I’ve been using Glutamine for a good 15-16 years now just cause of the recovery benefits and its ability for it to help you maintain muscle mass in a caloric deficit. I spent the good part of my 20’s in a caloric deficit cutting weight for fights so it helped me tremendously but there’s so much more it was doing for me so Im going to tell you all about it!
What Is Glutamine?
Glutamine is 1 of 20 naturally occurring amino acids found in protein foods. It’s also the most abundant amino acid in the bloodstream. It makes up about 35 percent of the amino acid nitrogen in your blood.
It’s known as a conditional essential amino acid.
What does “conditional essential amino acid” mean? It means that your body can make some on its own but uses it in large amounts.
It becomes essential when an individual faces disease or specifically muscle wasting. This can happen in the course of certain diseases or even physical trauma.
It’s a conditionally essential nutrient during certain catabolic states, including after bone marrow transplantation.
Around 60 percent of your muscle is made up of glutamine – and supplementing with this amino acid can aid protein synthesis(muscle building) and help naturally balance your pH levels.
L-glutamine benefits your health by supporting gut function and digestive processes. It can be beneficial if you have a digestive condition, such as:
- irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
- an inflammatory bowel disease like Crohn’s disease
- ulcerative colitis
- diverticulosis
- diverticulitis
- leaky gut or any of the issues associated with leaky gut (like joint pain, rosacea or any type of autoimmune response)
The man famous for discovering the Krebs cycle in the body was the first person to recommend taking L-glutamine for gut-related issues. That’s because Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, a German-born British biochemist who received the 1953 Nobel Prize for Physiology, found that it helped improve a healthy gut-related immune response.
A precursor to glutamate in your brain, glutamine is key to boosting your brain health. Why? If you mess up the glutamine-glutamate cycle it can result in all kinds of brain problems, including:
- Reye’s syndrome
- epilepsy
- bipolar disorder
- schizophrenia
- anxiety
- depression
Glutamine can also help slow down brain aging. Mitochondrial dysfunction causes increases in the glutamate and, again, puts the brain at risk for developing the above problems.
A study done at the New York University School of Medicine showed that even mild traumatic brain injury caused brain atrophy (loss of brain mass), and most of this damage was due to the disrupted glutamine-glutamate cycle and an increase in glutamate levels.
Whether your goal is to increase athletic performance, boost metabolism, improve recovery or even build muscle, research shows that L-glutamine can significantly aid your efforts. During an intense workout, your body becomes stressed, and your muscles and tendons require more glutamine than the amount supplied by a normal diet.
After an intense workout, the levels of cellular glutamine can drop by 50 percent and plasma levels by 30 percent. This muscle-wasting state is a gateway for the body to use your muscle for energy rather than carbohydrates, but glutamine can help prevent this from happening.
Supplementing with L-glutamine allows your muscles to fight and push a bit harder. This boosts your strength and helps repair your skeletal muscles.
A study found that glutamine supplementation makes it possible to recover quicker from intense weight training sessions because it improves muscle hydration. This aids the muscle recovery process and reduces recovery time for wounds and burns.
The recommended dose for those training hard 3+ times a week is 5 grams per day to keep levels optimized in your body. We have it for sale here at Radix if you think it’s time to get started.
Its tasteless and I just add it to my post workout shake!
COACH DANIEL