When rats take betaine supplements, their livers make more of a special enzyme that helps clean up a harmful chemical called homocysteine, so less of it builds up.

Taking 4 to 6 grams of betaine every day for a few weeks to months can slightly lower a substance in your blood called homocysteine, which might help your body process nutrients better—kind of like giving your metabolism a little tune-up.

Taking betaine, a natural compound found in foods like beets and spinach, can slightly lower a substance in your blood called homocysteine—which, when too high, might be bad for your heart. This suggests betaine helps your body process certain nutrients better.

Betaine, a natural compound, can stop a harmful substance (homocysteine) from blocking an important energy-sensing system in one type of liver cell, but not in another—because the first cell type has a special enzyme (BHMT) that the second one doesn’t have enough of.

When rats eat a poor diet that lacks certain nutrients, their livers get fatty—but giving them betaine (a natural compound) helps keep the fat out, probably because it lowers a harmful chemical called homocysteine in the liver.

If your body doesn’t have enough folate or has a common gene variation that makes it hard to process folate, taking betaine (a natural compound found in beets and spinach) can help lower a harmful blood chemical called homocysteine by giving your body another way to clean it up.