Diet Coke Nutrition Facts How to Get Glutathione in Your Diet.
What foods facilitate the production of glutathione in your body?
What is glutathione? Glutathione is a tipetide made up of three proteins-- L-cysteine, glycine. and glutamate. Glutathione is a substance that is in every cell of your body. Glutathione is the guardian of your cells from the moment you are born and until you take you pass away. With insufficient glutathione you die. Production of glutathione is crucial for your cells to be alive and for you to be alive.
But can you just eat the right foods to produce your own glutathione?
If you lived in an environment where you had minimal stress, no toxins or pesticides, had great sleeping habits, didn't eat junk foods, minimal radiation and so on this would be possible.
Protein Power Life Plan, is a book, written several years ago by two physicians. They say, "We can't take it so we got to make it," referring to the fact that because the stomach acid breaks glutathione, as a supplement. apart we can not take it and it never gets into the blood stream much less into the cells themselves where it is needed.
"Although plants contain a generous quantity of antioxidants and antioxidant like substances, the most abundant antioxidant we have in our body we make ourselves and it's called glutathione and we make it from three amino acids, one which is cysteine (a sulfur containing amino acid)." Cysteine is the limiting one as it is in short supply.
Where can cysteine be found? Primarily it is found in a meat based diet-not in a vegetarian diet(except as noted below)--which explains why vegetarians and or vegans often have a suppressed immune systems.
"Glutathione is a muti-functional antioxidant and a whole lot more. One of its primary antioxidant functions is to recycle vitamin C."
Vitamin C's job is to neutralize free radicals. This is done by Vitamin C taking an electron from the free radical. The result is that vitamin C then becomes a free radical itself since it has an extra electron. However, it is a benign free radical--not capable of doing harm but no longer a functioning antioxidant.
To be recycled again and become an antioxidant, vitamin C must get rid of the extra electron. This is done by passing it along to glutathione. However, if there's insufficient glutathione, vitamin C cannot be utilized further, is dormant, and useless.
When glutathione takes this electron from the benign vitamin C, vitamin C is regenerated once again to become an antioxidant. As long as you have sufficient glutathione, massive doses of vitamin C are unnecessary as the glutathione continues to recycle the vitamin C which we get normally from fruits and vegetables.
"Glutathione also gets rid of hydrogen peroxide."
Hydrogen peroxide comes from fats damaged by free radicals. Damaged fats easily react with a mineral such as iron to produce hydroxyl radicals (OH-), "the hydroxyl radical, the most dangerous and unstoppable free radical of all. Glutathione gobbles up these peroxides before they have a chance to create the hydroxyl radical." That's the power--glutathione's power.
Glutathione is also a detoxifier-especially in the liver where the sulfur containing portion of glutathione combines with many toxic substances like mercury, lead, bismuth, cadmium and so on to neutralize them. They are then escorted to the kidneys for disposal in the urine. With an increase in glutathione and a lot of toxins with which to deal sometimes the kidneys can't get rid of the toxic waste fast enough resulting in a build-up of toxic waste in the bloodstream. The result is the typical detox reactions of headache, flu like symptoms, nausea, skin rashes and so on until the toxic waste is eliminated from the body.
Toxicity is not limited to heavy metals but also includes pesticides and drugs-both illicit such as marijuana, coke, and so on but also legal drugs such as alcohol and acetaminophen (the common pain killer found in Tylenol). The toxins damage the liver because "these substances deplete the liver of its protective glutathione allowing a build of liver poisoning toxins."
Strenuous exercise also drains the body of glutathione? This is because certain exercises increase the metabolic rate; and when this happens free radicals are the result--the more vigorous the exercise, the higher the level of free radicals that are being produced. Proportionally the levels of glutathione are depleted.
This is why sore throats, colds, and other respiratory infections are typical for long distance runners. And this is magnified by those who "avoid a meat based diet in the mistaken notion that a vegetarian diet is more helpful for them."
Anyone who engages in exercises of long duration must increase glutathione levels by consuming sulfur containing amino acids as found in meats and eggs; and by taking alpha lipoic acid which recycles your glutathione.
In summary, diet wise to produce glutathione, eat meats and eggs. Egg yolks are high in sulfur and its best not to scramble them as scrambling causes oxidation of the sulfur in the egg yolk rendering it useless before you eat it.
Selenium is also necessary to boost glutathione. It is found in meats, sea food, broccoli, onions and so on.
With regard to vegetables, those high in cysteine are leeks, red peppers, garlic, broccoli, and brussel sprouts. Other foods are wheat germ, granola, yogurt, whey protein, and cottage and ricotta cheese.
Intravenous injections can also boost glutathione but glutathione is a large molecule and it's difficult for it to traverse the cellular membrane to get into the cell where it is needed.
Whey protein has cysteine but you have to take a lot which brings calories. Immunocal is a glutathione accelerator based on this approach, however, it's a drink high in calories with only about a 20% boost.
Within the last four years a new product has been discovered--a double blind clinical study placebo controlled crossover study demonstrates that it boost glutathione production in the cells by 276% over a two week period of time.
Diet Coke Nutrition Facts.