New York Company Develops “Sweetener” to Combat Chronic Inflammation
Dr. Joel Brind
A single, highly specific nutritional deficiency is responsible for shortening the lifespan of most people, according to Dr. Joel Brind, a longtime medical researcher and the CEO of Natural Food Science, based in New Hamburg, NY.
“These days, most people in our society do not live a natural lifespan,” he says. “Rather, they are slowly poisoned to death by their own immune system fighting microbes that are not harmful or not even there, all due to a deficiency of a single, simple nutrient: the amino acid glycine.”
Brind, whose medical research experience goes back to 1972, received his doctorate in Basic Medical Sciences from New York University and has been a professor of human biology at Baruch College of the City University of New York since 1986. He founded Natural Food Science in 2010, after recognizing the link between glycine deficiency and the chronic inflammation that causes disease.
“While it is now generally appreciated that most chronic and life-threatening illnesses—such as arthritis, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer—are caused by some form of chronic inflammation, the fundamental cause of inflammation is not yet generally appreciated,” he says. “Once it became clear to me that glycine was the critical natural regulator of macrophages, the cells that cause inflammation, I set about making this simple nutrient widely available in a convenient and cost effective form.”
The glycine supplement that Brind formulated, sweetamine, became the flagship product of Natural Food Science. Meanwhile, Brind has continued his own research on extending lifespan by glycine supplementation, including a collaboration with the National Institute on Aging, a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
“One of the key lessons I learned along the way is that important knowledge can be obscured by the wrong word,” he says. “Thus the nutritional term ‘non-essential’ has made glycine widely ignored by researchers. But just because the body can make glycine on its own does not mean that it can make enough for good health.”
In order to regulate the behavior of macrophages, and thus the process of inflammation, blood levels of glycine need to be very high, Brind says. Glycine also needs to be replenished daily, as it’s a small, water-soluble nutrient that quickly cycles through the body.
Because it’s used like a sweetener in tea or coffee, sweetamine simplifies that replenishing process, he says. “People who use the product regularly receive the tremendous benefit of eliminating inappropriate or excessive inflammation in an easy and natural way.”
For more info, visit sweetamine.com.