Glutathione Helps Promote Muscle Growth / Recovery and Whole Body Vitality.
Glutathione is a “non-essential” amino acid that is essential as a naturally occurring antioxidant. One of the body’s main defensive mechaninsms, it takes care of toxins and repairs damage wherever it occurs. Glutathione, together with catalase and super-oxide dismutase, are the body’s main weapons against foreign invaders.
Glutathione is made up of three amino acids – cysteine, glutamic acid, and glycine. It scours the system of the pro-oxidants that suppress the immune system, cause cancer, and contribute to the aging process. Unfortunately, like so many other biological processes, glutathione production slows down with age. Glutathione levels can be 34% lower in older subjects. Experiments have shown glutathione to protect against damage caused by exposure to cigarette smoke, kill liver tumor cells, and detoxify heavy metals like cadium and mercury in the body.
Weight training, exercise, and general activity causes the production of pro-oxidants, so powerful antioxidants like glutathione can assist the body in the recovery process. Take it in conjucntion with alpha lipoic acid, super-oxide dismutase, and vitamin E.
Dosage as an antioxidant is 1 to 3 grams daily.
Glutathione Can Help in these four areas
Immune function: It has been known for some time that intense exercise creates an immunosuppressive condition as it will deplete glutathione levels in immune cells. This can result in more frequent cases of upper respiratory infections, colds, flus and the like. However, when glutathione levels are optimized, this results in stronger, more responsive immune cells, which will reduce the frequency of colds and flus.
Recovery: Researching have learned that due to intensed levels of oxidative stress in muscle cells, athletes suffer from significant muscle soreness and damage. Optimal glutathione levels in muscle cells helps to reduce oxidative stress and it’s resultant muscle soreness, for more frequent workouts.
Performance: Experimenting with supplementation using a special whey-based cysteine donor designed to augment intracellular glutathione, the doctors hypothesized that raising glutathione would enhance performance. In the test, twenty healthy adults (10 men and 10 women) were used.
Their hypothesis was proven correct. In fact, using this cysteine donor supplement, doctors observed that intracelluar glutathione levels increased by 35.5%.
There are been a number of ground-breaking studies conducted in the field of sports nutrition. One such study conducted by Drs. L. C. Lands, V. L. Grey and A. A. Smountas, involved the glutathione precursor, cysteine. It noted that, normalizing cysteine levels in such athletes increased their muscle strength by as much as 13.5%. That is significant for a professional athlete.
Muscle Development: Interesting in the study mentioned earlier, Dr. Lands observed that the control group of athletes taking the whey-based cysteine donor supplement had a 6% increase in lean muscle mass and an equal decrease in the percentage of body fat. He hypothesized that the increase in glutathione stores resulting from the intake of the whey-based cysteine donor supplement, could “alter gene expression to promote muscle growth.”