https://www.listennotes.com/e/72878176e22d4a56a9bf4c7a45db3712
5 Aug 2025 · 47 min
Dave Asprey talks with Nayan, a pharmacist, about Aura Wellness's transdermal glutathione delivery. They compare methods: passive lipid routes versus a water-channel dextrin approach that claims better intracellular uptake and brain penetration than IV or oral forms.
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So, the transdermal delivery is— I mean, there's literally 2 ways to get into your system. One is passive diffusion. So, you make something in an oil-based systems, a liposome-based system, which is lipid-soluble and gets through into your skin, into the fatty tissues and all the cholesterols, everything under your skin. And, it goes passive diffusion. And, this is where 99.999% of all the medications are in the marketplace today. Of course—
So, there's mixed with fat droplets and then you smear it on, the fat soaks in like lotion.
Exactly. And then, of course, you can enhance the diffusion by putting a patch on there or CERN wrap the whole thing or whatever. So make it, make it more bioavailable or faster penetration. And then we discovered a new way of delivering this for the very first time, which is bypassing all the fat layer, putting into a water-based system using sugar technology that goes to the water channels of your skin, which is unheard of. And that has no barriers whatsoever and just goes straight through the channels into your body instantaneously. There's no passive diffusion. It's active transport of the products through the channels.
Well, it does take like 1 minute, right?
It takes about a minute, yes, to rub it in. And but it's the results are coming in within seconds. Right. So for example, if you have a sunburn and just spray it on even before you start rubbing it in, it starts— pain starts getting away immediately.
And you can imagine the difference if you get something that kind of soaks in over time with oil versus a sudden pulse of something, it's going to have different biological effects. And this is why the delivery system of a supplement can make all the difference. It is kind of like exercise, like did you do a sprint or a jog? You could use the same number of calories, but the effect on the body is very different. So I'm a fan of rapid raising of levels for most things. And, your favorite molecule is glutathione for this. So, why glutathione?
Well, you know why. Of course, you know why. You're the father of glutathione.
I've written a couple books about it, but I want you to tell me because you're a scientist, a pharmacist, and you have a different take on it. It's kind of similar, but let's get into the guts of glutathione.
So, my thing was when I first from a pharmacy school, I was in the top 2 pharmacy school in the country graduating from there. You think you're invincible. You know your shit and you know you're ready to conquer the world and the world tells you, "No, your place in this business is to, all you're going to do is manage people's medication problem. You're not going to solve any problems." And you go, "Wait a second. I'm here to manage people's problem for the rest of my life instead of solving problems?" They say, "Yep, that's what you're going to do. And if you even mention the word cure, you'll be out of business. We'll strip your license away. You cannot practice pharmacy anymore." And so, yeah, it was a humble beginning. It's a sad, sad story, but that's how we were being trained to deal with the problems. And all of a sudden, I come out, I said, okay, and I said, okay, I'll do some compounding. I'll do something weird within the same industry but a little bit different. So, I started doing compounding and compounding medications and I started attracting all kinds of clientele from all over the country who wanted to work with me. And, the one thing that told me was, guess what? "Nayan, do you have something for anti-aging?" Keep in mind, this was 27 years ago. "Do you have something for anti-aging?" I go, "What the hell is anti-aging?" At that time, right? Today, it's called longevity medicine and biohacking. There's all these different terms that we have, but at that time, it was called anti-aging. I go, "I don't know what to do with it." And so, somebody came to me, I said, "Hey, the best thing that you can do for anti-aging was either vitamin C or glutathione." And, I looked at the research, I said, "We don't produce vitamin C. So, it has to be glutathione." And, they asked me to work on liposome technology of glutathione back in 1999. And so, I said, "Okay, I'll make it." Did not work for all my patients quite effectively. It worked. I mean, it did work, but it's just not— I didn't get 100% results. And so, this is a good treatment but it's not effective enough for me. So, I started making the intravenous form of glutathione, IV forms of glutathione. I said, "If anything can solve this problem will be IV forms of glutathione." And then, I quickly— even that did not work. What I realized at that point is that getting something inside your body was only one piece of the puzzle. The second piece of the puzzle is how do I get inside your cells? Because getting inside your body is a physical barrier. So, your skin, your stomach, your anything that you can think about it is a physical barrier that you have to bypass that. Once you get the physical barrier, because that's what the people, oh, I have nanotechnology. I said, whoopie-doo. So, you got inside your body. Now what? How do you get inside your cell? That was the bigger problem that I wanted to solve that issue. And then, there was nothing in the marketplace at that time that can solve that issue. So again, there's my research and development of what can I do with the molecule glutathione.
So, what I think about is you can have glutathione, You get an IV and I've had lots of them and they help. It's going to help the liver mostly, but it's not going to get from the blood into the cells. And you can do oral forms of glutathione, like liposomal forms, and you might get some of it past the gut barrier, which is what liposomes are for. But again, how much of it actually goes into cells? Not that much, according to your research. And when you're using these water channels, you're raising levels inside the cells more than an IV. And just by spraying it on the skin, which is kind of a little bit less painful and expensive. What I, I want to understand is what is the difference in outcome for people when they get glutathione inside their cells versus floating around inside their blood?
So the thing is, to answer the question, I had to figure out where's the glutathione going in the first place? Because we knew glutathione, if it's endogenously produced glutathione, that means your body produces it internally. It can go everywhere. But, when you take exogenous glutathione, it stays inside your body and never crosses the blood-brain barrier. It never gets into your brains. So, if an endogenous production of glutathione can cross the blood-brain barrier, then my test would be, if I use my product, if it gets into your brain, my job is done. And so, of course, we work with a couple of neurosurgeons and they have— one guy's a technology that actually measures brain glutathione levels with the MR spectrometer. Oh, wow. No blood test. That's cool. Put your scanner on and I can tell you where the glutathione is in your brain. And so, he applied the glutathione and boom, he started seeing hotspots in the brain. He goes, "Holy shit. This is crazy." Now, I knew that something was happening. Now, of course, this requires further studies of does it going to help with any brain functions. In fact, I was talking to one of the main a brain expert, Dr. Palmer, this morning about Parkinson's. I said, "The disease is not the condition. What got you there is what my concern is." And so, by having glutathione on board, I wanted to see if I can stop the oxidative stress. And so, getting inside the body, measuring those levels in the brain, we knew this was happening. Now, the question that you asked is how does it correlate into outcomes, into results, and is it better than the IVs, better than liposome, better than anything else? So, let me just tell you, IVs, liposome, oil capsules, they all work. They will all raise your levels. If you're young, if you're like 30, 35, 40, up to, you're fine. You can raise your levels all day long, no questions asked. Once you get to over 40, your body's ability to take cysteine combined with the 2 enzymes and some 2 ATP molecules, your ability to increase glutathione levels starts diminishing starting at the age of 40. So, you need something to overcome that gap. So that your body can have enough glutathione levels. So, that's why we had to find a way to bypass all those barriers. Your skin is a physical barrier, your cell is a chemical barrier, bypass all those things, get into the system so your body can use it up. And, the outcomes are generally better for people that are not able to absorb glutathione at all. And, the results are literally less than 2 weeks.
And, you're saying that when you're looking directly at glutathione in the brain on an MRI, when you take the oral wellness stuff you made and you spray it on the skin, it enters through water channels, you see it in the brain, but you don't see the oral liposomes?
So, the thing is that the liposomes and the IVs, there's a bunch of studies done and what happens is there's a delayed reaction. And the reason it's a delayed reaction is because IVs, liposomes, capsules, all the products, the body it enters the body, but the body, what it does, it breaks it down either in the bladder, in the stomach, in the intestines, wherever. It breaks it down into the cysteine molecule. Cysteine gets reabsorbed. And, like in IVs, 90 minutes later, you see a spike of glutathione levels because the cysteine is getting used up in the mitochondria to produce your own glutathione. In terms of the liposome, it takes maybe anywhere from 2 to 6 hours to get into the bloodstream because cysteine is getting reabsorbed and using that to produce your own glutathione. That glutathione will cross the blood-brain barrier and improve those levels for you. Yes, there's a delayed reaction though.
Okay. And does the level go as high with liposomes versus oral?
I have not seen that data, but with the liposome, the half-life is a little bit better than the oral capsules. So, I would— it has to do with bioavailability of the cysteine that is bypassing the gut barrier. I believe so. That's a reason why we have a little bit more bioavailable with liposome than just taking oral capsules.
And if you want to get it in specific cells like on your face or around an injury or some area like that, you spray it on. And are you going to see more of your form of glutathione in that part of the body or does it just go in systemically?
So, yes, it depends, right? If you apply, let's say, to an area where it's highly inflamed area, there's a lot of oxidative stress in that area. So, your body gets used up the glutathione right away in that area. So, it will, it will help that area for sure, but all the excess will get all over the body.
And so, okay, got it.
Yeah. So for me, I, I wanna make sure that if there, if you apply the, on the injured site to sometimes apply a little bit more than what you need because it's gonna get used up at the site of application more.
And it, it's kind of cool that one little spray, I think it's what, 2 sprays equals an IV or more levels inside your cells. And I, I wanna save people money and time. I think that's, that's a big thing. It's a lot of money and a lot of time to drive to a doctor and get an IV. And this is functionally at least as good as far as I can tell.
Functionally for sure. And plus, Dave, you know, you have recommended so many great solutions for people and those are not cheap. I have, I have all your solutions that you recommend in my house and they're not cheap. I know they're not cheap. And so wherever we can save money, I, hey, I wanna save money for people.
If you're listening to this going, you know, biohacking is so expensive, The biggest, most impactful things like getting sun in the morning, learning how to sleep, black air, that stuff is free. And there's a bunch of low-cost stuff I talk about. And it's my job to talk about all of the stuff that works at different price points. But very few humans do all of that because you don't need to. You find the problem you have, you find the solution that matches, and I curate the good stuff. And so, um, this is the good stuff as far as I can tell. But let me ask you this. We didn't arrange ahead of time. Is there a discount code for listeners?
Yes, I, I believe it's the Dave 10 is, is what we give out to everybody. Okay, cool.
So there you go, guys. It, it's aurowellness.com and code, the code is Dave 10. And I don't actually even have that in my notes. Like, like this, this isn't about selling stuff. It's about educating people about delivery systems for glutathione and why you would care about glutathione. And one thing that I'm really curious about, as we know that it's an antioxidant and it works inside the cells, but there's evidence that it might rewire mitochondria or it might act as a signaling molecule. So what do we know now about glutathione that we didn't know before?
So what, what I'm finding out lately about glutathione is that yes, we are able to reduce oxidative stress down. And so the number one thing that we need to do, we need to realize that glutathione is not this magic cure that people thought that it was going to cure all problems. But what it does really, really good is that it takes away the number one problem that we have to deal with, which is oxidative stress. Once that is taken away from it, it allows the body to start working on healing the other parts of your body. So glutathione may not have a direct impact on every single organ and every single cell in your body, but it has a massive indirect effect because it's allowing the body to start working on rejuvenating and regenerating new cells for you by getting rid of the oxidative stress. Resistance is good, oxidative stress is not. So, I want you to feel about resistance and do whatever it takes, red light therapies, cold plungings, and all the therapies that you recommended. Those are all great things to do. Resistance is good for you, but oxidative stress is not. And so, my job is to get rid of oxidative stress, and by doing so, Keep in mind, mitochondrial number one problem is oxidative stress. That's why we have less and less mitochondria as we age because oxidative stress is killing those mitochondria. Once we get rid of the oxidative stress down, we should see an increase in the mitochondrial function and the number of mitochondria.
So, we're actually driving your body to make new mitochondria or mitogenesis, which is really important. It's kind of the holy grail for longevity. And I've used weird SARMs and pharmaceuticals banned by the International Olympic Committee because they work and there are ways to do it and fasting and certain kinds of exercise. But those are hard and increasing glutathione or pulsing it, if that can cause your body to say, all right, I have enough capacity to make more mitochondria, that's like a permanent upgrade. And I think that that drives longevity and resilience and mental power for sure. That's a big deal. So if it's such a big deal, why has Big Pharma mostly ignored glutathione?
Well, the thing is they did not ignore the glutathione. They were trying. They were trying for a long time. There's numerous pharmaceutical companies that I know of from here and Europe and everywhere else. They have applied to every agencies in the world to get glutathione product approved by the agencies like FDA. Europe has their own, EU has their own things, Japan has its own thing. And every single clinical trial for glutathione has not been impressive enough because as I said earlier, Getting inside your body was the easy part. Getting inside your cell was the most difficult part. As a peptide, tripeptide, you cannot get inside your cell. The body has to produce endogenously. So, with this technology that we have developed that gets inside your cells using a dextrin technology with the sugar molecules, it's changing the whole world. The downside is I can only work with small peptides like 3, 4, 5 amino acids to change your peptides. That's it.
Well, at least you're getting some good stuff in because I know the power of raising glutathione. My levels were very low when I had toxic mold. Anyone with chronic fatigue, long COVID, mold, mast cell activation, glutathione is a part of the fix. It just makes everything work better. And most of us still think, oh, it helps my liver. It stops Tylenol and alcohol from poisoning the liver. All that's true, but there's a whole body cellular thing, especially in the brain, that is at least as important. So I, I like that we're doing this. I've been using it for 20 years. But what happens when high performers stop using glutathione? If I've been using it, you know, several times a week or even daily for a month or two, and then I just go cold turkey off of it, is something bad going to happen?
No, it's not. And what you're experiencing is something that I did myself as well, because I've been using for, for so many years now. Then, I took a break. I took a— you know what? I went from twice a day application to just to do once a day application only. And then, I was at a conference lately and I say— the guy goes, "Oh, let me check all your metabolomics. I want to check your oxidative stress markers. I will check everything for you." And so, I said, "Okay, fine. Sell me a kit." So, he sold me a kit of it. I did my testing and I sent the results out. This is what happened. Honestly got through. This is exactly what happened. My glutathione levels were low. And he goes, "This test is garbage. This cannot be. My levels are not going to be low. I know for a fact." And he goes, "Please do not blame the Mass Spec. The machines only tell me what's inside the blood. So, what is that you're not doing?" So, what I found out was, here's the thing, my glutamine was getting absorbed, everything was getting utilized. So, I saw all my markers, my glutamate and my glycine, all those markers were up. That means my glutamine was getting into the cells, were getting used up. My oxidative stress markers were all-time low. My age markers were all-time low. That means I was really not stopped aging, but it was very, very slow pace of aging. So, everything was great except for my glutathione levels. And the guy said the same thing. I said, "Here's your answer. You know your product more than anybody else. Why can't you use it twice a day yourself instead of just using once a day because your levels are still low?" So, even though my levels were low to begin because I measured 24 hours later after my last application. So my levels of glutamine were low, but all my markers were in best condition. Okay.
It's kind of like ketones. When people first go on a keto diet, they're like, oh yeah, man, bro, I'm, I'm keto and my ketone levels are 4. I'm better than you cuz yours are only 3. And meanwhile, people who actually understand cyclical keto diets are like, yeah, my levels are 1, 1.5 because my body's using the ketones. It, it'd be kind of like diabetics bragging about their blood sugar levels. Like mine's higher than yours. If it's in your blood, it means you didn't use it. That's right. And that's not a good thing. And so it, it's one of those things you have to have those systems biology view and then you realize, okay, so it's going into the cells and then you've got the brain studies that back it up. And people don't stop making glutathione when they stop taking it. There isn't like a suppression from taking glutathione.
So this, this is a very common question I get asked from all kinds of doctors as well because they don't understand the negative feedback mechanism because we have been trained that anything that you do from exogenous sources that your body will start down to shut down his own production, which is true for all the endocrine system hormones, hormones, steroids, pathways, testosterone, estrogens, progesterones, all those things. Yes, it's true because there is a signal that coming from the pituitary telling your body to stop production because you have excess of it. When it comes to peptide production, protein production, there is no negative feedback, so to speak, because the building blocks are amino acids, energy, ATP, and NAD+. So, that engine, you can make glutathione, you can make GHK, you can make tissues, you can make muscles, you can make organ parts, you can make all kinds of things. If you have enough of the glutathione, then the body will use the same building blocks to make something else. And so, there's no negative feedback, so to speak, but what the thing is the body is using the energy and the building blocks to make other things. So, your glutathione levels are okay, but the rest of the body starts functioning better.
That makes so much sense. And I'm kind of wondering, are you willing to say that glutathione could change emotional resilience? I just wrote a big book on emotional resilience, you know, heavily meditated, and I feel like it does, but do you have evidence that it does?
So this is the question. As I said, I work with a bunch of neurosurgeons, I work with psychiatrists, and what we are noticing is that oxidative stress is absolutely a driving force on people's mental health. It is. And without that oxidative stress, People are able to think better. They're able to comprehend better. They're able to strategize their emotional responses to questions all the time. And so, yes, it's not an overnight process, but over a month or month and a half, when the oxidative stress level starts reducing in your brain— keep in mind, your brain is just 2% of your body weight, but yet it consumes 20% of all oxygen you breathe in. And if you breathe less oxygen, guess what? The brain gets the first dibs before the body gets it. So, brain has a high amount of oxidative stress regardless. And so, reducing oxidative stress down gives you a very good chance. So anyways, long story short, the doctors are now using it for multiple reasons to reduce oxidative stress down and giving them the chance to respond better to stressors that comes in their life instead of reverting back to medications like antidepressants, antipsychotics, and things like that. So, that is already working. We work with doctors all over the country for that.
Do you think we're going to have a time where we have a glutathione pump or something like you'd have an insulin pump or some kind of smart wearable that sprays Aura Wellness on your skin whenever you get too inflamed?
Oh, my God. You always ask me a question that just triggers my brain. I have no more hair left, Dave, to think about more than what I'm already thinking about. But, You know what? I want to be on the other side. I want to be on the other side where our need for glutathione is reduced so much that we don't need to be using it on a daily basis. If I can get to people to change their behavior to stop consuming so much glutathione, that means don't drink alcohol, stay away from pollutions and toxic chemicals as much as possible, drink coffees that is completely mold-free and metal-free and things like that, if that's a behavior you want, or do whatever it takes to you reduce the expenses of glutathione. Because if you didn't do that, the need reduces so much, so little that you, that you don't need to have a pump.
I always say that, that aging is death by a thousand cuts. There isn't a single cause of aging. There are 7 big pillars, but it's like, why does your car wear out? Well, it's more than one thing and that's normal. So take less cuts is a really good strategy. And then when you do take them, have something that helps your body to be resilient and heal them better. And glutathione is, it's at the core of biohacking. I've been taking has been since probably my third blog post was about glutathione because it, it's that fundamental. I knew it was fundamental though, 'cause I could feel glutathione. I would take it and like, ah, my brain works again. Why do some people feel glutathione right away and some people don't?
And it, this, again, this all depends on your, your needs. When people like today, we are finding out there's so many people have gene mutations where they cannot synthesize glutathione or the needs for glutathione is extremely, extremely high. Those are the people, they feel the effects right, right away. Keep in mind, majority of the people don't have this problem. The young people, they don't have this problem. So, they may not feel the effects right, right away, but over time, they do feel the same effect anyway. So now that we are finding out with all these gene mutations that the people that have those, I can pinpoint down, use a gluathione, and literally within 15 minutes, they're telling me, I said, "Oh, I'm buying this product. What the heck is this? My mind just opened up," or "I feel better. My pain went away," whatever. So, there are a few people that experience right away. The rest are still normal.
Is there a daily circadian curve for glutathione? The best time of the day to take it? When is it naturally high or low?
It's need-based. Our needs for glutathione are extremely high after we eat or after you take medications because we are consuming a lot of foreign objects that your liver has to detoxify them. And so, conjugation is one of the major pathways, major pathways that are activated by glutathione. So, for that purpose, we need a lot of glutathione. So, it's all need-based. If your oxidative stress is high during the morning, then you may need more glutathione in the morning. But usually, during the afternoon time, evening time, you need more glutathione as well. And so, there's no circadian rhythm, so to speak, Like, for example, if you drink alcohol in the morning, your needs of glutathione is very high in the morning.
If you work out and you take antioxidants like vitamin E, it reduces your body's ability to grow after the exercise. Does glutathione suppress muscle from exercising?
No, it does not. And this is a great question because that's what I thought. So first, that I don't want to suppress people's antioxidant benefits because exercise is a resistance type training, and I need those resistance increasing so that people can start building the muscle mass and all those things. But then, when I started working with a lot of professional athletes from NFL to NBA to MLB and even NHL, now ice hockey teams are customers of ours too. And, what I'm finding out that having glutathione on board, they're able to exercise even stronger, better, faster without getting the muscle pain or without getting a lot of lactic acid buildup. And so, granted I'm working with younger kids and they're under the age of 30, but they are able— they can feel the effect of better exercise tolerance when they have glutathione on board versus when they do not have that.
There's something else really important, and I've spoken with Nick Foles about this and privately with some MMA fighters. Any sport you're in, hockey players, if you're going to hit your head or have a likely chance of hitting your head, all the damage comes from reactive oxygen species right after you hit your head. So, I've gone through strategies to reduce ROS so that you don't get a brain injury even if you hit your head, or if you do get one, it's much smaller. Does glutathione belong in that stack? So, if your levels are high before you get hit in the head and you'll get less damage?
Oh, absolutely. That is 100%. So, as I said earlier, we do work with NFL neurosurgeons directly for TBIs post-recoveries, but we have worked with patients that are after concussion comes, it happens. Actually, I'm working with 2 NFL players right now that 14 years of concussions and now they're coming to us. So, it's kind of late in the game because now they're on the verge of getting Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, all kinds of diseases of the later stages. But the thing is if I can get them early and prevent that problem, oh, it'll be a game changer. So, that's what the study was done about the brain mapping studies.
So, if you imagine, Okay, you're a pro ball player, so you get an IV of glutathione before every game. That's a huge commitment of time and money and effort. Or you're in the locker room and you take, what, 4 or 5 sprays before you put on your uniform, you go out and you play, your levels are higher. If you do get hit in the head or you, you hit a soccer ball or take a knee or wherever, your odds of getting a brain injury go down.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Wow. Absolutely.
What should I stack when I'm using your glutathione? So I'm going to spray oral glutathione on my body, it's going to regulate or upregulate the amount glutathione inside my cells, should I be taking other antioxidants, other peptides? Like, what goes with it?
So, my number one drug of choice with glutathione is something like vitamin C, vitamin E, CoQ10. And the reason is because all the glutathione, if the oxidative stress is high, the glutathione is going to become into the redox, which is oxidized glutathione, which is GSSG molecule, which is glutathione disulfide. And that glutathione molecule is stable but it's oxidized. And to revert back to glutathione, either the body has to produce enzymes like glutathione peroxidase enzymes or you can— the cheapest way to do it is you take some vitamin C or vitamin E or CoQ10 and it will revive it back to normal. And so, for me is I want to have reduced level of glutathione in my body all the time. So, having something like this type of products along with the glutathione, will ensure that I have the highest amount of reduced glutathione inside my body.
I have a suggestion for people. I've been very open about using pharmaceutical nicotine as a performance enhancer for cognitively and physically for more than a decade. And you see a lot of people talking about like, finally, we're all catching up to this. After I interviewed a professor from Vanderbilt University who's, he said, Pharmaceutical nicotine, not smoking, can reverse or prevent early onset Alzheimer's disease. And since 1986, there's been a bunch of papers. And again, don't smoke, don't vape, don't chew. This is about using either a spray or gum or a patch, um, or lozenge, and at low doses. But even then, it mildly increases reactive oxygen species in your neurons, which isn't necessarily a bad thing because that can be a hormetic signal But if you're using it every day the way I do, having a little bit of extra glutathione in your body, especially in your liver, is a really good idea as well as in your brain. So I think nicotine and glutathione pair really nicely. And so I'm willing to spray some glutathione on every day or two. It's pretty easy to do.
So that I have heard of before. I have not tried it myself personally. I know I've seen you spray the, I think the gum or the whatever you take every time on the nicotine. I've seen you do it. Plenty of times and I always question myself. And if you think about it, nicotine was used to prevent long COVID. It was used for, yeah, for all other, during the COVID time, this was a big deal. We were, we were using at the pharmacy all the time.
Nicotine, it has benefits and smoking is not good for you. And most people just hear nicotine and then they hear smoking and they're just not the same. So I've been using a very small dose of it. Every one of my books after I think after the Bulletproof Diet was always caffeine and a low dose of nicotine because it's such a powerful nootropic. And if I'm using any kind of cognitive enhancer and I use them all, then I would want extra glutathione buffering inside my brain and inside the rest of my cells because I'm increasing my metabolic activity, especially my neurons, because I'm jacking up my brain, which means more mitochondrial demand, which means more oxidative byproducts. Which means my glutathione demands are going to be higher than the average human being because I'm getting more done. So that means I want to put glutathione into my system regularly because I'm planning to live a very long time. It's like if you're going to drive a car really fast, you need to have better lubricant, you need to have better fuel, better tires. So if you're a biohacker, I think there's a case that says anything that speeds up your nervous system should be paired with glutathione because it's going to protect your nervous system from the downside of basically having exhaust coming out of your cells. Am I onto something in that way of thinking?
You are 110% correct. By the way, I have seen your nutritional cupboard with a couple hundred supplements in there, which is amazing, all arranged by alphabetical order. I was shocked when I saw that for the first time. But anyways, what you just said right now is absolutely instrumental because Everything that we know about glutathione, it's only stopping the oxidative stress down, but your body is rejuvenating, regenerating new cells until the day you die. I don't care if you're 150 years old, the body is trying to repair every single thing. We have to be getting out of the way to do so. So, you can do all the stimulants and every single thing, but they will all work as long as you can reduce oxidative stress down to zero. I want to make sure that people understand their parts. The glutathione becomes a primary stack. For everything else you do.
And it doesn't suppress the exercise benefits the way most other antioxidants would. So, there are just lots of benefits to doing this as a longevity agent. And what I want to know, are there changes in gene expression from increasing glutathione levels?
So, that part I have not studied yet. We are working with a couple of gene testing companies right now and we are been recommending some after the gene— after we see, after we diagnose with the gene SNPs. We are recommending this product to prevention from expressing the genes yet. But again, this is too premature. It's only been a couple of years. So, it's hard to say right now if it's working or not working. And again, I do not know what triggers gene expression above and beyond. So, time will tell if this is going to work for us or not.
I think we'll find some more evidence over time for that. Do you know about glutathione and sirtuins? Sirtuins are famous because of the NAD research with Dr. David Sinclair. What's the interplay with glutathione?
So, glutathione is ATP and an energy-sparing molecule. I take glutathione every day. So, I've been taking it for now 5 or 6 years or 7 years. I can't remember how long I've been taking that for. I have measured my nitric oxide levels. They're always high. I have measured my energy levels. It's always high. I measure my NAD levels and they're higher. Now, keep in mind, I don't have a baseline before I started taking glutathione. That's the only part I do not have an answer for that yet. But they all tell me for my age, my energy levels are higher. So, it is definitely an energy-sparing molecule. Now, keep in mind, your needs could be— energy could be very high and having any type supplementations like NMN or NR or one of those supplements is absolutely a must. For you guys. But by taking glutathione, it's not reducing those, those levels. In fact, it's sparing some of those molecules for you.
Okay. That's really important to understand. So if you're on this, let's live to at least 180 and have a good time along the way and be happy path along with me, then you want to say sirtuins are important because they help you live longer and they work when you have low stress inside your cells, low low ROS, basically. And if you raise the amount of free radicals in your body, whether it's excessive exercise, stress, toxins, whatever, it's going to inhibit sirtuin from doing its job for longevity. So if you have lots of glutathione inside the cells, then you have low oxidative stress, and therefore sirtuin can do its longevity job. And that's a really big deal. And my research shows that that in fact you've said something similar to it, that the pool of NAD that's available gets preserved when there's extra glutathione in the cells. So you don't burn through the NAD you have, which means taking glutathione increases available NAD inside the body, which increases your mitochondria's ability to do things that give you energy and keep you young. And there's a follow-on effect on SIRT1. Do you know about that one?
No, I don't.
So SIRT1 is one of the sirtuins. And when you increase that as part of your longevity practice, it induces glutamyl cysteine synthetase, which is an enzyme that causes your cells to make more glutathione themselves.
Yeah. Enzymes.
And then it turns on NRF2, which is another longevity pathway, which turns up your endogenous antioxidant defense, including glutathione. So it's cool. You take glutathione. It preserves NAD, it helps sirtuin do its job, and then sirtuin helps glutathione do its job, right? That's cool.
That is amazing. I knew about NRF2. I did not understand about the, uh, GCS, which is the enzymes that are, uh, necessary to produce glutathione.
Well, if you're inflamed, none of it works. So like glutathione stops the inflammation, which allows things like extra NAD to do its job. So glutathione's very foundational. For longevity, it's probably as important as things like vitamin D and Minerals 101, where like, look, if you don't have enough zinc in your body, you're probably screwed. And it doesn't matter if you're taking a bunch of expensive stuff. If you don't have foundational things, glutathione is very, very low down. Have we found it in bacteria and things like that?
Not that I know of.
So it's more of a human mammal kind of a compound, right?
It's more like a mammal. Yes. I mean, animals have it too. Smoke a mammal thing. I want to raise one more thing for everybody. I just want people to understand that part. As much glutathione is important for us, make sure the dose matters because you cannot— even if you have all the money in the world, more is not better. And so, having that homeostasis around how much glutathione your body needs is very important because the more you take, the more process, the more the body has to process to get rid of it. It. And so having the right amount is very critical.
Can you overdose on glutathione?
Well, yes and no. If you take any of the forms like IVs or oral forms or liposome forms, you cannot overdose on glutathione. The topical versions that we have, you absolutely can because—
okay, so the Aura Wellness stuff is so strong even though it's a spray that you could overdo it. What would happen if I like took a bath in— oh my God, be very expensive to do that. But what would happen?
First of all, you will not take a bath in there. Yeah.
Do you have to go to the bank a lot of times to do that?
Well, not just that is even a whole bottle of it, it would be super toxic for you.
How toxic?
Well, the thing is what's going to happen is it's going to try and release every single thing from your body. It's a massive conjugator. And so, it's going to try and detox you so fast that immunological response is so fast, that you're going to have Herxheimer reactions. You have massive headaches, extreme fatigue. You have diarrhea, stomach cramps, rashes all over the body because what the body is doing is the body is going from oxidative stress state to reductive stress state and your body just all the differences goes down.
Oh, so it's almost as bad as kale in that environment. Sorry guys, I had to say it. Okay. So, how many sprays is the max of Aura Wellness that I could do? I don't want to go down that Herxheimer path.
So, I have used personally up to 16 sprays at a time, but I do it very— I know when to use that much amount because I'm usually traveling a lot. If I'm in a hotel which is moldy, I get screwed. But typically between 12 to 16 or 18 sprays is about the max that I have used. And you'll know the first reaction is rashes. If that happens to you, just come back, guys. Don't have to go anything further than that.
Okay. And like you're saying, this is more powerful than an intravenous treatment and getting into cells. So, you get a bottle. How many sprays are in a bottle?
The 240 sprays in a bottle, it's a month's supply, 4 sprays twice a day. It should last them a 1-month supply. Slow and steady wins the race. It's a marathon. It's not a race. It's not a sprint. So, just go even keel. The body is working at a particular pace for the rest of your life. You don't have to sprint to it.
Dan, is there anything about glutathione that we haven't talked about on the show? I, I want listeners to be like, oh, here's, does this, does that, does that. So what did we not get into? It, it's a potent longevity performance enhancement resilience molecule. What else does it do?
So one of the trials that we did, and this was, I had no idea where this was gonna come out, articles would come out. I was just doing a trial for absorption, making sure that it was getting inside your cells or not. And the researcher at the University in California, what they did was, you know what, I'm going to draw the blood for these people and I'm going to infect this blood with some Mycobacterium infection like tuberculosis, avium. There's no cure for any of these diseases and see what happens. What the heck, right? And so, they did that. And to their amazement, the people that had glutathione in the blood, the placebo group and the active group, The active group people, what they saw was an immediate increase of all the cytokines, all the immunological markers, the interleukin-2, the interleukin-12, interferon gamma, TNF alpha. These are all the cytokines that are known to go up because the body is signaling threat. And so, glutathione is an— I know it's an antioxidant, I know it's a conjugator, but this thing proves it's a master immunological responses as kicking in. So, it is absolutely an immune booster product that we didn't even think about that one. And, within 1 hour, they saw reduction of the microbiome load in the test tube. It was mind-blowing for the researchers. And, they said, "It's not antibacterial, it's not antiviral, it's not antifungal, it's not none of those things." But, what it's doing is it's allowing the body to attack this problem and it can do so if the stress is low.
And when you say stress, this is cellular reactive oxygen stress, not I have high cortisol cuz I'm thinking about a final exam or something.
Yeah. Yeah. It's not that, it's not the cortisol stress, it's the, it's the RROS stress. Okay. Thank you.
So the, it's, it's just a fascinating molecule. Been on glutathione in one form or another on and off for the past 25 years. And this is a, a substantial breakthrough. It seems like every 5 to 7 years We figure out like another major step, almost like we do in tech, like, okay, and Moore's Law and all that kind of stuff. It just keeps getting better. And supplements, it takes a longer period of time, but all of a sudden now we can shift from IV to a topical spray and get higher levels inside the cells with a lot less money and a lot less pain and just inconvenience, which is one of the reasons I want to talk to you. It's a better delivery system, but you also know a lot about about the nuances of using it, like how much is too much and all that. So, this has been incredibly educational and informative for me. And thanks for being such a deep nerd on targeted delivery systems and on glutathione because it's an unusual set of knowledge.
Oh, thank you for that. But, it's not just the glutathione, it's a tripeptide. Imagine—
Tell me more.
Imagine a peptide that I can— because right now, all peptides are what? Bioregulators.
Yes.
What if?
I wrote about bioregulators in Superhuman, but not everybody read it. So, what's a bioregulator?
Bioregulator is basically a signaling molecule that signals your body to actually help get a positive response to what you're looking for. And so, peptides are messengers that tells your body to respond with little or no side effects. And so, to me, they're amazing molecules. The question is, our body produces those peptides internally, endogenously. What if, imagine just what if, if we can enhance those peptides back into a system. I can deal with the 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 amino acid chain peptides. I cannot work with like a GLP-1 or BPCs and all those big large molecule peptides. I cannot work with those yet, but the small ones I can get into your system endogenously into your cells. And get the response not just for one time, for long periods of time. And so, that's my next wave of future that I'm looking at personally myself because I need to make sure that my brain keeps on active enough to keep on looking for new ways to enhance body above and beyond 180. I think we can comprehend it today that 120 is inevitable. I think we can reach 120 easily.
We've already done 120. That's boring.
So, 180 is something that people are striving for today. But, the way we're going to move forward beyond 150, 180, or 200 is that we are able to make sure the body is able to regenerate, rejuvenate, and stay as is for long, long periods of time. And so, glutathione is great, but there has to be more than that. It's just one molecule. So anyways, my work is going to be with peptides next. And I have one more coming out pretty soon.
I want to be first on the list to try them when they come out, especially if you can do some bioregulators. Those are really potent. And even GHK is a big deal. So, um, keep hooking me up. All right.
I will for sure.
All right, guys, if you want to try this, it's, it's very noticeable compared to any other form of glutathione that I've, I've experienced. So it's R-O-A-U-R-O wellness.com. And we said code Dave, Dave 10, code Dave 10 will save you some money on it. And it's, it works and we know why it works. We know how it works. We know what it does. And if you're spending a bunch of money on longevity, things like resveratrol and NAD+, awesome. Glutathione will make them work better. So you should do it for that reason and a whole bunch of others.
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