After doing my research, the first ever supplement I ever took was L-Glutamine more than 10 years ago! In my opinion, it is one of the most important ones you should take, especially if you’re training. Here are my top 3 reasons why you can benefit from L-Glutamine supplementation, even if you don’t necessarily train that much.
- The main reason why I personally started taking glutamine when I was younger was to help with muscle building. Glutamine is the most abundant amino acid in your body and can help you recover from your workouts faster, prevent muscle breakdown and even promote muscle synthesis.
Your body stores up to 60% of glutamine in the muscles, but when you train or cause a large stress on your body, the reserves are emptied because your body also needs it for the intestine, the immune system and for other tissues. This leads to muscle catabolism. When you have glutamine after your workout, this prevents the breakdown of muscles and drives protein into the muscle cells.
Glutamine has also been shown to increase levels of glycogen storage after workouts, which will improve performance and growth.
- The second reason why I think you should make sure to have enough glutamine in your body is for your gut health. Glutamine is the primary building block in the intestinal lining and it will help seal the tight junctions in the gut lining (essentially acting as a bandaid), thereby decreasing oxidative stress. This will also help if you have leaky gut or autoimmune diseases that prevent you from absorbing your foods properly. Glutamine is also anti-inflammatory and can act as a protector, coating your cell walls and acting as a repellent to irritants. Finally, it can also improve irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and diarrhea by balancing mucus production, which results in healthy bowel movements.
- The last reason why Glutamine is so good for you is because it helps your immune system. Because 70% of your immune system is actually located in the gut, fixing it will boost your immune system. Like I mentioned earlier, certain stressful situations (including illness, injuries, infections, malnutrition or even chronic stress) will cause a decrease in the levels of glutamine in our tissues. Intense workouts will also drop the levels making your immune system weaker. Restoring your glutamine levels after your workouts has been shown to help your body repair and to support the immune system, and has even been used to overcome overtraining. A lot of trainers I know recommend taking L-Glutamine as soon as you get sick since it will help boost your immune system.
