Glutamine for healing the gut (and fixing stress too)
The role of L-glutamine in the gut is diverse. Perhaps the most important, glutamine can be digested directly by the gut. For those of you concerned with leaky gut, it plays an important role in restoring/maintaining gut function. Furthermore glutamine is the precursor to glutathione which is the master enzyme which regenerates all of your stress enzymes. The problem is in times of high stress or trauma your body's consumption of glutamine will greatly exceed any typical supply. Which is why for almost any gut related condition, doctors and other authorities recommend 2 to 3 gm of glutamine daily. The protocol given to me by my new doctor of functional medicine. I saw her about three weeks ago about a gut condition which may be Candida and leaky gut. Saccharomyces boulardii is a probiotic which fights gut inflammation . I used Jarrow's S. boulardii . PGX is a form of glucomannan which has been specially processed so fiber quality is preserved. Take 3x per day. About 3 gm of glutamine daily. I prefer to dissolve in about 2 cups of water and I take it to bed with me . When I wake up in the middle of the night that's when I'll drink it all. It is best taken on an empty stomach. When my stomach was at its worst, I would often just double up on this dose of glutamine. However, don't do this regularly. Glutamine is involved in the production of GABA and changing your GABA levels can alter your mood. I did notice a lessening in the pain the very next day when I doubled up on the glutamine. Bob's Red Mill unmodified potato starch is a resistant starch. Resistant starches resist digestion, they are broken down by your probiotics and they do not raise your glucose level. Resistant starches feed your gut directly and they are anti-inflammatory. Dissolve 1 tablespoon in water, take up to three times daily. Collagen:Your gut needs collagen to heal.You can get collagen by either drinking bone broth or by taking collagen supplements. Vitamins: the truth is you need all your vitamins if you want to heal from a major trauma. so you need a good multivitamin . The problem is most of the vitamins out there, centrum, one-a-day are lousy vitamins. they just aren't bioavailable. Getting a good multivitamin is fairly tricky many vitamins cannot be absorbed unless they are present in absolutely the correct ratio whereas others will completely block the absorption of one or another vitamin or mineral. Just make sure you get enough magnesium and zinc. The two most important minerals and they are fairly bio-unavailable in most forms. You need to research this carefully. Initiate protein synthesis: healing is by definition the production of new proteins to replace that which is broken or missing. You need to eat 30 g of proteins in one sitting in order to initiate protein synthesis. Nutritionists recommend doing this at least three times per day if you are trying to recover from major trauma or medical condition. 30 g of protein is rather a large amount. Five large eggs contains 30 g of protein. I have difficulty eating such large amounts in one sitting, therefore I tend to take all the protein I would normally eat in one day and concentrated into a meal. I eat all my other foods veggies etc. at other meals. Support for broken digestion: Symptoms include gas, Bloating , diarrhea, stomachache /heartburn , gut cramps and GERD. HCl Digestive enzymes You want to use the HCl and the digestive enzymes under the supervision of a doctor. If it turns out that you don't need it you could end up burning a hole in your stomach. I had actually been using a variant of this protocol for almost a year with some limited success . But after I switched to the doctor's version, after three weeks my digestion seemed almost normal. What were my mistakes? You need to take the glutamine on an empty stomach. I've been taking it during the day but apparently my stomach wasn't nearly empty enough. I was using very crappy fiber. Metamucil is not good stuff. Bad fiber will feed your probiotics, yes, but it will also feed other less desirable organisms in your gut. The difference between the Metamucil and PGX is a universe apart. I was using too many probiotics. Yes too many probiotics. It turns out Saccharomyces boulardii is the correct probiotic to use if you want to heal gut inflammation. All the other probiotics I was taking were just competing for a very limited resource (the fiber) and apparently they outnumbered the Saccharomyces and it never really took off. That was it. Update: My gut seems mostly healed up using this protocol. Recently, I added N-acetyl-cysteine (NAC) to my line up. NAC is used primarily to support glutathione (this is the master stress enzyme that controls regeneration of all your other antioxidant/stress enzymes). I noticed I seemed to recover better from stress when I remember to take glutamate. In fact, I lost about 1.5 inches from my waistline but didn't lose any weight. This could only happen if my stress levels drop and my metabolism stopped depositing fat preferentially at the waist (stress belly).. Then when I ran out of glutamate, the waistline started to creep up again. It's starting to drop again now that I've gotten my next bottle. The protocol to support glutathione: Supplement with n-acetyl-cysteine (NAC) Supplement with glutamate Supplement with magnesium glycinate (magnesium tends to be depleted if you're under stress. The glycinate is required to make gluthionione
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