The Food Medic - S9 Ask Dr Hazel: L-Glutamine for gut health - fad or fact?

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

Welcome back to Ask Dr Hazel, our mini episodes that drop each week. Our listener question this week is “Recently I have seen a lot of people post on social media about L Glutamine, saying it has helped bloating and stomach cramps, as well as helping exercise recovery. Are these claims true? If it is beneficial, how much should we be taking and how often?”To find out more about L-Glutamine and gut health, head over to our educational hub www.thefoodmedic.co.uk for further reading. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Thank you to everyone who's sending questions already. And if you would like to submit a question of your own to the podcast on any topic related to health, fitness, nutrition or mental health, please send your voice recorder questions to info at thefoodmedic.co.uk. So let's get into this week's question. Hi, Hazel. Recently, I've seen a lot of people post on tiktok and instagram about lgbt and seeing that it's helped boating and stomach cramps as well as have benefits for exercise

recovery and are any of these creams true um what actually is it and if it is beneficial then how much should you be taking and how often? Thank you for your question this is something I get asked a lot and I've seen it float around on TikTok so let's go back to basics and just first talk about what L-glutamine is. So first and foremost it's an amino acid which are the building blocks of proteins I'm sure many of you know that already. It's considered a conditionally essential amino acid, which means it can be made in the body under normal circumstances. But during times of stress and illness, the body may have trouble making enough. And so you might need to get some extra from external sources. You can find it in high protein foods such as meat, fish, eggs, dairy,

nuts and beans. But in terms of gut health, which is what your question was referring to, glutamine is needed for cell growth and does play a role in supporting and maintaining the gut barrier, which can be affected in certain gut conditions such as IBD, IBS, celiac disease. And there's some emerging evidence for its use there. If you're a healthy individual, no current gut issues or illness or injury, it's unlikely supplementation will help and getting it through your diet should be sufficient. Additionally, taking L-glutamine without knowing the cause of your gut issues, i.ee a lot of people are promoting it for bloating is not advisable and it's really important we understand what the root cause is with support from a qualified medical doctor. In terms of its role in sports performance and muscle protein

synthesis the evidence is also mixed especially in otherwise healthy individuals. I am super interested in this supplement, but I think we need to see more research and I'm personally not ready to cash in on supplements just yet.