Your Gut and Glutamine

All people endure health issues within their daily livelihoods, but struggle to find the most efficient way to recover. Gut health, one of the many issues that affects almost everyone, is one of the most important parts of our health that we should keep in mind when encountering any illness. Searching for the proper probiotic supplements can leave a person flustered and confused. Despite the ever expanding and growing market for probiotics, a L-Glutamine supplement has always and continues to be the best way to treat and boost one’s gut health. This is why each of Nouri's Inner Immune packets include 5000mg of L-Glutamine. 

Knowing how confusing what certain ingredients, supplements, and medicines do and how they function, let’s begin by breaking down what L-Glutamine basically is and how it works. According to Dr. Grant Tinsley, an expert in exercise nutrition and physiology, glutamine in its most simplest form is one of our bodies most central and necessary amino acids. Being an amino acid (monomer of protein), glutamine naturally ties into our gut health and immunity.

As an amino acid Dr. Tinsley explains that glutamine can be naturally identified as either L-glutamine (common) or D-glutamine (uncommon). Glutamine is typically helpful within the form of L-glutamine, which is within oral supplements and foods. Taking a glutamine supplement will prevent a variety of gut and health issues.

There are two significant ways that glutamine will improve and heal our gut health according to Dr. Sarah Ballantyne, a distinguished expert in medical biophysics and New York Times bestselling author. These two basic ways are through improving our gut barrier and managing our gut microbiota.

When considering glutamine and our gut barrier on a simplified level, Dr. Ballantyne mentions it is important for all people to maintain high levels of L-glutamine to constantly maintain a steady supply of energy for our gut cells to function properly, develop, and to prevent a “leaky gut” (weak intestinal wall that separates intestines from body). An unhealthy gut barrier would lead to a compromised immune system due to the “leak” of toxins between our intestinal system and the rest of the body.

In addition to the gut barrier, Dr. Ballantyne also impresses the significance of glutamine to our gut microbiome (bacterial environment within intestines). She states that several studies have found that bacteria within our gut prefer and function more efficiently through the use of glutamine rather than a plethora of other amino acids within our gut. Supplying glutamine to our microbiome will ensure more protein formation for healthy gut cells and maintain proper nutrient metabolism.

Furthermore, according to the study “Glutamine: Metabolism and Immune Function, Supplementation and Clinical Translation” published by a group of prominent medical experts, glutamine is essential to our gut health and immunity. They determine that through all instances in life (especially when we are ill) that “Immune cells largely depend on glutamine availability to survive, proliferate, and function, and ultimately defend our body against pathogens”. Without glutamine our body would find it almost impossible to maintain homeostasis (stable and balanced state in our body).

L-glutamine at its core, strengthens our gut health and therefore builds up our immune system, but according to an analysis of glutamine by WebMD, it can also be used to treat a multitude of issues such as “injuries, burns, bone marrow transplant, complications of HIV/AIDS, radiation, and cancerchemotherapy”. Just by maintaining proper gut health, we can all prevent and heal a variety of other health implications that we may be suffering from.

Impressively, not only is L-Glutamine capable of solving and treating common health problems, but it could also be used as supplemental treatment for the Covid-19 pandemic. In a collaborative study published in the U.S. National Library of Medicine by a group of medical experts, an oral L-Glutamine supplement could ease the severity of symptoms and relieve hospitals at capacity. The study incorporated 60 similar Covid-19 patients with half of them receiving the L-Glutamine supplement. Although the results did not convey the oral supplement as an effective treatment for the virus, the hospitalization times were effectively lower in the patients who had taken the supplement.

Contrary to popular belief our gut health and immune system are actually the same system. By maintaining proper intestinal health, we can unilaterally not only prevent issues such as “leaky gut” but also substantially boost our immune function. An L-glutamine supplement has been a proven method to treat gut health and act as a proactive approach to preventing future health issues.

Sources:
https://www.thepaleomom.com/the-role-of-glutamine-in-gut-health/?vgo_ee=3wlQdTiTR7hQzmiM8d9Cy7DJ2DT9kzKMCETN1PeKn4E%3D
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/glutamine#section1
https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-878/glutamine
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6266414/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7387270/