Inositol

What Is Inositol?

Inositol is a small sugar alcohol: a six-carbon ring with a hydroxyl group on every corner. Myo-inositol is the form your body and your food use. Citrus, beans, whole grains and organ meats carry it, and the kidneys make a fair amount of it each day from a simple sugar.

How It Works in the Body

Inositol's day job is in membranes. Cells attach it to a lipid to make phosphatidylinositol, then hang phosphate groups off the ring. When a hormone or neurotransmitter docks at certain receptors on the cell surface, an enzyme cuts that lipid in two and releases inositol trisphosphate and diacylglycerol. Both are second messengers, carrying the message inward. Inositol trisphosphate then opens calcium reserves held inside the cell.

What It Supports

• Cell signaling: Inositol is the backbone of the phosphoinositide messenger system, so it plays a role in how cells hear signals from outside.
• A calm, balanced mood: Several neurotransmitter receptors signal through that same pathway, and inositol supports a calm, balanced mood.
• Nervous system: Brain tissue holds some of the highest inositol concentrations in the body, where nerve cells run the same cycle.
• Cell membranes: Phosphatidylinositol is a structural phospholipid present in membranes throughout the body.

Who It May Suit

Dietary inositol comes mostly from beans, whole grains, citrus and organ meats, so low-carbohydrate and low-fruit patterns take in less of it. This suits people eating that way, and anyone who wants plain myo-inositol without additions. The capsule is cellulose with rice flour.

Good To Know

This is plain myo-inositol, a fine white powder, faintly sweet and readily water-soluble. Talk with your healthcare provider before use if you are pregnant or nursing, or if you take psychiatric or mood medication, since inositol sits inside the signaling those medicines act on.