Glutathione and Cell

Glutathione is a small protein produced naturally in every cell of our body. It is made up of three protein building blocks, called amino acids. These are cysteine, glyceine, & glutamic acid. Your body produces glutathione inside every cell of your body, or that cell would quickly die. The levels of glutathione produced naturally is enough to keep the body working optimally under 'normal' conditions. Increasing levels of environmental pollutants and prolonged exposure to stress are depleting your body’s stores of glutathione increasingly fast.

The liver uses glutathione to process; alcohol, caffeine, medications, nicotine as an example, to process such substances and remove them from the blood. It also helps in the filtering of alcohol and other toxic substances from the blood. It helps in the processing of drugs and medications absorbed through the digestive system,, enabling the body to use them effectively and ultimately dispose of them. Reduced glutathione plays a critical role in the cellular detoxification processes including the metabolism of peroxides, the conjugation with electrophils and the scavenging of the free radicals. The relevance of glutathione in ethanol metabolism consists mainly in compensating for alcohol-related oxidative stress. Glutathione acts as a detoxifying agent by combining with undesirable substances and ridding the body of them through urine and bile .

White blood cells are the body’s major defense system. They need glutathione in order to *function *properly. By raising the levels of GSH glutathione, the body's master's antioxidant, the body can produce more white blood cells Glutathione depletion will eventually exhaust any ability of the white blood cells to keep fighting, which means: You lose the battle.

"The liver is the major storehouse for glutathione. Glutathione is impaired in alcoholic hepatitis as well as in viral hepatitis A, B, and C. Raised glutathione levels restore liver function." - American Journal of Gasteroenterology 91: 2569-2573, 1996