How Glutamine Supports Immune and Gut Energy
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In this clip from his FoundMyFitness interview with Dr. Rhonda Patrick, Dr. Andy Galpin explains why glutamine becomes conditionally important when training load, energy restriction, illness, or injury increases demand. Gut cells and activated immune cells can use glutamine as fuel, while its conversion to glutamate and alpha-ketoglutarate connects it with cellular energy metabolism.
Dr. Patrick describes her own daily use of glutamine and her experience of fewer minor respiratory illnesses after becoming a parent. Dr. Galpin describes using larger divided doses in selected athletes, especially when gut problems or recovery demands are present. They describe these as practical observations.
Human exercise studies also support glutamine's role at the intestinal barrier. In a small crossover trial, glutamine taken before running in the heat reduced markers of gastrointestinal permeability and epithelial injury in a dose-dependent pattern. This finding fits Dr. Galpin's emphasis on gut and recovery contexts while keeping dose and use specific to the person and the training demand. [1]
Dr. Galpin and Dr. Patrick add two important boundaries. Some tumors use glutamine as a fuel, so a person with active cancer should not infer safety or benefit from athlete protocols and should discuss supplementation with the oncology team. Dr. Galpin describes glutamine as one component of an emerging nutrition framework before and after concussion, drawing on a recent review and his practical use.
- ^ Pugh, Jamie N.; Sage, Stephen; Hutson, Mark; Doran, Dominic A.; Fleming, Simon C.; Highton, Jamie, et al. (2017). Glutamine Supplementation Reduces Markers Of Intestinal Permeability During Running In The Heat In A Dose-Dependent Manner Graefe's Archive For Clinical And Experimental Ophthalmology 117, 12.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: What about glutamine?
Dr. Andy Galpin: Yeah, you can do that. So we will use glutamine, conditional amino acid, right? So in our populations, when amino acid need is really high, and again, you're combining it with caloric reduction, and you don't have that much room to go, like, I just can't give you more food, or I can't give you more chicken breasts, I can't give you more turkey or elk or whatever we're doing. Okay, fine. So we have some argument for the conditional actually coming into practice with those people. Then you have the kind of area of glutamine with gut health stuff. And then we actually see that a little bit transfer over to even brain health.
And you specifically like post-concussion protocols, that whole line then starts to come together and you go, okay, for our population, there's 1, 2, and 3 likelihood of all that stuff. Okay. Pretty reasonable. Add on top of that safety profile. No, no real downsides here. We're not worried about any other effect of it. Uh, yeah, we use it quite a bit actually. That's the, that's it.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So I have a few thoughts on glutamine. Um, one, that's interesting, TBI, because glutamine is, it's like a, it gets converted into, you know, it gets used by mitochondria as well as a source of energy.
Dr. Andy Galpin: Totally.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And in fact, I did a lot of research in graduate school with glutamine and T cells and activated T cells. And this is kind of where I got into this. I now take glutamine for immune reasons.
Dr. Andy Galpin: Yeah.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And I got it, I don't know if you've seen any of the literature on long endurance athletes, you know, taking glutamine.
Dr. Andy Galpin: Yes, I imagine you're taking multiple, are you taking it 2 times a day? Are you splitting up your dose?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I'm not. Sometimes if there's an exposure, I'll take it 3 times a day. Like, so if my son all of a sudden starts sneezing, I'm like, okay.
Dr. Andy Galpin: You just scoop it into the eye.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: But so glutamine is, it's used by activated T cells, and it just dawned on me, I'd done all this research, I'm like, you can take glucose out of a cell culture as long as there's glutamine there. Those cells are fine. They are fine because they consume glutamine as an energy source. It's used as alpha-ketoglutarate.
Dr. Andy Galpin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So, basically, it gets converted into that.
But I started taking it, and this is total anecdotal, but for a long period of time, I never got sick. Then I became a mom. I still didn't get sick until my son started school. And then it was like insane how often I was getting sick. I was like, I was wondering if I had cancer. I'm like, what is wrong with me? Um, and then I started the glutamine and I don't ever get sick anymore.
Dr. Andy Galpin: Really?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I'm serious. I'm serious. Now I'm sure if the flu came up or something like that, I would get it.
Dr. Andy Galpin: That doesn't count though.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: But upper respiratory tract infections, like if I get a little bit of anything, it's a tiny bit of a runny nose for like a couple of days and Like, I haven't been sick in months, and that's unusual as a parent, as you know.
Dr. Andy Galpin: Oh my God.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So, that's why I take it.
I take it not for recovery reasons, but for, I take it prophylactically every day. Now, gut health—
Dr. Andy Galpin: 5 grams, 10 grams?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So, like I said, so right now I take 5 grams a day. No, 5.6. It's almost 6 grams. It's about 6 grams a day. If I have any inkling suspicion that it's coming—
Dr. Andy Galpin: 25 grams.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, I'm like 20 grams, I'm like, up, and the only downside for me is I can get a little gas when I start high dose. I think you're talking about no downsides. I would say the only downside is if someone has cancer, they have—
Dr. Andy Galpin: Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Colon cancer or liver cancer or something like that.
Dr. Andy Galpin: Cancer cells like glutamine. I was talking about T cells, but cancer cells can thrive with glutamine. It's an energy source. Totally. And people don't realize that.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And so, I was thinking about the TBI thing that I'm totally going off on a tangent here, but I'm wondering if the TBI thing, if there's an energy component to it.
Dr. Andy Galpin: Oh no, there absolutely is. There's huge— I covered this. I did a whole— we published a paper a few months ago, myself, Tommy Wood, and Federica Conte, who works with me at Parker now as my research scientist, published a review on preventative as well as post-brain injury concussion. All the supplementation, dosage, timing, all that stuff, as well as whole food equivalents. And that whole paper is open access, so you can go through that whole thing. But yeah, this came out as a pretty clear one.
When you start then poking around into the gut health literature as well, you start going, oh, okay, the immune stuff you just brought up, this is such a clear connection between this entire chain from being sick to the brain health to the energy. You pay attention to how it's working, what it's doing, and you're like, okay, this is one of those times where it lines up and you go, oh yeah, now I get it. Like, this is why it's having such cross-benefit.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Right. Absolutely makes sense. In the gut too, it's like it's being converted to energy. Your gut cells are using alpha-ketoglutarate. I mean, it's so interesting.
I think there's just, there's so much to be discovered with glutamine that I hope people are going to research that more, but—
Dr. Andy Galpin: We do almost always 10 grams twice a day, morning and night. Like, that's a pretty standard thing, especially if we have any inclination or direct evidence of actual gut issues. That's a common one. If we want to drop it then back down to 10 grams total a day, like we will do that, but we will generally use at least 10 grams a day.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: That said, um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do your protocol because I'm not— and if every day, if I ever get sick again, I'm having a lawyer send a letter to you. I'm playing, everybody. I gave it to my son as well and he's not getting sick nearly as much. It's real. So, I was thinking it was placebo.
I was like, oh, it could be placebo, because honestly, if it was placebo, I don't care. If it works, it works. But my son doesn't know that I'm giving him glutamine.
Dr. Andy Galpin: What do you give him, 3 grams?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: No, I'm giving him—
Dr. Andy Galpin: The full 5.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Almost 5, yeah, yeah. And it's like, it's been a pretty night and day difference in terms of the effects on the immune system. I mean, I'm saying immune system. I don't know that it's actually, I'm just saying—
Dr. Andy Galpin: It doesn't matter, yeah.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Bringing illness into our house. Not getting a cold.
Dr. Andy Galpin: This season has been unbelievable. And it's, it's funny because this season has been the worst for all of my friends. Like, everyone's been sick. Crushed. Yeah, everyone's been sick. We haven't. My wife probably has had one cold in a decade. Like, it doesn't matter.
You could soak her in a bath of 16 cold viruses. She will get nothing.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I'm so envious of those people.
Dr. Andy Galpin: Nothing. My, my daughter is like, okay, but she gets a lot. My son and I just,
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: You bring it home, it's over. Like, it's a wrap. I'm so done. And I get so mad because I'm like, I know all these things, I do this, whatever, this is my job, and I can't.
Dr. Andy Galpin: But I've never tried this at this level.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So try it. Um,
Dr. Andy Galpin: I'm so like, I'm fired up. I put it in my coffee, um, or, you know, my tea, and it does— you can— the coffee, if you put like monk fruit or stevia, you won't taste it. But it does have a taste, as you probably know. You probably remember it. I'm a straight shooter. We put it— I just add enough water. I just down it. And we just dose it with all the rest.
It's like, put creatine, put it all in there, deal with 6 ounces of liquid and just get it out.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Now, what's it supposed to do for muscle recovery?
Dr. Andy Galpin: Well, if it has that conditional effect, if it has any of the immune effect, it's going to have the same there. So you'll see muscle soreness as the primary outcome to pay attention to there. Like, is it doing anything anabolically? Um, in cachexia maybe, or like some other situations, sarcopenic. But for normal people, no. Why we do it is the other stuff, for the most part, like all the gut health.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I just wonder how much of the glutamine, you know, because I remember, gosh, it's been so long, I did some of these like substrate labeling studies and it was like, you know, a lot of it's getting converted into glutamate and alpha-ketoglutarate and being used as energy.
Dr. Andy Galpin: Yep.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So it's, it's, it's fascinating. You kind of wonder how much of the glutamine that you're taking in is going as an amino acid versus the energy source. So, um, that's a great question.
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