Upgrade Spotlight: Redefining Wellness with Topical Glutathione with Nayan Patel , PharmD

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Today's episode is an Upgrade Spotlight edition where I introduce you to a researcher or a founder who's making something new and interesting that's moving the world of biohacking forward. One of the most relevant things you can check when you're trying to figure out if something is real or whether it's something that some marketing huckster put together is you talk to the people behind it and, and find out the why behind what they do. And then you ask them the how about what they do. Today we're going to talk about glutathione, which is something like, Dave, you introduced this to the world of biohacking, like in your first five blog posts. Like, this is nothing new. And just by full kind of confession there, the first liposomal glutathione formula ever was called redisorb, invented by my doctor at the time named Tim Guilford, many years ago in Palo Alto. So I've been involved with glutathione since it was ever liposomalized. And when I first heard about what we're going to talk about today, I just said, nothing new here. Yet another marketing thing. But our guest, Nayan Patel, said, no, Dave, I'm not messing around. There is something here. And so I gave it a second look and said, okay, this is neat. So I'm going to give you guys a masterclass here with Nian about what is glutathione? Why does it matter? Or read any of my books. I think it's in most of them. But getting, knowing you need something and getting it into the body is different. Like if you needed heroin but you swallowed condoms full of heroin, it doesn't get into the body even though it's in the body, if you know what I'm saying. So our job is to figure out not just what do you need in you, but how do you get it in you so you can use it. And I think we have a new innovation here. Nayan, welcome to the show.

Well, glad to be here today. I'm glad that we have something new to talk about today about glutathione, even though it's been out for what, 120 plus years now.

I don't think you could get a glutathione supplement back in 1910, could you?

No, but we knew about that product at that time. But we could not figure out how to get into the body.

Ah, that's true. We knew there was some kind of sulfur based antioxidant that was important, right?

That's right.

Okay, so just give us the overview. Why do we need glutathione in our bodies?

Okay, well, it's like preaching to the choir. Your audience already knows glutathione what it is.

Some do, but give the 30 seconds because there's someone listening to the show. It's like gluta. What is? Whatever.

That's right.

What is it?

I mean, every cell, every human cell, every single living organism cell has glutathione produced in the powerhouse. The mitochondria is basically the master detoxifier, master antioxidant. It's the life support, is what's necessary. And glutathione is there to support that. So it's. The most abundant molecule in your human body is glutathione. So if that's not convincing enough for people to understand what this is, I think we should tell them to read the book the Glutathione Revolution or something to get them a queen about glutathione, because it's going to change how people are going to view it in the future.

It is. And what I describe glutathione as is the primary detoxing molecule in the human body. And you have a lot in your brain, a lot in your liver. When you drink alcohol, when you run out of glutathione to detox it, you get liver damage. When you take too much Tylenol, you get liver damage. And when you have a lot of environmental pollution or mold, your glutathione levels drop and inflammation goes up and your cells make glutathione inside themselves and your liver manufactures extra. So this is one of those things that's a measure of how good do your detox pathways work, how well do your cells work at handling oxidative stress. In other words, if you're resilient, you make glutathione. If you're not resilient, better. So that's why glutathione matters. Okay, so why would we not just take it orally? Just give me a pill of glutathione. Why doesn't that work?

So most of the pills of glutathione, they do actually produce, they will improve glutathione levels, but it's different than what you think it is. When you take a pill, you assume that your body is going to absorb part of it and the rest is going to get destroyed. But that is not true. Glutathione being a peptide, the body will destroy 100% of the Glutathione, but it will reabsorb the amino acids and make glutathione out of it. And so there's a delay, there's a lag on when the glutathione actually level is actually rising in your blood. And it's anywhere from three days minimum to up to seven days and go up to three weeks, four weeks, depending on how good the glutathione product is made in the laboratory. And so that is the fundamental difference between taking oral forms of glutathione versus there's IV forms right now that has been out there for 20 plus years. And the molecule is big enough that it doesn't actually get absorbed at all. And I don't know if you know this, Dave, but, you know, even the intravenous form of glutathione only stays in the plasma, never enters the red blood cells. So when people do the IV forms of glutathione, within the first 14 to 15 minutes, the plasma gets filtered by your kidneys, and all the glutathions end up in the kidneys and. And nothing in the bloodstream anymore. And so there has been the quest for all these years, how can we improve glutathione levels to a point on demand? Like you said, when you drink alcohol, you don't want to wait for three days to detoxify your liver. You want to detoxify now, today, because I just drank some alcohol today. And so having that extra support when you need it is so important. And I understand liposomes form is probably the best that was out there for until now. And it's good because it at least give you a chance to improve the glutathione levels relatively faster compared to three to four weeks. It takes you about a week or less times to improve the glutathione levels. But now we have a whole different way of delivering that part now, and that's what we have, and that's called.

Glutaryl G L U T A R Y L and you sent me some. And I know for drugs transdermal, getting drugs or nutrients through the skin is sometimes way more effective even than injecting them, which is maybe why you should think twice before you spread endocrine disruptors or toxic sunscreen on your skin, because it does absorb, like an iv, depending on what's in the cream. So, okay, I've tried glutathione lotion before, and I smelled like I mated with a rotten egg. It wasn't particularly good. So what's different about gluterol versus the. The sulfur forms of tropical glutathione?

Yeah, absolutely. So, so what we did was we discovered this, this way to stabilize glutathione back in 2008, 2009. It's been about 14, 15 years we've been working on this thing. And what we've. What we first did was, you know, the sulfur order. Our goal was to minimize the sulfur order. And we were able to do that a little bit, but not to the point where it's completely gone. It's still there. But in the process, what we did was we reduced the particle size so small that it was actually getting to the skin and bypassing all the layers of his skin and getting into the bloodstream pretty fast. And so the gluteril we have right now, we have four patents already approved on the compositions, the delivery of the molecule to the skin. And now we are able to take this molecule, glutathione. It's a tripeptide. We would like to call it a protein, but it's a tripeptide. But having a peptide molecule go through your skin is kind of impossible to do that. So all the other lotions and potions that are there with the glutathione cannot enter through your skin. But with this technology, we are able to bypass all the layers of your skin and, and actually enters the red blood cells. And you can literally measure within 15 minutes in your red blood cells levels of glutathione, not just the plasma.

It's red blood cells inside the cells. So this goes back to the analogy of trying to smuggle drugs inside a latex barrier. Well, it can't get in. So the holy grail of even intravenous glutathione, which I've done at least 100 plus times. If you fly somewhere, you're just feeling wrecked, you've been exposed to mold, you're hungover, you do intravenous glutathione, and the lights come back on, especially when I had chronic fatigue and things like that. So even then, it's floating around in your bloodstream, and some of it may absorb into the cells, but because you modified the molecular size, you take this little bottle of glutathione, or gluterol, which is not just glutathione, and I spray it on my abdomen or something, and then it does smell a little bit like sulfur, but you can feel it on the skin, and five minutes later, it's completely gone. Is the odor actually gone, or did I Just get used to it. I truly don't know the answer.

So you're absolutely right. Right. So initially you smell the odor, but you keep in mind the vasal nerves that we have, they get attenuated, right? So after a few days of using it, Dave, I'm sure you don't smell it anymore because your body gets attenuated to the smell. So you feel like the smell is gone. The smell is still there. If it's somebody new, they will tell it, oh, what are you spraying on your body, Dave? It's just smell so awful.

Right, but here's my question. If I spray it on my stomach and I wait a half hour, is the smell entirely gone for other people or do I just think it's gone? I don't smell like a, like a, you know, sulfur, Alex.

It actually, when you apply on your body, you rub it in and it literally. The smell and everything is gone within 30 seconds to 2 minutes maximum. Everything is inside your body. It's that fast.

Okay, that, that makes me feel better about it. There's been a few times I'm like, I've kind of got a date tonight. I wonder if I should use glutathione. And you're telling me that if I use Gl it's going to be all right. Because one of the worst things you could do is like drink liposomal glutathione before you kiss someone. It's like kissing a fart. It's terrible. You don't want to do that because it's a very strong sulfur taste and none of them taste good. I've worked on it for years. So this avoids all those problems. And the levels inside blood cells go up more than from an iv?

Yes. And that's something that we just finished a clinical trial right now it's, it's out for publication. So people are going to get very early on, by the end of summer, everybody should be able to pick up a, pick up this article and literally prove it to yourself that within minutes of applications of glutathione, this way you'll be able to improve the red blood cells levels of glutathione, which has never been done before.

For that is so cool. And if you're listening to this going, wait, you mean this raises blood cell levels more than an IV? Where do I get it? It's ro wellness a u r o wellness dot com. Use code DAVE10 and they'll give you 10% off the, the whole point of, of these upgrade spotlights. This is just cool. If You're a biohacker. You've probably spent a couple hundred bucks on an IV for glutathione. And there may still be reasons to do that. But if you wanted to raise your levels more than taking pills of glutathione and more than the stuff you spray under your tongue, this is the way to go. So this is a tiny little bottle. It's not very, it doesn't need very much cause it absorbs so quickly. And I take it with me when I travel. So I use it before I get on an airplane, when I get off the airplane, before I drink a six pack of beer. Oh wait, I don't actually do that. I haven't done that in like half. I used it before and after if I did, but I don't actually do that. But if you drink, certainly you should do this. And the fact that it's quick, it's easy, and it works better than what's existing. This is that smarter, not harder idea. That's my last book. This isn't in the book because I didn't really go down that kind of detoxing. But this is just cool stuff. How did you discover it?

Oh boy. This was back in my pharmacy days. I was working a lab actually. We were making the liposomal form of glutathione and vitamin C back in, in the late 90s. But when I did the blood test, I could not get the levels fast enough risen. And as a pharmacist, as a clinician, I was more looking for outcomes based model. And I was not getting the outcomes I was looking for because the literature support says one thing about glutathione. When you do that with the liposomes, it doesn't happen to me fast enough. So even though it was good, great product at that time, it was, was not good enough for me personally. So I started doing research on alternate form of delivering glutathione. And I stumbled upon in 2008 this novel approach of using dextrin rings, oligosaccharide rings to entrap this glutathione molecule. When I did that part, there was nothing in the literature that supports the proper use of this molecule. And so I had to do all my trials from the get go. So it took me about 12 and a half years to do all my trials to figure out what to do. So that's what it was something that it was necessity. But at the same time I want to make sure that I give something good to everybody. And so it took me 12 years wrote the book first and then launched that company afterwards.

It's really funny how sometimes it seems like something just appeared, but it's the result of a decade's worth of work I've had a few other inventors on, talking about postbiotics and things that you can now get that noticeably change mitochondrial function. One of the things that I'm really interested in is reducing cytokine storms. And a lot of people have heard of those because of the last three years of government interference with our lives. That was well packaged as something else. And I think we all know what I'm talking about there, that that created cytokine storms. A cytokine storm is inflammatory signaling molecules that come from missing mitochondrial and immune cells that are pumping these out in response to some sort of perceived threats, whether it's, it's real or imagined. In other words, emotional pain can cause cytokines to go up or real invaders like an infection. So I've had a problem with cytokine storms my whole life because I had toxic mold in my basement growing up. And that's why I had toxic mold induced brain damage, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, like all kinds of stuff. So I've been working on my cytokine levels for 25 years with great results, which is why I know about glutathione as well. So you've done a little bit of work on cytokine storms from any source, even a cold or something. What effect does gluterol, your form of glutathione, what effect does that have on cytokine storms?

Immediate resolution. And when I say immediate resolution, we are talking about less than a couple of days, which is, think about it, you are in the hospital for two weeks, three weeks sometimes. But cytokine storm is multifactorial, right? You just mentioned a few of them, which we all know about mold and infections. But there's another thing called autoimmune conditions and some of them is drug induced. And I'm a pharmacist, I understand what drug induced autoimmune conditions are at this point because we are in for another pandemic in the next three to five years from now, which is self inflicted from the pharmaceutical companies in pushing all these medications to us, all this are causing inflammation in your body. And early on, when we first saw the gluterial or the glutathione improved the levels. What we noticed this was again accidents, right? Everything happens as an accident. What we noticed was the symptoms of cytokine storms were going down pretty Fast. And so one of the researchers at the university, I'm also part of the university at Western University School of Medicine and the researchers over there started talking to me as I said, hey, we have this molecule that's been amazing results. I'm talking about pre pandemic, right? And so we have done this work pre pandemic on various types of illnesses and acute infections that rises up so high that people are not able to breathe properly. And we were able to bring the levels down within hours and within a couple of days they are completely back to normal. So we've done this work and in fact our first article just got published on helping as an alternative therapy to reduce cytokine storm down because of all these acute infections.

Can we go into specific cytokines? Not everyone knows what they are, but IL6 is the primary bad guy when you're getting a cytokine storm. Can you just give me the two sentence version of IL6 and what you do for that and which other ones you drop?

So what we did see was we were not measuring all the cytokines in the study, we just measured a few of them. But what we did measure was the immune markers. So we were measuring the IL12s, the TNF alphas and the interferon gammas. That's the one we were measuring. And what we saw is single dose application. One time of applying four sprays of gluteril, which is about 100 milligrams, we had significantly increased all the immune markers. And when they were increased to a point, that probably triggered the response of reducing the cytokine storm. So I'm not sure if it was related to the cytokine storm itself directly or was it an indirect method. Again, there's a lot more work needs to be done. I'm just at the tip of this iceberg at this point, trying to figure out what else needs to be learned at this point.

The study that hasn't been published yet that I happen to see says that there's a proposed and guys, proposed means we're not certain, but we think it's how it works. In other words, the old scientific method where this makes a lot of sense. Here's the reason we think it's true, but we might be wrong. The more modern scientific method is you just accuse others of misinformation who don't like your hypothesis, even if there's no evidence for your hypothesis. So this is like old science, the kind that actually works, not new science, the kind that's funded by Pfizer. And this new kind of science we're going to ignore. But in the hypothesis that I like and seems to make sense is the people who are working on the paper believe that raising levels of glutathione inside the cells with gluterol is restoring adaptive immunologic response without suppressing the immune system. What this means, if you go to the hospital and you have a big infection or something, they're going to give you cortisol or even worse, prednisone. In fact, I wish they would just give you cortisol. It's much better for you than prednisone. But anyway, they're going to give you a aggressive immunosuppressive steroid and that can save your life. It's very helpful when you're really sick. The problem is it suppresses this. What this new study is showing is about using the nanotech version of gluterol, the stuff you can put on your skin that absorbs what it's doing is it's getting into the cells so that the body starts responding with its immune system without turning it off the way prednisone would. So wow, wouldn't that be neat if you went into the doctor instead of giving you something that makes you fat and emotional, which is what the corticosteroids do and instead they said I don't spray this kind of sulfur smelling stuff somewhere on your body and rub it in and you'll probably get the same results. If you don't this, then we'll give you the cortisol. So that's cool. Where do I rub it on my body, by the way?

It doesn't really matter. I like it non hairy area because it's a little sticky so the hair gets stuck to your body. So just very uncomfortable faces anywhere.

What I learned from using transdermal testosterone cream, which by the way, if you guys are using testosterone, which you probably should be if you're over 40.

The.

Creams and to a certain extent gels, they work well, but they're relatively risky if you have younger kids in the house because it could get on them and it doesn't take very much. So back when I had the cream, I was taught number one, best spot is scrotum, number two, best spot is armpit. But they always pick the hairiest spots. So you kind of have to trim a little bit if you're going to be doing that. And you're saying for, and those are large molecules though you're saying for gluterol, it just doesn't matter. Like your abdomen or like your forearm, it's just going to go in.

It doesn't matter. Because the whole. By the way, this is the first technology in the world that delivers through your skin. There's no other medication in the world that uses this technology to deliver any molecule through your skin at this point?

Well, there's lots of transdermal big pharma applications, including electrically driven ones, but no one uses your nanotechnology. You're saying just like the Dexter thing.

Yes, that's the first technology, and that's also through the skin. And so the skin is all lipids and very little channels for the water. This thing bypasses the lipids and uses the water channels to deliver medications.

Oh, that's neat.

So it's like a whole different way. So it doesn't matter the thickness, the thin, how thick, how thick. If it's your palms, it doesn't really matter. It can go through any part of your skin.

Okay, can we run some danger coffee through your technology? So I could just rub coffee on my skin and have it enter my red blood cells? Because I really want that.

Well, we should try that part. Absolutely should try that part.

I'm thinking there's all kinds of cool stuff you could do with this. I mean, I want to microdose espresso. I mean, why not? Espresso is awesome. Okay. And so for listeners, what we have here is a new innovation in the world that. That instead of using a needle to get into your blood, uses a channel that no other compound has used so far to get in. So there's not by absorbing into the fat in your skin, it's absorbing around the fat in your skin to get it in. And because it does it that way, it also gets into your cells better than the IV would. And. Well, okay, I. It's. I don't know what else to say about it other than this is neat and it's cool, and I am absolutely using this for my glutathione. And by the way, I'm also going to take oral liposomal glutathione on occasion because I build it into my supplement pack and I don't have to spray it on myself. This is in my travel bag. It's always there. And I use it if I don't feel perfect, and I use it when I get on the airplane. And then I blame the guy sitting next to me if anyone smells sulfur.

That's okay, right? At least you'll be healthy and you'll be alive.

It goes away quickly. There you go. I'm not sure what else to ask you. Anything else we need to know? I went through all the studies, I, I tried it and I'm really impressed with this.

I think that the next wave is. Until now, we never had a way to improve the glutathione level so fast. Unless they see it the first time, they're not going to believe it. I have so many patients, I have ladies. One of the ladies that just applied it about a month ago and she has not slept for a decade after just two applications, morning and evening. That night she slept for 10 hours. She couldn't believe it. She could not believe it. She posted one on Instagram and all of a sudden I had literally had over a thousand people call me that day in one day.

Wow.

It was just amazing. That's because of oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is affecting people in so many different ways. And to reduce it down to bare minimum or to modulate that with mole glutathione, it's the holy grail for us.

Okay, I have one more question for you from the Upgrade Collective, my mentorship group. If you're listening, go to our upgrade collective.com join my mentorship group, hang out with me on these things and ask intelligent questions like Manda here did. She's asking, should gluterol be recycled or not recycled? Should it be cycled on and off? Because I've heard and there might be some evidence that if you take a lot of glutathione consistently, it would suppress your own production.

It will suppress your own production no matter what you use, unfortunately. But keep in mind, gluterinal or glutathione is not a hormone if it's suppressed, producing 1 peptides, your body has to produce thousands of different peptides every single day. So if you give the relief of producing one peptide, the body will use the same energy, same resources to produce anything else. But the question that she's asking is if you take too much, will you become in a reductive state? Right, because then you instead of being oxidative state, you become reductive state. And that's also not good. The good thing about glutathione is it's self regulating. So the advantage that we have with glutathione is that the glutathione can stay as a GSH molecule or stay as a GSSG molecule, which is an oxidized form of glutathione, and they both stay in equilibrium. Unfortunately, either one of them, the half life in the body is not too Long four to six hours. So regardless of what's going to happen is if you get too much of it within six hours, you'll be depleted anyways. So chance of you being in a reductive state is going to be very short amount of time. But the question is right. And because of that question, either the same exact question 15 years ago I had to figure out what dose can I give every single day without raising the level super physiologic ranges. And that's where the dosage came up. The gluteural is my flagship product that I have, delivers about 100 milligrams of glutathione which is probably more powerful than even 2 grams of IV dose. And then we have a plus. The plus was of course all my NFL athletes, my, my advanced biohackers, they want utmost support of the glutathione. So we delivered the plus because of them. A lot of my Olympic athletes are on that programs as well. And so that is going a little bit above the super physiologic dosages. And so that is good to start off with it. But that maintenance is always going to be in the gluteal because that's the dose is enough for your body to maintain, maintain every single day. So short answer, I'm sorry, short answer.

Four sprays twice a day is not going to overdo it?

No.

And I have, I believe when I was really working on just why am I feeling like crap all the time? I was doing very high dose vitamin C for longer periods of time and I think I did suppress like I became reductive instead of oxidative. And the way the body works is kind of like a battery oxidation Redox, ox redox. There's a cycle so you can overdo it. What about maybe suppressing benefits of exercise? I know that if you take a lot of antioxidants after a heavy workout, you don't get as many results. But I don't think glutathione accounts for that. But I don't know. You might know.

No, it does not. And the thing is you are supposed to use after you exercise, not before. Because after you exercise there is a lag time of you still need the oxidative stress in your body because stress makes your body resilient and perfect. So you need that stress. But then the prolonged stress is what I'm more worried about because you want to recover within a couple of hours after you finish exercising. And so gluteril or glutathione can actually help you do that faster. Of course, you can do cold plunge and all the other stuff that you can do to help with that as well. But the glutathione will actually help you get the reductive state faster than anything else out there. But it would not suppress the benefits of exercise, for sure.

That's cool. That means if you work out really, really hard and you use some gluterol afterwards, you might really like the results because you might suffer less. And, oh, my gosh, what would happen if we worked harder, not smarter? I mean, heaven forbid, what would we all do? All right, your website is Auro a u r o wellness.com with code Dave 10. And if you guys can't remember that, you can go to Glutathione Revolution and learn about Nian's new book. And here's the deal. You already know about glutathione, most likely. If you follow me, I have made glutathione products in the past. I've recommended them, and I love all forms of glutathione. This is new. This is just a new thing in the world, and I wanted you to know about it. I wanted you to meet the guy who did it. You decide, is he legit? You decide, is the product legit? I think it is. And I think it'll save you a lot of money compared to getting IVs. And also, you just don't have time or. I'm flying to Colombia soon, and I'm pretty sure getting a glutathione IV there will take a while, and who knows what I would get. So maybe I'll just bring this. See you all on the next episode. And I'll bring you some more of these Upgrade spotlights. Only when there's cool stuff that's new in the world. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.