Glutamine is one of the most intensely studied nutrients in sports nutrition over the last 5 years.

It is one of the most versitile and useful nutients for sports performance. Research has shown that glutamine is very useful against the catabolic stress that is imposed on the body by resistance training.

500mg per day is not enough ... you need at least 2 grams for it to get through the small intestines (they are a glutamine hungry group of scavengers) ... anything under 2g will be absorbed by the small intestines and will not give you the protein sparing/cell volumizing effect that you are looking for.

Best bet is to go with a powdered form of L-glu and choose your goal from the following and increase you doseage as you see fit:

(1) Boosting GH levels - To do this, athletes take 10g of glutamine on an empty stomach upon waking.

(2) Accelerating muscle gylcogen synthesis - This is done by taking glutamine (5g to 10g) within 1 hour after severe exercise.

(3) Sparing glucose levels. (5g to 10g, 3x per day)

(4) Off-setting overtraining syndrome - Glutamine plays a crucial role in the stimulation of intracellular protein synthesis if you are training hard. To get the full effect of this, you should be taking in at least 20g of glutamine per day.

(5) It has also been noted that by super-supplementing glutamine, some athletes have reported breaking through training and hypertrophy plateaus by boosting glutamine intake to 60g - 80g per day. This requires a dosing pattern of 10g upon waking, 5g every 3 hours, and 10g before bed.

During flu season, be sure to take even more glutamine to insure a well-functioning immune system.

It has been my experience that the cheaper brands of glutamine have an "off-taste" to them, while EAS and Twinlabs are taste-free.