Dr. Alicja: Your life:
Healthier, Sexier and Longer 4.

In every cell, glutathione is responsible for reduction reactions the good reactions, in the sense that they don't release electrons. The proton (H+) is easily detached, because it is loosely bound to sulfur and protrudes beyond the plane of the molecule as if on a string (-Cl 12 -S-H), and is thus readily accessible. The proton itself, free or attached, most often lacking an electron, has a positive charge (HI-) and can react with the migrating, bombarding electron and neutralize this charge so that the electron is no longer dangerous. By making available this proton, this reducing power and hence promoting reduction, glutathione plays an important role as an antioxidant that impedes oxidation. It can thus be termed a master antioxidant because it is a principal antioxidant within our cells, being produced in the cell. It is so powerful because the cell does not depend on an outside source every cell produces its own supply. In the course of evolution Nature developed glutathione for the detoxification of cells because external toxins (environmental pollution, improper diet) and internal toxins (free radicals and oxidized ions released during important biochemical reactions within every cell) all make a mass of unwanted or simply residual active particles in the cytoplasm. As they are reactive, they must be deactivated, and glutathione plays that role both within the fluids of the cytoplasm and the organelles, especially mitochondria and the nucleus.

Glutathione must have evolved within the cell when life first began to arise, when processes leading to the formation of a living cell separated the cytoplasm from the environment. To grow and divide, every cell must be in homeostasis, and needs 1) building blocks and 2) energy. We understand how important it is to obtain energy, but the process involved is often very dangerous in itself as oxidized products are formed when energy is generated. To keep these in check, antioxidants had to be evolved, and to address this problem the master antioxidant, glutathione and the enzyme system connected with it, appeared inside the cell.

Glutathione, a very simple molecule, could have arrived on the scene early in evolution, and thus is included in every cell: microbial, plant and animal, having the same role to keep the cell healthy. If every cell is healthy, we can assume that the entire organism is going to be healthy. Hence my statement: glutathione is a molecule that allows us to lead a healthy life.

We shall hear a great deal about glutathione in the coming century because, I believe, the stimulation of glutathione production and activity will be in the interest of professionals trying to prevent diseases, and of the public too. Prevention will attract more of our attention, as it is much more satisfactoiy to prevent a war than to repair the damage it causes.

Glutathione stimulation will be used more often to treat diseases. It undertakes the repair process right within every cell, because it is the master antioxidant of the cell, allowing even oxidized vitamins C and E to be reconverted to their active, reduced forms. There are many interconnected antioxidants, and after they have done the job of antioxidation (i.e., reduction) they become oxidized themselves and thus useless in that form. They must, therefore... either be reduced anew or eliminated from the cell and removed from the body through the kidneys. The same thing happens to every antioxidant consumed in our diet, and glutathione with its glutathione peroxidase is responsible for this reduction, being the master antioxidant.

Food can be considered our most effective drug, as plant material contains, for instance, thousands of phenol compounds that can enter into the blood and cells from the gut. The plant kingdom contains thousands of secondary metabolites, of which phytochemists have identified about 100,000, and as they are continually being discovered at a rate of some ten a week, the role of phytochemists cannot easily be underestimated. Every plant species, e.g., carrot, apple, cabbage, contains about 300-500 phenolic compounds, of which some are unique and some repeat themselves, but all participate in the makeup of a given species, and form the basis of a whole branch of science, chemosystematics.

But sometimes their proportions, or quantity, make some plants of medicinal value, e.g., when a particular plant has more antioxidants, such as epicatechins from pine bark, or antiviral and antibacterial properties, such as phenolics from Echinacea. We should be aware that some compounds, while desirable in low concentrations, are sometimes not desirable in greater quantities, e.g. an alkaloid, digitalis, in Digitalis species, which could stop your heart beat. Some can influence your brain and nerve cells, causing hallucinations. Glutathione s role is to detoxify these, as well as other toxins.

Over thousands of years, humans experimented with foods, consuming those, which were nutritious but rejected the ones found to be toxic. As all this experimentation naturally started before humankind had discovered fire plants were eaten raw and our system was adapted to undenatured, unchanged food. During cooking, oxygen high temperatures oxidizes nutrients before they reach our body cells. Thus, many beneficial substances found in plant cells are lost to human cells, which get only the leftovers. Thousands of antioxidants that plants produce for their own defense, and are in our diet, form a chain, or rather a network, of compounds reducing such active oxidants as OH, NO, and N02. These oxidants, because of their mobility and small size, can penetrate into the active sites of enzymes, or even DNA, altering them. Antioxidants, with glutathione heading the list, prevent the worst penetration of free radicals into the nucleus. This is of great importance, because if even some free radicals alter some enzymes there are many more copies of such enzymes available, so that some biosynthesis can still occur. But in the nucleus, these radicals can alter genes. In the latter case, since genes are the blueprints containing the programs to direct the entire operation of the cell, one cannot afford to meddle with this basic information.

Glutathione is also located outside the cells in blood serum and lymph (more of this in volume II), and there it is found among the external antioxidants deriving from the fOod. These antioxidants are put to work outside the cells where some oxidants and toxins are found after ejection from the cells detoxification program, and are removed from the cells by normal processes as products, e.g., uric acid.

Some antioxidants can penetrate into the cell, the number depending on how many special carriers there are for a particular molecule to be actively transported through the membrane into the cytoplasm. Since very little glutathione penetrates into the cell, supplementation of the diet with glutathione is of only slight benefit. Glutathione outside the cell is veiy often mostly in the oxidized form, because when oxidized in the cell, glutathione is eliminated from the cell, so that the ratio within the cell remains favourable. Inside the cell, the ratio of reduced to oxidized glutathione should be 400:1, because only reduced glutathione is used to reduce the oxidized molecules, dangerous free radicals and toxins. It has much detoxification work to do outside the cell, too. When it is obtained with food, glutathione frequently becomes oxidized in the blood stream or in the lymph, so that the pool of oxidized glutathione outside the cell is much higher than inside.

Thus within the cell glutathione has to be synthesized continuously. Each and every cell does so for itself. There are two pools of glutathione: within the cytoplasm itself (ground cytoplasm) and in the mitochondria. As the mitochondria are largely responsible for energy generation, oxidation is very actively in progress there, and a great deal of glutathione is certainly required at that site. For glutathione biosynthesis the cell needs enzymes the glutathione synthase complex glutamic acid and glycine, which are common in our food, and cysteine. As cysteine, in contrast, is less widely available, we should look for good sources of this amino acid in the diet. Some foods appear to be better sources than others, and while it is toxic in the free form, dietary proteins having cysteine together with glutamine are optimal sources.

So, if we want to be good to our cells and thus to our body when we are still healthy, to prevent diseases, or to put our cells back on the track to health by removing toxins and stimulating the immune system, we should increase the amount of glutathione in our body. In both health and disease glutathione is our ally in helping our immune system cells and all other cells in the human organism to work 100%. To find how depleted the glutathione pool within our cells is, we should measure the intracellular reduced glutathione level in the blood (after lysis of the cells), and then try to boost its concentration by eating foods rich in cysteine, such as colostrum, buttermilk and whey protein. But only whey protein from unpasteurized milk is of maximum benefit, because there it is not denatured by the high temperature. Most of the molecules will thus be absorbed through the intestine and won't pass through undigested. Pasteurization causes protein to be denatured, like the protein in cooked eggs, and some or most of the reactivity, and hence value, of such protein is lost.

Colostrum was developed during evolution for boosting the glutathione level, and in that way to enhance the immune system of the newborn baby. Previously, as a fetus, it had every protection from its mother; and now is on its own, facing air pollution and all internal toxins, as well as viruses, bacteria and fungi. Colostrum is the best food for a child during the first ten days, after which its concentration is lowered, although it is still present in the mother's milk. After the human child is weaned it can still get the benefit of whey protein from cows milk, but we have to be very careful the allergenic properties of cows milk because of the different proportions of lactose and casein as compared to humans (see Table I).

Both young and adult human beings encountering the stress of existence, and of course an even greater stress when fighting disease, show a depletion of glutathione, so it is beneficial to stimulate glutathione formation in both health and disease.

Groups of scientists at McGill University in Montreal developed and patented a formula for the extraction of milk serum proteins in their undeiiatured form. Over 20 years ago Dr. Gustavo Bounous observed that experimental mice in his laboratoiy lived longer (up to 50%) when whey protein was added to their diet: He thought, is this the way to longevity? He then began experiments with healthy and diseased mice, which later were confirmed by researchers in Australia and the U.S.A. The healthy mice lived longer and had a higher glutathione level, but mice with cancer caused chemically by different drugs known to be specific carcinogens for colon cancer developed smaller and less numerous tumours. In further experiments, already existing tumours were found to be shrunk. The Australian scientists had similar results. Because colon cancer in rodents is very similar to that in humans both physiologically and morphologically, and reacts in the same way to chemotherapy, the reversal of tumour developMent by glutathione gives some hope to the cancer patient. In 2000, this diet-enhancing glutathione product was patented as an anticancer treatment, and has since been found to give good results with cancer patients (see next volume).

As Dr. Bounous compared cancer patients and excessively trained athletes, he found that the physiology of the cancer patients is under similar oxidative stress as those over trained athletes. Thus, the increased level of glutathione would be beneficial in both cases (more later). Dr. Lance of the Pediatric Hospital in Montreal compared the level of glutathione and performance of the McGill University students, and found that the group of students having whey protein in the diet in the form of lmmunocal had a higher level of glutathione (by 35%) and their long muscle and lung performance increased by 13%. We found with Dr. Gasiorowski from the Immunology Institute in Wroclaw, Poland, that granulocytes have 40% less free radicals if treated with Immunocal.

We have to remember that glutathione was discovered in 1888 as a molecule that is depleted in eyes with cataract and only a century later have we linked it with oxidative stress in different cells. In the case of the eye, it is because of the exposure of the delicate tissue (of the lens) to the UV radiation of sunlight and splitting of a water molecule (reaction at the end of this book, Fig. 7), forming a hydroxyl radical, a very dangerous free radical. As these reactions are cumulative, proteins in the translucent part of the eye become denatured and opaque, and this is followed by other oxidative stress-related disorders in that tissue. The more glutathione the more preventative it could be by neutralizing free radicals, and thus preventing or postponing cataract development.

I have personally observed improvement in cases of skin allergies and asthma in young people who use Immunocal for three to six months. I would attribute these to the removal of toxins formed during the fight of the immune system against allergens, and the drastic increase of antioxidants on glutathione itself at that stage. Glutathione improves the reactivity of the lymphocytes themselves and modulates the operation of chemicals in the blood (interleukins, interferons, neoplastons and others about which there will be more in the next volume and different cells included in the immune system.

Immunocal was introduced to the American market in 1996, and in 1999 reached doctors desks (Red reference book) as one of the very few natural products and food supplements that doctors in the U.S.A. can prescribe their patients. In many American states, it is covered by Medicare and Medicaid for older people and Aids patients.

AIDS patients have an immune system deficiency in which their own blood white cells start to undergo uncontrolled self-destruction, termed apoptosis. A high glutathione level prevents this apoptosis, and additionally would help to prevent malnutrition, a common condition in these patients. Moreover, a low-protein diet prevents Aids patients from absorbing a large number of chemicals as medication (they often receive therapy that includes over 60 pills daily to prevent opportunistic infections), which by itself leads to free radical formation. Glutathione, a detoxifier and antioxidant, must play the crucial role in this case.

Apoptosis was found to occur in Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, connected in some cases with a dramatic influx of calcium ions, Ca2± (under increased toxin concentration) into the cells, and there into the mitochondrdria. The cell membrane and mitochondrial membrane must, to neutralize the changed charge, either add electrons (which does not occur) or release protons (H±) on the other side of the membrane, a process facilitated by glutathione.

Further examples of the use of Immunocal supplements in boosting the glutathione level, and in that way preventing or sometimes reversing already existing diseases will be considered in the next volume. Further supporting examples have been given in the book, The ultimate handbook.

Follow this link to the beginning Alicjas main presentation.

Notice:
This publication is intended for reference only, not as a medical guide or a manual for self-treatment. If you suspect you have a medical problem, please seek competent medical care. The information here is designed to help you make informed decisions about your health. It is not intended as a substitute for any treatment prescribed by your doctor.

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