Accepted Payments
Glutathione: The Mother of all Antioxidants
What is the most important molecule that you need to stay healthy and prevent disease?
Hi, this is Dr Mark Hyman, welcome back. Now, why is it that most of you have never heard about this and why is it the secret to prevent cancer, dementia, heart disease and more? And why is it necessary to treat everything from autism to Alzheimer’s? And why are there over 76,000 medical articles about it and your doctor doesn’t know how to address the epidemic deficiency of this critical, life-giving molecule? What is it? It’s the mother of all antioxidants. It’s the master detoxifier and the maestro of the immune system. It’s called glutathione. The good news is that your body produces its own glutathione. The bad news is that our poor diet, pollution, toxins, medications, stress, trauma, aging, infections and radiation, all deplete your body’s glutathione levels. And this leaves you susceptible to unrestrained cell disintegration from oxidative stress and free radicals to infections and cancer and your liver gets overloaded, making it damaged and unable to do it’s job of detoxification.
So you know in treating chronically ill patients using functional medicine over the last ten years, I have found that glutathione deficiency is found in nearly all of my very ill patients. Those who have chronic fatigue, heart disease, cancer, chronic infections, auto immune diseases, diabetes, autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, arthritis, asthma, kidney problems, liver disease, you name it. If you’re very sick, you’re likely to have glutathione deficiency.
Now at first I thought this was just coincidental when I saw this but over the years I’ve come to realize our ability to produce and maintain a high level of this glutathione molecule in our bodies. It’s critical for recovery from next to all chronic illness, and to prevent disease, and to maintain optimal health and performance. And so have the authors of the 76,000 articles on glutathione.
Ok, so what’s glutathione, what does it do for us and how can we get more of it? Well glutathione is a very simple molecule that’s produced naturally all the time in your body. It’s a combination of three simple building blocks we call amino acids, cystine, glycine and glutamine. The secret of its power is the sulfur chemicals it contains. Sulfur is a very sticky, smelly molecule. It sort of acts like fly paper and all the bad things in the body stick onto it. Free radicals and toxins like mercury and other heavy metals. Normally it’s recycled in the body, except when the toxic level becomes too high and that explains why we we’re in such trouble. You know in my practice I test for the genes involved in glutathione metabolism. Genes involved in producing the enzymes that allow the body to produce and recycle glutathione. And they have lots of names, GSP1 and GTA P1 and so on.
The fact is that we all have evolved in a time before there were 80,000 toxic industrial chemicals that were introduced into our world. Before electro magnetic radiation was everywhere. Before we polluted our lakes and rivers, and skies and oceans and teeth with dental amalgam and with mercury and lead. And that’s why we often got by with just the basic version of genetic detoxification software that’s encoded in our DNA. And it’s sort of mediocre in getting rid of toxins in the body. We just really didn’t need more. Who knew we would be poisoning ourselves and eating the processed, nutrition-depleting diet? That’s why almost half of the population has a limited capacity to get rid of toxins. They’re missing GSTM1 function. And nearly all of my very sick patients, including me, which explains why I became mercury poisoned and why I suffer from chronic fatigue, are missing this important gene. And that makes them the yellow canaries in the coal mine. And there may be up to 1/3 to 1/2 of our population who suffers from chronic disease. So, why is glutathione so important, well, it recycles all of the antioxidants in the body; it helps us deal with free radicals and dealing with free radicals is like handling a hot potato, right! The free radical gets passed around, it goes from vitamin C to vitamin E to lipoic acid and then finally to glutathione which cools it off and recycles the other antioxidants. And then the body can reduce or regenerate another glutathione molecule and then we’re back in business.
The problem occurs when we’re overwhelmed with too much oxidative stress or too many toxins, then glutathione becomes depleted, leading us to some terrible illness and we can no longer protect ourselves against free radicals or infections or cancer and we can’t get rid of our toxins which lead to further accumulations and further illness.
Glutathione is also critical in helping your immune system do its job in fighting cancer and fighting infection and that’s why studies show it can help in even the treatment of Aids.
Glutathione is also the critical and integral part of your detoxification system. All the toxins stick onto glutathione which then carries it into the bile, the stool and then out of the body. So that’s great. And lastly, it helps us reach peak physical and mental function. In fact, research has found that raised glutathione levels actually decrease muscle damage, reduce recovery time, increase strength and endurance, and shift metabolism from fat production to muscle development.
So if you’re sick or old, or just not in peak shape, you likely have glutathione deficiency. In fact, the top medical journal of Lancet found that the highest levels of glutathione were found in healthy young people, a little bit lower in healthy and elderly and lower still in the sick and elderly and the lowest of all was in the hospitalized sick and elderly.
So keeping your self healthy, boosting your performance, preventing disease and aging will depend on keeping your glutathione levels high.
So the reason that glutathione is so important is that it’s responsible for keeping so many of the keys to ultra wellness optimized. It’s critical to immune function, controlling inflammation, it’s the master detoxifier, it’s the main antioxidant, it protects ourselves and our energy and metabolism.
So what about the good news? I’ve given you a lot of bad news. The good news is, you can do a lot of things to increase this natural and critical molecule in your body. You can eat glutathione-boosting foods, you can exercise and you could take glutathione-boosting supplements. So remember, if you want to stay healthy, and be ultra-well, make sure you’re glutathione levels are up and functioning well. Thanks for listening to me today. I’m Dr. Mark Hyman and I’ll see you next time.
So you know in treating chronically ill patients using functional medicine over the last ten years, I have found that glutathione deficiency is found in nearly all of my very ill patients. Those who have chronic fatigue, heart disease, cancer, chronic infections, auto immune diseases, diabetes, autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, arthritis, asthma, kidney problems, liver disease, you name it. If you’re very sick, you’re likely to have glutathione deficiency.
Now at first I thought this was just coincidental when I saw this but over the years I’ve come to realize our ability to produce and maintain a high level of this glutathione molecule in our bodies. It’s critical for recovery from next to all chronic illness, and to prevent disease, and to maintain optimal health and performance. And so have the authors of the 76,000 articles on glutathione.
Ok, so what’s glutathione, what does it do for us and how can we get more of it? Well glutathione is a very simple molecule that’s produced naturally all the time in your body. It’s a combination of three simple building blocks we call amino acids, cystine, glycine and glutamine. The secret of its power is the sulfur chemicals it contains. Sulfur is a very sticky, smelly molecule. It sort of acts like fly paper and all the bad things in the body stick onto it. Free radicals and toxins like mercury and other heavy metals. Normally it’s recycled in the body, except when the toxic level becomes too high and that explains why we we’re in such trouble. You know in my practice I test for the genes involved in glutathione metabolism. Genes involved in producing the enzymes that allow the body to produce and recycle glutathione. And they have lots of names, GSP1 and GTA P1 and so on.
The fact is that we all have evolved in a time before there were 80,000 toxic industrial chemicals that were introduced into our world. Before electro magnetic radiation was everywhere. Before we polluted our lakes and rivers, and skies and oceans and teeth with dental amalgam and with mercury and lead. And that’s why we often got by with just the basic version of genetic detoxification software that’s encoded in our DNA. And it’s sort of mediocre in getting rid of toxins in the body. We just really didn’t need more. Who knew we would be poisoning ourselves and eating the processed, nutrition-depleting diet? That’s why almost half of the population has a limited capacity to get rid of toxins. They’re missing GSTM1 function. And nearly all of my very sick patients, including me, which explains why I became mercury poisoned and why I suffer from chronic fatigue, are missing this important gene. And that makes them the yellow canaries in the coal mine. And there may be up to 1/3 to 1/2 of our population who suffers from chronic disease. So, why is glutathione so important, well, it recycles all of the antioxidants in the body; it helps us deal with free radicals and dealing with free radicals is like handling a hot potato, right! The free radical gets passed around, it goes from vitamin C to vitamin E to lipoic acid and then finally to glutathione which cools it off and recycles the other antioxidants. And then the body can reduce or regenerate another glutathione molecule and then we’re back in business.
The problem occurs when we’re overwhelmed with too much oxidative stress or too many toxins, then glutathione becomes depleted, leading us to some terrible illness and we can no longer protect ourselves against free radicals or infections or cancer and we can’t get rid of our toxins which lead to further accumulations and further illness.
Glutathione is also critical in helping your immune system do its job in fighting cancer and fighting infection and that’s why studies show it can help in even the treatment of Aids.
Glutathione is also the critical and integral part of your detoxification system. All the toxins stick onto glutathione which then carries it into the bile, the stool and then out of the body. So that’s great. And lastly, it helps us reach peak physical and mental function. In fact, research has found that raised glutathione levels actually decrease muscle damage, reduce recovery time, increase strength and endurance, and shift metabolism from fat production to muscle development.
So if you’re sick or old, or just not in peak shape, you likely have glutathione deficiency. In fact, the top medical journal of Lancet found that the highest levels of glutathione were found in healthy young people, a little bit lower in healthy and elderly and lower still in the sick and elderly and the lowest of all was in the hospitalized sick and elderly.
So keeping your self healthy, boosting your performance, preventing disease and aging will depend on keeping your glutathione levels high.
So the reason that glutathione is so important is that it’s responsible for keeping so many of the keys to ultra wellness optimized. It’s critical to immune function, controlling inflammation, it’s the master detoxifier, it’s the main antioxidant, it protects ourselves and our energy and metabolism.
So what about the good news? I’ve given you a lot of bad news. The good news is, you can do a lot of things to increase this natural and critical molecule in your body. You can eat glutathione-boosting foods, you can exercise and you could take glutathione-boosting supplements. So remember, if you want to stay healthy, and be ultra-well, make sure you’re glutathione levels are up and functioning well. Thanks for listening to me today. I’m Dr. Mark Hyman and I’ll see you next time.