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Effect Of Glutamine Supplement On Muscle Recovery
Madhura MohanMuscle soreness is an inevitable factor that comes with your workout. Today you go to the gym with full motivation to complete your reps, but tomorrow you tend not to have the same drive as the previous day.
You feel like taking a break, but then you remember the inspiring quotes on the gym wall and try to push yourself — only to give up soon. This is the effect of muscle soreness. Chronic muscle soreness can lead to fatigue, muscle loss, a decline in athletic performance, and a loss of motivation. You don't want to let this happen on a daily basis — you must take measures to optimize your post-workout muscle recovery so you can continue training full-fledged the next day.
Muscle soreness and fatigue are definitely inevitable, but there is a strategy to deal with them. Let's learn in this article how glutamine can be used as a nutritional strategy to delay the onset of fatigue and improve athletic performance.
What Is Muscle Fatigue?
Muscle fatigue is defined as the inability to maintain power output, muscle strength, and impaired physical performance. The reasons for fatigue are many — mainly the accumulation of protons in the muscle cell, depletion of energy sources (muscle glycogen, phosphocreatine), accumulation of ammonia in the tissues, oxidative stress, muscle damage, and increases in serotonin.
Before learning how glutamine helps speed up the muscle recovery process, let's get some background on glutamine and the reason for its supplementation…
What Is Glutamine?
Glutamine (C5H10N2O3) is the most abundant and conditionally essential amino acid in the human body, with the highest concentration of free-floating amino acid (50–60%) in the body. Glutamine is synthesized from glutamate and ammonia by the enzyme glutamine synthetase and is stored predominantly in the skeletal muscle.
Why Should You Supplement With Glutamine?
Your body stores glutamine for when it's needed, but during intense training periods, your body will deplete all of its glutamine — which inhibits its function, decreases strength and stamina, and lengthens the recovery period. Supplementing with glutamine ensures your body has an adequate supply of glycogen stores.
Also Read: Glutamine + Whey — Get Optimal Results Of Muscle Gain
Mechanism By Which Glutamine Aids In Muscle Recovery
1. Glutamine Helps Maintain Positive Nitrogen Balance
The main role of glutamine in muscle recovery is to maintain a positive nitrogen balance. With its unique structure containing two nitrogen side chains, glutamine can be a primary nitrogen donor in muscle cells. After a heavy workout, rushing nitrogen to the damaged muscles stimulates muscle protein synthesis. Glutamine also performs as a nitrogen donor in the biosynthesis of other amino acids and improves nicotinamide dinucleotide (NAD) potential. Glutamine increases positive nitrogen balance — required for positive protein balance — which can result in attenuation of exercise-induced muscle damage, muscle soreness, and loss of muscle strength.
2. Glutamine Prevents Ammonia Accumulation
During intense workouts, your muscles rapidly produce ammonia due to adenosine monophosphate deamination. This may increase ammonia levels in the brain, which has been linked to peripheral and central fatigue. Glutamine supplementation is associated with the prevention of ammonia accumulation due to its effects on energy metabolism. As the main transporter of nitrogen in the body, glutamine prevents muscle accumulation of this metabolite, aids in the formation of urea, and favours its renal excretion. During glutamic acid conversion to glutamine, the ammonia group is added to glutamic acid — helping regulate toxic levels of ammonia.
3. Glutamine Preserves Glycogen Stores & Fuels Your Muscles
Another way glutamine can hasten recovery is through stimulation of glycogen synthase — an enzyme necessary for the storage of glycogen in the muscles and liver. Glycogen serves as the primary source of energy during high-intensity exercise. During workouts lasting more than 20–30 minutes, gluconeogenesis ensures a supply of glucose to fuel the brain and muscles. If you are aiming for fat burning, taking a carb source may not be desirable. Supplementing with glutamine post-workout may accelerate muscle glycogen stores and restore energy levels following training.
4. Glutamine Maintains Immune Health
There is consistent evidence that prolonged exercise causes an elevation in plasma cortisol concentration, stimulating protein breakdown and increasing gluconeogenesis. Intense physical exercise might decrease the rate of glutamine release from skeletal muscle or increase the rate of glutamine uptake by other organs — resulting in an impaired immune function.
A decrease in plasma glutamine concentrations limits the availability of glutamine for immune cells that require it for energy and nucleotide biosynthesis. Supplementing with glutamine helps reverse this condition. Glutamine also functions as a substrate for the production of neurotransmitters glutamate and GABA, thereby helping manage the negative effects of stress on immune health.
5. Glutamine Promotes Optimal Hydration
Hydration is an overlooked aspect of muscle soreness and recovery. If you are dehydrated following a workout, protein synthesis will be hindered and recovery will be delayed. Water movement is determined by osmotic gradients and the cotransport of sodium and glucose into gut epithelial cells. The great benefit of glutamine is its ability to help sodium uptake for an increased rate of fluid absorption during training — making it a faster muscle recovery supplement.
6. Glutamine Reduces Oxidative Stress
Intense workouts demand enhanced oxygen consumption and subsequently generate reactive oxygen species. Oxidative stress causes muscle damage and alters metabolic processes, including energy and gut metabolism. Studies have shown that glutamine supplementation reduces the plasma concentration of creatine kinase and lactate dehydrogenase — markers of muscle damage. Glutamine plays an indirect antioxidant role by acting as an important donator of glutamate for glutathione synthesis. Glutathione is the most important non-enzymatic antioxidant in the cell. Glutamine also helps counteract the metabolic effects of oxidative stress.
Faster post-workout recovery means more training, better workouts, and improved results…
Intense training followed by faster recovery makes the athlete's training routine more productive…
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6520936/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5504368
Also Read: 5 Effective Ways To Maximize Post-Workout Muscle Recovery
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