Research Report Prepared by Tim Cochran for Dr. Pravin Kini & Dr Uday Muttane, Cochran Foundation/India. July 25, 1997

L-GLUTAMINE, A VERY POWERFUL AMINO ACID THAT DOES THE FOLLOWING:

1. Regulates muscle protein synthesis to maintain healthy muscle tissue.
2. Helps in preventing muscle deterioration, especially in cases of prolonged disease, surgical trauma, or where physical body movements are reduced or restricted.
3. Supports healthy brain function as a precursor to certain required brain chemicals. It readily passes the blood-brain barrier.
4. Helps maintain healthy Glutathione (GSH) Levels, which is one of the strongest and most important antioxidant produced by the body.
5. It’s very essential for healthy absorption rates and energy processing in the small intestines. It enhances the maintenance process for a healthy digestive tract.
6. It’s the basis and a very important requirement in the building blocks for the synthesis of RNA and DNA on a molecular cellular level.

Found throughout the body, L-Glutamine is considered conditionally essential, but there are many different situations, which will create a need for more of it than the body is able to produce. When the body is stressed out because of sickness or disease, exercised excessively, physically injured, and/or surgical trauma, it will require more L-Glutamine than the body can produce.

Medical research has shown that L-Glutamine helps maintain healthy muscle tissue by regulating muscle protein synthesis. In fact,

L-Glutamine appears to be the most important amino acid in regulating protein synthesis. In addition, when the body is over-exercised, under disease attack or under stress, the body's L-Glutamine levels will be reducing downward to very short or low supply. The body then borrows it directly from its own muscle tissue, breaking it down to use as energy. Supplementing the body’s supply of L-Glutamine short-circuits the body’s need to consume its own muscle tissue during these physiologically troubled time periods.

Another role served by L-Glutamine includes it ability to maintain healthy Glutathione (GSH) levels. Many experts and medical researchers consider Glutathione to be the most important Antioxidant produced internally by the body.

L-Glutamine is very important in brain function, because it serves as a precursor to Glutamic Acid and GABA. Glutamic Acid is an excitatory amino acid that allows neurons to fire more readily. Considered to be "brain fuel", because once inside the brain, after it has crossed the blood brain barrier, Glutamine is converted into Glutamic Acid. Glutamic Acid is very essential for proper cerebral function. Glutamic Acid is a major excitatory neurotransmitter inside the brain and the spinal cord and it is also a precursor of GABA. Glutamic acid converts excess ammonia; which inhibits and retards the brain performance; into Glutamine. A byproduct of amino acid synthesis is free nitrogen, which will form into ammonia. Ammonia is highly toxic to brain cellular tissues as well as other body tissues, and in any amounts will cause tissue damage inside the brain. The free nitrogen can attach itself to Glutamic Acid and in the process reforms into L-Glutamine. L-Glutamine is unique in that each molecule contains two nitrogen atoms not just one like the majority of other amino acids. This is why it has the ability to help clear out ammonia from body cellular tissue, especially inside the brain organ and why it can transfer nitrogen from one place to another via the blood system – which ends up in the liver.

Since Glutamine produces Glutamic acid, a deficiency of Glutamine in the diet will result in a deficiency of Glutamic acid in the brain. L-Glutamine is a precursor to GAMMA-AMINO BUTYRIC ACID (GABA) which is one of the brain’s Primary Neuroinhibitors. GABA is needed to sustain proper brain function and mental ability and activity. L-Glutamine will assist and support in the enhancement of mental/brain functions

L-Glutamine is essential for the health of the digestive system and absorption rates. It is the primary energy fuel for the small

Intestine. Diets deficient of L-Glutamine will result in atrophy of the small intestines, which is common with aged patients and those with age related diseases. L-Glutamine is one of the most widely used amino acids in the body. It can make up to 22% of all the amino acid levels in the body. There are related drop levels and differences between the levels of earlier adulthood and those of 30 or 40 years later in the biological cycle of the human body. Which is related to aging, cellular DNA regulation and tissue deterioration.