“Sleep that soothes away all our worries. Sleep that puts each day to rest. Sleep that relieves the weary laborer and heals hurt minds. Sleep, the main course in life's feast, and the most nourishing.” So said Macbeth. And he was right. Just about everyday some item shows up in my newsfeed about the impact of insomnia on our health. “Disordered sleep increases the risk of stroke,” “Insomnia induces cognitive inefficiency and impairs memory,” “The effect of insomnia on development of Alzheimer’s disease” are typical headlines. Unfortunately, insomnia is not rare. Some 30% of the general population complain of it to some degree. What help is there?
Prescription meds like zolpidem (Ambien) and triazolam (Halcion) are available, but come with a host of side effects. What about over-the-counter sleep aids? Magnesium is touted, but reports of its efficacy are all over the place. Same with melatonin. Some users claim benefits, others notice no effect. With melatonin there is the further problem that what is on the label may not match what is inside the bottle. And that brings us to another sleep-aid, one that has been scooting under the radar, the simple amino acid, glycine.
Glycine was first obtained in the early nineteenth century by the French chemist Henri Braconnot who treated gelatin with sulfuric acid. Gelatin is a protein that can be extracted from animal bones by boiling and is composed of a number of amino acids of which glycine is the most prominent. Some two hundred years after Braconnot, Japanese researchers were investigating the function of other amino acids in the human diet and used glycine as a placebo control, believing it to be biologically neutral. To their surprise, the subjects receiving glycine reported an improvement in insomnia. This precipitated a number of studies in which subjects who had sleep problems were given either glycine or a placebo. They subjectively reported an improvement in time taken to fall asleep, length of sleep, and greater satisfaction with their night’s sleep. Polysomnography, a method of studying sleep by recording brain wave changes, eye movements, breathing rate, blood pressure and electrical activity of the heart confirmed the subjective reports. In a further positive finding, subjects performed better on memory tasks the day after they had taken glycine and felt more alert.
Exactly why glycine improves sleep isn’t clear, but it does act as an inhibitory neurotransmitter that reduces anxiety and protects the brain from overstimulation. Perhaps more importantly, glycine reduces core body temperature, a factor that is known to promote sleep. It also increases the release of serotonin, the body’s precursor to melatonin. In terms of dosage, the studies used 3 grams, taken about half an hour before going to bed. Other than rare instances of nausea, no significant side effects were reported even when the dose was tripled. For anyone struggling with insomnia, it seems reasonable to give glycine a try. It is readily available. Too bad Macbeth had no access to Amazon.
21 окт 2024
