Glutamine or glutamic acid (glutamine peptide) is a non-essential amino acid, i.e. it can be produced by the body itself. The synthesis takes place mainly in the liver, kidney, brain and lungs. Other amino acids are needed to form glutamine, especially the two essential amino acids valine and isoleucine. Glutamine is used by the human body to build proteins, so the amino acid is proteinogenic.
Is the intake of glutamine useful?
In principle nothing speaks against it the income of Glutamin. While the consumption recommendations lie with 0,1 gram per kilogram body weight per day, also with incomes of up to fivefold quantities over two weeks no side effects were observed. Corresponding long-term studies on the long-term use of glutamine are not yet available, however.
From a medical point of view, there do not seem to be any arguments against glutamine supplementation. Normally, the daily glutamine requirement is covered by a balanced diet. With a vegetarian or vegan nourishing way it can recommend itself however to supply Glutamin additionally since it is contained particularly in meat and milk products.
The effect of glutamine cannot be dismissed. Compared to taking protein shakes alone, a combination of protein shakes and glutamine could achieve a relative muscle gain of about 10% more. However, these results must be critically reviewed, as the group of subjects in this study was quite small. In our opinion, the use of additional glutamine is not worthwhile for hobby athletes, but rather belongs more to the high-performance or professional sports due to its cost-benefit ratio. Ultimately, however, each athlete must decide for himself whether the costs of a glutamine supplementation do justice to the benefits he can derive from it.
Effect of glutamine
Glutamine is mainly found in the muscle cells of the human body, where it controls the water retention in the cells. In the blood plasma, glutamine has the highest proportion of amino acids at about 20 percent. In general, it can be said about glutamine that it keeps the building and decomposing metabolic processes in the human body in balance.
In terms of sports, glutamine increases cell volume during a training session, which has a positive effect on fat burning and muscle building. By increasing cell volume, the body receives the signal to produce proteins and glycogen to stimulate anabolism (muscle growth). This protein building effect also protects the body from unwanted muscle breakdown and the accumulation of glycogen also has a positive effect, because with the increase in cell volume the energy reserves are also increased.
If you do a lot of sports and want to maintain the load over a longer period of time, you can consider taking glutamine as a dietary supplement. In this way, fat burning can be optimized, muscle building can be stimulated and subsequent regeneration can be improved. Other positive effects of glutamine are, in addition to muscle growth, increased fat burning and optimized regeneration, a stabilization of the immune system, the breakdown of ammonia, which protects the liver and a well-functioning gastrointestinal mucosa.
