Benefits of L-Glutamine

Even if you supplement with vitamins and minerals like vitamin C and D and magnesium, you may not have considered L-Glutamine. While it’s long been used by people in the fitness industry who wanted to preserve muscle tissue, many people don’t know about L-Glutamine benefits beyond its applications for bodybuilders. The truth is that glutamine is one of the 20 naturally occurring amino acids found in protein foods, and is the most abundant amino acid in the bloodstream. Your supply of glutamine must be continually replenished because your body uses it in large amounts, and science confirms that L-Glutamine benefits skin, digestion, and brain health, as well as increasing athletic performance and improving certain health conditions.

What Can L-Glutamine Do for You?

Often, people are glutamine-deficient because they don’t eat enough protein, are under excessive stress, exercise too intensely, or are battling an infection or illness. A person with an immune disorder or a gastrointestinal disorder might suffer from glutamine deficiency, as will a person undergoing radiotherapy or chemotherapy treatments. Digestive diseases can be the result of a lack of nutrients, like L-glutamine, that support the digestive tract. Supplementing with L-glutamine can boost your immune system, improving your ability to fight diseases and infections, and it can also provide very specific benefits to different parts of your body.

Glutamine improves gastrointestinal health. Interestingly, the person who discovered the Krebs cycle, Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, was the first person to recommend L-glutamine for gut health. Additional research supports his findings, showing that L-glutamine can be beneficial with those who have conditions like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, diverticulosis, or diverticulitis. One of the ways it helps is by balancing mucus production, to improve bowel movements. It also reduces intestinal inflammation and plays an important role in maintaining healthy gut microbiota.
It helps treat leaky gut and ulcers. Millions of people struggle with leaky gut syndrome, which is the main cause of autoimmune disease. Leaky gut plays a role in thyroid issues, arthritis, skin conditions, and other serious health conditions. Glutamine is the major source of fuel for cells in the small intestine, so it supports intestinal health and helps to treat leaky gut. Research indicates that supplementing with L-glutamine decreases intestinal permeability, benefiting ulcerative colitis and inflammatory bowel disease.
Glutamine supports brain health. Glutamine is the precursor to glutamate, a neurotransmitter in the brain. When the glutamine-glutamate cycle is disrupted, the result can be brain issues like Reye’s syndrome, epilepsy, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, and alcohol addiction. Supplementing with glutamine can help stall brain aging, and has been shown to remove excess ammonia in the brain, alleviating brain fog.
L-glutamine is good for muscles. This is why it is often used by bodybuilders and other fitness professionals. Supplementing with L-Glutamine may help with athletic performance and endurance, and it also boosts metabolism, improves recovery and can even help build muscle. This is because, when you work out intensely, the stress it puts on your body increases the amount of glutamine required by your muscles and tendons. L-glutamine assists the muscle recovery process and can even help reduce recovery time for wounds and burns.
L-glutamine supports both metabolic and heart health. Because human growth hormone (HGH) goes up significantly with glutamine supplementation, it helps increase resting metabolic rate and improve the afterburn effect post-exercise. The afterburn effect promotes weight loss, burns fat, and builds lean muscle mass, and there is evidence that glutamine helps suppress insulin levels and stabilize blood glucose. Research shoes that glutamine supplementation helps the body use lean muscle mass to maintain blood sugar and insulin sensitivity, and can markedly improve cardiovascular risk factors in patients with type 2 diabetes. There is even emerging evidence to indicate that L-glutamine promotes cardiovascular health by supporting the synthesis of DNA, ATP, proteins, and lipids, and has potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects that reduce risk factors of cardiovascular disease.

Supplementing with L-Glutamine

You can get L-Glutamine from food sources like meat, fish, bone-broth, spirulina, cottage cheese, cabbage, and asparagus, as well as in supplement form. The amount of L-Glutamine you should take in a supplement depends on what you’re trying to address. For instance, the L-glutamine dosage for leaky gut will be different from the dosage you take to support muscle repair or brain health. Glutamine seems safe in dosages up to 30 grams a day, but it’s important to talk to your doctor about the right dosage for you.

Glutamic Acid vs Glutamine

When considering amino acids, it’s easy to become confused about the difference between L-glutamine and L-glutamic acid. They both come from the family of amino acids known as glutamates, but they’re different. Glutamic acid is a component of monosodium glutamate, while L-glutamine is useful for improving your health.

Treating the Whole Person

At Advanced Functional Medicine, an integrated medical clinic, we exclusively practice functional medicine. A full functional medicine approach to healing uses a comprehensive diagnostic screening to get to the root of a patient’s issues. Our whole body approach to medicine utilizes all-natural, researched-based nutritional approaches to optimize the body’s natural healing abilities, rather than just using medication to treat symptoms. Each individual receives unique and customized care, formulated based on the latest scientific resource, and we have a 96 percent success rate in patient outcomes. As a medically driven, patient-focused health clinic, we support our patients’ individual health goals, providing natural relief for symptoms of chronic factors and expert guidance about the decisions affecting a patient’s long-term health. It is our goal to help reverse chronic disease without resorting to dangerous or unnecessary drugs or surgical interventions, promoting healing from the inside out, in its truest, healthiest form. To schedule an appointment or learn more about how we can help restore your health and strengthen your body’s unique physiological functions, call 858-500-5572 or contact us through our website.