L- Glutamine and its benefits

It used to be that every where you read ninety percent of all supplements contained L-glutamine. Although that percentage is not quite as high they still include it in a lot of different supplements. So why do they put just this amino acid in so many supplements? Glutamine is not a branch chain amino acid so in other words our body's can produce it. But our bodies also use it for a lot of things such as the production of growth hormone or gluthione one of the bodies most powerful antioxidants. The main reason they add it into supplements is due to the fact that it helps with the growth hormone production and also that it is one of the most abundant amino acids in muscle. So logic would dictate that the more you get the better muscle recovery and all that. Well I can tell you from my own experience that that is some what true. Yes it helps with recovery and GH production and all of that good stuff but it is not an essential or branch chain amino acid. One source of protein that is high in glutamine is soy protein. So what I would venture to say is that glutamine's role is more anti catabolic that anabolic. Or in other words it just helps you to keep muscle while you burn body fat. If you are looking to add muscle your body will still need those pesky branch chain amino acids. You can take a peek at my previous article about branch chain amino acids to get more in depth info on them. If you look at most vegetarians they are usually relatively thin muscle wise. They don't have the large dense muscle. The reasoning is they lack branch chain amino acids in there diets. Your body cannot produce these on it's own it is a scientific fact. So therefore if you don't get them in your diet where are you supposed to get them from? And I am not saying there aren't any vegans or vegetarians who don't take branch chain amino acids. Which by the way is against the rules for a vegan because most of what you can get in the way of branch chain amino acids are from animal sources of some kind. Anyway I think that glutamine is good but not great. It is something you could add to your supplement regiment if you are cutting down or something like that. But if you eat a lot of protein already truth be told you are already getting glutamine with the protein. If you need extra security because you are not consuming enough protein for recovery glutamine could help you from loosing some muscle mass. For a good guide of how much protein you need check out my article on how much protein is enough protein. This explains in detail how much protein you actually need for recovery. Then if you want to add glutamine on it could be like the icing on the cake.