Hard to get up in the morning and even harder with glycine

[JHF1]

Dear all,

I'm having trouble getting up in the morning; The alarm wakes me up, but I will easily go back to sleep without much control over it. I'm using a wake-up-light plus my phone; It's been like this almost my whole life. I've only been diagnosed with CFS last year, but it really started as a kid and got even worse as a teenager.
I'm using glycine sources, which (after some intial problems in the past) make me feel better. I can tolerate powder, mag glycinate and collagen, but usually I only take collagen.
However, too much glycine make getting up almost impossible. I've stopped taking it before bed, but even taken in meals in the late afternoon will knock me out in the morning. Too much is below 10 g over the day (I've tracked it as exact as aposible on cronometer).
I've thought about possible causes and came up with this:
a) Cortisol doesn't rise enough
b) it's related to glycine's role in methylation
c) it's related to it's role as an inhibitory neurotransmitter
a) and c) could be the same thing, I guess.

Any ideas what could be done about it (except taking even less glycine, which I'm trying to avoid)?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Mary]

@JHF1 - I take 2000 mg. glycine before bed and 2000 mg more in the middle of the night, for sleep. I also take a lot of magnesium glycinate, though I don't know how much glycine is in magnesium glycinate. I've been taking glycine for sleep for 4 years or so, and initially I noticed it helped a lot with sleep, but not so much now.

In any event, I think 10 grams a day is a fairly high dose and you just might have to cut back. I read it can lower cortisol noticeably, though that hasn't been a problem for me, though I'm not taking as much as you. And it is an inhibitory neurotransmitter as you note.

So I don't know a solution apart from cutting back on the glycine, unless you took things to offset it, like licorice to raise cortisol, something to knock you down and then something to knock you back up, but I don't think that's a good solution. It is interesting that you can take collagen. I tried taking gelatin before I started the pure glycine, but it has glutamate which offset any benefit from the glycine for me.

Maybe you could try magnesium citrate instead of glycinate. I did not do well with mag citrate - it had something to do with msg, I can't recall right now exactly what, but magnesium citrate did make my sleep worse. So maybe magnesium citrate would offset some of the glycine for you and make you not sleep so deeply.

 

[prioris]

some ideas
take an at home 24 hour cortisol test
maybe the adrenals ... try B5 pantothenic acid

 

[JHF1]

Thank you for the replies.

@Mary I think 10 g is pretty low, but the symptoms I described already start way below that and I'm avoiding taking it in the evening. Additionally, 10 g is not just my supplemental, but whole intake as claculated by cronometer.
Apart from other sources, I read about it here.
Quoted from above link:

41:41 We run a deficit of our ability to synthesize glycine relative to our needs of about 10 grams per day, according to the most conservative estimate.

This could be higher, but will also definitely be more, if one is sick. I also have MTHFR C677T homozygous, which will raise the need even further.
Regarding magnesium, I'm using malate right now or a pre-mixed product with citrate, malate and glycinate. I will take your advice and take only the malate (maybe before bed?) for a while.

@prioris : I had a DUTCH test done 2017. To my surprise, cortisol came out ok in the morning and over the day, though it was really low in the night. I have tried B5 several times in the past. There seems to be a reproducible initial (positive) effect, though not necessarely on geeting up, but it always makes me really angry after some days. After talking to my doctor I have now gone to taking 100 mg every other day (instead of 500 mg 1-2 x / day).

 

[jason30]

Glutathione is primarily made up of three amino acids: glutamate, glycine and cysteine.
When you have enough glutamate and cysteine and then take glycine, glutathione can be produced. And producing glutathione is almost equal to start detoxing. And detoxing can result in reactions?

 

[prioris]

Glutathione is primarily made up of three amino acids: glutamate, glycine and cysteine.
When you have enough glutamate and cysteine and then take glycine, glutathione can be produced. And producing glutathione is almost equal to start detoxing. And detoxing can result in reactions?

why bother farting around and hoping there is enough enzyme reactions to make it when one can just take S-Acetyl Glutathione or the liposomal glutathione

S-Acetyl Glutathione is relatively inexpensive and reviews are very positive from people who have used the liposomal form. Glutathione will create methylation so may not be good for overmethylated people.

I would explore a trial of autoimmune diet to eliminate possibilities to see if food related.

I would explore using an immune booster. Beta Glucan that has 70% or more 1,3d activated beta glucan. Wellmune is 70%. It needs to be taken on an empty stomach when one wakes up and then wait 30 minutes before eating anything. 1000 mg is a reasonable dose. It is the number one natural immune booster in world. It works pretty quickly so no waiting for weeks. This is a supplement I'd recommend in anyone's core stack. It works on a broad array of conditions. It will even prevent flu's and colds and many other things.

I've been through that hard to wake up phase before but I have had the disease for nearly 60 years but I can't remember the path out of it because it spanned a long time. It was like I got bit by a tse tse fly and had sleeping sickness .... slept 20 hours a day for quite a while too.

Is the sleep restful when she does wake up ?

 

[jason30]

In my point of view, it's always better to let the body decides how much to make then giving the body an amount.

But my reaction was about JHF's reaction after intake of glycine. This could be due detoxing.

 

[Saint George]

I would just like to add a little of my experience here. I am also homozygous 677t like @JHF1 and have been having a very hard time with nutritional supplements fixing my issues (fatty liver, chronic heartburn, sleep issues, and brain fog which I believe may be supplement induced hypoglycemia or liver related as it started happening once working on methylation / B vitamins).

Anyways, in marches Glycine into my life. It can assist with stabalizing blood sugar and liver function, reduce stomach acid, and help you sleep - is this too good to true? It wasn't and I believe (i've only been taking for a week) may be turning things around for me.

With regards to the "rate limiting" cysteine comments here on glutathione, I honestly would get very bad reactions to NAC (excitotoxic feeling, clamminess, sweating, anxiety, heart palps, high blood pressure, and think it boosted nitric oxide which should help blood pressure?) quite rapidly after taking it. Interesting that they say to not take it after alcohol as it can be excitotoxic, but there's very little info why and how long you need to wait. I think that it might be simple that if there is no way to use NAC to produce glutathione, it can be excitotoxic and make you feel high glutamate. I did comprehensive blood work a while ago and looking through it and discovered I had high benzoic acid levels, which is likely showing a glycine deficiency. My ND is not very helpful and did a very half-assed analysis of my organic acids test and help at all.

Anyway, I would love to be able to take NAC for all it's benefits; perhaps now that I am taking plenty of glycine, and feel like I have plenty of glutamate, I can take it and make glutathione and feel great. We'll see!

 

[JHF1]

Sorry guys, I wasn't aware more people had answered.

Regarding detox reaction: I don't think that's the cause of my issues with glycine, for the reason that I had taken liposomal glutathione before, also in higher doses. From what I've read most of the swallowed liposomes end up in liver and spleen, so this would still keep the possibiity of detox in the brain open.
But I also tried to hold the liposomes under my tongue, which I could fix with taurine. I suspect that the gluathione (GSH) was able to reach my brain this way and too much became GSSG, activating NMDA receptors. The taurine helped through GABAergic and intracellular Ca2+-scavenging effects. So I would suspect that glycine should be similar.
One of my theories right now is that I tend to have a low NAD+/NADH ratio, because of long sickness as well as having a pathogenic mutation in a NADH dehydrogenase in ETC complex 1. This prevents mitochondrial quzality control and production of new ones, whole damage accumulates. The glycine buffer system uses NAD+ up, which made it worse.

Regarding waking up I had a some intermittent success with vitamin C (several g daily). Over the last days it got better. Possible causes could be NMN intake since about 2 weeks (if it was , there was a time delay) or (that's more likely) phosphatidylserine at a total of 800 mg daily.

 

[Saint George]

Where did you see that Glycine uses your NAD+ up? I can't find anything to support that.

 

[JHF1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycine_cleavage_system

It's more of an idea actually. While it would use up NAD+, it doesn't mean it would be an significant amount. But maybe it would be enough to do cause in parts of my brains... really just speculation, but there's not much alternative. I'm not sure I have tried SAMe to fix it when I wa sin the condition, but methylfolate didn't help.

 

[Juanita Vee]

Just wondering if external things help, like I've seen alarm clocks that get bright in order to wake a person up? Maybe light would help wake you up? It could help counterbalance the meds/supplements effects? Just an idea..

 

[JHF1]

Thanks for the reply, Juanita.
I have had an alarm clock using light for several. It worked fine to wake me up in the beginning, but lost some effectivity over time. But my main issue isn't to wake up, but to get fit (and get control over me getting up).

To update this thread: In the meantime this issue got a lot better.
Helped definitively: Phosphatidyl serine (I had tried this before, but a higher dosing was needed; 800 mg did the trick. I developed insomnia after some time, which probably was a side effect)
Helped probably to some degree:
- frequent Vitamin C dosings (500-1000 mg every 1,5 waking hours)
- NMN sublingually (a NAD+ precursor, 500-1000 mg daily in 125 mg doses, took some time of taking it)

 

[Juanita Vee]

oops, sorry! I see you even posted your experience using light to wake up when I re-read the thread... Glad the issue has gotten better

 

[Judee]

Since you say you cannot take it at night or even late afternoon, I'm wondering if you are making your evening cortisol levels go into crisis zone and if that may be why you have trouble waking up in the morning. I agree with @prioris about getting a home cortisol test. The 4x a day ones can be bought on amazon.

Also I agree with @Mary. You may have reached your point of diminishing returns with that amount and walking it back a bit may help you to find the sweet spot that does one thing ("makes me feel better") without causing the other ("getting up almost impossible").

It could just be a small adjustment is needed before throwing a bunch of other things into the mix which may actually take away the positive this supplement is doing for you.

I've seen that with this disease before where I or another poster will find something that works somewhat and then we add more of that or something else into the equation and then the original thing stops working altogether.