Raising your Glutathione

If glutathione is manufactured within the body, what can we do to maintain or increase GSH levels? Some pharmaceutical drugs can do it, and so can some natural sources. Eating glutathione cannot. There are many ideas about how to raise GSH levels in the body but only a few actually work—and some of them have side effects. In order to take advantage of the great potential of GSH in health and disease we must dispel the myths and clarify the facts. This requires an understanding of the biochemical make-up of this important protein.

GSH is a tripeptide—a protein made up of three amino acids—in this case, glycine, glutamate (glutamic acid), and cysteine. The chemical structure of glutathione does not easily survive the digestive process, so eating it will not raise GSH levels. The body manufactures it within the cell from building blocks (precursors) of GSH in our food. Glycine and glutamate are readily available in North American diets, but cysteine-containing proteins are much harder to come by. Figure 12 shows sources of these three component amino-acids of glutathione.

Cysteine—a sulfur-containing, or "thiol" amino acid—is responsible for the biological activity (bioactivity) of the whole molecule. Cysteine as an isolated amino acid has trouble getting from your mouth to your cells. Much of it is broken down or altered in the digestive tract and bloodstream. So we must take cysteine in a form that resists breakdown. If the body doesn't get these sulfur-containing amino acids into the blood, we can't make GSH.

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