This is a YouTube video titled "Is Glutathione Better Than Vitamin C" containing a conversation where Speaker A asks about the benefits of glutathione compared to vitamin C, and Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP, explains the biochemical roles of vitamin C and glutathione as antioxidants and pro-oxidants, discussing their interaction and effects in the body. The content is from July 11, 2025.
Why glutathione? Like, why not vitamin C? I know we don't produce it, but if we take it in, it's an antioxidant or any of the other antioxidants. Why is glutathione so much better or is it better?
Okay, so vitamin C is actually not an antioxidant at all. Chemically, it's a pro oxidant. At low concentrations of vitamin C, ascorbic acid, it, what it does, it provides energy to oxidize glutathione in your body and, and get them reduced again. So glutathione is in the active form inside your body. What it does, it takes away the free radicals, quenches all the free radicals, energy from there, and in that process gets oxidized, it's inert, has no properties, doesn't do much in your body other than it just tells you that, hey, I'm just staying stable inside your body until something comes up and I can revive this and make into two molecules of glutton. Again, that energy source comes from either short exposure to sunlight or products like vitamin C, CoQ10, vitamin E and things like that that provides the energy to revive glutathione back into an active form. So chemically, vitamin C is actually a pro oxidant, not an antioxidant. And it, it provides the energy to glutathione to make it active again. So at low concentrations of vitamin C, it acts as if it's an antioxidant because it revives the glutathione and at high concentration of vitamin C, it becomes a pro oxidant.
