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What Causes Glycine Malabsorption?

What Causes Glycine Malabsorption?

Darrell Miller

09/09/11

Date: September 09, 2011 04:33 PM
Author: Darrell Miller (dm@vitanetonline.com)
Subject: What Causes Glycine Malabsorption?

Glycine

Glycine is known to be the smallest amino acid in the human body and it is present in both water and fatty based environments. This has been one of the most researched amino acid to date and most results indicate that it has an important role in normal bodily function maintenance. It has the ability to supply collagen to the human body as one of its main functions. Studies have also found that glycine is also used to build both fibrous and muscle tissues which is why it has been used as a treatment for degenerative diseases. Aside from this main function glycine also plays such a wide range of roles in other bodily functions as it is playing a part in numerous system processes, from aiding in blood sugar conversion to affecting the nervous system it truly has made itself essential to the body.

That is why any malabsorption or lowering of glycine levels in the body can cause harmful and detrimental effects in any person’s well being. Furthermore, it also has been proven in many studies that glycine has an antioxidant effect which aids in the body’s war against free radicals. In recent years there has been an increase in the popularity of glycine, so much so that some food products have been fortified with it just to up their value in the consumer’s eyes as they know that America is getting more and more health conscious as the days go by. Since the body is capable of producing this substance it is considered as a non essential amino acid. It is seldom that the body will totally run out of this substance however lowered levels due to various reasons are absolutely possible. Which brings me back to how is malabsorption of Glycine caused.

Glucose and Galactose Presence

Studies have been done to show how glycine absorption can be impaired and what they were able to find out is that there is a competition between forms of sugar like glucose and galactose and glycine for intestinal transport. The results show that there was a decrease in absorption of both substances whenever the other is present. For glycine the drop in absorption was over 50 percent and for the sugars there was also significant decrease in uptake and absorption. What this entails in the real world is that regions with high carbohydrate diets maybe affected and may have cases of Glycine absorption impairment more so than other regions with lower carbohydrate diets however this is not taking into account any gastrointestinal damage that may also affect glycine absorption.

Anesthesia Administration

In cases that a person has gone through surgery they may suffer from Glycine malabsorption, this is not something to be that worried about as anesthesia is not consistently present in the body and realistically very few individuals have surgery often and surgery that requires anesthesia I might add. Studies have shown that local anesthesia is the one that is more harmful to glycine absorption compared to general anesthesia.

If you have a glycine malabsorption problem, supplementing with the amino acid will help restore these low levels. Grab some glycine and feel the difference it can make in your energy.