Glycine: The Missing Amino Acid Behind Pain, Hypermobility & Modern Inflammation
Most people think of Glycine as a simple “non-essential” amino acid you don’t have to worry about.
But when you look at its roles in collagen, inflammation, detoxification, brain chemistry, and pain signaling, a different picture emerges:
- We make some glycine, but not nearly enough for everything the body needs.
- Modern diets are heavily weighted toward muscle meat and away from bones, skin, and connective tissue.
- Chronic pain syndromes, hypermobility, EDS-like patterns, and inflammatory illness may all be worsened by low glycine
Much of the inspiration for this article comes from Dr. Joel Brind’s work and his interview here:
What Glycine Actually Does:
- A major building block of collagen and elastin (tendons, ligaments, fascia, cartilage, skin, vessel walls)
- A key component of glutathione, your master antioxidant and major detox molecule
- Required for bile salts, heme, creatine, and purines
- A calming neurotransmitter, helping balance excitatory signals in the brain and nervous system
- A “trigger lock” on inflammation, especially in immune cells called macrophages
Even though we can synthesize some glycine, estimates suggest that typical adults need around 10–15 g/day to fully support collagen, detox, and other uses. Most people get maybe 4–6 g/day total from diet + synthesis. That’s a large gap.
Why Modern Diets Create Glycine Deficiency ?
1. We eat the wrong parts of the animal
Traditional diets made heavy use of:
- Bones simmered into broth
- Skin, cartilage, tendons, ligaments
- Long-simmered stews with connective tissue
These are glycine-rich foods.
Modern diets emphasize:
- Boneless, skinless chicken breast
- Lean steaks, ground meat
- Fast-cooked, low-connective-tissue cuts
Muscle meat is high in methionine and relatively low in glycine. Collagen-rich “scraps” (where glycine lives) mostly go into the trash or pet food.
2. Carnivore diets without collagen
A carnivore diet can be glycine-replete if you include
- Skin-on poultry
- Bone broths
- Oxtail, shank, knuckle bones, tendons, gristle, etc.
But a “steak-and-eggs only” version is basically methionine overdose with minimal glycine. That imbalance can feed inflammation, joint degeneration, and pain over time.
3. Vegans & vegetarians: low gelatin
Vegans and vegetarians generally:
- Do not consume collagen or gelatin
- Rely on plant proteins that are not particularly rich in glycine
- Often have lower total protein intake overall
So even if blood levels might look “okay” on paper, from a structural and detox perspective they can still be glycine-insufficient, especially if they have high toxic load or connective tissue problems.
4. Methionine “burns through” glycine
Excess methionine (from lots of muscle meat, eggs, dairy) has to be broken down. The pathway the body uses to safely dispose of extra methionine consumes glycine in the process.
So:
High methionine + low collagen = a chronic glycine drain.
5. Obesity, diabetes, cancer & aging reduce glycine further
Research shows that people with:
- Obesity and visceral fat
- Type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance
- Fatty liver disease
- Certain cancers
- Advanced age
…tend to have lower glycine availability and reduced glycine synthesis. That’s on top of dietary issues.
Glycine, Inflammation & Pain (The Main Reason for the Challenge)
Dr. Brind’s key insight: inflammation is not actually a normal requirement for tissue healing. Pain from the initial injury is normal; chronic inflammation afterward is often a sign of glycine deficiency.
Here’s why that matters for pain:
Macrophages: the inflammatory “cop” cells
Macrophages are immune cells that live in every tissue—joints, muscles, fat, arteries, lungs, gut, brain. They can show up after:
- A sprain or strain
- Micro-tears from exercise
- Chronic mechanical stress (e.g., poor posture)
- Micro-injuries in blood vessels
- Normal physiological cell turnover
In a glycine-replete environment, they mostly stay in “mend mode”: • Cleaning up dead cells
- Remodeling tissue
- Supporting healing with minimal collateral damage
In a glycine-deficient environment, they flip too easily into “rend mode.”: • Releasing inflammatory cytokines
- Generating oxidative stress
- Damaging surrounding tissue
- Triggering or worsening pain syndromes
How this shows up clinically
When glycine is chronically low, everyday life can become an injury– inflammation–pain loop:
- Persistent back pain, hip pain, knee pain, foot pain
- Diffuse muscle aches that feel “fibromyalgia-like”
- Tendon and ligament pain that doesn’t fully heal
- Flaring pain from minor injuries that should be trivial
- Sensitivity to sunburn or overuse that lingers for days
One of the main reasons we recommend a 14-day glycine challenge is specifically to see what happens to:
Chronic pain syndromes and “mystery aches” when you finally give the body the glycine it’s been missing.
Glycine for Hypermobility and EDS-like Patterns
If you have:
- Generalized hypermobility
- Suspected or diagnosed Ehlers–Danlos Syndrome (EDS)
- Easily sprained joints, “loose” ligaments, recurrent subluxations
- Slow healing or fragile connective tissue…then glycine becomes even more important.
Collagen is built heavily from glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline. When glycine is limited:
- Collagen quality and density may be compromised
- Tendons, ligaments, and joint capsules are less robust
- Micro-injuries accumulate faster than the body can repair them
Glycine is not a cure for EDS, but:
- It’s one of the foundational raw materials for collagen
- It may improve tissue resilience over time
- It can reduce inflammatory amplification of connective tissue pain
For people with hypermobility/EDS-type presentations, glycine often becomes a “must-have,” not a luxury.
Glycine, Sleep, Mood & Anxiety
Many people first encounter glycine as a 3 g bedtime supplement for sleep. That’s a great starting point.
In the brain and nervous system, glycine:
- Acts as a calming (inhibitory) neurotransmitter
- Helps balance excitatory signaling
- Modulates NMDA receptors (which are involved in learning, plasticity, and pain perception)
Clinically, people often report:
- Falling asleep more easily
- Deeper, more restorative sleep
- Less “tired but wired” at night
- A subtle calming, anti-anxiety effect
Given the explosion of anxiety, insomnia, and neurological illness, it’s reasonable to ask:
Are our diets simply not supplying enough glycine to support healthy GABA/glycine signaling in the brain and spinal cord?
If you find glycine makes you sleepy when taken in the morning, that’s not necessarily a bad thing—it just means you’ll do better skewing your dose toward the evening and bedtime.
Detox, Glutathione & Chronic Illness
Glycine is required to make glutathione, the body’s master antioxidant and detox molecule. It’s also used for:
- Phase II glycine conjugation (binding to certain toxins so you can excrete them)
- Bile salt conjugation (critical for fat digestion and toxin elimination through bile)
If glycine is low, you can be:
- Overloaded with toxins
- Underproducing glutathione
- Struggling to clear environmental chemicals, mycotoxins, heavy metals, and more
This is one reason I see glycine as foundational for patients with chronic complex illness, mold exposure, Lyme, chemical sensitivity, and “mystery” fatigue.
Glyphosate (“Glycosade”) and Glycine — A Possible Environmental Hit
Dr. Stephanie Seneff has proposed that glyphosate, the common herbicide in Roundup, may interfere with glycine biology because it is structurally similar to glycine.
Her hypothesis (still controversial, but worth noting) is that glyphosate may:
- Compete with or replace glycine in certain proteins
- Disrupt enzymes and signaling pathways that normally depend on glycine
- Contribute to a kind of functional glycine deficiency even if intake is okay
If this is true, then decades of glyphosate exposure could be another reason our glycine-dependent systems are struggling—on top of poor diet and chronic illness.
The 14-Day Glycine Challenge
A simple experiment for pain, sleep, and inflammation
This is NOT a prescription, but a general framework you can discuss with your practitioner.
What you’ll need
- Pure glycine powder, ideally a clean, high-quality form
- A way to record daily symptoms (paper journal, app, notes on your phone)
In our clinic, we carry a good-quality glycine powder if you’d like guidance and a clean source to work with.
General safety notes
Most healthy adults tolerate 3–8 g/day very well. If you have kidney or liver disease, are pregnant, or are on complex medication regimens, talk with your provider first.
Dosing outline (14 days)
The main target here is pain syndromes and sleep.
Days 1–3: 3 g/day
- 1 g with dinner
- 2 g about 30–60 minutes before bed
Notice:
- How quickly you fall asleep
- Whether sleep feels deeper or more restorative
- Any change (even small) in background pain
Days 4–7: 5 g/day
- 1–2 g with dinner
- 3–4 g before bed
Focus on:
- Morning stiffness and joint pain
- Back, hip, knee, or foot pain
- Diffuse muscle aches
- Any change in headaches or inflammatory flares
If you feel too sleepy the next morning, pull most or all of the dose toward evening/bedtime and avoid daytime doses.
Days 8–14: 6–8 g/day
- Optional: 1 g in the late afternoon or with dinner (if it doesn’t make you groggy)
- The rest (4–6+ g) before bed
For many people, 6–8 g/day total is where the bigger shifts show up. Track daily:
- Pain scores (0–10) in your worst area (knee, low back, neck, etc.)
- Number of “bad pain days” vs “better” days
- Sleep onset, number of awakenings, quality on waking
- If you have hypermobility/EDS: joint stability, sense of “holding together,” frequency of subluxations or flares
If glycine clearly helps your pain but consistently makes you groggy in the morning, simply:
Put the whole dose at night.
You’ll still support collagen, detox, and inflammation while leveraging the sedating effect where it’s useful—during sleep.
Food First: Collagen & Bone Broth
Supplemental glycine is helpful, but I still like to anchor this in food-based collagen wherever possible.
Key strategies:
- Bone broth: 1–2 cups per day of real, long-simmered broth (ideally including joints, knuckles, feet, skin)
- Collagen powders: easy to add to coffee, tea, or smoothies
- Skin and connective tissue: eat the crispy chicken skin, slow-cooked shanks, and all the “weird bits” our grandparents loved
In our clinic, we use and recommend Collagen ECM by Systemic Formulas, which is a high-quality collagen product designed for connective-tissue support:
Combining:
- Collagen/bone broth (for a broad collagen matrix)
- Glycine powder (to reliably reach a therapeutic dose)
…is, in my experience, one of the simplest, most powerful ways to support:
- Chronic pain and stiffness
- Hypermobility / EDS-type connective tissue fragility
- Detoxification and glutathione status
- Sleep and anxiety
- Overall inflammatory balance
Bringing It All Together
We live in a world where:
- We eat more muscle meat than any humans in history
- We throw away the bones, skin, and tendons that used to supply huge amounts of glycine
- We’re exposed to unprecedented toxic load and chronic infections
- Rates of pain, hypermobility, anxiety, and chronic inflammatory disease are soaring
Glycine sits at the crossroads of collagen, inflammation, pain, detox, and neurochemistry. It’s not magic, but for many people it’s a missing piece that the modern food environment simply doesn’t provide in adequate amounts.
If you’re struggling with chronic pain syndromes—muscle aches, back pain, hip or knee pain, stubborn tendon problems—or you have hypermobility/EDS patterns, a 14-day glycine challenge (with medical guidance) is a low-risk, potentially high yield experiment.