The following article discusses the supplement Glutamine and helps you to understand its purpose. Supplements are just that, a supplement and they cannot replace a complete diet. Food, sleep, exercise, and stress management should be considered before supplementing, however, the one caveat is that if you are on a calorie-restrictive diet, you might want to consider a supplement since your chances of eating ALL of the vitamins and minerals you require will be greatly reduced and since more food would equal more calories some people might supplement with what their diet is missing.
Another example is Omegas if you are vegan, it can be very hard to get enough through vegan sources without supplementation, or potentially you live in a part of the world that has poor soil quality (e.g. New Zealand has less selenium in the soil), so it might be beneficial to supplement. Read on to find out why someone might consider taking Glutamine...
Do you want to increase your energy in sessions, aid your recovery and stop yourself from getting run down as easily? Read on to find out how supplementing with Glutamine might be for you!
Glutamine is just one of the twenty amino acids. It is considered to be conditionally essential, and it is also the most abundant amino acid found in muscles: 61% of your skeletal muscle is glutamine. It is the primary transporter of nitrogen into your muscles, and it also plays a key role in muscle synthesis and improves protein metabolism. Despite the amino acid being considered conditionally essential, there are times when your body could use more glutamine: that is right after a heavy workout. Intense training depletes the glutamine in the muscle, so much so that it would take about 6 days after an intense workout to return the levels of glutamine to normal! Since Glutamine plays a big role in the synthesis of muscle, using glutamine can actually minimize the breakdown of muscle and improve protein metabolism. Glutamine also helps with cell volume and can increase your affinity to release Human Growth Hormone: which is great to help metabolize fat. The best time to take glutamine is right after your heavy workout to top up your levels during the day. Some experts also say that it is important to separate when you have your glutamine and when you have your creatine as they use the same competing pathways in the body, so maybe have creatine before your workout and creatine afterwards, or vice versa. Give glutamine a try and see if it works for you! Let us know your experience, message us or visit out Facebook/Instagram pages. Read more about all things health, fitness, and nutrition on my blog.