Investigation of betaine as a novel psychotherapeutic for schizophrenia

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Interesting.

Betaine (trimethylglycine) functions very closely with choline,folic acid, vitamin B12, and a form of the amino acid methionine known as S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe)

Food sources include beets, wheat bran, spinach and quinoa.

Furthermore, a CHDH variant, rs35518479, was identified as a cis-expression quantitative trait locus (QTL) for CHDH expression in postmortem brains from schizophrenia, allowing genotype-based stratification of schizophrenia patients for betaine efficacy.

Well I guess thatā€™s something to look into for those who have had their genome sequenced.

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Thanks for sharing. I am interested in learning if betaine (Trimethylglycine) TMG could be as effective as sarcosine. Does anyone know? Has anyone tried Betaine?

I have been taking TMG (betaine) for a while now, 2000mg every four hours or so during the day. Seems to be a nice mood brightener. I donā€™t see any effect on positive symptoms though. Much clearer of an effect than sarcosine, which I got tired of really quickly due to itā€™s ā€˜dirtyā€™ feelingā€¦

Can betaine (TMG) cause irritability af? I tried to take 1.5mg last night and then took diazepam (Valium) which I also never tried before. The diazepam did kick in fast and sedated me fine, it helped me fall asleep alright. Then 1 hour later I wake up to ā€œcrazyā€. I donā€™t know if in a good or a bad way. I feel kinda manic but in a way that I AM REALLY IN REALITY and so Iā€™m decently grounded (minus the irritability, emotionality), very positive mood, very clear goal-oriented thinking but I also have irritability af. I also have too much emotionality too but mostly positive mood yeah. I donā€™t know if it is the betaine/TMG or the diazepam but since I took sarcosine years ago which is supposed to act kinda similar to betaine right?, well so sarcosine gave me the same good mood and clear grounded thinking just not the irritability. Then I gave some of the sarcosine to a friend who got irritable af from it. I donā€™t know ā€¦ Any thoughts, anyone?

To clarify, with sarcosine I was more grounded overall than this, in contrast to that now the emotions make it a challenge, but Iā€™m at least feeling more like my normal self, again minus the irritability/other emotions.

Its like its given me a load of dopamine. So maybe itā€™s really the betaine.