Glutathione: A powerful weapon against cancer and aging

Glutathione is nature’s favorite antioxidant. It’s powerful, and it sops up all kinds of free radicals before they can damage our cells.

by Dr. Frank George — 

Of all the antioxidants our body makes, glutathione is probably the most important. In fact, our lives depend on it. Without it, our cells would disintegrate from unrestrained oxidation — free radical damage. Our bodies would have very little resistance to bacteria and viruses, and our livers would shrivel up from the eventual accumulation of toxins.

Certain foods and environmental toxicity produce free radicals — little marauding molecules that react with oxygen and can break down cells and damage our DNA. As long as we breathe oxygen, we will produce free radicals. In one sense, the very breath that gives us life is also our mortal enemy. But nature, in her quest for balance, also created the body sources of antioxidants that deactivate free radicals. Nature keeps the two opposing forces in balance, as long as we are healthy.

Glutathione is nature’s favorite antioxidant. It’s powerful, and it sops up all kinds of free radicals before they can damage our cells.

For cancer patients, glutathione is a powerful tool. Cancer patients who undergo insulin potentiated therapy, IPT, receive low doses of chemotherapy and high doses of antioxidants like glutathione and vitamin C. IPT causes far fewer side-effects, partly because such a small amount of chemo is used, and partly because powerful antioxidants like glutathione are given to minimize the damage.

A lack of glutathione often plays a key role in the development of cancer. Without enough of it, the body cannot detoxify itself, and free radicals go about their business unchecked. Free radicals can damage the cell membrane and then damage the DNA — the genetic code and control center of the cell.

Cells bombarded time and again with free radicals eventually lose the ability to control their own division. A damaged cell can then form a neoplastic cell, which then makes more errant cells like itself. When enough of those are made, a mass becomes visible and is called a tumor. Antioxidants, especially glutathione, protect cells and prevent damage to your DNA.

Glutathione is also an important anti-aging tool because our bodies make less of it with age, and we use it up faster. Then nature’s balance is lost, because increasingly, free radicals are on the loose, unchecked. They accelerate the aging process because they gradually weaken the body’s functions.

Glutathione is not something you can take effectively as a pill because it does not survive the acids in the stomach. The only way to significantly add to your stores of glutathione is to take it intravenously.

The late Frank George, D.O., M.D.(H), was the first osteopathic physician in the United States to train with Dr. Donato Garcia Perez in IPT, and taught IPT to other doctors.www.icogaz.com.

Reprinted from AzNetNews, Volume 27, Number 4, August/September 2008.