Also known as trimethylglycine or TMG, betaine is a chemical compound similar to choline, folic acid, and SAMe. Together, these compounds function as "methyl donors" that carry methyl molecules throughout the body, and thus help in the completion of several vital chemical processes.
As a nutritional supplement, betaine's primary role is to support and improve liver function. It does a particularly good job of helping the liver process fats, or lipids; animal studies have shown that betaine helps protect the liver from chemical damage, and can improve, or even reverse, a condition called fatty liver disease caused by high intake of alcohol. Betaine has also been shown to be useful in controlling homocysteine levels in the blood, and thus may help to reduce the incidence of atherosclerosis and osteoporosis. There is anecdotal evidence that betaine can help improve a condition called dry mouth.
To help treat fatty liver disease caused by alcohol intake, many practitioners recommend between 1,000 and 2,000 milligrams of betaine supplements taken three times daily. Lower amounts are often taken as a general supplement and to improve overall liver function.
Betaine can be obtained through one's diet from foods such as fish, beets and beans. Betaine is also available as a dietary supplement, usually as betaine hydrochloride, in capsule or tablet form.
As of this writing, there are no known side-effects or drug interactions associated with betaine. As always, make sure to consult with a licensed health care provider before taking betaine or any other herbal remedy or dietary supplement.
References
Chronic pain afflicts over 20% of the adult population. Sadly, most MDs have essentially no education in treating pain, beyond offering a few toxic medications. Then they tend to steer people with pain away from those health practitioners who are trained. This puts the acupuncture community on the front lines for addressing this epidemic.
When the body is going through a stressful event, the sympathetic system is activated. This activation will help the body with a life-threatening situation. If this state is activated for prolonged periods of time, it starts to consume energy. These traumatic events that generate stressors in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) will eventually become internalized.
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One of the things that makes acupuncture so difficult to measure is that the medicine actually does contain some esoteric aspects. There have been numerous studies that demonstrate the neurochemical reasoning behind why acupuncture points stimulate the autonomic nervous system to enact change However, not all the benefits of TCM can easily be measured by randomized, controlled trials. But does that make them fundamentally and definitively untrue?
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