Glutamine is the most abundant amino acid in your body, and it is used by almost all bodily tissues as an essential source of fuel. Your body can make its own glutamine, but the amino acid is also found in food sources such as dairy, eggs, peanuts, barley, corn and wheat. Glutamine is necessary for overall good health, and it also plays a role in maintaining normal blood sugar levels.
What Glutamine Does
The cells that are part of your intestinal tract and immune system tend to divide rapidly and need a lot of energy, which comes from glutamine. Without enough glutamine, you would suffer intestinal wasting and your immune system wouldn’t be able to fight off disease. Glutamine also carries nitrogen into muscle cells to stimulate muscle growth, and it plays a role in normal brain functioning. Although glutamine deficiencies aren’t common, stress, disease, surgery and trauma can deplete glutamine stores.
Effects on Blood Sugar
Glutamine plays a critical role in the control of blood glucose, or blood sugar. When levels of glucose are low, a condition called hypoglycemia, your body converts glutamine in the liver and kidneys into glucose to help bring levels back in balance. If you’re diabetic, however, you have an abnormal glutamine metabolism in which excess amounts of glutamine are broken down into glucose. This in turn leads to higher levels of the pancreatic hormone glucagon, which raises blood sugar.
Type 1 Diabetes
A study at the University College of Dublin in Ireland investigated the role of glutamine in the process of autoimmune conditions such as type 1 diabetes, which is the inherited form of the disease. The results, published in September 2001 in “The Journal of Nutrition,” showed that giving an anti-glutamine drug to patients with type 1 diabetes delayed or stopped the progression of the disease in diabetes-prone rats. Other researchers reported in the June 2010 issue of “Diabetes Care” that glutamine supplements increased the likelihood that adolescents would develop hypoglycemia after exercising.
Type 2 Diabetes
Type 2 diabetes is not inherited but usually develops in association with obesity. A 2008 report in “The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition” demonstrated that glutamine significantly improved circulating insulin levels in all study subjects, including patients with this form of diabetes. Research at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Australia, published in “The Journal of Nutrition” in July 2011, looked at the effects of glutamine supplementation in 15 patients with type 2 diabetes. Researchers found that 30 g of glutamine decreased blood sugar levels following a meal.
Considerations
Glutamine supplements may cause an allergic reaction in sensitive individuals. Less serious side effects in other people may include nausea, swelling, muscle pain, headache, sweating and rashes. Do not use glutamine if you have diabetes, hypoglycemia, or any other chronic disease without first consulting your health practitioner.
References
- “Life Extension Magazine”; Glutamine: The Essential “Non-Essential" Amino Acid; Ivy Greenwell; September 1999
- Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center: Glutamine
- “The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition”; Oral Glutamine Increases Circulating Glucagon-like Peptide 1, Glucagon, and Insulin Concentrations in Lean, Obese, and Type 2 Diabetic Subjects; J. Greenfield, et al.; January 2009
- “The Journal of Nutrition”; Why Is L-Glutamine Metabolism Important to Cells of the Immune System in Health, Postinjury, Surgery or Infection?; Philip Newsholme; September 2001
- “Diabetes Care”; Effects of Glutamine on Glycemic Control During and After Exercise in Adolescents With Type 1 Diabetes; Nelly Mauras, MD, et al.; September 2010
- “The Journal of Nutrition”; Glutamine Reduces Postprandial Glycemia and Augments the Glucagon-like Peptide-1 Response in Type 2 Diabetes Patients; D. Samocha-Bonet, et al.; July 2011
