glutamine article said:The only safe situation for glutamine use is in the vigorous athlete. Glutamine is used as a muscle fuel, so that vigorous exercise will consume most of the glutamine before it can accumulate in the brain. I would still avoid long-term use in high doses. I would caution readers to avoid excess glutamine, especially in the above named conditions and situations.
Research shows that glutamine supplementation can not only help an athlete prevent illness and prevent catabolism of muscle tissue, but it can actually boost growth hormone levels, enhance glycogen storage, and hydrate muscle cells - three components important in protein synthesis or energy metabolism (Antonio and Street, 1999).
No, because glutamine isn't really a 'protein'. protein is made up from amino acids. Complete proteins contain all the essential amino acids. Incomplete proteins don't.
Glutamine is just one amino acid, and since increased dietary intake of glutamine doesn't benefit you, its not the same as 'contributing to the total protein in the shake'.
it won't hurt you either, but its just not going to do anything useful, and it will add grit to your shake much like creatine does.
It "does not sound good" if your position is not supported by any research.It does not sound good if so.
Not a big fan of glutamine either. It had a lot of theoretical support (specially with regards to the immune system after exercise), which is why it was claimed as being a good supplement before anyone actually tested it. But when they started testing it they didn't find anything in healthy people as far as performance increases go.
Here's a link to a free review article on glutamine supplementation:
The only thing that really comes close to being evidence for an anabolic effect is that GH is increased after exercise with glutamine supplementation, but GH doesn't really help with skeletal muscle anabolism.
There isn't a whole lot of studies comparing glutamine with placebo in a resistance training study, thought.. I've only found one, which found no effect.
Glutamine is a very abundant amino acid in the body, but levels do drop after exercise, but it's probably not enough to really make a huge difference on the immune system. However, I think some studies have seen some positive effects after very heavy endurance exercise (while others haven't). The thing is, that you have to compare it to other protein/amino acid sources. If you take glutamine and whey after your work out, will the glutamine help any on top of the whey, or will you get all you need from the whey? If you take glutamine on top of whey after a work out, will that help any more than simply taking more whey? If it doesn't then you just have to find out which one is cheaper (I have no idea what glutamine supps cost)
This study found an increase in protein synthesis, but what if you had compared it to regular whey or another cheap protein product providing a similar amount of nitrogen? In addition, they measured whole body protein synthesis and not protein synthesis of muscle proteins.