Short-Term Effects of Glutamine Supplementation on Levels of Blood Lactate and Fatigue Index in Male Elite Swimmers

Abstract

Food supplementations are public assistance for a variety of championships sports. Competitive and recreational athletes use the nutritional supplements to improve their performance in a long time. In this context, there is lack of information about whether glutamine supplementation has the potential to help improve the muscle recovery after a period of intense aerobic exercise to exhaustion. This study aimed to assess short-term effect of glutamine supplementation on the levels of lactate and fatigue index in male elite swimmers.  Research method was mid-experimental and research design was a pretest-posttest with control group that was administered as double-blind. Twenty swimmers with age range of 26-18 years were selected based on convenient sampling. Then, based on swimming record results of 50 and 100 m freestyle breasts  were randomly divided into glutamine and swimming training group (n = 10) or placebo and exercise swimming group (n=10 ). Then the glutamine was given to supplementation group and the placebo was given to the control group, both groups began to swim for 4 weeks. Studied variables including lactate levels, fatigue and athletic performance index were measured before and after the study.  The results showed that use of glutamine amino acids led to a significant reduction in the fatigue index and produced lactate in the supplementation group compared to the placebo group. The time of athletes' performance wasn’t significantly increased.  The results showed the glutamine supplementation in areas such as swimming where the athlete must take part in a day in several competition, has a significant impact on the reduction of blood lactate concentration and more endurance of athletes than accumulation of lactic acid and reduction of swimming athletes fatigue index . However, more research is needed in this area.