Article Summary:
- Glutathione is a key antioxidant found in high concentrations in the liver, where it scavenges harmful free radicals and facilitates their safe degradation.*
- This ‘master antioxidant’ supports many other bodily functions, including nutrient metabolism, vitamin C and E regeneration, and regulation of cellular events.*
- Optimum glutathione absorption in the gastrointestinal tract is a major challenge associated with the oral intake of glutathione nutritional supplements.
Oxidative stress is an umbrella term that refers to the processes in the body when oxidants (the molecules that are harmful to tissues and organs) outnumber the body’s antioxidants. Glutathione is the body’s most abundant non-protein compound in organic tissues that acts like an “antioxidant superhero”. Although it is naturally produced by the body, glutathione’s level can decrease with age, poor diet, lifestyle changes, and other negative factors, thereby potentially contributing to adverse health effects.
Below, we discuss how glutathione’s detoxification activity occurs in the liver to support your body’s optimal functioning,* and why you should include a glutathione supplement in your diet.
Glutathione and Detoxification — How This Master Antioxidant Supports Your Body
Let’s understand why liver detox happens and the critical role antioxidants play in shielding liver cells from free radicals.
The Role of Antioxidants in Detox
Oxidative stress results from an overabundance of reactive oxygen species (ROS) — or free radicals — in cells and tissues. While having ROS is an important physiological necessity to drive the body to produce energy in the Citric Acid Cycle, increased ROS production or an excess of ROS can adversely affects important cellular structures like lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids, eventually leading to various impaired cellular functions. Enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidant molecules, like glutathione, are part of the body’s natural cellular defense system that protects cells and tissues from ROS-induced damage.
Glutathione’s Role in Detoxification in the Liver
The liver’s main detoxification function is to filter the blood, and metabolize and remove harmful substances from our bodies. To mitigate the effects of these substances, there is a high concentration of glutathione in the liver that serves as a protective barrier. Glutathione detox in the liver works through:
- Regulating detoxification pathways. Glutathione and glutathione-related enzymes, including glutathione S-transferase (GST), glutathione peroxidase (GPx), and glutathione reductase, help regulate the liver’s complex detoxification pathways.*
- Scavenging free radicals. Instead of letting free radicals adversely react with the body’s cellular machinery, glutathione molecules ‘scavenge’ these harmful free radicals and help neutralize them in Phase I liver metabolism.*
- Safely degrading free radicals. During oxidative stress, the liver exports oxidized glutathione molecules into bile1 to safely degrade free radicals for elimination via stool.* In Phase II liver metabolism, glutathione molecules join the activated intermediates produced during Phase I to make them water-soluble for easier excretion by the kidneys in urine.*
The following table highlights the beneficial effects of glutathione for liver detoxification support.
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Beneficial Effects of Glutathione Detox in the Liver |
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How Glutathione Helps Your Body to Function Optimally*
The glutathione molecule holds immense potential for promoting the optimal functioning of the body.* Let’s review some of the ways the body’s ‘master antioxidant’ supports various functions.
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How Glutathione Supports Various Functions |
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A clinical trial3 studying the long-term effectiveness of oral glutathione supplementation concluded that daily consumption of a glutathione supplement increases the body’s level of glutathione. Owing to the critical role of this master antioxidant in promoting liver health, glutathione is widely used as a supplement in oral, topical, intravenous, intranasal, and nebulized forms.
Benefits of Including an Oral Glutathione Supplement in Your Diet
Although oral glutathione has been shown to be well absorbed in laboratory animal models, the efficacy of oral glutathione supplements for human use has been limited due to the challenge of determining its absorption in the gastrointestinal tract.
To address the challenge of glutathione absorption in the body, Tesseract Medical Research has formulated SafeCell® — an acetylated form of oral glutathione. Coupled with Tesseract’s revolutionary CyLoc® – DexKey® delivery system, Tesseract’s SafeCell formulation is developed for superior absorption and efficacy to better achieve the benefits of glutathione detox.* Tesseract’s unique nutrient delivery system directly releases each molecule of acetyl glutathione into the intestinal tract — billions of molecules at a time — one by one. SafeCell’‘s enhanced efficacy supports the optimal functioning of other antioxidants, down-regulating oxidative stress and up-regulating natural detoxification pathways.*
The power of Tesseract supplements lies in enhancing palatability, maximizing solubility, absorption and bioavailability, and micro-dosing a single or multiple nutrients in a single, highly effective capsule. Shop productson our website and learn more about how they support liver health.*
References:
1https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2596047/pdf/yjbm00117-0089.pdf Accessed 31 March 2023
2Chen Y, Yang Y, Miller ML, et al. Hepatology. 2007 May;45(5):1118-1128. doi: 10.1002/hep.21635.
3Richie JP Jr., Nichenametla S, Neidig W, et al. Randomized Eur J Nutr. 2015 Mar;54(2):251-263. doi: 10.1007/s00394-014-0706-z. Epub 2014 May 5. PMID: 24791752.
