The Unfulfilled Promise of Glutathione
Glutathione is not only an antioxidant it is one of only a few SUPER ANTIOXIDANTS another other one being superoxide dismutase, or SOD.
What does it mean to be a super antioxidant? Vitamin C, the best known antioxidant, obviously helps with colds and other viral illnesses but in theory, reduced glutathione, the form we can use in our body, is a MILLION TIMES more potent! A million times more effective! It should be but so far has not been.
WHY?
And what is glutathione? Why is it supposed to be such an amazing vitamin?
Well, it’s not really a vitamin as we know it, nor is it a hormone but something in between. It’s just a simple, elegant even, tripeptide which means it Is made up of three amino acids, one of which has an INCREDIBLY STICKY sulfhydryl group on it.
This is the real story of glutathione. This sulfhydryl group is the sharp point of glutathione, and the sharp end of our immune defense system. This is also what gives glutathione its distinctive smell and taste. And it’s supposed amazing benefits.
These benefits are detailed in literally hundreds of research studies and articles, many of which are by the NIH, the National Institutes of Health — check them out on PubMed where all the medical research articles are stored.
Lack of REDUCED glutathione is at the root cause of many diseases.
Lack of Reduced glutathione production in the lungs is what causes CYSTIC FIBROSIS
Lack of reduced glutathione in the eyes is what causes Wet Macular Degeneration, the #1 cause of blindness in the world.
AND lack of reduced glutathione has been associated with various forms of hepatitis, chronic renal failure or kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, neuropathy, Parkinson’s disease, HIV/AIDS, herpes, shingles, decreased stamina with exercise, and other diseases...
Look on PUBMED to confirm my claims. While you're there look at the 2013 reduced glutathione study by Bastyr University in Seattle — they could not get 2000 mg of encapsulated reduced glutathione to even work.
But the many glutathione products on the market today have not fulfilled any of those promises.
And you have to ask why?
Let me help with that and share my observations...
We were doing a study on metallothionein dysfunction being the cause of fibromyalgia, by the way — a video discussion for another day, and we realized reduced glutathione, a critical third of every metallothionein enzyme, was necessary for the study. There are 23 known metallothioneins in the human body, one to mobilize each known metal, and having a lack of reduced glutathione would cause the metallothionein to become dysfunctional, causing a metal imbalance, which causes pain, brain fog, and a MYRIAD of other problems.
We looked at and ordered ALL the glutathiones on Amazon and elsewhere, reviewed all the reduced glutathione patents, and dug into numerous studies trying to prove efficacy of glutathione, ANY glutathione, and saw that no one, no university or pharmaceutical company had any success. Again see that Bastyr University study.
Why? Why was there no glutathione that was reduced, and stable in its reduction, easily and readily absorbable, and validated in its efficacy?
Well all the ones we looked at from Amazon, more than fifty, were all oxidized and essentially worthless. It was usually the actual manufacturing process. Well, air contains oxygen and reduced glutathione when exposed to oxygen in the air immediately oxidizes and is then worthless. Even the dry or powdered and encapsulated forms are broken down in your stomach and you absorb none of it. Again look at that recent study performed by Bastyr University — after 2 months of two grams a day of one of Amazon’s top encapsulated forms of so called reduced glutathione they had no changes in any of their lab results. NONE!
Remember, the problem with humans isn't that they can’t make glutathione, it’s that as they age or due to genetics or illness they cannot REDUCE the glutathione they’ve made.
So our struggle was with developing a VALIDATED ABSORBABLE REDUCED GLUTATHIONE that was relatively inexpensive, easily absorbed, and strongly efficacious.
After much review and study, myself and a fellow named Steve Pitcher, who’d started with NASA and had eventually become the head of R&D at a major supplement company, had a plan. We partnered with a company in Iowa, the manufacturer of the top selling CoQ10, Qunol, because they had specialized equipment to accomplish what we needed. And we made it.
We did it.
We created the first validated, absorbable, reduced, and stable glutathione on the market. We have a well written patent with plans to achieve FDA approval to treat several horrible diseases. And yes, It starts to fulfill several of the amazing promises the research world made in regards to glutathione and its benefits.
But guess what? The FDA still just considers it a safe and effective supplement.
We purposefully, despite the cost and complexity of its manufacture, despite the bottling, made it easy to use, and not completely horrible tasting. But more importantly it is incredibly effective and stable. Please try some.
