What is Glutathione?

You may or may not have heard of 'glutathione'. However, researchers and scientists continue to discover the importance of this substance in health and disease and in the next few years its name will become as well known as terms like 'cholesterol' or 'vitamin', states author and glutathione expert Dr. Jimmy Gutman.

Without Glutathione, your cells would disintegrate from unrestrained oxidation, your body would have little resistance to bacteria, viruses and cancer, and the liver would shrivel up from the eventual accumulation of toxins. Essentially, Glutathione or GSH is the building blocks to life! Your life depends on glutathione.

The importance of glutathione to your health cannot be overstated. The immune system is constantly on the prowl for pathogens - agents of cellular damage, toxicity and disease. In order to neutralize these pathogens, the body needs a ready supply of glutathione. If it doesn't have enough, some of the invaders will get through, infecting the body and/or contributing to aging, long-term accumulative damage - even eventual cancer.

Glutathione is a tri-peptide, a small protein composed of the Amino Acids; Cysteine, Glycine and Glutamate. It is made in every cell of the body, and is only synthesized inside the cell. Glycine and glutamate are ready available in North American diets, but cysteine-containing proteins are much harder to come by.

We inhale and ingest natural and synthetic toxins every day of our lives and cannot possibly avoid them, especially in our technological era with congested and polluted cities and bio-engineered food supplies. Scientific studies have shown that low glutathione levels lead to poor liver and kidney function, and result in unnecessarily large quantities of toxins circulating through the body. There, they continuously damage individual cells and organs.

Here is a list of some of the factors that drain glutathione levels: Stress, pollution, radiation, metabolism, infection, drugs, exercise, poor diet, aging, injury and fatigue. These all contribute to glutathione depletion which in turn, leads to cellular aging, disease and death. “Concern about maintaining one's glutathione level will eventually be on par with other health maintenance issues”, says Dr. Bounous.

In the last twenty five years the volume of research into glutathione has grown immensely. There have been over 70,000 published medical journal articles written on glutathione, and researchers have determined that glutathione works to prevent cancers from developing, and effectively combats cancers already established in the body.