective tissue and so bone broth anytime you have bones left over put them in a ziploc bag at the end of the week make a pot of bone broth when i say bone broth it doesn't just need to say bone broth on the label it needs to actually be real bone broth and so some of the bone broths that you buy over the counter are not going to be great sources of glycine you want to probably make your own bone broth and that's how you know you're getting more than enough glycine in your diet the skin of any animal is going to be an excellent source of glycine and so when you chicken skins turkey skin pork skins and so you're like wait you mean the pork skins that come in a bag that are crispy and delicious yeah they're excellent sources of glycine also chicken skins it's becoming more common that you can buy fried chicken skin and it's a delicious snack you can include it in your meal we use chicken skins and pork skins as dippers to dip into something that we've made so that you can have that chip experience without the chip side effects anytime that you eat any meat you want to try to include some of the connective tissue some of those white chewy bits those are those are rich sources of glycine and so when you eat pork ribs or beef ribs you want to leave the membrane on the back of the ribs you want to eat some of the cartilage eat some of the little crunchy chewy bits because those are almost pure glycine i don't usually talk about supplements i find it's a little disingenuous because i believe if you're eating a proper human diet you're going to be able to get enough of all the essential amino acids fatty acids vitamins and minerals in your diet but if you just insist on taking a supplement then the two supplements i recommend to get adequate amounts of glycine in your diet are carnivore crisps chicken skins they're delicious and they're fried in a very healthy oil or epic pork rinds they're also fried in a very healthy oil and are an excellent source of glycine and so if you must supplement please pick to one of one of these two supplements and supplement with them i put links down below in case you just want to take a supplement this is dr berry i'll see you next time