Glutathione Infusions

A Most Powerful Antioxidant

Glutathione is your body’s most important antioxidant. It is created and consumed all day long. Your body must replenish this natural antioxidant or it becomes susceptible to oxidative stress.

What is oxidative stress?

Oxidative stress is a natural process of energy production. While churning out energy molecules from sugar, fats, and proteins, your body creates free radicals. Compare it to exhaust from a car. If your car is running, exhaust is being created. Unlike your car, your body never turns off, so it needs a constant source of detoxification in order to remove oxidative stress before it causes damage to nearby structures (DNA, cell walls, mitochondria).

Anti oxidative stress = Antioxidants.

You have probably heard the word antioxidants mentioned thousands of times. Now, you know why you need them.

What happens if oxidative stress goes unresolved?

Oxidative stress creates free radicals within the system. These free radicals damage the closest structure. Free radicals are volatile and aggressive. They are created in an instant and subsequently damage structures in an instant if not detoxified. If you damage the wrong DNA in the wrong place, a cancer cell is formed.

Oxidative stress can also damage LDL, the “bad cholesterol.” As it turns out, Oxidized LDL is much more dangerous and more likely to cause plaque than non‑oxidized LDL. Oxidized cholesterols can be assessed on the NutrEval from Genova.

The same is true for fish oil when it cooks in a hot delivery truck and warehouse without climate control.   The fish oil gets oxidized from the environmental stress. Consuming oxidized fish oil is likely more dangerous than not taking fish oil at all. High quality fish oil products are always climate controlled and never sit in warehouses.

What does glutathione detoxify?

Besides oxidative stress, glutathione helps detoxify pesticides, dry cleaning solvents, heavy metals (lead, mercury), Persistent Organic Pollutants, Radiation, Flame retardants, and many other chemicals.

What disease can be treated with Glutathione?

There has not been robust enough evidence to suggest that glutathione can treat, cure, or prevent any diseases at this time. Most health claims of glutathione are related to its theoretical benefits. Glutathione cannot be patented by drug companies, so there is limited funding for studies.

With that being said, Glutathione improves Nitric oxide production which allows for healthy blood vessels and blood flow. It improves the cellular wall integrity of red blood cells. It optimizes immune function and allows macrophages to function properly.

Glutathione can improve symptoms and viral load of HIV by reducing oxidative stress. It can reduce side effects and inflammatory consequences of diabetes.

It can reduce inflammatory damage done by auto-immune conditions.

Glutathione can improve cancer outcomes as glutathione can initiate apoptosis (programmed cell suicide) in cancer cells.

According to some men, it enhanced their erections (erectile dysfunction) due to its anti‑inflammatory and blood flow stimulating properties.

Since it helps detoxify the metabolites of alcohol, many people use Glutathione as a hangover remedy.

Most importantly, it has been shown to eliminate Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP), which have been implicated in causing Parkinson’s Disease. This may explain why Glutathione infusions improve Parkinson’s Disease symptoms.

What lowers my glutathione levels?

Many things can lower your glutathione levels. Anything that requires glutathione to be eliminated lowers its levels: Alcohol, Smoking, Tylenol, Pharmaceuticals, Pollutants, Heavy Metals (mercury), and Extreme Exercising.

Inflammatory medical conditions drastically lower glutathione levels as inflammation creates free radicals and oxidative stress. People with auto-immune conditions (Hashimoto, Crohn’s, Ulcerative Colitis, Lupus, etc) need high levels of glutathione to help with anti-inflammation.

What raises my glutathione levels?

There are multiple ways to raise glutathione levels. Most importantly, you should focus on eating an organic diet with lots of vegetables and healthy proteins. Obviously, you should avoid the things that lower glutathione levels that are mentioned above.

You can increase your glutathione levels by supplementing with N-Acetyl Cysteine, Glycine, Glutamic acid, Alpha Lipoic Acid, and Vitamin C.

One of the best ways to raise glutathione levels is to supplement glutathione. You can supplement glutathione by mouth or intravenous infusions.

How can exercise both lower and raise glutathione levels?

Exercise was mentioned in both raising and lowering glutathione. Being sedentary lowers glutathione levels. There seems to be a happy medium between not exercising at all and exercising to the extreme. Both lower glutathione levels for different reasons. Without exercise, your body doesn’t stimulate glutathione production. With too much exercise, your body runs out of glutathione.

Oral Glutathione (Supplements)

It is popular belief that oral glutathione is useless. While it is true that oral glutathione is destroyed by the gastrointestinal system, a recent study in 2013 proved that oral glutathione did raise red blood cell glutathione levels by 33%. Therefore, you can raise glutathione levels with supplements, but you should not expect to get the same results as you would from an infusion.

Intravenous Glutathione Infusion

The best way to improve glutathione levels is to receive an intravenous infusion which can be performed in the office in less than two hours. Unlike oral supplementation, intravenous glutathione immediately raises glutathione levels. The usual intravenous dose is around 2,000mg whereas the oral dose is 200mg (most of which is destroyed by the stomach). Needless to say, the intravenous infusion is at least 1,000 times more powerful.