Topical Glutathione for Aging, Chronic Disease and Energy with Dr. Nayan Patel

Welcome to The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome. This is your host, Lindsey Parsons, and today I'll be speaking with Dr. Nayan Patel, a sought-after pharmacist, wellness expert, and thought leader in his industry. He's been working with physicians since 1999 to custom develop medication for their clients and design a patient-specific drug and nutrition regimen. He recently published his first comprehensive book, The Glutathione Revolution: Fight Disease, Slow Aging, and Increase Energy. But before our conversation, if you haven't yet followed or subscribed to the show, be sure to do so. And if you want to get transcripts of the podcast, pop over to my website, HighDesertHealthCoaching.com, and sign up for my newsletter. You'll also get my free ebook, Finding Your Root Cause Through Stool and Organic Acids Testing, when you sign up. And if you haven't yet done my quiz on which stool test would help you get to your root cause, you can find a link in the show notes and take that. Now on to the show.

Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Patel.

Oh, thank you for having me today.

Thank you. It's my pleasure.

Since you're clearly a glutathione expert, why don't we start with what glutathione is and what it does in the body and why it's important?

Okay. Glutathione is, it's a peptide that is produced by humans. It's the most abundant peptide or molecule produced in human body. And it's important to me personally is because body does not produce something so abundantly unless there's a lot of functions attached to it. And so, that's why my research has always been around how do I improve glutathione levels? How do I increase those levels if they're low? What can I do to increase levels if your body cannot conjugate and make its own glutathione and so on and so forth? That's what I've been studying this a lot. And the reason we are talking today is because after 20 years of research of my side on what I've seen, I think your listeners want to listen to me. I think it's gonna be profound impact on how we live the rest of our lives now. And it's, it's been a huge difference in my family and my patients' loads and, and the people that I deal with it. So I think it's about time we get the rest of the world needs to know this thing.

Awesome.

Well, I've often referred to glutathione as the master antioxidant. Is that an accurate description?

Well, that's one of the functions. We don't know what it is because most of people don't care what glutathione is. What they do want to know is what does it do for you? And so yes, antioxidant is one of the benefits that we experience because of glutathione. It is not the only benefit, but that's one, one of the majority function. And it's called the master or the mother of all antioxidants because it has a regenerating capacity. So your body does not lose the capacity of over and over being an antioxidant. And so for that reason, it's a lot more beneficial over and over again.

Mm-hmm. Okay. So I check glutathione levels on almost every client via the marker for pyroglutamic acid on an organic acids test or on a metabolomics.

Uh-huh.

I'm wondering, is that a reliable marker of glutathione status? And if not, what better ways are there to assess glutathione status?

So what you're measuring is urine test for the whole thing. It's one of the metabolites of glutathione, which is okay. It's not the best test. There is no best test for glutathione as of right now. So we do testings in the laboratory, in the research center where we can draw the blood, put the bloodstream in the machine and measure the levels out right away. Anything besides that is not an accurate test because what you're really measuring is, for example, if you do a blood draw, by the time the test tube is filled with the blood and it sits there for like 10, 15 minutes, the whole glutathione is completely oxidized. Mm-hmm. So you have no idea how much is reduced, how much is oxidized. So in reality, most of the people, if they're otherwise healthy with no other diseases, your body should have 50/50, 50% oxidized, 50% reduced, and it stays sort of an equilibrium. Patients with diabetes, autoimmune conditions, cancers, diseases, any metabolic diseases, you have a lot more oxidized glutathione and a lot less reduced form of glutathione. This ratio needs to completely be reversed. And so, the tests are, at the best, telling you total glutathione load you have in the body, which if that is low to begin with, oh boy, we are in trouble to start off with, right? And so, the most of people are already low to begin with in the complete glutathione status. And then, What we do not know is how much is reduced form out of that. The urine test does not give the whole picture either.

Right. And reduced is the usable glutathione.

The reduced is the one that is active form of glutathione. The oxidized form have to be reactivated, and which is okay. So, if you're a lot of oxidized glutathione, you can actually activate those glutathione by taking supplements like vitamin C or vitamin E. And, that's what it does. It regenerates all your glutathione again.

Mm-hmm. So, why might someone be deficient in glutathione?

Why might somebody be deficient? Life. So, let, let me do a little bit broader than that. So, glutathione is affecting not just the oxidative stress in your body, but it also helps with conjugation or detoxification of your liver. And so, that process is a one-way process. That means The glutathione has been used for conjugation and detoxification. You get rid of the glutathione out of the body and the body has to reproduce them again. And so, what happens is that when you're young, under the age of 30, kind of invincible, you think the world's never going to end, nothing's bad ever going to happen to you, body completely regenerates on its own and you just feel fine. You can drink like a fish and the next morning you're back to work. I said, "What happened?" I said, "No, nothing.

We had a good time last night." Same behavior at the age of 50.

So, oh boy, you know what? 2 days ago I had a drink and oh my God, I'm still having a headache right now. And so, the body is not able to detoxify, recuperate, regenerate, and recalibrate itself at a faster pace. So, what's happening at that end is right about age of 30, what your body's actual need for glutathione is and what your body can actually produce, there's a discrepancy. You're not producing enough to meet all your body's demands. For example, if you live in United States and let's see, your expenses for the month is $5,000, but you only make $4,000. Every month you're short $1,000. It won't take you more than 2, 3, 4 months. By the 4th month, I say you're dead in the water, right? Because you have no reserves. And so, that's the thing that happened with the glutathione. It's not quite similar to the money portion, but your needs are there, you can't produce enough. And, if you can't produce enough, there's a discrepancy. The discrepancy over time take 10 years over time. Now, there's an onset of diseases. And that's why everybody should be listening to that is because this is not something magic that happens because I turned 40, so I should be going through this issue. My mom had this disease when she was 40. I'm 50, so I should be okay. I still don't have it. No, it's how much your body is able to recuperate. And if it cannot do that over periods of time, now we have something to deal with it. And so when it comes to life, there are few things that I want to talk about it. Start off with first thing is environmental factors like air pollution, sunlight, direct exposure to sun for long periods of time, chemical exposures, gas exposures, all those things the body has to somehow neutralize them, detoxify them, and get rid of it. Second thing is we eat food. Now, we are supposed to eat food for our body as a fuel, but we eat food because our tongue likes it. And that's a big difference, right? You do what your tongue wants, not what your body needs. And what your body needs is real foods, amino acids and proteins and things like that, or maybe carbs, complex carbs that the body can use up as fuel. We end up eating sugars and some empty calories that now the body has to somehow figure out, well, what am I supposed to do with this? I need to make glutathione. I need 3 amino acids, glycine, glutamine, and cysteine. Instead, I have this junk that I don't know what to do with it. And so your body's always deprived, needs it has is to produce peptides like glutathione. And if it doesn't have the amino acids, you cannot do that work. So that's why it says when life happens, the glutathione levels drop.

Right. Yeah. So you mentioned the 3 amino acids that go into glutathione, and I have found that particularly in my parents and in other clients that I see, there's a glycine deficiency. And I'm wondering why people end up deficient in glycine or in cysteine for that matter, because those seem to be the two that are most recommended for supplementation when people are deficient in glutathione.

That is right. So there's three things, right? Glutamine, glycine, and cysteine. So you are right. Glutamine, we have abundance of glutamine inside our body. I think there's a new theory right now. They're suspecting that excessive amount of glutamine in the brain can be early onset of dementia or early onset Parkinson's or ALS or MS or any of those diseases that they, they were dealing with. And so, they're trying to figure out how to get rid of glutamine outside their brain. And the one way to do that is give them glycine and cysteine and hopefully they'll conjugate to produce glutathione. And hey, you get two for, you get glutathione in the brain, oxidative stress, and reduce the glutamic acid in the brain. Anyways, that's just a theory right now. We don't have no idea how to do that part yet. But the second part you asked me the question is you like supplemented glycine or you're seeing glycine deficiency. Now, glycine deficiency is not very common. There's plenty of foods that are out there that have plenty of glycine in there. And so, to replenish glycine, you just have to find glycine-rich foods and just consume that part. Glycine is very easily absorbed. There should not be any difficulty in replacing glycine and— from the foods that you absorb. And glycine is not something that I see commonly as a suspect that they have in terms of absorption. What I do see is diet low in cysteine. And so cysteine by far to me is the most important thing that you have to do to replace in order for you to improve glutathione status in your body. And so I always tell my patients that first of all, if you're ever in doubt, look at glycine-rich foods. Everybody has a favorite search engine, put it in there, glycine-rich foods, or put in your AI robot. I said, hey, find me glycine-rich foods and I'm vegan. That gives you option. I'm vegetarian, gives you option. I'm a meat eater, that gives you an option. Everything has cysteine in there. And there are people that are out there that make a product which is both combination of glycine and cysteine. And that's also okay. I'm okay with either one of them. What I'm not okay is taking too much glutamine. Now, a lot of people have gut issues and they take glutamine all the time, which is okay. I'm okay with taking glutamine all the time. You just know your status is gonna be important. If you don't have a problem, then don't take it. If you have a gut issue and you put Take it temporarily, go for it.

Okay. But not too much glutamine otherwise.

Not too much glutamine otherwise, no.

Okay. And so what symptoms might tell you that you are deficient in glutathione?

So glutathione, I always look at the job. This job is to reduce oxidative stress. Now, oxidative stress is linked to almost every disease that's out there. I mean, I'd say 80% of all diseases in the world is linked to oxidative stress is probably pretty much Everything is linked to oxidative stress. As soon as we are born, we are breathing oxygen, we are oxidative stress. There is no way around it. What the body does is it keeps on neutralizing every single day so that you are becoming strong and resilient as the day goes by, but it's not killing you. It's eventually when the oxidative stress gets higher, that's when the issues are going to be. So, if you look for particular symptoms, there are none for glutathione deficiency, but you can tell the signs and symptoms of something that can lead to a disease or condition and that can be linked to oxidative stress. For example, if you see sun damage spots, age spots on your face, all of a sudden you turn 45 or 50, you say, "Well, you know, I get some spots over here. What is that?" Right? And does the glutathione help get rid of it? Well, most of the time it's sun damage. So, oxidative stress causing the sun damage, cholesterol getting oxidized under your skin. By glutathione, once you reduce oxidative stress down and once you get rid of that, It's gone. It's not like a bleaching cream where you don't see it, so it's gone. No, no, no, it's gone forever, right? If you go back in the sun again, it'll come back again, maybe someplace else, maybe the same spot again, but that's okay. So, that's visible signs and symptoms. If you're looking for non-visible signs and symptoms, starting the age of 30, 35-ish, first thing you start noticing is that, "Hey, I'm not as sharp as I used to be before, right? Oh, maybe I had 2 kids now. I got the mom brain now. My kids are taking too much of my time." And, "I don't have time to think about things like that." The creepy forgetfulness kicks in. For women, it's subtle, right? They notice really fast. For the guys, it's a gradual process. They have no idea what's coming down the pike. So, they're just oblivious of every single thing. And so, they say, "What's the difference? This is how I'm usually normally anyways." But, that creepy forgetfulness is a first sign of oxidative stress in your brain. So, please remember, our brain is only 2% of the total body weight. But yet it consumes 20% of all the oxygen we breathe in. The highest amount of oxidative stress you have in your body is in your brains. So reducing oxidative stress in your brain is by far the most important thing we can do to have a fighting chance so the brain does not get clogged up or doesn't have too much of oxidation going on. And eventually plaque gets built up inside your brain. We have all kinds of diseases that kicks in, and trust me, we don't wanna treat any of those diseases because there's no cure for it. So, could be forgetfulness. Other thing is that to produce glutathione, we need 2 molecules of ATP, which is energy source, 1 molecule of NAD, which is an electron transfer, and 3 amino acids and 2 enzymes. And so, if the body is constantly producing glutathione because it needs so much of it, because either you're drinking alcohol or we exposing ourselves to sunlight or chemicals exposures or toxins exposures, or the foods we did are not adequate enough, the body is constantly producing glutathione. It is constantly requiring more and more of ATP energy, which is the mitochondrial energy. If your body cannot produce enough, that's when the fatigue kicks in, lethargy kicks in, tiredness kicks in. By itself, completely benign. Oh, everybody feels tired when they're old. I said, no, you should not be, right? And so, supplementing glutathione, you should expect to see a rise in energy in about 2 to 3 weeks once it gets stabilized. And so, again, they're not sudden symptoms of glutathione deficiency per se, but you can see that there's a progression of oxidative stress increasing in your body. You can measure your cholesterol, your oxidized cholesterol, ApoB levels. You can measure MDA levels, which is malonaldehyde levels. And if this starts rising, you know, okay, now the oxidative stress is rising. If your insulin resistance is rising, that means the oxidative stress is rising, and so on and so forth. So, if you start looking at every single thing, There's a range. This is the low end. This is the high end, right? If you are in the middle, well, you're still normal. Yeah, but I was on the low end and now in the middle. It's slowly getting there. Do we wanna wait until it's really bad before we treat them? Or can we something to do something today?

Mm-hmm.

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So you mentioned the age spots on the skin, and I've got this one here that's always driving me crazy. And I've heard of people using glutathione for their skin. Is this a topical or are they taking it internally?

So 140 years we have known about glutathione and FDA or any countries in the world has only approved N-acetylcysteine or called NAC. As a way to improve glutathione levels. So, your body does not have the receptor to accept glutathione from outside sources. So, if you take glutathione from outside sources, the body will chop it up, break it down, absorbs the amino acids, and using the amino acids to produce glutathione. Well, save your money and just take the amino acids by itself and let the body makes its own glutathione. But again, the issue is can the body produce enough based on body's needs? And, as we get older, it cannot keep up with the demands. So, there's always been a way to improve the glutathione level. So then, we said, "Okay, you know what? I'm just going to inject infusion into the veins." There's no country in the world has approved IV glutathione except for compassionate use only for people taking chemotherapy drug that includes platinum, right? Cisplatin is a platinum drug. We're taking cisplatin as a drug for chemotherapy, then approved glutathione infusion to temporarily reduce our platinum overload in your body. Other than that, glutathione is not approved for any other indication or purpose in the whole world.

How come I hear about my clients getting infusions of glutathione then?

Exactly. So, they're getting from a compounding pharmacy. It's not FDA approved as a drug, but they're getting from compounding pharmacy. But, when they infuse the glutathione, there was a study done in 1991 that when they were given 2 grams of IV infusion, guess what? 100% of the glutathione was sitting in the plasma, and nothing went in the red blood cells. Well, that's okay, right? People think that part, but what they do not know is the plasma gets filtered by the kidneys, and in 5 to 15 minutes, all the glutathione is in the urine. Nothing is getting absorbed. It still works. And the reason it still works is because the body, even though it's in the urine, is slowly breaking down and is reabsorbing the cysteine out of it. So about a couple of hours later, the researchers did see a spike in the blood, levels of cysteine by itself. And so, they're scratching their head. I said, "Whoa, what happened here?" We give glutathione and we didn't see a rise in glutathione, but we saw a rise in cysteine. And that's when they figured out, okay, the body was breaking down this glutathione, reabsorbing the cysteine. Cysteine is going to be used in producing glutathione again. So, fast forward 20 years later, 30 years later, 2011, they did a similar study. Back in the late '90s, early 2000s, a technology called liposome technology emerged in the nutraceutical world. I was involved with making pharmaceuticals using liposomes. And, the doctor who holds a patent of liposome technology came to me and asked me, say, "Hey, can you make some liposome nutraceuticals like CoQ10 and vitamin C and glutathione and PQQ and all those things?" I said, "Okay. I know how to make it, so I'll give it a shot at it." And so, we did. 1999, we made the first liposomal glutathione technology product. And, the doctor was happy and he sold off the technology to bunch of companies and made some money. But, one thing I did not work was the glutathione. It did not work for my patients. So, I was always looking for something better. So, 2011 comes around, 26 kids, all spectrum disorder, given liposome form of glutathione because it bypasses the gut. So, it's supposed to absorb better. What they found out was, guess what? Zero glutathione levels in the blood. What they saw was a rise of all the amino acids, cysteine, glutamine, glycine, they all went up. So, the conclusion was from the researcher again, that glutathione does not get absorbed, is broken down, your body absorbs amino acids, and the amino acids are later used to produce glutathione. Folks, save your money. Just buy the amino acids, it's cheap, right? So, that's where my technology lies. We've been researching since 2001. And in 2007, we discovered a way to basically stabilize glutathione outside the human body in a petri dish in a completely intact manner. The second goal was we tasted it, it tastes awful, so nobody's gonna put it in the mouth. We squirted in the nose, it was very painful. So, I said, "Okay, it's not gonna go through your nose either." Nobody wants suppositories. I said, "Okay, well, the only route left is the skin route." So, I said, "Okay, skin route is even harder because skin is such a big barrier. Nothing goes to your skin. This is a water-based product." I said, "Okay, what if I reduce the particle size even further small?" And so, that's what we did. So, we reduced the particle size by 80 folds. We took a dextrin molecule, put a cover over it, And the reason we use dextrin molecules is because your body has a receptor to accept dextrins. And so, what happened was the body saw this as a dextrin molecule coming through your skin. The body goes, "Okay, I can take that one. I can use it up." And inside, what stuck was glutathione like a Trojan horse. And so, all of a sudden, within 5 to 15 minutes, we saw a spike in the glutathione levels in the blood cells. And that's when we said, "Aha." We just figured it out. Right away, we applied for patents in 2007, but we quickly found out there was no research being done using this technology on any other product in the world. So, I said, "Oh my God, now what do I do?" So, 13 years later, we did all the studies ourselves, how much to give, how often to give, when to give, what kind of results are we gonna see? It took us 13 more years. In 2020, we came to a conclusion that, hey, it's time to launch the product. Wrote my book, finished writing the book, the book got published. We knew that it was going to launch in 2020. God was not happy. It goes 2020, I'm about to launch the company in first week of January, and middle of February, we were shut down because of— actually, not of us. The whole world was shut down. I said, "Oh my goodness." So, here we are talking today about this thing. Our goal is to get this out to the world and have them experience this because now we have a technology to deliver a peptide Yes, it's a glutathione. We deliver peptide through your skin for the very first time.

Mm-hmm. So, it could be applicable to multiple peptides, not just glutathione.

Oh, yes. And so, right now, we have blanket patent over majority of the antioxidants. And now, we are applying for another blanket patents for the anything less than 5 amino acid chain peptides. And so, that's what we are working on right now. So, we're doing a lot more research. Everything that I make right now is going back into the research because nobody's funding me. So, it's all 100% self-funded. And, I take time to educate people and whatever time I have left over, go back in the lab.

So the product you developed is through the skin then?

It's through the skin.

Is it a lotion or is it— what, what form is it?

It's a solution. It's a topical solution. It's like a water-based system. If you look at it, it's just water, but smells like glutathione. It has an odor of a cysteine odor. Cysteine smells like rotten eggs or has a sulfur smell to it, right?

Right.

So it has a slight odor to that. Well, I don't say slight. Everybody's different, right? To me, it's slight, but somebody else is, oh my God, this is awful. It has an odor to it. And we use dextrin molecules, and dextrin's a little sticky to your skin. But the thing is, if you rub it on for about 30 seconds to a minute, the stickiness goes away, the smell goes away, and it becomes completely smooth. And all the glutathione is already inside your skin. And then all it does is within the 15 minutes or so, you can literally do a blood draw. On your patients and see the levels rise.

And how long will that rise sustain?

So, we only did a single application study. Like, we applied one time and did the study. This is when I had no money. I can only afford like $100 test. We just got published last year. We did a human trial for 30 patients. And, what we found out was that the peak was at 45 minutes. So, once you apply it, at 50 minutes, the level starts rising already. By 45 minutes, there was a peak and the area under the curve, which is how long it stays in the body, was about 4 to 6 hours. Now, young patients was actually lasting longer. Older patients was lasting shorter. It made me realize what? That our needs as we get older and they have never had glutathione for such a long time, just using it up as we give it to them, right? Versus young folks. Well, the young folks were all med students right now, you know, we did at the university. So, young people, their levels were lasting longer, 6 hours. Mm-hmm. Older folks, all the professors at the university, was only lasting 4 hours, maybe less, maybe less in some cases. So, when I did my calculations, because again, we can only do calculations at this point, is that 50% of the glutathione gets oxidized and recycled, 30% gets conjugated and used up. So, if I give the same dose, which is, I think is gonna be the right dose for the patients to increase levels to high levels and 50% gets used up every single day, then hopefully if they're otherwise normal, within 3 to 4 months, each application should last them 8 to 12 hours.

Hmm.

The twice a day application should be giving you good 16, 20, 24-hour coverage, which is ideal for me, which is not bad at all. But in reality, to achieve that, it takes a lot longer because when people get healthier, they pick up bad behaviors. Yeah. And so it's, it's very, very difficult. Yeah. When you're in trouble, you'll do whatever it takes to get healthier. As soon as you get healthy, you forgot that you were in trouble.

Then you're like, I can afford those two drinks and—

There you go.

I can eat that.

That's the problem. That is the concern that I have. I mean, over the years, before the launch of the company or the product, we were only working through physicians' offices. And so we had over 100,000 patients that we have served before we launched the product to the open public. And so over the years, I've seen doctors themselves get healthier. And then they pick up bad behaviors, right? And so if the doctors are not willing to put a self-control on themselves, how can you expect the patients to do the same thing? So that's the difficult portion for me.

Sure. Well, you can only do so much. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. So you can apply the supplements, but you can't force them to change the lifestyle, right?

No, we cannot, but we can educate them. And that's why I'm here. Is to, hey, please, I've already seen what happens. You know, I had one guy, he was alcoholic. He was going to die because liver failed. And so he says that he's done. His family moved out, his wife moved out, his kids left him, and he was rotting his life away. He couldn't stop drinking. And he was my brother's best friend. My brother kind of had a heart for him. I said, you know, use glutathione, don't sweat it, just use it every single day. And literally a year goes by. He didn't die, he got healthier. And he got to a point that his wife moved back in, his kids moved back in, and 3 or 4 years later, he was like completely changed person, right? Guess what happened again?

He started drinking again.

I drink again. So my hope is, hopefully he listens to this message, that we are just human beings over here. But if we create better habits for ourselves, better lifestyle for ourselves, and keep the poisons out of our body, I think we have a fighting chance to live forever.

Forever may be a hair ambitious, but, you know, longer and healthier I'll take. Yeah. So in terms of genetics, I did one of these fancy DNA tests with somebody else who came on the podcast and they said my genetics were such that I don't have great glutathionization. What does that actually mean for me and my glutathione needs?

So if you cannot produce glutathione, So, you need supplementation for rest of your life. The unfortunate part is that most of supplements that you are taking over the counter doesn't get absorbed in your system, actually all of them, right? So, you are always gonna be struggling to produce enough glutathione for your needs versus the other gene SNPs where your need for glutathione is much, much higher. The body can produce it, but your needs are much higher. And so, for that, you require a lot of essential amino acids to keep on replenishing this glutathione. So, I'm not sure which genes you have, but if you have the genes where your conjugative pathway is somewhat distorted, that means you cannot produce enough glutathione in the first place. You can take all the amino acids in the world and you are, at best, you're going to get half of the normal. You're never going to reach the high normals ever. Versus, if your body can produce glutathione and your needs are much higher, by taking supplements, amino acids, you can sum up, boost up a little bit. But keep in mind that as you age, it's gonna keep on declining, decline, decline anyways. Mm-hmm. In fact, I'm also doing a presentation at the World Anti-Aging Conference this year on genomics and glutathione supplementation. So, wow. This year, December, we were presenting a whole day workshop onto physicians on how to help doctors identify those genomic markers and how do I help those people. Because we have cases that we have done that help people with heavy metal toxicities and dementia, patients with other ALS-type diseases or Huntington's disease, things like that, and how the genes are there, were not diagnosed correctly, and they got the disease. You're gonna treat the disease, but the problem is something else. Mm-hmm. You're dealing with oxidative stress diseases and you're dealing with the disease itself, but the stress is what, what caused the problem, but not addressing the stress at all.

Mm-hmm.

And so by putting this in a limelight, I think we have a fighting chance that the doctors of tomorrow are gonna be able to look at the gene markers. And try to help you identify, said, hey, you are this kind of person, so I would suggest you stay away from all these products, or you can do this one and to improve your health, or whatever that is, right? 15 years ago, gene testing was so expensive that nobody can afford it. Today, most people can afford it, $400, $500. Most of them can, right? To get a basic gene test. So, it's becoming like an average test that everybody can do it now. And more and more people are doing it right now. The problem is the education behind the gene testing is still catching up.

Yeah. And how many SNPs are involved in this? Is there heaps of them or is it just a few you could look at?

Well, right now we are only going to teach them about 3 or 4 today to all the doctors, but they have lots more than that. And this is just a surface right now. We just scratching the surface at this point. We have no idea how fast the body, human body system is. We assume that, but hey, if I eat one avocado, I'm going to be all healthy. Oh my God, you're, you're so far away from the truth, right? And so, we are only mapping our human genome right now, but keep in mind, half of the body belongs to the bugs, bacteria.

Exactly.

And who's mapping their genome? Because if the bacteria is a problem, guess who's suffering?

Us.

Us, because it's inside our body. And we call them healthy bacteria, right? The gut microbiome, whatever you call them. And if they got a problem, then we got to suffer with that too. And so, we have a lot more to learn and I can only lead them to the next step if I can master the first step.

Yeah.

And so, I wanna help this doctor master the first step. And I'm working with a doctor up in Beverly Hills who's a doctor to the stars when it comes to gene mutation testings. And so, I recruited him to come speak at the event and he said yes. So, we'll be launching this educational course for the physicians and hopefully, it'll become available to every doctor that's out there.

Awesome.

Hey, this is Lindsey here, just letting you know that if you're tired of dealing with digestive issues like bloating, indigestion, soft stool, diarrhea, constipation, reflux, IBS, IBD, or the numerous health conditions that come about when your gut is off, like brain fog, weight gain, UTIs, fatigue, mental health issues, or complex conditions like fibromyalgia and ME/CFS, That's my specialty. With my 3 or 5 session gut health coaching packages, we'll discuss different stool and functional medicine tests to find out the root cause of your symptoms. I'll interpret the results and provide clear explanations, empowering you to make informed choices for your gut and overall health. And together we'll develop a customized action plan based on your test results so you can find relief and regain your health and vitality. I come from a functional medicine perspective, trying to incorporate the latest peer-reviewed research and educating you on protocols used by functional medicine practitioners, but devoting lots of time and support to my clients the way a doctor simply can't. If you're interested in a 3 or 5 session coaching package, you can sign up for complimentary 30-minute breakthrough session. Or if you can only afford one appointment at a time, you can book an initial 60-minute consultation. Links for those are in the show notes. Now back to the show.

So you mentioned that over time, a twice a day administration of the glutathione would be sufficient. I'm just curious, 'cause I know that this often happens. I'll be interviewing somebody and they have a product and there's dosing on the bottle, but the dosing might say 1 or 2 capsules, okay, or whatever amount that you put on your hand. But the reality is the dosing is in fact a lot more than that. It's 1 or 2 capsules 3 times a day. So what is the actual dosing that a regular person who is maybe already in their 40s or 50s or 60s or 70s should start with? And then what is the regular dosing somebody who already is showing signs of oxidative stress, say they have high cholesterol or they have prediabetes or something like that?

So we have two products. One is Glutaral, and that is about 200 milligrams per ml. The other one is Glutaral Plus, which is a plus for you, which is a stronger version of the same product. Exact same product, just a stronger concentration, 1.75 times stronger than the other one. So which is about 350 milligrams per ml. The actual dose is on the regular product, 4 sprays twice a day, which gives them 100 milligrams twice a day, approximately. And that's a full dose. Even at that dose, a lot of people cannot tolerate that dose because what happens then is initially, if it's releasing all the toxins and the body's not well equipped to handle all those toxins excretion, they can get reactions.

Like if they are constipated?

Well, oh no, it could be, could be constipated, but it could be even worse. Could be cause diarrhea sometimes.

Oh, right.

No, but I mean, if somebody's constipated and they're not getting rid of toxins fast, they're getting Well, thing is, that's a physical obstructions, but most of toxin that we are dealing with is in the liver. And so, when it gets dumped in the liver, sometimes people have headaches, sometimes have diarrhea, sometimes have rashes all over the body. It's not an allergic reaction, it's a detox type reactions. That means we said that, hey, slow down. Body's not able to handle that part. There's a lot more issues than just the glutathione by itself, but we can only deal one problem at a time. So I'll reduce it down to maybe 2 sprays or even 1 spray twice a day if they can tolerate that part. And then slowly, slowly go to 2 sprays, 3 sprays. Eventually the dose is gonna be 4 sprays twice a day. Now that's a typical dose for everybody. And that dose, again, you're dealing with a pharmacist. I'm all looking for outcomes. I'm not here to give you the safest dose possible so nobody will complain to me. And if you don't get the results, it's okay, but at least I won't hear any complaints. No. I want results. I don't care, right? If there's a problem, I'll work with you. I'll work with your doctor. I'll work with your physicians, everybody, and make sure that it works for you. Now, people that have high amount of oxidative stress that led, led to autoimmune diseases, people with type 1 diabetes or type 2, uncontrolled type 2 diabetes, or cancer patients taking high-dose chemotherapies, their needs for glutathione is extremely high. That's the plus version that we have. We strongly recommend that if you use the Plus version, that you try the regular version first.

Mm-hmm.

Make sure that you have no problems and then go to the Plus version the next month for 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, depending on what the conditions are. If you have chronic conditions for years, it may take you over, over a year to be in the Plus version, and then eventually you'll come back down to the regular version anyways.

Mm-hmm.

The way you know this thing is what if you use a Plus version, there's something called too much glutathione. And when that happens, you'll feel on the other end as well. You'll get the rash, itching. When that happens, a year later or 6 months later, your glutathione reserves have been tapped in, completely done. Switch to the regular version, go the lower concentration one, you'll be fine. You never have to change the dose again after that.

Okay.

Got it. Can you explain about methylation and how glutathione relates to methylation and whether an MTHFR mutation, which is incredibly common, can lead to suboptimal glutathione levels?

So, that was one of the gene mutations, COMT, MTHFR, where your body can produce enough glutathione. There's no doubt about it. But, with methylation defects, your body is not able to detoxify a lot of products, right? Your body is craving for the methyl groups from cruciferous vegetables and things like that to, "Hey, I need this to detox my body." If it's not there, the secondary product that's used to detox the body is glutathione. So, the glutathione is getting used up. Even the body can produce enough, it's getting used up. And so, when you give glutathione to anyone with MTHFR gene mutation, the first 30 days, they are going to feel the difference immediately. They're going to feel better, right? They said, "Oh my God, this is how it's supposed to feel." It's not solving any problems yet because all you did was just replace what your body was missing. But, what the body was really missing is methyl donors. And so, eat enough cruciferous vegetables, get methyl groups, methyl B12s, methylated vitamins, anything that methylated will be really good for you because then the load of glutathione reduces and you can do some other things as well. But they're gonna feel fantastic.

Okay. So you mentioned the liposomal glutathione and NAC and glycine and such. What about acetyl glutathione? Is that useful at all?

Acetyl glutathione that I've seen, I usually saw them in commercially on the skincare lines, and lately now they're coming into more towards vitamin supplementation as well. So, when you acetylate a glutathione molecule, what it's doing is it becomes water-soluble. Well, let me put it this way. Glutathione is already water-soluble. To make it another product like this thing is not going to make it more water-soluble, right? So, that defeats the purpose. The other reason people do acetyl form of glutathione is because glutathione is very reactive and it doesn't stay stable in a room temperature. And that's why they put acetyl group to it. So, it kind of protects from getting oxidized. But, what they do not know is that just because it is stable outside the room temperature or outside the body, that doesn't mean the body's going to accept it as is. As I said earlier, you have zero receptors for glutathione inside your body. The glutathione is never going to get absorbed by itself. It has to be broken down into amino acids and amino acid has to be absorbed. And, that's how you get inside your body. And so, I have not seen any studies yet. I would bet everything I have that it is probably not going to be anywhere close to even other technologies. So, there We know benefits over some of the other products that are already out in the market today.

Right, right. So other than your product, which is clearly quite different from these other things, the next best thing is just to supplement with the amino acids cuz it's gonna be cheaper and—

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

And just to let you know, 80% of the people have no problems.

Mm-hmm.

They can take amino acids and make their own glutathione.

Mm-hmm.

It's when they get older, if, if you wait for the diseases to come in, then God bless you because you need all the help you can. But if you try and do early on, if you have a 20-year-old listeners over here, please listen to your mom and dad, eat the right fruits and vegetables. Doritos is not your friend, has no amino acids in Doritos. Right?

Yes. Eat foods with protein.

Eat food with proteins. That's it. That's what you need.

And your fruits and veggies for your, especially your cruciferous veggies for your methyl donors.

Methyl groups. That's if you have a problem. Some people don't have a problem, then it's okay. But eat real food. Eat what your body needs and not what your tongue wants.

And have you done any studies or at least observed in patients the impact of getting these glutathione levels up to optimal on chronic diseases and aging?

And we have only published one study as a clinical trial. The other study was not published as a trial because we had 2020 when we first launched the company, we had started a study on COVID, but since we, there was no IRB approval, we could not publish as a human trial. We could only publish as a fact-finding expedition, so to speak. We had no approval from the authority to do our human trials, but we still give to them anyways. So, we have done things a couple times and both of them are published, by the way. So, you can just Google "glutathione dextrins" that we have and "what is COVID and what is Mycobacterium." We have 2 trials. And so, what we did was we wanted to see what happens if I can improve the glutathione levels. What effect does it have on infections? We know glutathione is not an anti-infective. It's not antibiotic. It's not antiviral. It has nothing to do with killing any bugs. But, what it does is that glutathione can immediately improve your immune system to the point that you can kill the bugs on its own. And so, that's what we did. We did a 3-day trial. In 3 days, what can you expect in 3 days, right? Not a whole lot. Spicy application, 4 sprays in the morning, 4 sprays in the evening for 3 days in a row. And, that was it. And, what we found out was within 4 hours, they saw reduction of the MDA levels, which is a melanin aldehyde. Oxidative stress marker levels just went dropped within 4 hours. They saw a rise of the glutathione levels in the red blood cells right away. The third thing what they did was they couldn't infect the body, the, all the professors and the med students with Mycobacterium infection because there's no cure for it. They'll all die. And so, we took the blood with a test tube and then infect the blood with, with the Mycobacterium. So, 15 patients had applied the glutathione, 50% didn't apply the glutathione on them at all. They applied the placebo. The people that apply the glutathione, they saw a rise in that test tube of all the immune markers, IL-2, IL-12, all the T cells went up, natural killer cells went up, macrophages with the immune system that kills all the bugs went up to the point that within 4 hours, there's a reduction of the Mycobacterium infection in a test tube. Imagine we do that every single day of your life. This is only 3 days trial that we did. We see such a profound impact. What that tells me is that there's no drug in the world that has such a profound impact. What we need is our own body's medicine. Our body has all the drugs we need inside our body. We just identify a couple of them so far. And the more we identify what chemical does in your body, our job is done. I'll be out of business as a pharmacist.

So, you mentioned other vitamins. I mean, I know when I think of oxidative stress, I think of vitamin C, I think of vitamin E and A. So, do we still need those ones or for people who are not getting enough diet?

So, if you look at oxidative stress, there's 3 things we can do. One is exogenous or outside the body sources of chemicals like vitamin C, vitamin E, and things like that to bring oxidative stress down. Second thing we can do is improve our endogenous products like CoQ10, glutathione. They'll bring oxidative stress down, right? Direct impact. The third thing we don't talk about it is enzymatic support like superoxide dismutase, SOD, or glutathione peroxidase. These enzymes affects multiple pathways to help reduce oxidative stress down. Which is the most powerful one? Of course, enzymes, because glutathione peroxidase enzymes will produce glutathione, will do all the work. So, that's more powerful than the product itself, which is glutathione. The least is vitamin C and vitamin E and things like that. In fact, I can tell you scientifically or chemically, vitamin C is not an antioxidant. Vitamin C is actually a pro-oxidant. What happens is that at low dose concentration, it gives that energy to revive the glutathione back into oxidized glutathione, into glutathione again. That's why if you look at vitamin C, the doctors will tell you, oh, at low concentration, it's an antioxidant. At high concentration, it's a pro-oxidant. I said, vitamin C is not that smart. It's a dumb molecule. It has one property, right? It doesn't have multi-properties. So if you're drinking vitamin C, I would suggest please take low dose because too much vitamin C is actually not good for you.

Low dose, like 500 milligrams, less than 1 gram per day. Yeah.

Yeah. But if you get it in your diet, it's even better.

Yeah.

I don't take vitamin C at all. If I do take vitamin C, it'll be very rare. And I do have vitamin C in my house, which I give it to my kids once in a while. They hate fruits and vegetables. So, I can supplement that for them because I, I will not give them glutathione at the young age. So, I give them other substrates like these to help improve the levels. My kids love avocado toast. Avocado has the highest amount of cysteine in there. Mm-hmm. To help increase glutathione levels that way. I have two daughters and they have acne. So, I said, well, if you eat avocados, it'll lessen your acne out. So, they load up on avocados every day, I guess. But, I try to bring the diets in them that's actually doing good for them more than the supplementations.

Right. So I know people are sort of getting tired, and I'm certainly one of them, of finding out there's one more supplement that they need to take for life. And most people think and need, I mean, I can see from the numbers that they need to supplement vitamin D and magnesium and then fish oil if they're not eating enough fish. And then usually taking a multi or B vitamins, creatine. Would you argue that glutathione should be part of that basic stack of things, or is there one of those things in there that it might be unnecessary if people are supplementing with glutathione?

So, I can tell you what I do. That way, I'm not giving—

advice. Yes.

Okay.

I'm just telling you what I do. So, 2009, I was on almost 20 different supplements because you hear things, you do things, and I belong to this anti-aging longevity club where everybody's talking about how do we increase lifespan, how do we increase healthspan, blah, blah, blah. Anyways, fast forward today, I take 2 supplements and one is glutathione. The other one is magnesium potassium combo.

Okay.

And that's it. That's all I take right now. Now I do take acid enzymes when I eat some bad food because I try to be healthy all the time. At times when I go eat at a restaurant, I don't know how they prepared the meal. I try to order the best meal possible the money can buy, but you never know what they've done sometimes. So if I eat out, I'll definitely have an acid enzymes to go along with it, but that's not a daily vitamin for me.

Yeah. Like a digestive enzyme with betaine HCL.

Yeah. Vitamin A, C, L with pepsin, with some digestive enzymes to go along with it, just to make sure that I can digest all my proteins.

Mm-hmm.

That's what I do. I don't take fish oils. I take vitamin E once in a while. It's not a regular thing. I take vitamin E for my heart health. Again, keep in mind when they say essential fatty acid, EFAs, it's essential fatty acid, not abundance fatty acids. So I'm not a big fan of taking abundance of supplements myself. But I do small things periodically. Probiotics, I don't take any probiotics, but if I have to take a probiotic for about a week or so, I'll do that part. But that's about it. I would not take probiotics for long-term, but that's all the vitamins I have. I take vitamin D during winter once in a while. It's nothing crazy. When I take vitamin D, I have vitamin K2 with it, so I don't want to get calcification of my arteries. But if I do take that, I'll take it for maybe 2 weeks in a row and then stop it after that. Nothing is consistent except for magnesium and my glutathione. Okay. And magnesium is because I have enough calcium in my diet and I want the electrical current to function correctly.

And the potassium is part of the magnesium you mentioned?

Yeah, exactly. Magnesium potassium aspartate is the combination I take. And I take different forms of magnesium too. I take magnesium by itself. I take magnesium with potassium combination. I take magnesium glycinate combination. I have magnesium for neurohealth. But magnesium is, different. I think it's completely different. And so body needs a lot of magnesium because of all the electrical currents that we have to go throughout the body. Mm-hmm.

So you showed your hand as you were describing the spraying on of the glutathione, but is there any benefit if you have sunspots or whatever to put the glutathione directly on the spot that's affected, or is it not matter? It's really just absorbed into the bloodstream essentially.

It doesn't matter. But if you have a spot that is bugging you, please apply on the spot because there's absolute localized effect immediately that you do see the benefit of it. But if you, if you're patient, if you're going to use it every single day and regardless, it will not matter. You can apply it on your arms and your spots on your face is going to slowly go away because your body is basically healing from inside every single thing anyways.

Yeah. So it doesn't really matter where you put it. You could put it on your arm or your leg or your hand or wherever.

Yeah. It doesn't matter because the technology is such that it does not go through lipid layers of your skin. Your skin is completely full of cholesterol or lipids, right? It's all fat. Every so often there's a water channel and no medications goes to the water channel of the skin. And so the first technology that actually just goes through it completely and within seconds to minutes, it's already in your bloodstream, able to measure the levels right away.

Okay.

Only thing is don't apply on a hairy area because as I said earlier, the dextrin molecules that we use is a little sticky. So the hair's gonna get stuck to your skin. It's just uncomfortable.

Back of the hand or the, maybe the forearm is a good spot or.

It doesn't matter where you apply it. I just put, hey, non-hairy part, like even my arms. I shave my arms too because I forget where to apply them. I just put it anywhere and everywhere. I forget if it's before shower, I apply anywhere. If it's after shower, then apply my arms in like an hour. So, I just wash my arms because everything is in the, as I said earlier, right? At 45 minutes, I already saw peak levels. Why give it more than 45 minutes if I don't have to?

Oh, okay. So, if it were bothering you, you I should wash it off after.

Oh yeah. If it bothers you, yes. If you'll just wash it off. If it doesn't bother you, then it's fine. Sometimes I apply cream over it, like a lotion over it, and that's fine too.

Mm-hmm.

Then it will not bother you at all.

Okay.

So where can people find you and your products?

Oh, my website, aurowellness.com, A-U-R-O wellness.com. We do have a lot of physicians' offices have them in their office for sale, but typically Most of the people are coming to the website, they're checking things out, they're reading my blog articles. Please subscribe to my newsletter. I do spend some time and energy to educate my customers on low-level thyroid and all the things it can do for us. I'm always working on multiple products right now. I have 2 or 3 products that are very close to completion right now. And as soon as it comes off, the patient will have the first dibs at it to at least see things out, check things out and things like that. So yeah, newsletter, the best thing.

Awesome. I did establish an affiliate account, so if people wanna support the podcast, they can go to my affiliate link to Aura Wellness and—

Yeah.

I'm excited to try it out myself.

Yeah, please. If they mention your name or they click at the link that's provided, that'll be the best way to support the podcast because we wanna support the podcast. So please use that link if at all possible.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for all this great information about glutathione and for working on these products to help people.

Well, it's my pleasure. I'm doing it for myself and people are just secondary to me because I want to help myself first. The longer I can stay on this planet, the more I can do some work for you guys.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, I'm a sucker for anything that might help me live longer, so I'm definitely going to try his glutathione. If you're interested in trying it, check out my affiliate link in the show notes to support the podcast. But if the link in the show notes isn't showing up where you're consuming this podcast, as many podcast players and YouTube don't show hyperlinks, you can go to my website, HighDesertHealthCoaching.com, and look for the show notes there for episode 135 to get my affiliate link. If you'd like to support the podcast in another way, you can buy supplements at a discount from my FullScript Dispensary, order tests at a discount from my Rupa Health Lab Store, or use my affiliate links to iHerb, which is available worldwide, or Amazon. And just to note that you can use my Amazon link to buy anything, not just supplements, and support the podcast. So I'd love it and really appreciate it if you'd bookmark my link and use it for regular Amazon purchases. If you'd like to connect with me online, you can follow my High Desert Health Facebook page, join my Gut Healing Facebook group, or join my newsletter list at highdeserthealthcoaching.com, as well as follow me on X, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest. Links for those are in the show notes. Thanks for joining me today, and here's wishing you all the perfect stool.