Some call it the backbone of bodybuilding. Others say its importance is exaggerated. By reading our article you will find out what glutamine means for you!

If you look inside the human body, then glutamine can be found everywhere. As the most abundant amino acid in the body, glutamine can be found in muscle tissue, plasma, and almost every animal product you eat.

Glutamine
Something especially important should be called an “essential” amino acid, right? Not certainly in that way. Glutamine считается “условно незаменимой”. This means that your body can produce enough to meet your needs under normal conditions, but not always. In other words, under heavy loads, you need to replenish your glutamine stores in order to exceed your usual daily allowance.

As a supplement, glutamine has many fans. He also has detractors who say that if you are not a patient in the burns department, then it is better to leave it on the shelf. We’ll try to sort through the research and help you decide if glutamine is right for you.

What is glutamine?
Glutamine вырабатывается в теле, когда незаменимая аминокислота глютамат (или глютаминовая кислота) распадается и связывается с азотсодержащими молекулами аммиака. Glutamine можно представить в виде губки азота. It destroys ammonia and shunts nitrogen between tissues where it is needed for cell growth and tissue repair and a host of other functions. It is known that approximately 30-35% of all nitrogen during the breakdown of proteins is transported in the form of glutamine. Glutamine также подвержен распаду для повторного синтеза глютамата, что делает глютамин критически важным источником аммиака и азота.

Approximately 70 percent of your body’s glutamine is produced in skeletal muscle, from where it travels to the small intestine, kidneys, and white blood cells. These are the dominant sites of glutamine use.

Internal levels of this amino acid depend on various factors. Pregnancy and lactation significantly deplete the body’s stores of glutamine, as do exhaustive exercise, illness, injury, starvation, rapid growth and development, and other conditions of extreme physiological stress. These are just some of the conditions under which consumption is growing. glutamine or its additional intake from supplements is appropriate.

What is he doing?
Glutamine, как и другие альфа-аминокислоты, участвует в регулировании синтеза и распада белка. But there is something more. Glutamine существенно влияет на метаболизм аминокислот, поддержание кишечника, нормальной функции иммунной системы, образованию глюкозы, водному транспорту, нейротрансмиссии и многое другое.

The kidneys will be the main consumer of glutamine because they break off ammonia from glutamine to maintain your body’s acid-base balance. Wherever ammonia is found, glutamine can be found. As metabolic acidity increases, in response to intense exercise or a high protein diet, renal uptake of glutamine increases. One study found that just 4 days of a high-protein or high-fat diet led to a 25% drop in glutamine in plasma and muscle tissue.

If all of these adverse factors for the body begin to overwhelm the body’s ability to produce glutamine, then signs of deficiency can manifest as muscle loss, energy depletion, and increased susceptibility to infections.

What are the benefits for performance and physical performance?
Despite the various functions of glutamine, there is little evidence of a direct effect on muscle growth, fat loss, and muscle strength in normal healthy individuals. Knowing how much stress intense training puts on the body, athletes may see some benefits from supplementing with more glutamine or from combining it with other supplements.

One study found that when athletes suffered from mild dehydration, supplemental glutamine increased performance and fluid and electrolyte intake after supplementation. The supplements also increased growth hormone levels in response to cycling to the point of exhaustion.

Extracellular concentrations of glutamine have also been shown to activate the mTOR signaling pathway, which is known to be responsible for increasing muscle size. However, here the benefits of glutamine supplementation require different conditions: mtor signaling requires the presence of branched-chain amino acids (most importantly leucine), as well as some threshold level of cellular hydration.

In another case, athletes who took 4 grams of glutamine per day for 8 weeks, combined with creatine intake by the loading and maintenance methods, saw better muscle growth in lean muscle mass compared to those who took creatine alone. This may sound significant, but it’s hard to draw conclusions over a mere 8 weeks at such a low dosage. Perhaps higher doses or prolonged study could lead to the resolution of questions and conjectures.

What is the difference between different types of glutamine?
A very important thing when choosing glutamine is the delivery system. Whether you are purchasing powder, capsules or tablets, free form L-glutamine works best. However, since glutamine is unstable, avoid ready-to-drink drinks and protein bars that claim to contain glutamine.

If you prefer ready-made drinks or bars, then you need glutamine in a peptide-bound form, such as L-alanyl-L-glutamine, glycyl-L-glutamine hydrate, or an ingredient listed as “glutamine peptide”. Remember that the concentration of glutamine in any of these forms of the peptide is approximately 65-70 percent. In other words, only about 6.5-7 gr. glutamine in 10 gr. glutamine peptide. Dose accordingly.

Regardless of the form, up to 90% of the ingested glutamine will be lost. Some of the glutamine you consume will never reach your liver. Most glutamine is eliminated by digestive enterocytes and immune cells in the gut.

Foods that contain N-acetyl-L-glutamine or alpha-ketoisocaproyl-glutamine should be avoided. These forms may be stable, but current evidence suggests that they are both poor delivery forms of glutamine.

What is the best way to use it?
It is best to combine glutamine with sodium and other electrolytes first. Glutamine transport occurs via a sodium dependent mechanism and has been shown to significantly increase cell volume, electrolyte uptake and hydration. This can be beneficial for endurance and strength athletes, the latter of which is important due to cell hydration, which is one aspect of muscle hypertrophy. Significant reduction in cell water volume can also inhibit signaling mtor, which is critical for muscle building.

Other candidates for combination with glutamine:

BCAAs: There are two main reasons why the combination of BCAAs and glutamine can promote muscle growth and performance. First, the concentration of ammonia, and therefore glutamine, directly affects the metabolism of BCAAs. And secondly, mtor signals from extracellular glutamine primarily require the absorption of BCAAs, leucine in the first place. BCAAs plus glutamine may promote performance and muscle growth.

Citrulline: Glutamine acts as a precursor for arginine and NO synthesis by delivering citrulline between tissues. Using glutamine with citrulline can increase the ability of citrulline to stimulate nitric oxide production, which can lead to improved delivery of oxygen and nutrients to muscle tissue. More muscle nutrients can lead to better recovery and growth. This may sound somewhat indirect, but again, a substance with transport qualities, glutamine for example, is involved in a variety of processes.

Alpha-Ketoglutarate: AKG glutamine is a precursor to glutamate and high doses of glutamine and its stores in the body have been shown to result in hydration and increase mTOR signaling pathways as well as glutathione. This means that glutamine taken with AKG can boost muscle growth potential and the production of glutathione, a powerful antioxidant.

Glucose or N-acetylglutamine: Glucose deprivation reduces the absorption of glutamine and negatively affects cell growth and life. If you are on a low carbohydrate diet, it appears that N-acetylglutamine (NAG) glycoprotein, which is available in supplement form, may be able to restore glutamine uptake and metabolism, potentially boosting cell repair and function.

What is the best way to take it?
It appears that the daily dose of glutamine in supplement form should be high, at least 20-30 grams per day, taken regularly to increase plasma glutamine concentrations.

To provide some perspective, consider that critically ill patients typically receive an intravenous infusion of about 20-30 grams of glutamine per day. Thus, it is recommended up to 30 gr. glutamine per day in divided doses throughout the day, preferably with meals or snacks containing carbohydrates to support glucose utilization.

On training days, it is recommended that you consume glutamine before or during your workout to support hydration, electrolyte transport, and BCAA metabolism. You can use 10 gr. before, during and after training, and you can also reduce these doses to 5 grams if you consume it a few hours before training. On non-training days, consume at least 5 grams of glutamine regularly, at least every 2-3 hours, to maintain an elevated plasma glutamine concentration.

Apparently there is no need to drink glutamine cyclically. Evidence suggests that it is best to take it during periods of physical stress.

What are the side effects?
There is a significant amount of data supporting the absence of adverse reactions from glutamine at doses up to 30 grams per day. The latest 13-week toxicity study concluded that “no adverse effects were observed” at high doses of L-glutamine given to rats.

In humans, this dose corresponds to approximately 0.6 g. glutamine per kilogram of body weight per day. For an 80 kg adult, this is 48 gr. glutamine per day. This dose resulted in no health side effects with no documented adverse effects.

Conclusion
Glutamine является ключевым игроком в целом ряде функций, которые значительно влияют на способность достичь ваших общих целей в области здоровья и фитнеса. However, if you use it alone or don’t use it enough, then you might be disappointed.

Maximizing the effect of glutamine depends on how well you approach its use. If you are not exercising, your body can probably provide you with everything you need. But if you regularly exhaust your body, consuming glutamine is the way to go to continue performing at a high level.