You didn’t think TMC would glorify just Creatine -did you? 

Glutamine is truly a wonder supplement and one not to be underestimated.  It has a wide variety of uses and applications.

The Most Important Supplement for Health and Fitness?

We’ll try and focus on it’s benefits to bodybuilders, fitness athletes and anybody trying to improve their health and fitness.

Glutamine is the most abundant amino acid in human muscle and is found in very high levels in most human tissue.  All forms of stress including trauma, surgery, burns, infections, fasting, malnutrition and EXERCISE deplete muscles of glutamine.  In fact the more severe the stressor, the greater the reduction in plasma glutamine in your muscles.  It’s been estimated that a severe trauma causes an immediate 50% reduction in muscle glutamine content.  Yikes!

Understanding this, you realize why Glutamine plays a major role in protein metabolism and acts as a direct regulator of protein synthesis.  We need our glutamine reserves constantly full to prevent catabolism and muscle tissue breakdown.  In times of sickness, disease or blunt force trauma(car accident, fall, debilitating injury etc) your body desperately needs increased glutamine stores to heal and regenerate itself.

Dr Mauro Di Pasquale in his book “Amino Acids and Proteins for the Athlete” recommends a dosage of 20-40 gms per day while healing from a traumatic injury or wasting condition. (the average daily production of Glutamine in humans is 50-120gms per day)

Let’s discuss glutamine and athletic performance.

Supplemental glutamine offers a number of advantages to athletes.

• It spares intramuscular glutamine leading to increased levels of muscle protein(bigger and harder muscles)
• Gastrointestinal and Immune Function is greatly improved
• It releases Growth Hormone and also up regulates other anabolic hormones conducive to maintaining a positive nitrogen retaining/anabolic environment

The Muscle Couple’s daily usage guide/recommendations are from what we know(personal use) and have read about using Glutamine.  It will be relative to the three population groups listed above. You should experiment yourself and obviously your intake should be dictated by what you can afford.

Bodybuilders/Fitness Athletes trying to gain muscle mass-15-25gms per day.  5gms in the AM, 15gms Before-During and After Training, 5gms upon going to bed.

Bodybuilders trying to get to competition bodyfat levels-35-50gms per day. -8-10gms 6x per day spread out every 2.5-3 hours.  (If you do this and your diet-cardio and training is on point, you won’t believe what happens to your body–few people ever do this due to cost and being impractical.)

Anyone trying to improve their Health and Fitness-2-5gms per day. Glutamine improves immunity, increases wound healing, stimulates protein synthesis, decreases tumor growth, decreases muscle catabolism and fights infection.

A couple of tips to understand when trying to figure out how much glutamine you are getting from your protein supplements (Whey-Casein etc)

Animal Protein-50% of the Glutamic Acid content on the label will represent your glutamine

Plant Protein-80% of the Glutamic Acid content

The Muscle Couple bottom line:

If you consume a high quality whey/casein protein supplement for 2 or more shakes a day, you are getting between 5 and 10 bioavailable grams of glutamine in your diet.  This is enough for most people trying to improve their health and fitness.

If you are embarking on a muscle gaining or shredding phase, it would be wise to purchase a couple of canisters of High Quality Glutamine Powder. Add tablespoons/scoops to your shakes or flavored water to hit the required dosage beyond the glutamine already in your protein formulations. There are multiple formulations on the market.  Make sure to buy from a reputable online source/manufacturer.

We would be very interested to know any of our readers results from using 35-50gms per day in a shredding phase.

MIHWCS