In the world of sports performance you’re not going to find a more popular and important anabolic strength-boosting supplement than glutamine, an extremely well-researched therapeutic nutrient that does a lot more than build muscle.
Glutamine is said to be a “conditionally essential amino acid”. The “amino acid” part refers to the fact that among other things the body uses it to create proteins, while “conditionally essential” means you may not absolutely need to. It’s probably a good idea to dose with it daily via foods or supplementation.
All of this is to say, glutamine is important stuff! While there are over twenty different amino acids in the body, nearly 60 percent of the free floating ones are glutamine and 5 to 6 percent of the ones used in various proteins are glutamine.
Glutamine’s reputation as a go-to building nutrient is well-deserved and it’s been used as such by body builders and weight lifters for decades. It can also help athletes after prolonged strenuous exercise by decreasing infections and preventing the breakdown of muscle. And that’s not all! Glutamine also has a buffering effect on acid and other chemicals that can cause fatigue during intense exercise. By reducing the impact of these biochemical by-products, workout warriors can pump out more reps and get stronger faster.
As functional as glutamine is for athletes, you don’t have to be a gym rat to enjoy its anabolic body building benefits. Breast feeding infants depend on it as a growth inducing element and up to half of the amino acids in mother’s milk are glutamine.
Hormones. We hear the word all the time. “Hormonal acne”, “woman’s hormones”, “stress hormones “, almost every measurement of health is impacted by these ubiquitous biochemicals. And when it comes to health, no aspect of our biochemistry is more relevant than the efficient and effective function of hormones.
While there are various classes of hormones, including “exocrine hormones” that work through the skin and the digestive tract (those produced in the pancreatic sweat and salivary glands for example) and “paracrine hormones” (prostaglandins and interleukins are classic examples), whose activities are restricted to the microscopic regions around a cell, the most commonly recognized hormones are part of what is known as the “endocrine system”. These hormones, with names like cortisol, testosterone and insulin, travel throughout the body via the blood, where they exert their effects by seeking, contacting and activating the cells of various structures and organs throughout the body.
Food represents the most important chronic offending agent. Even good foods activate a defensive response scientists call “post prandial leukocytosis” (post meal white blood cells proliferation). The intestine is packed with responsive immune system cells that can initiate inflammatory chemistry. When activated chronically as a result of repeated ingestion of triggering foods, the net result can be a permanent inflammatory condition and a breakdown in the digestive lining or “Leaky Gut”.
Once food particles sneak through the broken down intestinal barrier and enter into the circulation, a defensive reaction within the blood is initiated. The circulatory system is the sacred space of the body and kept secure by traveling immune system “scout” cells. When these cells spot an invader, a reaction is initiated that includes the formation of inflammatory factors. As these protective molecules proliferate and circulate and form complexes with food particles, eventually they contact various organs, ultimately resulting in the symptoms of disease.
Human beings around the world are sick and are getting sicker. We are immersed in a silent epidemic of chronic degenerative diseases (CDDs) that is gradually enveloping the planet’s population. According to the World Health Organization, from a projected total of 58 million worldwide deaths from all causes in 2009, it is estimated that CDDs, physical ailments whose course worsens over time, account for 38 million or over 60 percent.
Here in the United States, CDD’s impact on mortality is even more significant with 3 out of 4 deaths resulting from long term degenerative illnesses and nearly 50% of Americans having at least one. The elderly are especially susceptible; approximately 80% of all persons older than 65 years have at least one chronic condition, and 50% have at least two. And all that misery doesn’t come cheap. Of the nearly three trillion dollars Americans spend every year on health care, it is estimated that 75 percent of it can be attributed to the costs of chronic degenerative disease. That's over 2 trillion dollars!
Our bodies do a lot of work. From a microscopic perspective, each of the 100 trillion cells is a seething, roiling, bubbling dynamo of activity, manufacturing, processing and secreting countless chemicals per second. At the macro level, the various systems and structures of body are endlessly organizing, metabolizing, growing, dividing, respirating, pumping, digesting and excreting.
If you throw mental and emotional activity into the mix, it’s understandable that, after a certain amount of time, the system will just get burnt out. Under normal conditions, that occurs at the end of the end of the day, at which point we’ll head to bed, turn down our blankets, plump up our pillows to renew and refresh with a good’s nights rest. Or maybe, if it’s the middle of the day, we can replenish our energy stores with a little catnap.
But for many people that’s not enough. There are millions of men and women who are always exhausted. They go to bed tired and wake up that way even after a full night’s sleep, remaining weary throughout the whole day. These unfortunate folks are chronically fatigued, sometimes so severely that their ability to participate in life activities can be dramatically reduced. Some are so affected that they have trouble keeping jobs and relationships. Others can be severely disabled and even bedridden. Doctors call this condition Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or CFS, and in addition to feeling persistently pooped 24/7, it’s marked by a complex of health issues including headache, flu-like symptoms, muscle soreness and joint pain.
