Taylor Zentz (00:00)
Today we have Dr. Nayan Patel, Chief Scientific Officer of ThriveLab and the author of The Glutathione Revolution. Dr. Nayan Patel is an internationally recognized expert consultant and lecturer on glutathione. Dr. Nayan Patel holds the only patented to transdermal glutathione as well. He is also the Chief Scientific Officer of Thrivelab and today he will share his wealth of knowledge on glutathione, a protein that fights disease, slows aging, detoxes our systems and overall enhances our health and so many other benefits that he'll dive into. We will explore the best ways to increase your levels and how it builds your immune system and the most effective way to dose glutathione. So welcome Dr. Nayan Patel. Can you please tell us a little bit about your background in pharmacy and research into this master antioxidant glutathione?
Dr. Nayan Patel (00:55)
Absolutely, Taylor. So thanks for having me today on this podcast. It's amazing. It's my pleasure to be here today. My whole idea, my whole goal started from very early on because my mission was in life is just to be educated and to educate others. That was my whole goal and when I first found out that there's one molecule in our body, which is glutathione, that can have a major impact in my life's journey as I age, I figured I need to figure out this thing out as to how to improve those levels in my body. And so very early on as soon as I came out of pharmacy school went into a private practice and started doing the research on glutathione immediately and it didn't take me too long maybe like three or four years into my career and my first project I landed was to work on glutathione. So yes I have been working on for a very long time, and the main reason for working on glutathione is because glutathione can affect oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is actually linked to 80% of all diseases that are associated with oxidative stress down. Yes, at Thrivelab, we work a lot with the hormone replacement therapy. We do a lot of age management conditions and help optimize their personal health journey and the hormone journey. But we need to, I need to, make sure that the oxidative stress is low enough for the body to respond to the hormones we can about to prescribe them. So anyways, that's my journey. I chose this molecule. In the pharmacy, I have over 3,000 different molecules, prescription drugs that we sell. But guess what? Nothing actually get rid of the problem. They will all manage the problem. And I'm done managing the problem. I want to help people feel better and get better. And so, glutathione is one of those molecules that has a profound impact in my life's work on my patients. So, I'm here to share this information with you.
Taylor Zentz (02:53)
Can you elaborate on what this supplement is, where it occurs in the body, and why we need it?
Nayan (02:59)
Absolutely. So earlier you said in the introduction that glutathione is a protein. In reality glutathione is just a tripeptide. It's a very simplest form of protein. And the reason we talk about glutathione so vastly is because it's the most abundant molecule produced in the human body. So, that is one of the reasons why we want to make sure that if it's the most abundant molecule produced in the human body, we want to make sure that there's enough for all of us in there. And so my work has figured out how to get this enhanced inside your body, either through supplementations, through reducing the usage of glutathione in the body so you have more abundant available when you do need them, or try to figure out how else can we enhance it by food and other modalities?
Taylor Zentz (03:52)
When you say it's the most abundant molecule in the body, does that mean that it affects all of our organs, all of our systems?
Nayan (03:59)
Yes, it does. It's most abundantly found in the liver. And because, keep in mind, liver is your cleaning powerhouse organ, you know, it's like a garbage disposal. And it processes every single thing in your body and try to get rid of it. From toxic chemicals to heavy metals to any charged molecules that be exposed to. So all those things have to be neutralized, have to be conjugated, have to get rid of it from your body. So yes, it's high in the liver, but guess what? Every single cell in your body has glutathione.
Taylor Zentz (04:35)
For someone that's interested in naturally increasing glutathione, whether it be a supplement or other means, what would you recommend?
Nayan (04:45)
So, when you talk about naturally to increase glutathione levels, I don't consider supplementation as a natural process. I consider naturally as can I get from diet? Can I change my behavior pattern to the point where I have enough glutathione in my body? So keep in mind, our body produces enough glutathione for us to survive. If your body cannot produce glutathione at a very early age, you'll find out. If your body cannot detoxify yourself, I mean, you have all kinds of issues happening. I mean, patients, one of the simplest example is patients with spectrum disorder, autism or Asperger's. I mean, sometimes their body, these kids cannot detoxify themselves and they're full of toxins. And all of a sudden we figure out that, hey, if I can improve the glutathione level, the symptoms disappear. The disease is still there, but the symptoms disappear because the symptoms, they're getting are associated with overburden of toxicity inside the body. So yes, when I talk about supplementations, I'm talking about supplements using some foods. And second part is to also reduce the exposure to chemicals or UV light or something that is all these chemicals, toxicities that are actually depleting your glutathione levels. So there's two things you can do.
One, diet. In your diet, you need to have cysteine-rich foods. Glutathione comprises of three amino acids, cysteine, glutamine, and glycine. So we have enough of the glycine and the glutamine in our diet. What we do not have in our diet abundance is cysteine. So if you can just put in your favorite search engine, cysteine-rich foods, and you get a list of foods from meats to plant-based, to all those things, hey. Cysteine-rich foods will actually help the body make its own glutathione. So that's one way of doing it.
The second way of course is reducing exposure. You gotta do two ways, right? You're gonna either take something to get more levels or reduce expenses down so you have more abundance available and then reduce expenses down again If you are in sunlight cover yourself up right cover yourself as much as possible. Exposure to sun is good for about five or ten minutes per day. But if you are out in the sun for 2-3 hours a day, it actually produces a lot of oxidative stress and it depletes a lot of this glutathione. Exposure to known chemicals like alcohol, for example. Alcohol uses a lot of glutathione. If you are exposed to chemicals in your pollutions or your water or your foods you eat, all those have to be processed and uses a lot of this glutathione. So, yeah. When we're talking about supplementations. I'm more talking about, I'm more worried about the natural way and my book, ‘The Glutathione Revolution’ has a 14-day plan to boost your glutathione levels naturally. It's my personal lifelong diet the last 27 years that I eat every single day to constantly boost my glutathione levels.
Taylor Zentz (07:57)
We'll definitely link your book in the show notes of this podcast so that everyone can have that as a resource. So, glutathione has been well known for over 30 years, but it has been more popular to the general population due to the advent of new technologies. So some of these older forms of delivery are like capsules or IV or liposomal delivery, which is what I currently take it as. So I wanted to ask about your patent and why transdermal topicals are better in your opinion.
Nayan (08:30)
Absolutely. So I did not set out to deliver transdermal form of glutathione. So what I did was I follow the signs. My first project at the pharmacy was to stabilize glutathione outside the human body. So when I first stabilize the glutathione outside the human body, the next part was how do we get inside the body? I mean just because you swallow a capsule or drink a liquid, it doesn't mean that it's inside your body in every cell. And so when I started looking at the signs of all the traditional form of glutathione , which is I mean capsules that you swallow by mouth or the intravenous form that you inject in your bloodstream and you assume that just because you inject the bloodstream, it's in the blood so it's going to get it all over the body and you'll be fine. In reality, that is not even true. And so I'll give a simple thing about the IVs first because when I was, I used to be one of the company pharmacy in the United States where I used to make all the IV-glutathione and even though we knew this was not the best option, that's the only option we had to get inside your bloodstream. So the study was done in 1991 and it was published at the PubMed where they were injecting two grams of IV push of glutathione and what they found out was 100% of the glutathione stayed in the plasma and nothing ever entered the blood cells. And because of that, the kidney filters it out in about 5 to 23 minutes. Everything is out of your system in the urine and you just, you probably have the most expensive urine in about 20 minutes. Everything got peed out. And so, okay, we knew that back in 1991. And so in 1999, I started working with liposome technologies early on because I thought that was superior technology at that point. So I started working with that one. And very quickly I found out that that was not working for my patients either. And sure enough, about 10 years later in 2011, at the University of Texas in Austin, they did a study, where they took kids with autism and gave them liposome form of glutathione and what they found out was in the blood they saw an increase of all the amino acids but no glutathione. The glutathione levels went up, eventually went up higher so the conclusion from the researcher was that we do not know why there was a certain spike of all these amino acids in the blood but we did see a level of glutathione rise hours later on. So what we assume that the glutathione was actually getting broken down, the cysteine was getting reabsorbed, and we're getting used to produce glutathione again. And all this is true because our body does not have the receptors to accept this glutathione from outside sources and incorporate into our human cells. So our technology when we first discover when we first working on, we use dextrin type polysaccharide type molecule to actually combine them with glutathione to get it more sequestered. And that polysaccharide molecules actually can bind to the red blood cells and deliver glutathione into the cells directly. So that's our technology. When we first discovered it, it was so new for us. I mean, it took me almost 13, 14 years working with physicians all over the United States to really figure out. How can I deliver it? How much to give? How often to give? And how long can they wait to get the results in for? So the technology, we just follow the signs. When you apply your skin, you apply it on the non-hairy part of your body because when you apply it on the skin, it really, it starts processing on your skin cells. It starts getting delivered to the skin cells first and then from there, it transports the rest of the body through the cells.
Taylor Zentz (12:24)
How often do you have to reapply glutathione? Is it once a day, multiple times a day to really see the best effects? Then also once you start, how long after you start a regimen of glutathione do you really start to reap the benefits?
Nayan (12:37)
Gosh, that's a really, really good question, Taylor. As you can understand, like everything in medicine, you have to know how much to give, how often to give, and if I do that part, when can I see the results? And what results am I actually looking for, right? So I said earlier that 80% of all diseases, conditions, issues that people suffer are due to oxidative stress. So I wish there was one thing that I can make a difference with the glutathione. But there are literally thousands of things. What one person suffers from due to oxidative stress is completely different from somebody else. So I have no idea how people, what conditions people have or what they're suffering with, but if it's oxidative stress issues related, they're gonna see a major difference in a very short amount of time. The time short is, I'm gonna define it very quickly now. So in my research I figured out that once you apply the glutathione in your body, if it goes into the red blood cells, how long does it stay in the red blood cells? And how fast can it get out of the system? So what we found out was it stays in the body for about four to six hours. 50% of the glutathione actually gets oxidized and gets reused again. And so this is a very crucial thing because not every glutathione molecule that is produced by human body gets destroyed. 50% of it gets recycled to produce glutathione again. So, I have to take into account that 50% gets recycled, 50% gets destroyed. So if I give you a daily dose of this glutathione, how fast can I get to a point where the glutathione levels always in the body, is always high enough to do the job it's supposed to do. So what we found out was four sprays of the glutaryl that we have, the name of the product is called glutaryl, is four sprays of glutaryl which delivers approximately 100, 112 milligrams will get you decent levels of glutathione in your body for about four to six hours. And so if you use it twice a day, every single day, it's not 100% coverage for the rest of the day, so you still have to depend on your body's ability to produce the glutathione, but it'll give you a good eight to 12 hours of coverage. And if 50 % of the game gets recycled over time, that into 12 hours can get to 20, 24 hours. Four sprays twice a day gets me the best way to get there and the results are seen in as little as 15 days. I mean, keep in mind, there are people that have gene mutations, people that cannot produce glutathione from a very early on in their life, they are going to see a difference within 24 hours. But average person, which we are otherwise healthy, no other problems, we have not have any issues, they're going to see some changes in about 15 days. It'll be subtle, it won't be dramatic, it won't be like earth-shattering change, it's not going to grow hair for sure, you know, look at me. But it's going to be enough for them to feel the difference and say, you know what? I do feel better. I have a little bit more energy. I have a little bit more pep in me. I can do things. I'm not tired anymore. Subtle changes, right? It's not a full-blown effect. It's not a disease or anything else like that. It's not a condition we're treating with. All we're doing is we're just detoxifying the body. When the body gets clean from inside, it just functions better. It just runs better.
Taylor Zentz (16:13)
It seems like glutathione, disclaimer, it's not this magic cure-all supplement like everyone paints it out to be, which is fine, but it takes also into account the oxidative stress within your lifestyle and your nutrition as well and other things that are going on within your day to day that could be depleting your natural levels of glutathione to determine how fast and how well this product is going to work for you. So it's more so a way to optimize an already great routine to get the best results.
Nayan (16:46)
Absolutely, and this is, I mean, I see patients, I work with all the providers at Thrivelab, I work with them on a daily basis, and we see this manifestation of oxidative stress comes up in various forms, right? Yes, they come to us for hormone health, but besides the hormone health, if there's one thing I help them get better is glutathione. So it's on our platform, I would say, the majority of our customers that go on hormone therapy, they are also trying the glutathione for the first month or so and literally they are hooked on it, not as a drug but as the benefits they see from it. They really see that, okay fine, you know what, I'm getting hormone health but it takes me up to three months to get better with the glutathione. At least I'm not fatigued and tired. At least I have the energy to keep on doing, keep on doing what my provider, what my doctor wants me to do. So it's been a game changer and I'm so happy that we have something to offer them. So many times as a physician, as a pharmacist, when people come to us, can you help me? And we say, no, I have nothing to offer you. I mean, isn't it sad that we know so much about medicine, but yet we have nothing to offer to help them relieve the pain or the suffering they have. And so having this in our arsenal in my tool bag has been a game changer.
Taylor Zentz (18:14)
Absolutely. Now at Thrivelab, we treat patients based on symptoms. If they have a certain level of symptoms, symptom severity, then we will prescribe them hormone therapy and get them started to see how they feel after starting hormone therapy. Is glutathione very similar in the testing process to determine whether you have low glutathione levels? Do you just ask a patient about their lifestyle and other things like that to determine if they could potentially have or is there a test that they could do?
Nayan (18:45)
Yes, there is a blood test. You can test for glutathione levels in your blood. And I've done thousands of tests over my lifetime. And I'll tell you, I would say 99% of the people over the age of 30 have somewhat compromised glutathione levels. Either they don't have enough or they have barely have enough to be in the normal range, but nothing extraordinary. Under the age of 30, I would say a lot of people have good glutathione levels that the body is able to respond and produce enough of it. But then after the age of 40, 45, what has happened is there's a gap on how much your body can produce and how much your body needs. When the gap starts getting bigger and bigger, there comes the onset of forgetfulness, minor aches and pains, just fatigue and tired. It's simple things, if you don't sleep every single day, it's creating stress. What is the stress called? It's not a mental stress, it's an oxidative stress. So the body is getting tired physically by all this excess oxygen species inside our body that needs to be neutralized. So I don't ask questions as to what diseases they have. I know from the habits and lifestyle they have is if they're gonna be a good candidate or not. So simple stuff, right? If they can't sleep at night time, if they are fatigued all the time, or they have issues of, when we, all of our providers will ask them about medical history about, hey, do you have history of diabetes? Do you have history of cholesterol? What kind of diseases do you have? Patients that have multiple issues with asthma or border diabetes or you know what? My blood pressure is always okay, but sometimes it's high. Or my cholesterol is getting a little off the whack. Or I like to have at least one drink a week or one drink a day, oh my gosh. Or I like to smoke. You know, based on the behavior and habits, I know they're putting excess stress on the body. When they present with that extra stress, we don't go and explain that they have oxidative stress. We just put them on glutathione and let them experience the benefit of it for the first 15, 30 days. And they go, my god, doc, I feel really good. What did you do? Then they're listening to us and say, okay, this is what I did. This is what you have to do now on your part to reduce some of those bad habits that you may have. And so that way, you're not stuck on the medication for the rest of your life.
Taylor Zentz (21:14)
Can we dive a little bit into alcohol? A lot of the marketing surrounding glutathione talks about detoxing from your night out with glutathione the next day for liver detox so you feel better and your hangover isn't as bad. Would you say that that checks out or is that sort of the wrong way to look at it?
Nayan (21:37)
Well, so I have some inside scoop on this one. Very earlier in my career, this is back in the early 2000s, which is 24 years ago, we actually introduced mobile glutathione clinics in Las Vegas after a night out. Party. Oh my God, I know. So tell me about it, right? So we were doing that. I was working with physicians in the Vegas area and the doctor said, my God, we have a problem over here where people are just not being very smart. They over drink, they over consume alcohol and the next day is they're horrendous. And it's all in the name of fun, but it's really affecting the health, right? Even though the doctors I was working with, they were not their primary care physicians or taking care of overall health. All they were trying to do is try to help these people, I would say. I would say kids, but they're not kids, they're all adults. They're acting like kids. That's what I'm saying. They're not kids, but they're acting like kids. I said, hey, can we help these people to do two things? One, let's hydrate them properly.
Nayan (22:51)
And then the second part is we know glutathione is great to act as an alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme to process the alcohol from your liver. So if we can get this glutathione to these people, we will help them metabolize this alcohol so that at least they have a good chance of tomorrow morning waking up without having any major issues, right? And so the doctors, yeah, sure enough. At that time, the only thing we had which was proven was intravenous form of glutathione. So we introduced this one just to help those people and they thought that, my God, if I can inject glutathione, then I can drink more. There's only so much you can do with glutathione. It's not a whole, it's not a, you can drink it as much as you want if you are piss drunk on the floor, I'll come and inject some glutathione and you'll be fine in the morning. I wish it was true, but low levels of alcohol, actually glutathione is a great antidote to reduce the alcohol content from your body. So yeah, so that's a history. So talking about alcohol, alcohol is a solvent. I'm a chemist, I can talk solvents and chemicals. But when I talk solvent, they were like, that sounds bad. I said, yes, it is because it is bad, right? Solvents, if you think about it, we use in the chemistry lab to dissolve toxins to get rid of it. Right? And so when you drink alcohol, it's like, yeah, you're putting a known toxin, low grade, refined, tastes great, right? But at the end of the day, it's still a low grade toxin that you're putting inside the body. If it's low enough, it's not a big deal, but if you over-consume, of course, it's a problem. But if you drink alcohol, it is actually depleting your glutathione levels on a daily basis. It is, right? So I always say that, okay, I'm not saying not to drink alcohol, but I'm saying that, hey, if you're in a habit of drinking alcohol, then make sure everything surrounding that, optimize your glutathione levels by eating the right fruits, you know, reducing everything else in terms of exposure, take supplementations, whatever.
To improve the glutathione levels because alcohol will deplete the glutathione levels. Today, 2024 now, we know a lot about our genes. We can see gene snips as to what is there, what is not there, how a body produces some chemicals that we're exposed to. One person can smoke a cigarette all day long until they're 120 years old and nothing happens to them. And somebody can smoke for one cigarette a month and all of a sudden they're 50, they have lung cancer. Right? And so how do you differentiate between those two people? It's how your body is able to detoxify. So if you have a gene mutation where your need for glutathione is extremely high, right? If the needs are very high, then yes, supplementation is the only option you have because you cannot consume enough foods to really keep up with the demand that you have. If you want to just have the foods, take care of it, then you really have to focus on reducing your expenses by not consuming any alcohol, not having any sun exposure, not having any pollution exposure, not having any chemicals slap on your body in terms of cosmetics or shampoos and conditioners. I mean, there's a whole slew of things, right? So you can do those kinds of things to either reduce your exposure or you can have to take supplementations. Now, the other part is that if you're otherwise healthy, right? Yes, there are plenty of foods out there that you can consume that can help you improve the glutathione levels. Now, I told you there are three amino acids, cysteine, glutamine, and glycine. Cysteine is the rate-limiting step. What I mean by that is that, that's the molecule that is not available all the time in our diet. So if you just consume cysteine-rich foods, you're gonna get enough cysteine to produce gluten out of your body. So yes, the cysteine-rich foods are something like asparagus or avocados, cruciferous vegetables. So, I'm a vegetarian most of the time, so I can mention those part, but yeah, you can find turkey and chicken as well.
Taylor Zentz (27:15)
What would you recommend to a consumer to look for when choosing a glutathione supplement?
Nayan (27:22)
So today, as you know, Taylor, today's consumer is far smarter than everybody else. They're very, very well informed. And we want to make sure that the consumers, when they are given the information that is based on science and research. And so I want to inform our audience today is that, please, please, please, please review the science on glutathione. I have spent my life, 20 plus years of my life researching just one molecule, you know, and the reason is because it is very fascinating. I've known that about glutathione can have a major impact in our health and longevity space, and so if I plan to live past 100 years of age, I have to make sure my glutathione levels are optimized. And so, researching glutathione and the correct form is very critical. And again, I know my form is topical and that's a science I have used, but then all the other technologies that exist today, there are multiple patented technologies that's out there on glutathione, but guess what the patents are on? One has the patents on the water they use. One person has a patent on how the levels are increasing. I said no. My pattern is very, very, very unique. It's a composition and delivery of the glutathione molecule through your skin. Simple, right? And so look at all the patterns. As a consumer, you're smart to understand. You can see through the mass media advertisement and look it up. So IVs may do the justice for you, but may not be enough. So liposome technology, it's great for most of the people, but it may not be good for everyone. And what we are finding out today is that there's a very small subset of people, maybe 5 or 10% of the population, they have as they age, they have this gene mutation where either they cannot produce glutathione or the needs are very high. And any supplementation that they take besides glutaryl, it's not gonna raise the levels to high normal.
At Thrivelab, one thing I can tell you, we're very, very focused. I'm very focused to help my physicians get the best product there is. And that's why we only have one glutathione product. I hope our listeners are out there not just taking my word for it and really checking me out to making sure that I'm saying things within my research and my development that I've done.
Taylor Zentz (30:04)
Amazing. Thank you so much, Dr. Patel. And on the topic of your research, can you let our listeners know about your book, ‘The Glutathione Revolution’, where they can purchase it and what they can find in that book?
Nayan (30:17)
Oh, absolutely. So the book that I wrote, ‘The Glutathione Revolution: Fight Disease, Slow Aging’, I truly believe that every single word on the cover. They can buy the book at their favorite bookstores. Amazon has it online. They can get the audible versions of Spotify or Audible has it too. There's a Kindle version of that one as well for really inexpensive pricing. I mean if you want to read the book, it's available, anything that you have, right, any gadgets you have. So the book that I wrote, I mainly wrote the book for consumers, right? My original plan was to educate the physicians, but then I quickly found out that that's just one chapter. That's just one chapter, and then what? I really had to talk to the consumers. And consumers, if I tell them facts, they'll forget tomorrow. So my book has a whole bunch of stories, stories of what I have done in my career, how I've helped people with glutathione, what the results are. You're gonna learn about what is glutathione, how does it help my personal journey, my family's journey, my patient's journey, in different aspects of from dealing kids with autism to my super elite athletes. I mean, we have some, one of the world best athletes that are patients of ours from Olympic athletes to highly organized sports like NFL and Major League Baseball and ice hockey and you can name the sports teams out there. We have patients from there, we have customers from them that have the needs for glutathione, that needs to reduce oxidative stress down to better have better performance for themselves. And so you're gonna hear that, you can read about all those things.
There's one story that is very dear to me that, not dear, but it's a very interesting story because we think glutathione is only for humans, but we were able to help a horse on glutathione. And this horse, it was, this horse was a four year old pony that is, that doesn't race anymore for money, but she still races for, as a filler. We put them on a glutathione supplementation like three weeks before the race and there was zero chance this horse will ever come into the podium, right? One, two, three. And to everyone's surprise, the horse won the race.
Keep in mind, horses are where? They're the carriage behind a diesel truck. They're constantly consuming these fumes, right? They're traveling, the stress is so high. And so if I can reduce the stress down, if I can reduce the burden of all this toxic exposure to the horses, the horses can perform better. Human beings are better than horses. So anyways, yes, please support me by getting the book from any place you want to get it. That's the only way you can support an author. So thank you for that. I appreciate that.
Taylor Zentz (33:24)
Thank you so much. Like I said, we will link it in the show notes. And thank you so much again for coming on today and sharing your knowledge. This has been super insightful. I think all of our community patients and those that are just coming across our podcast will really appreciate this conversation.
Thank you again for tuning in all of our listeners and just a reminder to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. It's the best way to support our podcast and continue conversations like these.
Today we have Dr. Nayan Patel, Chief Scientific Officer of ThriveLab and the author of The Glutathione Revolution. Dr. Nayan Patel is an internationally recognized expert consultant and lecturer on glutathione. Dr. Nayan Patel holds the only patented to transdermal glutathione as well. He is also the Chief Scientific Officer of Thrivelab and today he will share his wealth of knowledge on glutathione, a protein that fights disease, slows aging, detoxes our systems and overall enhances our health and so many other benefits that he'll dive into. We will explore the best ways to increase your levels and how it builds your immune system and the most effective way to dose glutathione. So welcome Dr. Nayan Patel. Can you please tell us a little bit about your background in pharmacy and research into this master antioxidant glutathione?
Dr. Nayan Patel (00:55)
Absolutely, Taylor. So thanks for having me today on this podcast. It's amazing. It's my pleasure to be here today. My whole idea, my whole goal started from very early on because my mission was in life is just to be educated and to educate others. That was my whole goal and when I first found out that there's one molecule in our body, which is glutathione, that can have a major impact in my life's journey as I age, I figured I need to figure out this thing out as to how to improve those levels in my body. And so very early on as soon as I came out of pharmacy school went into a private practice and started doing the research on glutathione immediately and it didn't take me too long maybe like three or four years into my career and my first project I landed was to work on glutathione. So yes I have been working on for a very long time, and the main reason for working on glutathione is because glutathione can affect oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is actually linked to 80% of all diseases that are associated with oxidative stress down. Yes, at Thrivelab, we work a lot with the hormone replacement therapy. We do a lot of age management conditions and help optimize their personal health journey and the hormone journey. But we need to, I need to, make sure that the oxidative stress is low enough for the body to respond to the hormones we can about to prescribe them. So anyways, that's my journey. I chose this molecule. In the pharmacy, I have over 3,000 different molecules, prescription drugs that we sell. But guess what? Nothing actually get rid of the problem. They will all manage the problem. And I'm done managing the problem. I want to help people feel better and get better. And so, glutathione is one of those molecules that has a profound impact in my life's work on my patients. So, I'm here to share this information with you.
Taylor Zentz (02:53)
Can you elaborate on what this supplement is, where it occurs in the body, and why we need it?
Nayan (02:59)
Absolutely. So earlier you said in the introduction that glutathione is a protein. In reality glutathione is just a tripeptide. It's a very simplest form of protein. And the reason we talk about glutathione so vastly is because it's the most abundant molecule produced in the human body. So, that is one of the reasons why we want to make sure that if it's the most abundant molecule produced in the human body, we want to make sure that there's enough for all of us in there. And so my work has figured out how to get this enhanced inside your body, either through supplementations, through reducing the usage of glutathione in the body so you have more abundant available when you do need them, or try to figure out how else can we enhance it by food and other modalities?
Taylor Zentz (03:52)
When you say it's the most abundant molecule in the body, does that mean that it affects all of our organs, all of our systems?
Nayan (03:59)
Yes, it does. It's most abundantly found in the liver. And because, keep in mind, liver is your cleaning powerhouse organ, you know, it's like a garbage disposal. And it processes every single thing in your body and try to get rid of it. From toxic chemicals to heavy metals to any charged molecules that be exposed to. So all those things have to be neutralized, have to be conjugated, have to get rid of it from your body. So yes, it's high in the liver, but guess what? Every single cell in your body has glutathione.
Taylor Zentz (04:35)
For someone that's interested in naturally increasing glutathione, whether it be a supplement or other means, what would you recommend?
Nayan (04:45)
So, when you talk about naturally to increase glutathione levels, I don't consider supplementation as a natural process. I consider naturally as can I get from diet? Can I change my behavior pattern to the point where I have enough glutathione in my body? So keep in mind, our body produces enough glutathione for us to survive. If your body cannot produce glutathione at a very early age, you'll find out. If your body cannot detoxify yourself, I mean, you have all kinds of issues happening. I mean, patients, one of the simplest example is patients with spectrum disorder, autism or Asperger's. I mean, sometimes their body, these kids cannot detoxify themselves and they're full of toxins. And all of a sudden we figure out that, hey, if I can improve the glutathione level, the symptoms disappear. The disease is still there, but the symptoms disappear because the symptoms, they're getting are associated with overburden of toxicity inside the body. So yes, when I talk about supplementations, I'm talking about supplements using some foods. And second part is to also reduce the exposure to chemicals or UV light or something that is all these chemicals, toxicities that are actually depleting your glutathione levels. So there's two things you can do.
One, diet. In your diet, you need to have cysteine-rich foods. Glutathione comprises of three amino acids, cysteine, glutamine, and glycine. So we have enough of the glycine and the glutamine in our diet. What we do not have in our diet abundance is cysteine. So if you can just put in your favorite search engine, cysteine-rich foods, and you get a list of foods from meats to plant-based, to all those things, hey. Cysteine-rich foods will actually help the body make its own glutathione. So that's one way of doing it.
The second way of course is reducing exposure. You gotta do two ways, right? You're gonna either take something to get more levels or reduce expenses down so you have more abundance available and then reduce expenses down again If you are in sunlight cover yourself up right cover yourself as much as possible. Exposure to sun is good for about five or ten minutes per day. But if you are out in the sun for 2-3 hours a day, it actually produces a lot of oxidative stress and it depletes a lot of this glutathione. Exposure to known chemicals like alcohol, for example. Alcohol uses a lot of glutathione. If you are exposed to chemicals in your pollutions or your water or your foods you eat, all those have to be processed and uses a lot of this glutathione. So, yeah. When we're talking about supplementations. I'm more talking about, I'm more worried about the natural way and my book, ‘The Glutathione Revolution’ has a 14-day plan to boost your glutathione levels naturally. It's my personal lifelong diet the last 27 years that I eat every single day to constantly boost my glutathione levels.
Taylor Zentz (07:57)
We'll definitely link your book in the show notes of this podcast so that everyone can have that as a resource. So, glutathione has been well known for over 30 years, but it has been more popular to the general population due to the advent of new technologies. So some of these older forms of delivery are like capsules or IV or liposomal delivery, which is what I currently take it as. So I wanted to ask about your patent and why transdermal topicals are better in your opinion.
Nayan (08:30)
Absolutely. So I did not set out to deliver transdermal form of glutathione. So what I did was I follow the signs. My first project at the pharmacy was to stabilize glutathione outside the human body. So when I first stabilize the glutathione outside the human body, the next part was how do we get inside the body? I mean just because you swallow a capsule or drink a liquid, it doesn't mean that it's inside your body in every cell. And so when I started looking at the signs of all the traditional form of glutathione , which is I mean capsules that you swallow by mouth or the intravenous form that you inject in your bloodstream and you assume that just because you inject the bloodstream, it's in the blood so it's going to get it all over the body and you'll be fine. In reality, that is not even true. And so I'll give a simple thing about the IVs first because when I was, I used to be one of the company pharmacy in the United States where I used to make all the IV-glutathione and even though we knew this was not the best option, that's the only option we had to get inside your bloodstream. So the study was done in 1991 and it was published at the PubMed where they were injecting two grams of IV push of glutathione and what they found out was 100% of the glutathione stayed in the plasma and nothing ever entered the blood cells. And because of that, the kidney filters it out in about 5 to 23 minutes. Everything is out of your system in the urine and you just, you probably have the most expensive urine in about 20 minutes. Everything got peed out. And so, okay, we knew that back in 1991. And so in 1999, I started working with liposome technologies early on because I thought that was superior technology at that point. So I started working with that one. And very quickly I found out that that was not working for my patients either. And sure enough, about 10 years later in 2011, at the University of Texas in Austin, they did a study, where they took kids with autism and gave them liposome form of glutathione and what they found out was in the blood they saw an increase of all the amino acids but no glutathione. The glutathione levels went up, eventually went up higher so the conclusion from the researcher was that we do not know why there was a certain spike of all these amino acids in the blood but we did see a level of glutathione rise hours later on. So what we assume that the glutathione was actually getting broken down, the cysteine was getting reabsorbed, and we're getting used to produce glutathione again. And all this is true because our body does not have the receptors to accept this glutathione from outside sources and incorporate into our human cells. So our technology when we first discover when we first working on, we use dextrin type polysaccharide type molecule to actually combine them with glutathione to get it more sequestered. And that polysaccharide molecules actually can bind to the red blood cells and deliver glutathione into the cells directly. So that's our technology. When we first discovered it, it was so new for us. I mean, it took me almost 13, 14 years working with physicians all over the United States to really figure out. How can I deliver it? How much to give? How often to give? And how long can they wait to get the results in for? So the technology, we just follow the signs. When you apply your skin, you apply it on the non-hairy part of your body because when you apply it on the skin, it really, it starts processing on your skin cells. It starts getting delivered to the skin cells first and then from there, it transports the rest of the body through the cells.
Taylor Zentz (12:24)
How often do you have to reapply glutathione? Is it once a day, multiple times a day to really see the best effects? Then also once you start, how long after you start a regimen of glutathione do you really start to reap the benefits?
Nayan (12:37)
Gosh, that's a really, really good question, Taylor. As you can understand, like everything in medicine, you have to know how much to give, how often to give, and if I do that part, when can I see the results? And what results am I actually looking for, right? So I said earlier that 80% of all diseases, conditions, issues that people suffer are due to oxidative stress. So I wish there was one thing that I can make a difference with the glutathione. But there are literally thousands of things. What one person suffers from due to oxidative stress is completely different from somebody else. So I have no idea how people, what conditions people have or what they're suffering with, but if it's oxidative stress issues related, they're gonna see a major difference in a very short amount of time. The time short is, I'm gonna define it very quickly now. So in my research I figured out that once you apply the glutathione in your body, if it goes into the red blood cells, how long does it stay in the red blood cells? And how fast can it get out of the system? So what we found out was it stays in the body for about four to six hours. 50% of the glutathione actually gets oxidized and gets reused again. And so this is a very crucial thing because not every glutathione molecule that is produced by human body gets destroyed. 50% of it gets recycled to produce glutathione again. So, I have to take into account that 50% gets recycled, 50% gets destroyed. So if I give you a daily dose of this glutathione, how fast can I get to a point where the glutathione levels always in the body, is always high enough to do the job it's supposed to do. So what we found out was four sprays of the glutaryl that we have, the name of the product is called glutaryl, is four sprays of glutaryl which delivers approximately 100, 112 milligrams will get you decent levels of glutathione in your body for about four to six hours. And so if you use it twice a day, every single day, it's not 100% coverage for the rest of the day, so you still have to depend on your body's ability to produce the glutathione, but it'll give you a good eight to 12 hours of coverage. And if 50 % of the game gets recycled over time, that into 12 hours can get to 20, 24 hours. Four sprays twice a day gets me the best way to get there and the results are seen in as little as 15 days. I mean, keep in mind, there are people that have gene mutations, people that cannot produce glutathione from a very early on in their life, they are going to see a difference within 24 hours. But average person, which we are otherwise healthy, no other problems, we have not have any issues, they're going to see some changes in about 15 days. It'll be subtle, it won't be dramatic, it won't be like earth-shattering change, it's not going to grow hair for sure, you know, look at me. But it's going to be enough for them to feel the difference and say, you know what? I do feel better. I have a little bit more energy. I have a little bit more pep in me. I can do things. I'm not tired anymore. Subtle changes, right? It's not a full-blown effect. It's not a disease or anything else like that. It's not a condition we're treating with. All we're doing is we're just detoxifying the body. When the body gets clean from inside, it just functions better. It just runs better.
Taylor Zentz (16:13)
It seems like glutathione, disclaimer, it's not this magic cure-all supplement like everyone paints it out to be, which is fine, but it takes also into account the oxidative stress within your lifestyle and your nutrition as well and other things that are going on within your day to day that could be depleting your natural levels of glutathione to determine how fast and how well this product is going to work for you. So it's more so a way to optimize an already great routine to get the best results.
Nayan (16:46)
Absolutely, and this is, I mean, I see patients, I work with all the providers at Thrivelab, I work with them on a daily basis, and we see this manifestation of oxidative stress comes up in various forms, right? Yes, they come to us for hormone health, but besides the hormone health, if there's one thing I help them get better is glutathione. So it's on our platform, I would say, the majority of our customers that go on hormone therapy, they are also trying the glutathione for the first month or so and literally they are hooked on it, not as a drug but as the benefits they see from it. They really see that, okay fine, you know what, I'm getting hormone health but it takes me up to three months to get better with the glutathione. At least I'm not fatigued and tired. At least I have the energy to keep on doing, keep on doing what my provider, what my doctor wants me to do. So it's been a game changer and I'm so happy that we have something to offer them. So many times as a physician, as a pharmacist, when people come to us, can you help me? And we say, no, I have nothing to offer you. I mean, isn't it sad that we know so much about medicine, but yet we have nothing to offer to help them relieve the pain or the suffering they have. And so having this in our arsenal in my tool bag has been a game changer.
Taylor Zentz (18:14)
Absolutely. Now at Thrivelab, we treat patients based on symptoms. If they have a certain level of symptoms, symptom severity, then we will prescribe them hormone therapy and get them started to see how they feel after starting hormone therapy. Is glutathione very similar in the testing process to determine whether you have low glutathione levels? Do you just ask a patient about their lifestyle and other things like that to determine if they could potentially have or is there a test that they could do?
Nayan (18:45)
Yes, there is a blood test. You can test for glutathione levels in your blood. And I've done thousands of tests over my lifetime. And I'll tell you, I would say 99% of the people over the age of 30 have somewhat compromised glutathione levels. Either they don't have enough or they have barely have enough to be in the normal range, but nothing extraordinary. Under the age of 30, I would say a lot of people have good glutathione levels that the body is able to respond and produce enough of it. But then after the age of 40, 45, what has happened is there's a gap on how much your body can produce and how much your body needs. When the gap starts getting bigger and bigger, there comes the onset of forgetfulness, minor aches and pains, just fatigue and tired. It's simple things, if you don't sleep every single day, it's creating stress. What is the stress called? It's not a mental stress, it's an oxidative stress. So the body is getting tired physically by all this excess oxygen species inside our body that needs to be neutralized. So I don't ask questions as to what diseases they have. I know from the habits and lifestyle they have is if they're gonna be a good candidate or not. So simple stuff, right? If they can't sleep at night time, if they are fatigued all the time, or they have issues of, when we, all of our providers will ask them about medical history about, hey, do you have history of diabetes? Do you have history of cholesterol? What kind of diseases do you have? Patients that have multiple issues with asthma or border diabetes or you know what? My blood pressure is always okay, but sometimes it's high. Or my cholesterol is getting a little off the whack. Or I like to have at least one drink a week or one drink a day, oh my gosh. Or I like to smoke. You know, based on the behavior and habits, I know they're putting excess stress on the body. When they present with that extra stress, we don't go and explain that they have oxidative stress. We just put them on glutathione and let them experience the benefit of it for the first 15, 30 days. And they go, my god, doc, I feel really good. What did you do? Then they're listening to us and say, okay, this is what I did. This is what you have to do now on your part to reduce some of those bad habits that you may have. And so that way, you're not stuck on the medication for the rest of your life.
Taylor Zentz (21:14)
Can we dive a little bit into alcohol? A lot of the marketing surrounding glutathione talks about detoxing from your night out with glutathione the next day for liver detox so you feel better and your hangover isn't as bad. Would you say that that checks out or is that sort of the wrong way to look at it?
Nayan (21:37)
Well, so I have some inside scoop on this one. Very earlier in my career, this is back in the early 2000s, which is 24 years ago, we actually introduced mobile glutathione clinics in Las Vegas after a night out. Party. Oh my God, I know. So tell me about it, right? So we were doing that. I was working with physicians in the Vegas area and the doctor said, my God, we have a problem over here where people are just not being very smart. They over drink, they over consume alcohol and the next day is they're horrendous. And it's all in the name of fun, but it's really affecting the health, right? Even though the doctors I was working with, they were not their primary care physicians or taking care of overall health. All they were trying to do is try to help these people, I would say. I would say kids, but they're not kids, they're all adults. They're acting like kids. That's what I'm saying. They're not kids, but they're acting like kids. I said, hey, can we help these people to do two things? One, let's hydrate them properly.
Nayan (22:51)
And then the second part is we know glutathione is great to act as an alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme to process the alcohol from your liver. So if we can get this glutathione to these people, we will help them metabolize this alcohol so that at least they have a good chance of tomorrow morning waking up without having any major issues, right? And so the doctors, yeah, sure enough. At that time, the only thing we had which was proven was intravenous form of glutathione. So we introduced this one just to help those people and they thought that, my God, if I can inject glutathione, then I can drink more. There's only so much you can do with glutathione. It's not a whole, it's not a, you can drink it as much as you want if you are piss drunk on the floor, I'll come and inject some glutathione and you'll be fine in the morning. I wish it was true, but low levels of alcohol, actually glutathione is a great antidote to reduce the alcohol content from your body. So yeah, so that's a history. So talking about alcohol, alcohol is a solvent. I'm a chemist, I can talk solvents and chemicals. But when I talk solvent, they were like, that sounds bad. I said, yes, it is because it is bad, right? Solvents, if you think about it, we use in the chemistry lab to dissolve toxins to get rid of it. Right? And so when you drink alcohol, it's like, yeah, you're putting a known toxin, low grade, refined, tastes great, right? But at the end of the day, it's still a low grade toxin that you're putting inside the body. If it's low enough, it's not a big deal, but if you over-consume, of course, it's a problem. But if you drink alcohol, it is actually depleting your glutathione levels on a daily basis. It is, right? So I always say that, okay, I'm not saying not to drink alcohol, but I'm saying that, hey, if you're in a habit of drinking alcohol, then make sure everything surrounding that, optimize your glutathione levels by eating the right fruits, you know, reducing everything else in terms of exposure, take supplementations, whatever.
To improve the glutathione levels because alcohol will deplete the glutathione levels. Today, 2024 now, we know a lot about our genes. We can see gene snips as to what is there, what is not there, how a body produces some chemicals that we're exposed to. One person can smoke a cigarette all day long until they're 120 years old and nothing happens to them. And somebody can smoke for one cigarette a month and all of a sudden they're 50, they have lung cancer. Right? And so how do you differentiate between those two people? It's how your body is able to detoxify. So if you have a gene mutation where your need for glutathione is extremely high, right? If the needs are very high, then yes, supplementation is the only option you have because you cannot consume enough foods to really keep up with the demand that you have. If you want to just have the foods, take care of it, then you really have to focus on reducing your expenses by not consuming any alcohol, not having any sun exposure, not having any pollution exposure, not having any chemicals slap on your body in terms of cosmetics or shampoos and conditioners. I mean, there's a whole slew of things, right? So you can do those kinds of things to either reduce your exposure or you can have to take supplementations. Now, the other part is that if you're otherwise healthy, right? Yes, there are plenty of foods out there that you can consume that can help you improve the glutathione levels. Now, I told you there are three amino acids, cysteine, glutamine, and glycine. Cysteine is the rate-limiting step. What I mean by that is that, that's the molecule that is not available all the time in our diet. So if you just consume cysteine-rich foods, you're gonna get enough cysteine to produce gluten out of your body. So yes, the cysteine-rich foods are something like asparagus or avocados, cruciferous vegetables. So, I'm a vegetarian most of the time, so I can mention those part, but yeah, you can find turkey and chicken as well.
Taylor Zentz (27:15)
What would you recommend to a consumer to look for when choosing a glutathione supplement?
Nayan (27:22)
So today, as you know, Taylor, today's consumer is far smarter than everybody else. They're very, very well informed. And we want to make sure that the consumers, when they are given the information that is based on science and research. And so I want to inform our audience today is that, please, please, please, please review the science on glutathione. I have spent my life, 20 plus years of my life researching just one molecule, you know, and the reason is because it is very fascinating. I've known that about glutathione can have a major impact in our health and longevity space, and so if I plan to live past 100 years of age, I have to make sure my glutathione levels are optimized. And so, researching glutathione and the correct form is very critical. And again, I know my form is topical and that's a science I have used, but then all the other technologies that exist today, there are multiple patented technologies that's out there on glutathione, but guess what the patents are on? One has the patents on the water they use. One person has a patent on how the levels are increasing. I said no. My pattern is very, very, very unique. It's a composition and delivery of the glutathione molecule through your skin. Simple, right? And so look at all the patterns. As a consumer, you're smart to understand. You can see through the mass media advertisement and look it up. So IVs may do the justice for you, but may not be enough. So liposome technology, it's great for most of the people, but it may not be good for everyone. And what we are finding out today is that there's a very small subset of people, maybe 5 or 10% of the population, they have as they age, they have this gene mutation where either they cannot produce glutathione or the needs are very high. And any supplementation that they take besides glutaryl, it's not gonna raise the levels to high normal.
At Thrivelab, one thing I can tell you, we're very, very focused. I'm very focused to help my physicians get the best product there is. And that's why we only have one glutathione product. I hope our listeners are out there not just taking my word for it and really checking me out to making sure that I'm saying things within my research and my development that I've done.
Taylor Zentz (30:04)
Amazing. Thank you so much, Dr. Patel. And on the topic of your research, can you let our listeners know about your book, ‘The Glutathione Revolution’, where they can purchase it and what they can find in that book?
Nayan (30:17)
Oh, absolutely. So the book that I wrote, ‘The Glutathione Revolution: Fight Disease, Slow Aging’, I truly believe that every single word on the cover. They can buy the book at their favorite bookstores. Amazon has it online. They can get the audible versions of Spotify or Audible has it too. There's a Kindle version of that one as well for really inexpensive pricing. I mean if you want to read the book, it's available, anything that you have, right, any gadgets you have. So the book that I wrote, I mainly wrote the book for consumers, right? My original plan was to educate the physicians, but then I quickly found out that that's just one chapter. That's just one chapter, and then what? I really had to talk to the consumers. And consumers, if I tell them facts, they'll forget tomorrow. So my book has a whole bunch of stories, stories of what I have done in my career, how I've helped people with glutathione, what the results are. You're gonna learn about what is glutathione, how does it help my personal journey, my family's journey, my patient's journey, in different aspects of from dealing kids with autism to my super elite athletes. I mean, we have some, one of the world best athletes that are patients of ours from Olympic athletes to highly organized sports like NFL and Major League Baseball and ice hockey and you can name the sports teams out there. We have patients from there, we have customers from them that have the needs for glutathione, that needs to reduce oxidative stress down to better have better performance for themselves. And so you're gonna hear that, you can read about all those things.
There's one story that is very dear to me that, not dear, but it's a very interesting story because we think glutathione is only for humans, but we were able to help a horse on glutathione. And this horse, it was, this horse was a four year old pony that is, that doesn't race anymore for money, but she still races for, as a filler. We put them on a glutathione supplementation like three weeks before the race and there was zero chance this horse will ever come into the podium, right? One, two, three. And to everyone's surprise, the horse won the race.
Keep in mind, horses are where? They're the carriage behind a diesel truck. They're constantly consuming these fumes, right? They're traveling, the stress is so high. And so if I can reduce the stress down, if I can reduce the burden of all this toxic exposure to the horses, the horses can perform better. Human beings are better than horses. So anyways, yes, please support me by getting the book from any place you want to get it. That's the only way you can support an author. So thank you for that. I appreciate that.
Taylor Zentz (33:24)
Thank you so much. Like I said, we will link it in the show notes. And thank you so much again for coming on today and sharing your knowledge. This has been super insightful. I think all of our community patients and those that are just coming across our podcast will really appreciate this conversation.
Thank you again for tuning in all of our listeners and just a reminder to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. It's the best way to support our podcast and continue conversations like these.
