Many are concerned about the toxic chemicals surrounding us in our environment today. How does glutathione help us with detoxification? Find out here!
Detoxification or detox is defined as the removal of toxins from the body. Toxins are considered to be poisonous substances. They may be classified as either organic or inorganic. Knowing these dangerous chemicals, and that they are capable of causing harm to you, either by contact with them or by absorbing them through your food, air, or water, or other means, is very important to your health.
Why should you be concerned about removing toxins from your body? Our food, air and water just 75-100 years ago was relatively safe. But in just one generation, the situation has changed dramatically. Knowing what are toxins in our food, environment, and home is important, and knowing how to protect ourselves is crucial.
You need a dual strategy to successfully deal with toxins. You need to prevent them from coming in and you also need to remove the ones that do make it in. You can avoid those that you know about, but some toxins make it in to our system every day. Glutathione is here to make sure you have the best defense – as a detoxifier of toxins you may ingest throughout the course of your day.
We have tens of thousands of toxins in our environment today, poisons that were not known just a hundred years ago. Our body has a large order to fill – to successfully help us to remove them as they come in. And with disease on the increase, it is becoming increasingly evident that our bodies need an extra boost to keep up!
Just how does glutathione work in its role of detoxification? Glutathione was first discovered in 1888 by De-Rey-Pailhade, but much was yet to be learned once it was found. It wasn’t until about 30 years ago that glutatione’s main role as a detoxifier was discovered. Now that there is growing evidence regarding the role of toxins and disease, and the powerful role that prevention plays, we have access to research that shows us just how glutathione keeps us from becoming full of poisons and toxic substances.
Your liver and kidneys are your main organs of detoxification, and therefore they contain the highest amounts of glutathione. If you didn’t have glutathione in your body right now, you would not be able to read this sentence because you would be dead from all of the poisons in your body. Really! And it’s not just humans that have this powerful protein at their disposal. Glutathione plays an important life-sustaining role in all vertebrates, and even in insects, plants and microorganisms!
Regarding glutathione’s role in removing toxins, a team of biochemists comprised of D.P. Jones, L.A Brown, and P. Sternberg from Emory School of Medicine in Atlanta wrote, “GSH has multiple functions in detoxification and its depletion has been associated with an increased risk of chemical toxicity….GSH can be depleted by different agents (and GSH) plasma levels vary with gender, age, race, and dietary habits.”
-Toxicology 105:267-274, 1995
They suggest as a result of their findings that we can measure the risk that environmental toxins pose to an individual by monitoring their glutathione levels. H. Lew and A. Quitanihila, physiologists at the University of California, saw that the increase in glutathione levels of physically fit individuals make them better equipped to handle toxic threats. – Eur. J. Drug Metab. Pharmacokinet. 16: 59-68, 1991
Along with R.J. Flanagan and T.J. Meredith at the Poisons Unit of Guy’s Hospital in London, they found that glutathione, in addition to being used for acetaminophen overdose, a frequent occurrence in England, that research will also show its potential to detoxify carbon monoxide, carbon tetrachloride, chloroform, and other harmful compounds – American J. Med. 91 (3C): 131S-139S, 1991
Acetaminophen has long been known to reduce protective levels of glutathione. You might be surprised to find out what many do every day that depletes their protective gluathione levels! The way glutathione works is as a chelating agent. If you are familiar with chelation therapy, substances are introduced into your system, so they can bind to the toxins and remove them from the body.
Glutathione does much the same thing. It binds to the toxins in your system with an enzyme called conjugase, and this process is called direct conjugation. This process is also described very well in the Physician’s Desk Reference listing for Immunocal, a clinically proven glutathione enhancer.
In this listing, it is explained that “Through direct conjugation, (glutathione) detoxifies many xenobiotics (foreign compounds) and carcinogens, both organic and inorganic…Glutathione augmentation is a strategy developed to address states of glutathione deficiency, high oxidative stress, immune deficiency, and xenobiotic overload in which glutathione plays a part in the detoxification of the xenobiotic in question.”
Chelation therapy works well, but it is invasive and needs to be performed by a medical professional. You can raise your glutathione levels in the comfort of your own home by taking in the building blocks every day as a drink or food. Once the glutathione binds to these toxins, they are neutralized and liquefied, and they can exit the body as harmless waste. Some of the common ways the toxins will exit the body are through the bowels, urine, and sweat.
Glutathione detoxifies a large number of pollutants, carcinogens, heavy metals, herbicides, pesticides, and radiation. Mercury poisoning is a concern to many people today, and glutathione successfully removes mercury from the body as well. We are continually exposed to these toxins every day through cigarette smoke, automobile exhaust, food preservatives, and dental amalgams to name a few.
We depend on glutathione to safely remove them. And glutathione enhancing substances are being used with increasing frequency in the field of toxicology, and they are having much success! So now you understand glutathione’s role as a detoxifier. Watch for our next edition of Glutathione Report that will answer the question: “How does glutathione give me energy on a cellular level, and how is it anti aging?”
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