The Mother of All Antioxidants - The Glutathione Revolution

Along with traveling the world educating practitioners on advanced biochemistry and anti-aging science, Dr. Patel also serves as adjunct faculty at the University of the Southern California School of Pharmacy where he is also an alumnus.

Books by Nayan Patel, Pharm D. S1 Ep 4:

Show Notes

The Glutathione Revolution

Dr Nayan Patel, Pharm D

Dr. Nayan Patel is a sought-after pharmacist, wellness expert, and thought leader in his industry. He has been working with physicians since 1999 to custom develop medication for their clients and design a patient specific drug and nutrition regimen. He has been the pharmacist of choice to celebrities, CEO’s and physicians themselves.

He recently published his first comprehensive book, “The Glutathione Revolution: Fight Disease, Slow Aging & Increase Energy.” After 11 years of clinical research on the master antioxidant, glutathione, Dr. Patel finally shares how powerful and essential glutathione is to the body’s detox system. He speaks about the various benefits it has with slowing the aging process down, and explains how you can increase your levels naturally. Dr. Patel is a firm believer in providing the body with tools it needs to defend itself and promote a healthy lifestyle that fits the pace of the modern world.

Nayan Patel, Pharm.D is globally regarded as the foremost go-to expert on absorbable forms of glutathione, and holds the only patent on transdermal glutathione. In addition to many other topics such as cellular function and hormone replacement, Patel is a highly sought-after global authority on the critical role in that glutathione, and all other antioxidants and endogenous molecules play in the body. Along with traveling the world educating practitioners on advanced biochemistry and anti-aging science, Dr. Patel also serves as adjunct faculty at the University of the Southern California School of Pharmacy where he is also an alumnus.

Dr. Nayan Patel’s Story

He has known for a long time how powerful IV glutathione is for patients
He has been infusing that for several years to many of his neuropathic patients
At the A4M meeting (LINK) Dr. Patel described this topical delivery mechanism
Barrett had the fortune to experience some very painful situations
- One, a shoulder where he couldn’t even lift it.
- After one application, it dropped the pain at least half and during the second application, it was like the shoulder had never even been hurt.
- He first became really impressed with it when some red ants ate up his wrist. The next morning after application, they were completely gone.
- He had a hornet bite to the end of his left ring finger, which was one of the most intense pains that he has had; it knocked the pain down significantly about 30 minutes or so.
  - He could move his finger, but stinger was still in there.
  - He continued to apply the topical glutathione, and woke up the next morning with zero redness, zero edema, and feeling like he had never even been stung.
- The hornet incident prompted Dr. Barrett to give Dr. Patel a call and reach out to you to say his interest in this product.
Barrett says it’s one thing to read a lot of journal articles, but clinical experience is a very powerful reinforcer.

What glutathione really is and how he developed a functional topical delivery form?

As a pharmacist, Dr. Patel like to work on molecules that has not just the symptomatic relief benefit in medicine, but a far-reaching solution to the root cause.
He found out that all symptoms are leading back to oxidative stress and the main thing that the body produces was glutathione.
Glutathione has been discovered since 1921.
There are lots of products on the market, but never nothing really works.
He and his partner in crime, Dr. Tran, got to work and see if they can figure out a better way to stabilize and deliver.
He was still working a job but, on the side, he started working on glutathione.
It took him about three years to implement different theories to discover a stabilized molecule.

How Dr. Patel’s Engineering Background Helped His Medical Practice

Patel had an engineering background, where every cause is a reaction
When he approaches medicine, he always looks for the actual cause of the problem
Most healthcare provider will think of a global approach.
It’s hard to look for simple answers.
In medicine, you will go through so much different things to find out what the actual cause is.
He compartmentalized the whole process; it helped him hone down on what he needed to work on.
Tran, his partner, was looking at a big picture, taking Dr. Patel’s information and putting it into practicality.
- Patel designed theories and Dr. Tran go in the lab and make the stuff that was just discovered in theory.
He never finished mechanical school because his heart was still in chemistry.
He really wanted to do something more in the chemistry world than the mechanical world.

How do we prepare the body to heal its own problems?

LINK

As a pharmacist, Dr.Patel fills prescriptions every single day
There’s 3000 medications in his pharmacy that he can honestly say helps with symptoms, but not the root cause of the problem.
He wants to get into the getting rid of problems section as rigid as possible
The only way is not to take control of my body, myself, but to give the control back to the body so that it can regulate itself.
Our body can heal its own problems.
What we fail to recognize is a body needs rest, nutrition, and a stress-free life.

“The mind and body, everything needs to come into alignment so the body can self-heal itself.” –Dr. Nayan Patel

The book has all these different things, a 14-day plan to get you started.
The 14-day plan has been Dr. Patel’s plan for the last 25 years. It’s his daily lifestyle.
It’s not something to boost and get healthy in 14 days; it’s to embrace this as a way of life

Developing Good Habits

Barrett says it takes a while to develop good habits.
It’s best to understand the biochemistry and the physiology behind it
- It’s like him not really wanting to have that artificial sweetener, and mess up the tight junction in his columnar epithelium.
- It gives him more of an impetus to not throw the artificial sweetener in the coffee in the morning.
The more that we can educate our patients, the more they will adopt these things to try to make them habits and routines of lifestyle.
Today, we’re just symptom treaters,
- Somebody with peripheral neuropathy who also has significant insulin resistance is not sleeping well and eating junk food right and left.
- It’s unrealistic for those patients to expect us to give them this magic pill.
- Sometimes we’re able to give them a Band-Aid on it.
- If your host isn’t ready for that pharmacology, then it’s going to be impaired in its efficacy as well.

“Once you take the time to educate them, they jump in full bore, and they come back and they’re better and more optimized.” –Dr. Stephen Barrett

The body is miraculous; it can heal up a lot of these things that are there.
Once we get the body straightened back up, let’s prevent it from getting these comorbidities

N-Acetyl Cysteine Glutathione Supplements

There are so many different supplements orally
You can take the comprehensive glutathione capsules or a subtler form of glutathione.

“Everything we try to do is trick the body that it will break it down into making glutathione.” –Dr. Nayan Patel

Unfortunately, any form that we take orally in the form of glutathione, either acetylated or pure, the body will break it down into various amino acids.
It’d be very easy to just take amino acids to begin with and let your body make glutathione.
The N acetyl cysteine, which is one of the three amino acids in glutathione, is so popular
Cysteine is the rate limiting step in making glutathione.
In our body, it’s not abundantly available in diet.
Taking supplementation of cysteine really helps the body with the raw material it needs to make glutathione.
We still depend on our body to have the ability and the enzymes necessary to produce the glutathione carotenoids.

How Aging Affects Glutathione Production

After the age of 30, you’re dropping roughly about 10% of your production of glutathione by every 10 years.
- People don’t realize that it’s not that we have reduced oppression by 10%, we have increased our toxic load in our body by 10%.
- Even the production is reduced by 10%, the ability for the body to detoxify is reduced by 10%; the toxic load is increased by 10%.
- That toxic load is not a short-term load that you just increase over time as an exponential growth.
By the age of 40-50, your pressure is only going down by 20 to 30%, but your need has exceeded what your body will ever be able to produce.
In the book, there were centenarians were tested who did not lose the ability to produce glutathione; they were genetically blessed.
- Not everybody is genetically blessed.
- Barrett thinks people that live to be 100 are genetically blessed from an insulin resistance standpoint as well.
- We’ve seen that in the literature: LINK

Glutathione as the Mother of All Antioxidants

“What is glutathione doing for us?” is like questioning, “what can money buy?”
- You can make a list of things that you can buy; there are simple things you cannot buy.
What glutathione does for a body is enormous.
- It reduces oxidative oxygenation, oxidative stress, which is any supercharge particles.
- It neutralizes them.
- We need oxidation in our body every single day
- Little stress is good for your body to improve resilience and improve the effectiveness of a body to perform.
- But once that is done, we’d like to reduce oxidative stress as fast as possible because too much stress is actually damaging your body of long term.
Free radicals are not bad for you; more exposure to free radicals for long durations is
- Water is not bad for you, but a piece of nail into the water is going to get rusted
  - You still need the water to clean the nails.
  - If you leave the nail long enough, it’s going to get rusted.
  - We don’t want rust on the nails, we just want it to be cleaned.
- Like water, glutathione is absolutely important for us to clean our body from inside.
  - At the same time, we want to make sure that that little oxidation is still happening every single day.
- What we are worried about is those organic phosphates or organic chemicals that we ingest from vitamins or food.
  - If they are fat soluble, they’re getting deposited in the body.
    - They get sequestered in the body that nobody can get to.
    - That will rust internally that your body has to clean up.
  - Glutathione improves the electron transfers and neutralizes the electrical charged molecules.
  - Glutathione can also conjugate with these chemicals and make them water soluble.
  - Barrett says that a lot of his neuropathic patients have some very heavy metal levels, such as mercury, lead, and cobalt.
  - Patel says the body produces glutathione to help keep it safe and sound from all these invaders that comes through the body all the time.
  - Glutathione is not the most powerful chelator out there.
  - Chelation is something that needs to be happening every second of your life

“Having glutathione levels optimized at all times, we will have a fighting chance to keep all these heavy metals in control in check.” –Dr. Nayan Patel

The heavy metals are not going to get deposited into small capillaries and give you neuropathy or diseases.
With glutathione in the long term, we have a fighting chance of not having to suffer because of toxicities.

Glutathione is one of those proteins that has a short life.

Glutathione is one of the proteins that has a very short life.
The life depends on where the glutathione is.
If it’s in the red blood cells, the body can keep it in there for up to two to three days
If it’s inside the mitochondria, it’s can stay longer
If outside the mitochondria, it probably stays in four to six hours
Once it gets into the plasma or outside the cells, it’s out in 10-15 minutes.
The original study was done in 2010: LINK
- Patel wanted to figure out if glutathione goes into the bloodstream in the first place
After application of glutathione, within 15 minutes, he saw a spike in blood levels
- He did a whole blood concentration at that time
- At 45 minutes, he saw a peak plasma and serum levels of glutathione
There’s an effective way to raise your glutathione levels.
He wrote the book, the Glutathione Revolution, for all the things he found out.
In 2020, the pandemic hit when the book got published.
In May of 2022, the first human trials were approved by IRB.
Glutathione stays in your blood for up to four to six hours.
In theory, it is actually getting inside the cells, because it stays in the plasma.
It was proven when they give IV glutathione.
- It stays in body for about 30 minutes
- All the glutathione is in the urine
The professor at the university has done about a dozen studies on glutathione itself.
- He’s claiming that we shouldn’t be seeing any reduction in oxidative stress to almost negligible in less than 72 hours.
- How you reduce oxidative stress from very high to zero and keep it that way.
The IRB has asked him to test mycobacterium avium; the original studies was on mycobacterium tuberculosis
- They have very good success with using supplemental glutathione and reduction of medication from one year to less than three months.
- If given the right form of glutathione, we might be able to eradicate mycobacterium itself.
The results should be available by end of September and the study should be published by December.

Glutathione is one of the most powerful anti-inflammatories I’ve experienced.

A lot of professional athletes use this product.
The athletes using the glutathione has noticed the recovery time has reduced into half.
- NSAIDs and other pain medications just masks the inflammation and pain, but doesn’t get them the recovery that they’re looking for.

“Glutathione is not just helping with the inflammation, but recovery is faster.” –Dr. Nayan Patel

There are so many stories like Bob’s
- His doctor diagnosed him with post herpetic neuralgias.
- He was suffering for years
- He had all the money in the world that money can buy but he was not enjoying life.
- The doctor gave him the glutathione product and told him to use it every single day and see what happens.
- 10 days later, the tingling has started going away.
- In about 30 days later, he was out of his wheelchair and using a cane to walk.
With diabetic neuropathy or neuropathy pain, Dr. Patel doesn’t have all the answers yet
When we help increase the glutathione level, it helps mobilize adipose tissue where it helps mobilize fat cells.
Glutathione has a positive effect on triglycerides, because that is also increasing fats in the liver.
Glutathione has a positive effect on insulin build up
Glutathione has a positive effect on reduction of those stress markers.

Why neuropathic processes are multifactorial and very complex.

Anybody who says they really understand neuropathic processes are not being truthful
There almost always is some component of a microvascular impairment and neuro inflammation
There’s a component of what’s happening with the toxins that these patients are exposed to.
Half of the idiopathic cases can be un-idiopathic just by a lot of testing.
There are multiple contributory factors.

“Unfortunately, there is no one rule that says a human can only have one cause or one etiology to their problem.” –Dr. Stephen Barrett

Anytime you can make the human more optimized, they will get better.
We have seen a lot of inflammation
We have medications to bring those inflammatory markers down.
Glutathione actually stops at the macrophage levels; that’s how it helps with the inflammation
Glutathione is nonspecific for all the different inflammatory markers.
Glutathione is hitting it higher up on the pathway
You don’t have to worry about all these different drugs that we have in our arsenal to treat one inflammatory marker
Glutathione just goes right to the top; it just cuts the head off.
- Is that what’s causing the reduction of the pain? We don’t have that answer yet.
- Are we seeing increase in blood oxygen concentration? The answer is yes.
- We have seen the aftermath of once we get to glutathione.
Somebody coming with oxygen saturation down to 70%
- While they’re doing the regular treatments, they put a glutathione.
- Within 24 to 48 hours, the SATs are back down to 99%.
- If we can improve one marker, people don’t have to suffer for shortness of breath, or go to ventilators, if they can just breathe in the normal of their own
When you give glutathione at a pace that the body is not accustomed to at one given point, it will trigger increased production of nitric oxide.
- Nitric oxide is good for you in a slow concentration.
- If you produce it too fast too much, it’s one of those oxidative species that is not good long term.
There are some people who are nitric oxide depleted
- Barrett thinks it’d be great to start having them apply a little Glutaryl and then test and see what happens.
- It may not be a bad thing that you’re seeing enhancement of nitric oxide after the glutathione administration, because most people are really severely low in it to begin with.

Topical glutathione is safe at any concentration for anybody.

There is no toxic dose for topical glutathione.
The FDA says that if you consume oral glutathione, it’s considered a GRAS standard.
- That means is safe at any concentration, any dose for anybody.
A study found that the baseline for glutathione to give you the best cost effective increase in your blood is 100 milligrams.
- That’s four sprays of Glutaryl or topical glutathione.

“Sometimes, the highest dose isn’t always the best dose.” –Dr. Stephen Barrett

Glutaryl Plus is a product available that doubles the concentration.
- Just because it’s more glutathione, doesn’t mean that it’s better
- Always check with your doctor
- If you have an acute problem that you will deal with, the Glutaryl Plus is great for you, because it’s going to get into the acute problems that you have right now.
- For maintenance, the Glutaryl 100 milligrams twice a day is all you need.
Glutathione is such an important molecule in the body
Your body has a way to recycle the glutathione.
- It recycles when glutathione, which is GSH molecule, gives the electron to neutralize a free radical.
- It becomes GS charged molecule
- Two GS charged molecules comes together and make GSSG molecule
- GSSG molecule is another inert product in our body; they call it oxidized glutathione
- GSSG and GSH tend to stay in equilibrium.
- This GSSG molecule will take electrons from vitamin C, COq 10, other antioxidants
- GSSG molecule was split again into two GSH molecules to regenerate itself
Patel’s theory is that Vitamin C is probably not an antioxidant.
- At low dose, it’s regenerating glutathione; at a high dose, Vitamin C is a pro oxidant
At low dose all these products are feeding to regenerate glutathione
Glutathione is giving up electrons neutralizing all the free radicals from oxygen and become GSSG molecule
- With the NADH and NAD, the pathway is regenerated.
- It regenerates the GSSG to back to GSH again
NAD, vitamin C, CO q 10, vitamin E, and all those things are soldiers and they call glutathione as a general; the general doesn’t die ever.
Majority of their antioxidant effect solely through their benefit to glutathione.
Vitamin C has some effect on increasing collagen
- Increasing collagen is a stimulation.
- This dimension only comes from oxidative species, not from redox species.

Glutathione hijacks your body’s own pressure.

Glutathione is made inside the cell, it’s not transported.
Glutathione is made within the mitochondria as well as within the cytosol
Cancer cells love glutathione; it doesn’t produce its own glutathione.
- It hijacks your body’s own precious glutathione
- When people have cancer, they are lethargic, tired, and fatigued all the time
Patel’s theory is that if he gives exogenous glutathione to a body, your endogenous pressure will go down.
- If that happens, there is a possibility that the cancer cell is not going to survive
- Because it doesn’t have the energy source from the human cells that is producing glutathione
- It’s possible that we can starve the cancer cells of glutathione by supplementing exogenously.
The ketogenic diet can also increase the production of glutathione on its own.
Cancer cells need a lot of energy from glutathione more than from the sugars.
Sugar is way bigger source of energy than anything else in the body.
This glutathione molecule that Dr. Patel have created is an engineered product
- It is a protein, but the size is shrunk the size mechanically
- Patel took the glutathione molecule itself in three-dimensional structure; three amino acids molecules in the three-dimensional structure.
Nothing goes through your skin, especially water.
When they put things in liposomes, that’s going to affect the transdermal bioavailability
A liposome is still forming lipid layers around the molecule.
- The hydrophobic part is outside and the hydrophilic part is inside to where that attaches to glutathione.
- The outside molecule will attach the lipid layers of your skin.
- By slow diffusion, it goes down; it’s a slow process.
- If you look at all the studies on liposomal technology, it doesn’t raise the glutathione levels for at least three to four weeks.
- That’s the reason why 25-27% of liquids reach maximum.
- Even if it increases the levels, it is not increasing in blood cells where we actually need it.
- That’s where the magic is happening, not in the outside.

Is there anything that you’d like to share about glutathione?

Glutathione is not a weight loss product at all, but people using this product are losing a lot of weight
Weight is a multifactorial problem
An analogy: if we live in our apartment complexes, 10 story high
- If something happened to on the sixth-floor apartment number six B, it doesn’t affect anything on apartment six A or one B, etc.; it’s just an isolated problem.
- Imagine the same apartment complex, no walls and no floors.
  - Everything can go up and down in the zero-gravity area and everything is free flowing.
  - If anything happens to somebody that was supposed to be in six A or six B, it’s affecting the whole body now.
- Weight is affecting the whole body
- If somebody has weight issue, they may have type two diabetes, fatty liver disease, fatigue, or hormonal issues.
- When Dr. Patel did this glutathione molecule region, he used a mechanical system to do that.
  - The mechanical system, dextrins, is already labeled on the product itself, also has a GRAS status by FDA.
  - That is a system that you find in your cereal box, and you’ll get packaged goods everywhere.
  - If you heard the word maltodextrins in your food item, that’s just one of the dextrins
  - There are literally hundreds of different textures out in the market today.
  - He used that to trap glutathione, change the structure, and send it to your body
    - When it goes to the body, the glutathione is released.
  - Now this mechanical system is now free to pick up fat.
- The highest pressure of glutathione happens in your liver.
  - Doctors have said in ultrasound of patients that the fatty livers diminished a lot.
  - Fatty liver is not just fat in your liver, it’s everywhere
- It may not be the glutathione that’s doing all this work, but the complex that we have created is what’s doing multitude of work
- Patel doesn’t want to make glutathione sound like it’s the Holy Grail of everything’s every single thing.
- The complex that they have created as a combination has a lot of synergistic effects going together.
- A pharmacist did a study on treating patients with high triglycerides whose levels were going down.
  - Obesity is not just fats in your blood or liver, it’s everywhere else
  - If you can trap those fats down, you reduce a triglyceride levels, NASH, and ALT/AST levels.