Glutathione. Here are seven ways to
boost your own natural production of this
incredibly important molecule.
Hi. I'm Dr. Chris Masterjohn of chrismasterjohnphd.com.
And this is Chris Masterjohn Lite,
where the name of the game is
"Details? Shmeetails. Just tell me what works!"
And today we're going to talk about seven
ways that you can boost your own
production of glutathione. Glutathione is
the master antioxidant of your cell; it
prevents wear and tear on your tissues,
helping you to age gracefully; it's
incredibly protective of your liver, and
your thyroid, and your lungs; it is the
master detoxifier, and it's extremely
important, as discussed in the last
episode, to preventing and controlling
asthma. So here are the seven things you
can do to boost your own production of
glutathione. Number one: get at least a
half a gram of protein for every pound
of body weight. If you're trying to
change your body weight, you can use your
target body weight. You may need to
consume more protein than this in most
cases when you're trying to do any goal
related to your body composition. But at
least a half a gram per pound of body
weight is going to be fine for helping
you make your own glutathione.
Then there's number two: glycine.
Get 1 to 2 grams of collagen or gelatin
for every 10 grams of non-collagen
protein, so if you consume 100 grams
of protein per day, get 10 to 20 grams
of gelatin or collagen. You can, if
you are getting plant protein as a
significant portion of that, you can cut
the amount in half to cover the plant
protein. Use the full amount to cover the
animal protein. You can get more of a
sense of how you can get this from foods
and supplements at
chrismasterjohnphd.com/glycinedatabase, and I'll
put the link in the description of this episode.
Number three: whey protein and raw milk.
Whey proteins are naturally present in
milk. Pasteurization hurts the whey
proteins, so if you look at the specific
whey proteins that boost glutathione
status, you get only about half of the
glutathione-boosting potential in
pasteurized milk that you would get from
raw milk. In whey protein,
you're isolating those whey proteins, so even
though whey protein is made from
pasteurized milk, you're still
concentrating the glutathione-boosting
power of those proteins in the whey
protein supplement itself, so both of
these are ways to use the same principle
to boost glutathione status.
Number four: carbohydrate. I don't know what amount
of carbohydrate you need to optimize your
glutathione status, but if you're
consuming less than 200 grams a day, I
would say that you could consider it
among one of the things to try to do to
help boost your glutathione status to
increase your carbohydrate further. I'm
not saying everyone needs to eat 200
grams a day. I'm just saying when you're
consuming anything under that, you're at
least on a moderately low-carb diet, and
it becomes plausible that you might
benefit your glutathione status by
increasing your carbohydrate intake.
Number five: magnesium. Magnesium is critical
to the production of glutathione. Without
it, you can't get enough. I've done an
episode on measuring and monitoring your
magnesium status. I'll link to it in the description.
Number six: fruits and vegetables. Actually,
fruits, vegetables, and spices. Shoot for the
five to nine servings a day of fruits and
vegetables in the official
recommendations, and a liberal use of
spices. If you're not getting that, you
can try supplements like milk thistle or
sulforaphane to try getting the same
benefit from the polyphenolic compounds
in those foods that are helping your—
telling your body to make more glutathione.
If you do use sulforaphane, I think it's
important to use it alongside 200
micrograms of iodine because
sulforaphane can prevent iodine from getting into
your thyroid gland, and if you're a woman,
into your breast tissue in the way that it should,
so I would use the iodine to
be on the safe side. If you don't have a
specific reason to use sulforaphane,
you're just trying to boost glutathione
status, then use the milk thistle instead
so you don't have to worry about that.
And again these are really to substitute
for not hitting the fruit and vegetable
targets. It's better to hit the
fruit and vegetable targets and to
use a lot of spices in your food in the
flavors that you like best.
The seventh thing is you need to make sure that if
you have any medical conditions that could
hurt your energy levels, that
you're dealing with them properly.
Dealing with medical conditions of
course is outside the scope of this
episode, but two big examples would be
diabetes, or anything associated with the
path to diabetes, or prediabetic levels
of insulin and glucose, or thyroid disorders.
Either of these are going to hurt
your ATP levels. ATP is the universal
energy currency of the cell and is
absolutely critical to glutathione production.
In addition to these things,
the B vitamins, thiamin, niacin, and
riboflavin, are all important to the
recycling of glutathione, and I'll hit
managing your status for those nutrients
Signing off, this is Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com.
And this has been Chris Masterjohn Lite.