Should I add glutamine to my protein shakes or just with water. The only reason I ask this is because I was reading on another forum and they said that the aminos fight for absorbtion and glutamine will lose. If this is true then wont the glutamine in just whey be wasted since its with other aminos or does it have to with it being glutamic-acid and not just glutamine.
I heard about this too. Any ideas? Also, how many of you guys supplement creatine and glutamine with your MAG10 cycles or MD6/T2 cycles? Pos and negs?
I could be wrong but, from what I’ve understood, very little glutamine is taken up by the body anyway. The reason for this is that the biggest “consumer” of glutamine in the body is your gut or digestive track. The gut takes precedence for glutamine use over other body uses just as the brain takes precedence for blood glucose use over other glucose utilization. Glutamine is synthesized in the body by the muscle cells. When the gut needs glutamine, it pulls it out of muscle cells, thereby sacrificing muscle glutamine stores. The gut has a huge turn over and utilization of glutamine and due to its high demand, most oral glutamine supplementation goes not to muscles but is used directly by the gut and never makes it past the digestive system. The benefit of glutamine supplementation is that if the gut is able to get some of its glutamine needs from diet, it has to pull less glutamine out of muscle and preserves muscle glutamine. The only way to absorb glutamine into the body past the digestive system is to take massive enough dosages on an empty stomach that are beyond what the gut can absorb at one time and the excell will make it past the gut into the body. But even smaller doses are beneficial to preserving muscle glutamine by decreasing scavanging by the gut. The bottom line is, if taking huge doses, then take on an empty stomach but more normal doses can be taken with food as the gut will latch onto most of it anyway. One final point is some think glutamine peptides are better absorbed as they need to be further broken down by the liver into l-glutamine aminos and therefore have a better chance of bypassing the gut where l-glutamine is usually taken by directly by the gut.