Are You Making Enough Glutathione?

Glutathione is your body’s own powerful antioxidant. It’s produced in your liver and is more potent than kale or blueberries. Illness, some medications and aging all reduce the ability of your liver to produce glutathione, leaving you susceptible to deteriorating health, inflammation and faster aging.

Glutathione helps to reduce inflammation, assists your liver with removing harmful toxins from your body, and it may even help you live longer. If you have a health problem resulting in too much inflammation, your body tries to produce more glutathione to bring the inflammation down. Soon enough, your body becomes very depleted in glutathione and your health will suffer. People with autoimmune disease particularly need more glutathione.

The following can all deplete your body of glutathione:

• Infections
• Injury
• Stress
• Heavy metal toxicity
• Pesticides
• Radiation
• Prescription and OTC Medications, especially acetaminophen
• Allergies
• Autoimmune disease
• Fatty liver
• Hepatitis

How to raise glutathione

• Get enough selenium in your diet. Selenium is a powerful antioxidant and is needed for your body to produce glutathione. Selenium is depleted from the soils in many parts of the world, therefore few foods are a reliable source. Reasonable sources of selenium include Brazil nuts, sardines, grass-fed beef and chicken. Selenium and n-acetyl cysteine (NAC) are an optimal combination for boosting glutathione production. NAC is the precursor of glutathione.
• Look after your liver. That’s where you make glutathione, so you want your liver to be as healthy as possible. When was the last time you had a blood test checking your liver health? Many people have a fatty liver, inflamed liver or poorly functioning liver and don’t know it. If you feel tired, bloated, can’t lose weight or your hormones are unbalanced, you likely have an under-functioning liver. 
• Try to get enough sleep. Maintaining good sleep hygiene is essential for good health, weight maintenance and healthy aging, and is also good for increasing glutathione levels. Research has shown that glutathione content was decreased in the liver by 23-36% following 5 and 10 days of sleep deprivation. Magnesium is a relaxing mineral which relieves sleeplessness and restless sleep. For more information, see the book ‘Tired of Not Sleeping’.
• Add sulfur-rich foods to your diet. It is essential to consume foods with adequate sulfur content as sulfur binds to toxins and free radicals, allowing them to be safely eliminated from the body. Studies have shown that eating sulfur-rich foods can increase glutathione and reduce oxidative stress. Suitable foods include garlic, onions, eggs and cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, Brussels sprouts and bok choy. Sulphur is required for phase 2 detoxification pathways in the liver, which are often too slow compared to phase 1.
• Make sure you get plenty of methylation nutrients in your diet. Methylation is a process that assists your body’s production of glutathione. The main nutrients required for methylation are B vitamins, particularly B6, B9 (folate) and B12. B12 is found in animal foods such as meat, poultry and seafood, while plant foods are an excellent source of the other B vitamins. It is important to eat lots of vegetables each day, either as salads, vegetable juices, smoothies, or cooked vegetables.

Boosting glutathione production is one of the most powerful ways to optimize your health.

The above statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any disease.

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