Glutathione: The Master Antioxidant and Powerful Detoxifier

Are you protected from cellular oxidation or free radical invasion to your body? We live in a toxic environment of pollution and chemical radiations. Aside from our continuous aging process on our daily emotional stress, we also experience a multitude of environmental hazards that makes us prone to body fatigue, infections, poor diet, drug toxicities,injury, trauma and burns. Exposure to these factors will drain levels of glutathione in our bodies. Such depletion further accelerates our aging process, disease and death. Glutathione is the key to our health maintenance and a door towards longevity.

What is Glutathione? It is a tripeptide composed of amino acids: glutamic acid, cysteine, and glycine. It is found in our body cells where the highest concentration of glutathione is found in the liver. The liver is the so called the "garbage can" of our bodies because it has the function to detoxify and eliminate free radicals. GSH (active glutathione) stands for reduced L-glutathione where SH means reduced sulfur (sulfur +hydrogen) which can be depleted upon cell's consumption in neutralizing free radicals. During the oxidation process there is formation of glutathione disulfide or oxidized glutathione (GSSG). From here we can note that the active glutathione is also known as GSH, while the inactive or oxidized glutathione is known as GSSG. Inorder to maintain a dynamic balance ("homeostasis"), GSH is recycled from GSSG after it is utilized in the body. Therefore GSSG is reconverted back to its active form, GSH.

Functions of Glutathione. Antioxidants such as vitamins C and E cannot be made by the body because they cannot be found in your cells naturally. So,you have to ingest them and they could only work properly in the presence of glutathione which is the most abundantly produced antioxidant both on the intracellular and extracellular level. It gained the title of "master antioxidant" because the presence of this small protein is "crucial" to the proper functioning of all other known antioxidants. Therefore, glutathione recycles and recharges all other antioxidants.

We know that our liver is the main body detoxifier. Now, low levels of glutathione leads to poor liver function and results in large quatities of toxins circulating through the body. The continuous damage of individual cells and organs leads to illnesses such as AIDS and cancer (includes prostate) muscle wasting, arthritis, hepatitis, diabetes, high blood pressure, cataracts, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, male infertility, and chronic fatigue syndrome. Other deficiency states exhibits malnutrition, radiation poisoning, sepsis, strong physical stress, athletic overtraining and acetaminophen toxicity. One of the best studies involved women with ovarian cancer who were being treated with chemotherapy via intravenous glutathione. As a result, patients administered with glutathione had shown fewer side effects from chemotherapy and an increased survival rates.

Sources of Glutathione. Natural sources includes meat (high in cysteine), watermelon, avocado, wheat germ, oat flakes, tomato (Vitamin C) , cabbage, cauliflower, watercress, asparagus, brocolli and as many dark green leafy vegetables which are good choices for glutathione synthesis. Whey is a by product of cheese (ricotta cheese,cottage) or yogurt processing. Milk sources are from non hormone injected cows or goats. Whey protein poducts raises cysteine levels and enhances the liver's GSH production. Dietary supplements of glutathione in capsule forms are ineffective because it is not fully absorbed by the digestive system when taken by mouth. Intravenous injection produced immediate results during extreme medical conditions. A practical solution is to take the "precursors" (chemicals that participate in the glutathione synthesis) rather than taking glutathione itself.

Dr. Gustavo Bounous who is a retired surgery professor along with his team of researchers from the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University in Montreal, Canada developed a bovine whey protein isolate as source of glutathione precursor cysteine called Immunocal. Their studies in 1978 focused on whey proteins that led to the surprising discovery of whey protein concentrate which helped sustained optimal glutathione levels. In 1993 they produced this protein and was given the name "Immunocal".

For More Information www.immunocal.com/

www.immunotec.com

http://www.whatisimmunocal.com/

www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=50746

www.naturalnews.com/glutathione.html.

www.prozactruth.com/gluta.htm

www.nutritionadvisor.com/glutathione.html.

www.healthline.com/galecontent/glutathione

www.glutathioneexperts.com