L Glutamine for Eczema and Leaky Gut (2024)

L-glutamine for eczema? L-glutamine for a leaky gut?

Yes, l-glutamine shows much promise for healing eczema and a leaky gut.

Glutamine is considered “conditionally essential” because it can be synthesized from glutamate when total protein is adequate, yet it can become depleted to dangerous levels that require supplementation during illness, injury, and surgery.
 

L-Glutamine for Eczema

The Google search term 'l-glutamine for leaky gut', returns over 150,000 results.

Similarly, the Google search term 'l-glutamine for autoimmune', shows nearly 1 million results.

And, of course, 'l-glutamine for eczema', returns over 300,000 results.

So, clearly, a lot is being written about l-glutamine for eczema, l-glutamine for a leaky gut, and l-glutamine for other gastrointestinal problems.

L-glutamine is sometimes just called glutamine. But, what is this l-glutamine?

L-glutamine is one of the 20 amino acids already in your body.

A significant amount of l-glutamine comes from the foods we eat, and it can also be synthesized in the body. However, when your body is under stress, chances are it doesn’t have enough l-glutamine to satisfy your demand.

Stress, like a poor diet (and maybe the Standard American Diet), medications, trauma, post exercise recovery, and so on. As a matter of fact, when your body is stressed, it releases the hormone called cortisol into your bloodstream. It’s the high levels of this hormone, cortisol, that lowers the stores of l-glutamine.

Nearly every bodily function requires l-glutamine. It’s also the most active amino acid involved in many of metabolic processes.

L-glutamine helps to remove excess ammonia waste products from the body. It’s also important for digestion and for normal brain function. L-glutamine aids in the protection of the lining of the gastrointestinal tract.

L-Glutamine for Leaky Gut

Your intestinal tract uses approximately 30 percent of your glutamine stores. It’s a key element in maintaining intestinal barrier functions and maintaining tight junctions between cells to produce a physical barrier.

Spend enough time reading through these search results and you might also see the term: secretory immunoglobulin A, or sIgA.

SlgA acts as the first line of defense. It helps protect against foreign substances, like bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, and food particles from entering the body through a normally functioning digestive tract.

With low levels of sglA, your digestive tract is unable to fight these foreign substances from attacking the intestinal wall. The gut becomes inflamed and irritated. As a result, the gut wall becomes weakened and allows toxins or undigested food particles to enter the body.

Both l-glutamine and probiotics, along with a better diet, is means to help increase sglA levels and rebuild the intestinal mucosal surface. L-glutamine is the preferred fuel used by the gut lining repair and rebuild themselves and produce more of the intestinal mucous and sglA.

L-glutamine also supports your overall health in many other ways like helping to maintain and regulate blood glucose levels. More fodder for late night searches.

L-Glutamine for Eczema Protocol (A Natural Alternative Treatment for Eczema)

According a protocol shared by 'Natural Cure for Eczema':

My own anti-eczema l-glutamine protocol began with 2 grams, twice a day, an hour before breakfast and at bedtime. Based on studies below, like these, I concluded this level of l-glutamine probably wasn’t enough for an active case of eczema.

• To build a healthy number of intestinal epithelial cells, l-glutamine is critical.
• Dietary supplementation of glutamine found to be beneficial in maintenance of these epithelial cells.

So, I then increased it to 2 grams, 4 times a day, until my red eczema patches healed. Never taking it with meals, in this way, the l-glutamine doesn’t compete with other amino acids in the foods we eat as they move through the digestive tract.

After two months of supplementing at 2 grams, 4 times a day, I have gone down to 2 grams, 2 times a day, an hour before breakfast and at bedtime for maintenance.

If I have a day or two of less-than-optimal diet, I’ll bump up my l-glutamine for several days to help compensate.

Some studies have subjects taking much more l-glutamine than I did. Perhaps my own healing might have been quicker if I had increased the how much I was supplementing. Or, maybe there would have been no difference?

Optimum Nutrition brand, 1000 milligram of l-glutamine per capsule with 120 capsules per bottle.

This is the brand of l-glutamine I purchase, Optimum Nutrition 1000 milligrams per capsule, 240 count. It has over 9,000 customer reviews, most of them 5-stars. Evidence of many happy customers! A search of customer reviews show that this product helps with gastrointestinal issues. Also, consider that an average of 1 person in 100 will take the time to leave a customer review.

You can see that these are about the size of a standard fish oil capsule.

These are about the size of a standard fish oil supplement.

L Glutamine side effects warnings

Taking any supplement — including glutamine — puts you at risk for side effects. Many doctors, for example, warn their patients about the possible organ damage caused by dietary aids. Your kidneys release ammonia from glutamine, according to a October 2016 paper in ​ Nature Reviews Cancer​. So, taking large doses of glutamine could create excess ammonia. This excess can damage your liver and ultimately your brain.

But this problem is unlikely to happen in healthy people. In fact, even cancer patients rarely experience side effects from taking glutamine. The authors of a March 2017 report in ​Support Care Cancer​ tested 56 children with cancer and found that only 2 percent of them had glutamine-related problems during a three-week study. These researchers actually found comparable side effects with glutamine and a placebo.

Because cancer thrives on glutamine, it's also possible that taking this amino acid could promote cancer growth. The writers of a September 2013 article in the ​Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition​ considered this idea in their review of glutamine's side effects. They concluded that scientists need to do more research to answer this question.

Until then, cancer patients should speak with their doctor ​before​ supplementing glutamine. Pregnant and lactating women should also meet with a healthcare expert before taking glutamine.

Related: Leaky Gut: One of the Most Mysterious Diseases, Can It Be Prevented?

Eczema References

Quick Treatment of Very Severe Refractory Hand and Foot Eczema with Dupilumab: A Case Report and Literature Review

Role of Glutamine in Protection of Intestinal Epithelial Tight Junctions
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4369670/

Intestinal epithelial cells: regulators of barrier function and immune homeostasis
https://www.nature.com/articles/nri3608

Intestinal permeability – a new target for disease prevention and therapy
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4253991/

Does L-Glutamine Heal A Leaky Gut?
https://fatiguetoflourish.com/l-glutamine-heal-leaky-gut/

Why L-Glutamine Is My Leaky Gut Superhero!
https://goodbyeleakygut.com/l-glutamine-leaky-gut/

The Skinny on Staying Thin: Glutamine and Other Weight Loss Supplements
https://foreveryoung.perriconemd.com/the-skinny-on-staying-thin-glutamine-and-other-weight-loss-supplements.html

Glutamine-Induced Secretion of Intestinal Secretory Immunoglobulin A: A Mechanistic Perspective
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/02e1/485fd23c947a31aedcae17d0ac0fabc1f376.pdf

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