Digging Deep on Glycocyamine…
If you have read some of my previous entries or visited the forum you would know that I am highly against using glycocyamine (GAA) in supplemental formulations. To put it bluntly, it’s an unnecessary ingredient that is used for label dressing and to give a bloating effect in creatine supplementers. The reason I have this stance is because most of the population are indeed creatine monohydrate responders and if they aren’t, there are other viable forms with are absorbed via different pathways.
Some say that glycocyamine helps the body produce it’s own creatine which drops by about 30% due to supplementation in vivo. However, they can never answer this simple question, “If you are already supplementing with creatine you will be at saturation thus not needing your body to produce more right?”
It’s plain and simple to me, but some will defend it tooth in nail despite the fact numerous companies have pulled it from formulation after customers were concerned. Given the fact most of the concerns were manifested on open forums why did no one accurately defend it? Who knows but the fact it was pulled without question leads me to believe few understood it’s role and surely didn’t understand that the 4:1 ratio of betaine to glycocyamine is most likely a theoretical number. Here were the original studies on glycocyamine before the discovery in the late 1990’s that elevated homocysteine levels and high level of plasma glycocyamine could be attributed to neurological disorders.
1: BORSOOK ME, BILLIG HK, GOLSETH JG. Betaine and glycocyamine in the treatment of disability resulting from acute anterior poliomyelitis. Ann West Med Surg. 1952 Jul;6(7):423-7.
2: VAN ZANDT V, BORSOOK H. New biochemical approach to the treatment of congestive heart failure.Ann West Med Surg. 1951 Oct;5(10):856-62.
3: BORSOOK ME, BORSOOK H. Treatment of cardiac decompensation with betaine and glycocyamine. Ann West Med Surg. 1951 Oct;5(10):830-55.
4: BORSOOK H, BORSOOK ME. The biochemical basis of betaine-glycocyamine therapy. Ann West Med Surg. 1951 Oct;5(10):825-9.
I just had these pulled from my medical library and will be reviewing them in detail for an article I’m working on for publication. However the conclusions drawn from these studies did manifest themselves in a published patent by the original researcher ME Borsook. I found this alarming to be honest when finding the origin of the mythical 4:1 ratio which some say makes glycocyamine safe:
Does anyone else take issue with what is stated here?
Even at this point in time they knew this was a potentially toxic ingredient before later studies implicated excess GAA in nuerological disorders among humans and elevated homocysteine levels in rat models. No wonder this crap isn’t studied in humans anymore and is now only used to raises homocysteine in rats to induce cardiovascular disease.
Now some may say, well excess B-vitamins, creatine, and betaine will alleviate any potential lack of methylation. That’s great, but why risk it when it was clearly noted back in the original patent:
As you can see, there are some valid concerns regarding this ingredients presence in nutritional supplements. No matter how you approach the argument I firmly believe it’s an unnecessary risk and not serving the best interest of the consumer at large. I can assure you that this will not be the last you here from me on the topic.
