L-Glutamine: The Most Important Gut Repair Nutrient (360 review)

2.10.2025 0 comments

Author: Trisha Houghton, CNS, ASIST

Your intestines are absolutely essential for healthy body function—not just digestion, but also immunity, hormone regulation, even brain health.

So much of your internal activity takes place in your gut, which means the health of your gut can have a direct impact on the health of your entire body.

Getting enough nutrients to support good intestinal health is absolutely essential for your overall health and wellbeing. One in particular, called L-glutamine, will play a particularly significant role in maintaining good gut function.

In this post, we’ll take a closer look at what L-glutamine is, how it benefits your gut, and what it can do for your body at large. We’ll also examine what you can do to get more L-glutamine, both from foods and supplementation.

By the end, you’ll know everything you need to know to increase L-glutamine intake to improve your intestinal health.

L-Glutamine for Your Gut: A 360 Review

What is L-Glutamine?

Let’s start off with the basics and take a look at what, exactly, L-glutamine is…

L-glutamine, also called just plain “glutamine”, is a charge-neutral, polar amino acid ^[1]. It’s considered “non-essential” because it’s not directly involved in the process of building muscle, but that doesn’t mean it’s unimportant.

As a free amino acid—the most abundant in your body, in fact—it’s utilized for a pretty wide variety of internal functions, including:

• Producing cellular energy (supplementing glucose)
• Synthesizing proteins
• Synthesizing lipids (fats)
• Regulation of acidity in your kidney
• Donating nitrogen and carbon to the production of other cells
• A transporter of ammonia in your bloodstream

But its most important function (at the very least, for the sake of this blog post) is to improve your gut function. 

How does L-Glutamine Improve Gut Function?

L-glutamine improves your intestinal health in a number of pretty important ways: ^[2]

• It maintains the intestinal mucosa. The intestinal mucosa form the inner lining that prevents the “wrong” foods and particles from being absorbed into your bloodstream. A lack of proper lining can lead to “leaky gut”, which can contribute to a wide range of health conditions (including IBS). But thanks to L-glutamine, your body is better able to maintain the integrity of the intestinal lining.
• It encourages the growth of healthy gut microbiota. It can prevent the over-colonization of harmful bacteria and increase the growth of the “good” beneficial bacteria that live in your gut. Paired with the other effects listed here, it can do wonders to regulate your gut bacteria and maintain healthy intestinal flora.
• It promotes the proliferation of enterocytes. Enterocytes are the cells in your intestines that absorb particles (of food and nutrients) in your gut and transport them into the bloodstream to be delivered to your body. Without enough enterocytes, your intestinal absorption rate will decrease. L-glutamine’s ability to increase the growth and spread of enterocytes makes it a highly important nutrient for good digestive health.
• It suppresses pro-inflammatory pathways. This can not only reduce inflammation in the gut (caused by digestive disorders or gut bacteria imbalances), but also help to combat inflammatory diseases in the rest of your body.
• It protects your cells against stress. Not only does this decrease the burden that free radicals and oxidative stress can place on your cells, but prevent cellular apoptosis (death) that could cause reduced function of your intestinal cells.
• It maintains a healthy gut-brain connection. By preventing inflammation, supporting your gut microbiome, and maintaining a healthy intestinal lining, L-glutamine has been shown ^[3] to be critical for maintaining a health connection between your brain and gut, ensuring your body can produce enough of the neurotransmitters to maintain a healthy brain balance. Research has shown that better gut health can reduce your risk of depression and other neuropsychiatric based conditions.

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Pretty amazing to see all the ways L-glutamine improves your gut health, right?

But that’s not all it can do…

Other Widespread Benefits of L-Glutamine

Maintaining your immune system. L-glutamine provides fuel for your immune cells, both the intestinal cells that fight pathogens and your white blood cells ^[4]. It can actually help to stave off infections ^[5] and speed up recovery times.

Aiding in fitness efforts. Research has proven that though L-glutamine won’t increase muscle growth or strength, it can help to speed up recovery and decrease muscle soreness following an intense workouts ^[6]. You’ll be able to get back into your workouts quicker and train harder thanks to L-glutamine. It can also reduce fatigue resulting from strenuous cardiovascular exercise.

Both pretty impressive benefits, and an excellent addition to the gut-improving effects of getting more L-glutamine in your diet!

Side Effects of L-Glutamine

The good news is that since L-glutamine is naturally produced in your body, there are no known side effects or risks associated with it. It’s only beneficial and critical in the maintenance of your gut health, gut-brain connection, and immune system.

However, people who take L-glutamine supplements need to be aware that they do come with minor side effects. High doses of L-glutamine from external sources can cause bloating and constipation ^[6], though it’s fairly uncommon. Some doctors warn that L-glutamine supplements can interfere with anti-seizure medications, or may affect those with bipolar disorder, liver disease, or an MSG sensitivity.

Really, the biggest side effects you’ll experience will come from a lack of L-glutamine. L-glutamine levels typically drop as a result of:

• Food allergies
• Chemotherapy
• Physical stress
• IBS
• Burns or trauma
• Ulcerative colitis
• Intestinal infections
• Immune disorders (AIDS or HIV)

People who don’t get enough L-glutamine in their diet may also experience L-glutamine deficiency.

When this happens, your intestinal lining may be compromised, your immune system may suffer, and your gut-brain connection will be affected.

That’s why it’s ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE that you get more L-glutamine in your daily diet!

How to Get More L-Glutamine in Your Diet

The simplest way to consume more L-glutamine is to consume foods that are rich in the amino acid. Your body already produces a significant amount of the L-glutamine it needs every day, but you can increase production and absorption by eating the following foods ^{[7, 8]}:

• Peanuts
• Tofu
• Spirulina
• Chinese cabbage
• Broccoli rabe
• Asparagus
• Corn
• Rice
• Wheat

Of course, if you’re really looking to increase your daily dosage of L-glutamine, it may be a good idea to consider taking a supplement.

Luckily, you can now find L-glutamine in our proprietary formula, Restore Gut. By supporting the protective barrier of the gut, this powerful supplement helps people enjoy healthy digestion, normal immune function, and attain more energy, vitality and vigor.

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Click here to learn more about Restore Gut and how it focuses on promoting digestive harmony by supporting your intestinal walls, so you can finally stop worrying about your digestion.

Wrapping Up:

As you saw from everything we shared above, L-glutamine is one of the most important nutrients for a healthy gut and a healthy body overall.

Improving your gut health not only aids in the digestion and absorption of the nutrients your body needs to function, but also improves immunity, aids in a healthy gut-brain connection, and reduces inflammation and stress-inflicted damage. Put this all together, and you’ve got the recipe for significantly improved health—all thanks to L-glutamine.

Talk to your doctor today to see if you should take L-glutamine supplements, and start adding more glutamine-rich foods to your diet. You’ll see huge strides of improvement in your overall health thanks to this amazing amino acid!

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