Glutamine: a nonessential essential amino acid

Danne Montague-King, Doctor of Biochemistry and Pharmacology, founder of DMK (USA)

The amino acid glutamine is associated with the most important functions of vital organs and systems of the human body, including the healing of damage to the walls of the stomach and large intestine, participation in the normalization of liver function, etc. Glutamine deficiency leads to atrophy of the muscles of the face and body and weakness, which usually accompanies fever and other serious illnesses. Glutathione is also the main absorber of toxic substances in the body. A similar discovery was made more than two hundred years ago, when it was discovered that eating lemon and lime by sailors could prevent scurvy during long voyages. So using glutamine as a dietary supplement may be as necessary for people recovering from illness or age-related stress as drinking lemon and lime was for sailors who wanted to avoid scurvy.

When does glutamine deficiency occur?

I have written many articles about the importance of creams that transdermally deliver proteins into the dermis during treatments. As you know, proteins are made up of amino acids, which are the building blocks for both the skin and the entire body. The human body uses twenty amino acids to create proteins. Nine of them are classified as essential (those that the body cannot produce itself, they must come from an external source, for example, from transepidermal cream), and the rest are classified as non-essential (the amino acid can be produced in sufficient quantities in the body's own tissues).

Essential amino acids: histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan and valine.

Essential amino acids: alanine, arginine, aspartic acid, asparagine, glutamic acid, glycine, proline, serine, cystine and tyrosine.

For many years, glutamine was considered a non-essential amino acid, but research has changed this point of view, and since about the 80s of the twentieth century, glutamine began to be classified as a conditionally essential amino acid. This means that under normal conditions (for example, when we are young and do not have any special skin problems), the body can synthesize adequate amounts of this amino acid. However, during times of stress, acne, fever, general illness, diet, hormonal fluctuations or chemotherapy, the body cannot provide the skin with the necessary amount of glutamine. Therefore, the deficiency must be covered - internally and locally to prevent deficiency.

Glutamine deficiency and muscle self-destruction

Of course, I won’t be able to describe in one article all the important roles that glutamine plays in our skin and body - you can verify this yourself, fortunately, the research is extremely extensive and very convincing - so I will focus on the possibilities that glutamine realizes in the facial muscles .

Muscle cells are fused together into myofilaments. Inside each cell there are contractile fibers: actin and myosin. When a nerve commands a muscle to contract, these fibers interact and shorten, causing the muscle to contract. The more times it contracts, the stronger it becomes, and accordingly, the more elastic and toned the face and neck look.

Actin and myosin are surrounded by cytoplasm, which is the repository of many cellular structures; mitochondria are located between the actin-myosin fibers. Mitochondria are the energy source of every cell, like a furnace that provides the energy to heat your home.

Under normal conditions, excess glutamine sits free in muscle cells waiting to be used as fuel to activate new proteins or other important compounds and amino acids, but when your patient experiences metabolic stress, when catabolism predominates in his body, the concentration of glutamine in muscle cells can drop up to 50%. Thus, the facial muscles, in an attempt to produce significantly more glutamine to maintain its levels in the bloodstream and microcirculatory activity, begin to break down. And this process can be stopped only by supplying the required amount of glutamine from the outside - for example, through transdermal therapy.

I thought about this in the 60s, but my observations at that time were only supported by clinical studies. We now have other studies showing the need for glutamine in treatment formulas. This is especially evident in the procedures we call "enzyme muscle banding": the non-surgical neck lift results achieved after this procedure were so stunning that even I was skeptical until I saw these patients in person.

Of course, achieving these results requires several professional treatments and also needs to be maintained with regular home appointments. However, once your patients see significant skin tightening, they will know it's worth continuing.

First published: Les Nouvelles Esthetiques Ukraine, No. 2 (84), 2014