<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>> The subject of whether glutamine supplemention should be used for any therapeutic use is one of controversy. Exactly how glutamine works to maintain intestinal integrity is still being studied (primarily in the guts of laboratory rats under artificial conditions.) Glutamine is a non- essential amino acid, meaning that our bodies manufacture it. In addition, we obtain ample quantities of glutamine (several grams of it daily) from foods in our ordinary diet. There is no question that glutamine does play an important role in maintaining intestinal health. As a supplement, there is some evidence it may be helpful for patients recovering from severe illness, trauma, malnutrition or stress where the body's supply of glutamine has been depleted. But as a daily supplement for other uses (including "leaky gut"), its use is questionable. I tried taking L-glutamine in pure powder form for a couple of months, mixing a teaspoon of it in water at breakfast and dinner. I noticed no improvement in my health, and, after 2 months, L-glutamine was causing me rectal discomfort and difficultly passing stools. Cutting back the dose to once a day did not stop this, and I finally discontinued taking L-glutamine altogether. L-glutamine is used as a building block in synthesizing L- histidine, the amino acid precursor to histamine. I suspect some of the excess L-glutamine from supplementation went into L-histidine production increasing the release of histamine and aggravating rectal discomfort from my existing food allergies. Also, it's possible that excess L-glutamine may have been taken in by gut microbes which in turn might have produced more toxins or allergens and rectal discomfort. Medical science really does not understand the necessary balance of amino acids in our bodies. We cannot just decide to take amino acid supplements at will without considering whether the complex biochemistry at work in our bodies will be thrown out of balance. Here is some suggested reading: LE Magazine September 1999 Glutamine: The Essential "Non-Essential" Amino Acid by Ivy Greenwell http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag99/sep99-report3.html American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 74, No. 1, 25-32, July 2001 Glutamine: commercially essential or conditionally essential? A critical appraisal of the human data Alan L Buchman (Note: Total parenteral nutrition (TPN) means non-oral (intravenous) nutrition.) http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/74/1/25 Journal of Nutrition. 2001;131:2505S-2508S Glutamine and the Bowel Peter J. Reeds and Douglas G. Burrin http://www.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/131/9/2505S There are a number of research articles on glutamine in the gut, mostly research on laboratory rats. Enter "glutamine AND intestine" in the "search" window of PubMed to see them: PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi * Send administrative questions to [log in to unmask] *