Double Your IGF-1 & Reduce Your Body Fat By 19% W/ Betaine!? I have to admit, the evidence I have to support this hilarious claim is not conclusive, but it's interesting. That's for sure.
➲ IMPORTANT REMINDER - This is "betaine" as in trimethylglycine aka TMG, not "betaine" as in betaine HCL, which may help you if you have serious problems with your digestive system, but is otherwise (i.e. for 99% of the healthy population) a complete waste of money and will have NO effect whatsoever on your IGF-1 and body fat levels.
The data was published in a not exactly totally recent paper from the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the Faculty of Veterinary Science of the Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. The subjects were pigs and the objective of the present study was, therefore, to evaluate the effect of betaine supplementation (at 0.125% of the total diet) on carcass quality, growth performance and changes in serum IGF-1 and TG concentrations of finishing pigs.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CjfUeWKeS5...ss/s1600/a.png
Figure 1: Relative IGF-1 & triglyceride levels, as well as thickness of back fat (Lothong. 2013)
Aside from the previously mentioned improvements in body fat and IGF-1, the pigs on the "high" betaine diet (my calculation would suggest that we are talking about a human equivalent of only 2-3g per day) did also lead to significant reductions in serum triglyceride and could thus also help people with high blood lipids.