Glycine for testosterone and building muscle

Glycine, the smallest amino acid, might be able to increase testosterone and help you build muscle. 

There’s not a lot of science out there, but it’s a lot of benefits when it comes to glycine. So let me show you.

Glycine increases luteinizing hormone (LH)

This study showed that glycine increases testosterone in a dose-dependent manner.

The researchers injected animals with 200mg of glycine and it caused a massive spike in luteinizing hormone, as you can see in the graph below.

50mg was a little effective, 100mg was more effective and 200mg was the most effective. I wonder if they used even more if it would have led to an even greater increase in luteinizing hormone.

The 200mg dose would translate to about 667mg/kg for each rat. This would translate to the human equivalent dose of about 108mg/kg. This would mean that a 100kg guy like myself has to take about 10 grams of glycine, or at least inject 10 grams of glycine to get this spike in glycine as the spike in LH as seen in these animals.

But we likely have to double the dose to compensate for absorption issues and liver processing that’s being bypassed by injection. So that means I have to take about 20 grams of glycine to most likely get this spike in luteinizing hormone.

Likely a bunch of glycine is utilized by the intestinal cells and liver for energy and repair. So we don’t know the oral dose required for boosting LH. We just know that it needs to be very high. And I’ve seen some people use glycine in their testosterone boosters to increase luteinizing hormone.

But guys, if the dose is not at least 10 grams, it’s most likely not going to do anything for your luteinizing hormone.

Glycine increases DHT

Glycine has been shown to increase 5 alpha reductase (5AR) (R), the enzyme that:

• Converts testosterone into DHT
• Converts DHEA into androsterone
• Creates allopregnanolone from progesterone
• Deactivates cortisol and aldosterone

In the following graph, you can see glycine is quite effective at increasing 3α5α-tetrahydroprogesterone (aka allopregnanolone). For a quick background, cholesterol is converted to pregnenolone -> progesterone -> (5AR) 5α-dihydroprogesterone -> (3α-HSD) allopregnanolone.

Allopregnanolone is a positive modulator of the GABA receptor, which means it makes it more sensitive. So you have better GABA signaling. Allopregnanolone is great for depression and anxiety, neuroprotection, and a bunch of other stuff as well. So having more allopregnanolone is quite a good thing.

Glycine boosts allopregnanolone even better when combined with gelsemine (found in Glesemium). This plant is used for state fright and apprehension, which is just general fear, panic and anxiety. So it’s quite interesting that this plant containing galsamine is being used for conditions that are related to low GABA signaling. Because if you have high GABA signaling, it’s much easier to deal with your fears.

Because glycine stimulates 5AR, it should also enhance the conversion of testosterone into DHT, our strongest androgen. If you’d like to maximize your DHT, get the blueprint here.

Glycine is anabolic and anti-catabolic

Glycine has also been shown to be anabolic and anti-catabolic. Glycine stimulates mTOR, which is how it’s anabolic (R, R).

You might’ve heard about anabolic resistance. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Resistant to anabolism. When you lift and eat protein, you don’t get such a robust stimulation in muscle protein synthesis. This is called anabolic resistance. This is quite common in older and sick/inflamed individuals.

Even if they’re training the same and they’re eating the same food, they’re not going to be as anabolic as the younger individual.

This is mostly due to reactive oxygen species (ROS) causing oxidative stress. As we age, ROS production and oxidative stress go up, and we are not as good at dealing with that ROS. And therefore testosterone goes down, muscle mass goes down, our health deteriorates and everything.

In this study, they injected endotoxin (LPS) into animals to create oxidative stress and inflammation. This induced anabolic resistance and blunted the anabolic response to leucine. When they gave glycine with the LPS, the drop in muscle protein synthesis (MPS) was mostly prevented and leucine was anabolic the way it should be.

The main mechanism of how glycine preserved anabolism was by reducing ROS.

When you have oxidative stress in the body, you get this anabolic resistance. When you use glycine, it reduces that oxidative stress and restores muscle anabolism. It gets rid of that anabolic resistance.

Glycine preserves muscle mass in sick individuals

Glycine has also been shown in patients under chronic hemodialysis (a treatment to filter wastes and water from your blood) to preserve muscle mass.

These patients were given 7g glycine twice daily or leucine. You can see in the graph that only glycine was able to preserve muscle mass.

Glycine lowers excess cortisol

Glycine has also been shown to lower cortisol. In this study, patients were given about 22g of glycine intravenously. As you can see in this table, cortisol decreased by an average of 30-50%.

To get the same effect, you’d likely have to take 40g+ of oral glycine.

Given that glycine can lower cortisol, it’s a good adaptogen. Plus it increases allopregnanolone, which enhances GABA signalling.

Summary

Glycine has been shown to:

• Increase LH
• Help build muscle
• Restore muscle anabolism
• Lower cortisol
• Increase allopregnanolone and DHT (anti-depressant and anti-anxiety)
• Improve fat loss
• Improve the synthesis of creatine
• Enhance sleep quality
• Release growth hormone
• Help with attention
• Improves vascular function (can help against high blood pressure and even with erectile dysfunction)
• Involved in the formation and repair of RNA and DNA
• Involved in the maturing of satellite cells, which can ultimately help your body recover and regenerate better
• Improve metabolic syndrome, which means that it can lower your cholesterol, and triglycerides, improve insulin sensitivity, and all of those good stuff

So there are a bunch of benefits when it comes to glycine. I use it really on a consistent basis and it’s definitely awesome.

As you’ve seen from most of the studies on anabolic resistance, luteinizing hormone, cortisol and so on, you need relatively high doses, at least 10 to 20 grams of it.

You can always use 5 grams 3x day. You can use 20 grams before bed, whatever protocol you would like and feel based on. Get that glycine into your body and start reaping the benefits.

If you’re a big fan of glycine, let me know in the comments below what it really helps you with. And I hope you learned something new and I will check you in the next one.

Supplements

Glycine powder

• Amazon
• iherb

Gelsemium

• eVitamin or Beeovita
• UK

Related articles you might like

• How to maximize your testosterone
• From submissive to fearless with testosterone and DHT
• The only hormone you need to crush fear

Course you might be interested in

• How to maximize your DHT and become alpha

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