Get Lean with Glutamine

Glutamine or L-Glutamine is an important amino acid produced naturally in your body. The most important function of glutamine is providing energy to your immune cells. In the absence of glutamine or when its levels drop, your immune system is the first to take a hit. Since it is important for your immune system, it plays an important role in recovery from stress, trauma and injury. Certain functions of glutamine make it especially important for athletes and body builders. Glutamine is essential for protein synthesis and fat loss. In the former case, it promotes anabolism (muscle building) and in the later it reduces the fat content of your body thus promoting lean muscle growth. Keep reading to find out the scientific benefits of glutamine.


For most athletes, intensive training and high level of physical activity takes a toll on glutamine levels. When levels of glutamine drop, the above-mentioned effects also suffer and you are caught in a self-destructive cycle. Therefore glutamine supplements are quite common among athletes and body builders. Since glutamine levels can drop which cause health problems, thus requiring external supplements – glutamine is called a conditional essential amino acid. One supplement of glutamine that has gained much popularity is Glutamine AKG.

Glutamine AKG is a much more sophisticated glutamine delivery system. For a long time consuming oral L-glutamine supplements has been the standard way of obtaining glutamine. However, this method requires glutamine to pass through your gut and eventually get absorbed in your blood, finally reaching the cells where its work can begin. This causes a lot of loss in terms of time and the potency of the supplement. Often the effectiveness of the supplement is marred during the digestion process. Researchers found a way to circumvent this by glutamine AKG or Glutamine-alpha-Ketoglutarate. This is a glutamine pre-cursor. A pre-cursor in this sense is a substance that leads to the creation of another. Thus glutamine AKG is essentially converted into L-glutamine or glutamine in the cells.

The benefit is that in this form, glutamine can bypass your digestive system and get to work directly at its playground – the cell. This increases the potency and effectiveness of glutamine by a great measure. Usually, consuming pre-cursors is an accepted method of taking in supplements that are otherwise manufactured in your body so that their effectiveness is not reduced. Glutamine AKG is thus the most effective and promising method for increasing glutamine levels.    

Many glutamine supplements in the market will contain glutamine AKG along with other added substances, which enhance the delivery of glutamine or expedite the process of conversion of glutamine AKG into glutamine or increase the rate of absorption. Such products also are quite promising, as long as they contain glutamine AKG.