Is Betaine legal in the United Kingdom?

Six grams a day lowers fasting homocysteine by 20 percent in healthy adults. In the same studies it raises LDL, the bad cholesterol, by 0.36 mmol/L. Studies that lowered homocysteine another way and then counted heart attacks found nothing. In 12,064 heart attack survivors, homocysteine fell 28 percent, and heart and blood vessel events did not drop.

Betaine does exactly what it says on the bottle. What it says on the bottle turns out not to be the point.

How it works: Betaine hands a small chemical tag, a methyl group, to homocysteine. That turns homocysteine back into methionine, a normal amino acid.

Approval history: Betaine anhydrous is FDA-approved as a prescription medicine to treat homocystinuria, a rare inherited disease. The same molecule is also sold over the counter as a dietary supplement, usually labelled trimethylglycine or TMG. The supplement has no approved use.

Licenses medicines for sale in the UK. A compound without a licence to be sold (a marketing authorisation) is an unlicensed medicine. The law only lets it reach people through a prescriber, under the specials scheme (unlicensed medicines made for one patient's needs). It cannot be sold as a research product.

The legal category above is how The Longevity Archive reads Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency listings for Betaine on the reviewed date. It is not a legal opinion. Rules change. Bringing a compound into the country, prescribing it and owning it can each be treated differently. Check with the agency before you act on anything here.

Check MHRA directly

Whether Betaine is banned in sport is set by the World Anti-Doping Code and by military rules, not by its legal status in the United Kingdom. Before you compete or get tested, look up Betaine by name on the Prohibited List, or look up a named product in Global DRO. Under the World Anti-Doping Code, category S0 bans, at all times, any drug-like substance that meets two tests. No other section of the List covers it. And no government health regulator anywhere has a current approval for it as a treatment in people. Many substances that are approved somewhere are banned by name in another section. So approval does not mean a substance is allowed in sport.

• WADA Prohibited List
• Global DRO (check a named product)
• USADA (US athletes)
• Operation Supplement Safety (US service members)

The rules you compete or serve under decide this, not this page.