L Glutamine For Brain, Gut Health and Leaky Gut (2024)

L-glutamine is a powerhouse amino acid that can fortify your gut and uplift your mood—a hidden gem during challenging times.

L-glutamine plays a crucial role in maintaining the health of your gut lining and balancing brain function. Incorporating it into your diet—especially during stressful times—could support your physiological and mental health.


Role of L-glutamine 

L-glutamine is the most abundant amino acid in the body. It is classified as a non-essential amino acid because the body can produce it on its own. However, it becomes conditionally essential when demand increases, such as intense stress, illness, disease, or strenuous exercise. In these cases, additional glutamine must be obtained from the diet.

L-glutamine is a crucial building block for the intestinal cells of the gut. In fact, the intestines rely on glutamine more than any other organ. When glutamine stores are depleted, the intestinal lining becomes vulnerable to damage.

What Stresses the Gut?

Bobban Subhadra, who holds a doctorate in microbiology and immunology, told The Epoch Times that several factors can negatively impact gut health, including the increased use of antibiotics, chronic stress, and a lack of physical activity. Environmental factors, such as exposure to toxins and pollutants, he said, also contribute to this growing issue.

A lack of fiber and whole food ingredients combined with a high intake of sugar and additives from processed foods can reduce gut diversity and cause inflammation, Yasi Ansari, a registered dietician nutritionist and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, told The Epoch Times. Ansari further emphasized that low vitamin D levels and insufficient intake of antioxidants through diet can also adversely affect gut health.

“This is not to say that one needs to completely strip the diet of these foods but rather to focus on emphasizing more whole foods, fruits and vegetables, lean meats, plant proteins, heart-healthy fats, and fiber from whole grains,” she said.

“When it comes to supporting the gut, I recommend aiming to get more cruciferous veggies, a variety of different colored fruits, nuts and seeds, legumes, adding more herbs to meals and snacks, and considering foods that contain probiotics (yogurt, kefir, aged cheeses, miso, tempeh are some examples of these foods),” she continued.

Ansari also said that alcohol can lead to gut inflammation and negatively affect the intestinal barrier, which is essential for nutrient absorption and immune system support.

Glutamine Improves Gut Health

Research has shown that the amino acid glutamine can enhance gut health by reducing inflammation, strengthening and protecting the intestinal lining, and positively influencing the gut microbiome.

Subhadra, who has published extensively in Nature and Science, said that glutamine serves as a primary fuel source for the cells lining the intestines, helping to maintain the integrity of the gut barrier. This barrier is essential in preventing the leakage of toxins and undigested food particles into the bloodstream, a condition known as “leaky gut.”

Glutamine can mitigate gut damage caused by stress, poor diet, and certain medications by supporting the health and regeneration of the intestinal lining. Additionally, glutamine reduces inflammation and supports immune function within the gut.

Glutamine Improves Brain Health

Due to the gut-brain connection, poor gut health can disrupt the balance of neurotransmitters, potentially leading to depression. Inflammation in the gut can affect neurotransmitter balance and overall brain health.
L-glutamine can help protect neurological health by maintaining the integrity of the gut lining and reducing inflammation, thereby positively influencing the brain’s environment.

L-Glutamine for Eczema and Leaky Gut

L-glutamine for eczema? L-glutamine for a leaky gut?

Yes, l-glutamine shows much promise for healing eczema and a leaky gut.

Glutamine is considered “conditionally essential” because it can be synthesized from glutamate when total protein is adequate, yet it can become depleted to dangerous levels that require supplementation during illness, injury, and surgery.

The Google search term 'l-glutamine for leaky gut', returns over 150,000 results.

Similarly, the Google search term 'l-glutamine for autoimmune', shows nearly 1 million results.

And, of course, 'l-glutamine for eczema', returns over 300,000 results.

So, clearly, a lot is being written about l-glutamine for eczema, l-glutamine for a leaky gut, and l-glutamine for other gastrointestinal problems.

L-glutamine is sometimes just called glutamine. But, what is this l-glutamine?

L-glutamine is one of the 20 amino acids already in your body.

A significant amount of l-glutamine comes from the foods we eat, and it can also be synthesized in the body. However, when your body is under stress, chances are it doesn’t have enough l-glutamine to satisfy your demand.

Stress, like a poor diet (and maybe the Standard American Diet), medications, trauma, post exercise recovery, and so on. As a matter of fact, when your body is stressed, it releases the hormone called cortisol into your bloodstream. It’s the high levels of this hormone, cortisol, that lowers the stores of l-glutamine.

Nearly every bodily function requires l-glutamine. It’s also the most active amino acid involved in many of metabolic processes.

L-glutamine helps to remove excess ammonia waste products from the body. It’s also important for digestion and for normal brain function. L-glutamine aids in the protection of the lining of the gastrointestinal tract.

L-Glutamine for Leaky Gut

Your intestinal tract uses approximately 30 percent of your glutamine stores. It’s a key element in maintaining intestinal barrier functions and maintaining tight junctions between cells to produce a physical barrier.

Spend enough time reading through these search results and you might also see the term: secretory immunoglobulin A, or sIgA.

SlgA acts as the first line of defense. It helps protect against foreign substances, like bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, and food particles from entering the body through a normally functioning digestive tract.

With low levels of sglA, your digestive tract is unable to fight these foreign substances from attacking the intestinal wall. The gut becomes inflamed and irritated. As a result, the gut wall becomes weakened and allows toxins or undigested food particles to enter the body.

Both l-glutamine and probiotics, along with a better diet, is means to help increase sglA levels and rebuild the intestinal mucosal surface. L-glutamine is the preferred fuel used by the gut lining repair and rebuild themselves and produce more of the intestinal mucous and sglA.

L-glutamine also supports your overall health in many other ways like helping to maintain and regulate blood glucose levels. More fodder for late night searches.

L-Glutamine for Eczema Protocol (A Natural Alternative Treatment for Eczema)

According a protocol shared by 'Natural Cure for Eczema':

My own anti-eczema l-glutamine protocol began with 2 grams, twice a day, an hour before breakfast and at bedtime. Based on studies below, like these, I concluded this level of l-glutamine probably wasn’t enough for an active case of eczema.

So, I then increased it to 2 grams, 4 times a day, until my red eczema patches healed. Never taking it with meals, in this way, the l-glutamine doesn’t compete with other amino acids in the foods we eat as they move through the digestive tract.

After two months of supplementing at 2 grams, 4 times a day, I have gone down to 2 grams, 2 times a day, an hour before breakfast and at bedtime for maintenance.

If I have a day or two of less-than-optimal diet, I’ll bump up my l-glutamine for several days to help compensate.

Some studies have subjects taking much more l-glutamine than I did. Perhaps my own healing might have been quicker if I had increased the how much I was supplementing. Or, maybe there would have been no difference?

l-glutamine for eczema
Optimum Nutrition brand, 1000 milligram of l-glutamine per capsule with 120 capsules per bottle.

This is the brand of l-glutamine I purchase, Optimum Nutrition 1000 milligrams per capsule, 240 count. It has over 9,000 customer reviews, most of them 5-stars. Evidence of many happy customers! A search of customer reviews show that this product helps with gastrointestinal issues. Also, consider that an average of 1 person in 100 will take the time to leave a customer review.

You can see that these are about the size of a standard fish oil capsule.

l-glutamine for eczema
These are about the size of a standard fish oil supplement.

Getting Enough Glutamine

Food sources of glutamine include animal products such as fish, beef, poultry, milk, yogurt, eggs, cheeses (ricotta and cottage cheese), and plant sources such as spinach, beets, lentils, beans, cabbage, and parsley, Ansari said.

Diet alone may not be sufficient to meet the needs of individuals with compromised gut health or those experiencing high levels of physical stress, said Subhadra. In such cases, supplementation can be beneficial to ensure that the body receives an adequate supply of glutamine to support gut repair and overall health. However, he added that it’s important to assess individual needs and consult with a health care provider before starting any supplementation.

For general gut health maintenance, a common dosage is 5 grams taken once or twice daily, often on an empty stomach, to enhance absorption.
 
“Consistency is key, so it’s important to take L-glutamine regularly to achieve the desired benefits,” he said.

L-Glutamine adverse efffects and side effects warnings

L-glutamine is generally considered safe for most people when taken in appropriate amounts. However, some potential adverse effects, especially when taken in high doses, can include mild gastrointestinal discomfort, such as bloating or gas.
Taking any supplement — including glutamine — puts you at risk for side effects. Many doctors, for example, warn their patients about the possible organ damage caused by dietary aids. Your kidneys release ammonia from glutamine, according to a October 2016 paper in​ Nature Reviews Cancer​. So, taking large doses of glutamine could create excess ammonia. This excess can damage your liver and ultimately your brain.

But this problem is unlikely to happen in healthy people. In fact, even cancer patients rarely experience side effects from taking glutamine. The authors of a March 2017 report in ​Support Care Cancer​ tested 56 children with cancer and found that only 2 percent of them had glutamine-related problems during a three-week study. These researchers actually found comparable side effects with glutamine and a placebo.

People with certain medical conditions, such as liver or kidney disease, should exercise caution and consult their health care provider before taking L-glutamine because large doses can cause harm in critically ill patients. Additionally, those with a history of seizures or who are on medication that affects glutamate levels should avoid L-glutamine supplementation without professional guidance, as it might increase seizure severity.“
Because cancer thrives on glutamine, it's also possible that taking this amino acid could promote cancer growth. The writers of a September 2013 article in the ​Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition​ considered this idea in their review of glutamine's side effects. They concluded that scientists need to do more research to answer this question.
Until then, cancer patients should speak with their doctor ​before​ supplementing glutamine. Pregnant and lactating women should also meet with a healthcare expert before taking glutamine.


L-Glutamine and Cancer (Caution)

Thomas Seyfried’s research adds another metabolic pathway in cancer cells that Warburg did not observe: cancer cells also get a lot of energy from the fermentation of an amino acid called glutamine, which updated Warburg’s theory [source][source].

The truth, Seyfried said, is that “They [cancer] cannot breathe … they can’t get energy through oxygen, they can only get energy from fermentation.” All cancers can survive without oxygen, but they “cannot live without sugar, glucose, and the amino acid glutamine.”

Cellular aerobic respiration mainly takes place in mitochondria. Mitochondria, which are responsible for respiration, are damaged and hollow in all major types of cancer. The cristae, the wrinkled and wavy structures in the mitochondrial structure, are cluttered and defective. The abnormality of mitochondrial structure will change the function of mitochondria, resulting in the inability of cells to obtain energy through oxidative metabolism. This changes the cell’s metabolism from relying primarily on oxidation to fermentation.

Seyfried further explained that the various abnormalities in cancer cells are caused by the loss of normal function of cell mitochondria due to various reasons (including carcinogens, radiation, pollution, inflammation, age, viruses, etc). A large number of reactive oxygen species (ROS) will be produced when mitochondria are damaged, further attacking and destroying the nucleus.

“The mutations that we see in cancer come as the result of damage from reactive oxygen species,” Seyfried said. “The mutations are an effect, they are not the cause of cancer.”

Furthermore, Seyfried also talked about a phenomenon, that is, cancers with myriad variants share a consistent metastatic process. First, individual cells become cancerous and form tumors; the tumor cells then spread through the blood vessels and circulatory system to other parts of the body, forming new tumors.
Why do all cancers have the same metastatic process? How does this relate to the theory that cancer is a metabolic disorder?

Seyfried said that the mitochondrial metabolic theory explains cancer metastasis better than the somatic mutation theory. After macrophages engulf and fuse with the defective proto-cancer cells, the normally functioning mitochondria are gradually replaced by dysfunctional mitochondria due to inflammation. As immune cells, macrophages have the ability to travel around the body. As a result, these cancer cells, which are fusions of proto-cancer cells and macrophages, spread throughout the body.

Seyfried believes the existing cancer treatment system is “broken.” He said once people understand the metabolic theory of cancer, treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy will be replaced by new treatments.

Based on the theory, Seyfried and his team developed the “press pulse therapy” [source] [source][source], which is a cocktail treatment consisting of the ketogenic diet, glutaminase inhibitor medicine, and stress management.
The ketogenic diet is adopted because cancer cells have defective mitochondria and impaired metabolism, so they can only rely on fermented sugars and glutamine for energy. Cancer cells cannot obtain energy as ketone bodies cannot be fermented. As for cells with normal metabolic function, they can obtain energy by metabolizing ketone bodies [source].
The purpose of a ketogenic diet combined with basic drugs is to control the ratio of glucose and ketone bodies in the blood to an ideal range while inhibiting the ability of cancer cells to acquire glutamine. In this way, we can “starve” cancer cells from a metabolic perspective, thereby achieving the same effect as cancer treatments.
FAQs
How much glutamine in eggs?

One single egg contains about 0.7 grams of glutamine. Therefore, if you were to get all of your glutamine from eggs, you would need to consume at least seven eggs. One egg yolk contains about 0.3 grams of glutamine and one egg white contains about 0.4 grams of glutamine.

Glutamic acid vs glutamine: What's the difference?

Glutamic acid and glutamine are both amino acids, but they have distinct differences: Glutamic acid is an amino acid that is among the free form glutamine within the building blocks of protein. It is also a component that makes glutamine what it actually is. Glutamine is derived from glutamic acid; it is glutamic acid that is attached to a mineral ion.


Sources and References:


Role of Glutamine in Protection of Intestinal Epithelial Tight Junctions
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4369670/

Intestinal epithelial cells: regulators of barrier function and immune homeostasis
https://www.nature.com/articles/nri3608

Intestinal permeability – a new target for disease prevention and therapy
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4253991/

Does L-Glutamine Heal A Leaky Gut?
https://fatiguetoflourish.com/l-glutamine-heal-leaky-gut/

Why L-Glutamine Is My Leaky Gut Superhero!
https://goodbyeleakygut.com/l-glutamine-leaky-gut/

The Skinny on Staying Thin: Glutamine and Other Weight Loss Supplements
https://foreveryoung.perriconemd.com/the-skinny-on-staying-thin-glutamine-and-other-weight-loss-supplements.html

Glutamine-Induced Secretion of Intestinal Secretory Immunoglobulin A: A Mechanistic Perspective
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/02e1/485fd23c947a31aedcae17d0ac0fabc1f376.pdf

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