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08.05.2022

L-Serine supplementation may make the yo-yo effect a thing of the past

Losing weight is difficult, keeping the lost pounds of body fat away after a successful slimming diet is even more difficult. Perhaps L-serine supplementation will make this task a little less impossible, suggests a German animal study published in Nutrients. And perhaps supplementation with L-serine is also very interesting for people who are experimenting with part-time fasting.

Study
German diabetologists at the Helmholtz Center Munich experimented with mice for several weeks. They fattened some of the lab animals with food in which they had hidden extra calories [HFD], and gave another part standard food [CD].

Both the HFD and CD groups were then given a portion of drinking water in which the researchers had dissolved the amino acid L-serine. If the mice had been adult humans, they would have received about 10-14 grams of L-serine per day.

L-Serine
Serine, present in protein-rich foods such as chicken, turkey and eggs, is not an essential amino acid. The body can synthesize serine by converting glycine. Strictly speaking, glycine is also not an essential amino acid, but some biochemists suspect that the body's capacity to make glycine is insufficient to meet its needs. If that's true, then maybe serine too.

In 2019, Chinese researchers published an animal study in which they gave old mice serine for six months, and found that the animals became slimmer as a result. [Front Endocrinol (Lausanne). 2018 Aug 23;9:476.] This was probably because the amino acid reduced the activity of appetite hormones. Incidentally, the Chinese used half the dose with which the Germans experimented.

The Chinese experiments were the impetus for the German study.

Results
Serine supplementation failed to prevent the animals in the HFD group from gaining weight.

Serine supplementation did, however, have a positive effect when the researchers made the mice lose weight by fasting them several times. After the fasting periods, serine reduced body weight gain when the animals were able to eat as much as they wanted.

Mechanism
The Germans discovered that serine supplementation increased the energy consumption by the brown fat cells.

Conclusion
"Our data strongly suggest that L-serine supplementation during and after weight-loss interventions could significantly reduce weight regain and thereby help tackle one of the major problems of current obesity therapies", summarize the researchers.

Hmm... What would happen if you supplemented not only with L-serine but also with L-carnitine during fasting cycles?

Source:
Nutrients 2022, 14, 1922.

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