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Glutamine Information & Benefits - Most Abundant Amino Acid

Glutamine is the most abundant amino acid in the body. It is synthesized from glutamate by an enzyme glutamine synthetase when ammonia from other amino acids and alpha-ketoglutarate, an intermediate of metabolic Krebs cycle are combined together. Glutamine serves as a metabolic fuel for the cells of your immune system (neutrophils, thymocytes, lymphocytes, macrophages), cells in the intestinal tract (for energy metabolism), brain (for neurotransmitter production), liver (in urea and glucose synthesis), kidneys (for renal ammoniagenesis), hair follicles (ensuring you don't go bald), and, most importantly, for your skeletal muscle cells (in protein synthesis).

Glutamine rules the construction rate of that bulk plus a multitute of protein-dependant reactions in all cells and tissues in the body. Your muscles and plasma are chock-full loaded with glutamine capturing more than 60 per cent of the entire intramuscular pool of amino acids. Adipose or fat tissue, lungs, liver and brain also synthesize Glutamine, but the extent and importance is not even close to that of muscles. Your gut uses Glutamine as one of the major fuels, extremely substantial during dieting. In fact, your intestines will eat up to 40 per cent of all Glutamine used in the body, regardless of whether you decide to quit eating 'cold turkey' in relentless attempt to get the cut-up look of muscle definition or let yourself gorge on everything in sight with a knowingly worthless justification of being in a 'muscle gain' cycle.

If you want your body to make sense of all metabolic reactions, thus turning the food you eat into usable energy, it must have hard-working and efficient guts. And you gotta eat a lot of weird-looking and anomalous-tasting food to get the rock-solid bulk. And while you stuff your mouth with questionable ingredients, the mucosal cells of your intestines have to recognize these as nutrients and get them to appropriate places in the body via blood while protecting from any possible bacteria. The more you eat - the greater the turnover of the intestinal mucosa, the more construction and protection material is needed for the re-structuring of guts, which should come from amino acids, mainly Glutamine.

Theoretically, the formula seems simple. Desired additional muscles=more intense workouts=more fuel for training and energy and tissue restoration=more food=increased digestion and metabolism=more work for GI tract=more fuel for guts from Glutamine.

While your muscles synthesize and store enormous amounts of Glutamine, when your train breaking down your lean tissue cells, you use the Glutamine stored in the muscles faster than can drop the stack of plates on your last heaviest ever repetition before screaming ...unprintable words. At the end, your muscles need additional Glutamine just to sustain survival. And that's not all.

Besides the muscle-food connection, Glutamine supports the immune function and body's replenishing abilities, especially at times of stress. Working out, undersleeping, dieting all spark a fire of stress inducing catabolism and suppressing immunity. Glutamine links your anabolic environment, immune function and muscle cells. In other words, your body's ability to restore and rejuvenate itself is dependant on the efficacy of the immune system. At its optimal states, your immunity creates the desired fertile muscle building ground to restructure muscle cells that you have cruelly destroyed in the gym. But the efficacy of your immune system is directly influenced by the plasma concentration of Glutamine which, in tern, depends on the rate of muscle synthesis and release of Glutamine.

By Elena Voropay