This is not an original post. It’s a reprint of a talk/presentation given by Dr Daria Davidson on chronic fatigue and the very important impact of glutathione on it. Yes, it’s a little on the long side, but this is terrific information and if you’re suffering from Chronic fatigue syndrome, worth every word.
The original of this article is a few years old and talks quite a bit about MAXGXL which is an outstanding product. But since this time Max has developed new products to support your glutathione, namely MaxONE and Cellgevity. So don’t hesitate to take a look at all three products before you make a choice about which one is right for you.
For a quick overview of the differences, you can call our order desk at 1 289 240 7408- We’re working on a new post that compares the products and I’ll drop the link in here when it’s done….. now – onto the wisdom of Dr Davidson.
Lets look at glutathione for individuals with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome… Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a very, very complicated issue. As a matter of fact it’s kind of fascinating because who knows when it actually really became something that we had acknowledged was an issue for a long period of time, we found people with unusual constellations of symptoms, many times the thought was this person just does not want to work or there is a psychiatric cause for it and I know people who suffered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome before we identified it really suffered because they were oftentimes ignored by their health professionals and often also takes many years to make the diagnosis which adds to some additional frustration.
Okay what is glutathione and how does it help with CFS?
Glutathione provides many roles inside every cell in your body including helping keep free radicals under control – it’s called oxidation reduction balance, the medical word for that is redox, it affects everything inside the cell including the rate of biochemical reactions inside the cell. Glutathione also cleans up many different free radicals inside the cell. It also performs phase 2 detoxification of heavy metals in the liver, don’t worry about what I mean by phase 2, this phase 2 happens in the liver, heavy metals such as mercury, it also detoxifies organo-phosphate pesticides, chlorinated hydro-carbon solvents, different kinds of hormones that may be in excessive amounts, different foreign bodies, endogenous, which means toxins that are actually created inside of our own bodies as well as things like Tylenol.
So phase 2 detoxification is highly dependent on glutathione, it does many, many other things as well.
Where is glutathione made in the body?
It’s made inside every single cell but the liver makes extra and that extra glutathione is transported outside of the liver cells so there is some glutathione floating around outside of cells, although 99% of glutathione occurs inside of the cell.
This is beginning to look a glutathione depletion and chronic fatigue syndrome so I am looking at just a quick review, and I’ll give you some of the years of these studies. First of all, glutathione depletion was first suggested for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in 1997. In 1999, another study found that all of their Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients universally had low glutathione levels. Another study published in 2000 and this is kind of interesting this is a side-note but you’ll find this fascinating, this particular study found that patients could be divided statistically into two distinct groups. One having elevated red blood cell glutathione relative to help control people and the other having very, very low glutathione levels in their red blood cells. People with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome have low magnesium and that if they have low glutathione in addition, the more difficult it is to help them with supplemental magnesium.
When you look at the general population, there are many different factors that will decrease intra cellular glutathione concentrations. First of all, you may not make enough of it, maybe just genetically you don’t make as much as glutathione as somebody else so that could affect the ability of your body to maintain glutathione. We also know that when your adrenal gland is stressed and have adrenal gland fatigue, and that will also decrease the ability of your body to make glutathione. We also know that stress and dietary deficiencies will also decrease your ability to make it.
Another reason why you may not have high glutathione concentration is because we have a lot of toxins in our body and its bound to glutathione so it can get removed from the body and I’ll tell you folks that’s probably a big issue for almost all of us. You know the whole thing with glutathione is supply and demand. If we don’t keep the supply up and the demand is higher, we will lower our glutathione levels, which has a negative effect on everybody but we’re specifically talking about chronic fatigue this evening. And then, another thing is that you just make a lot of free radical, you’re exercising a lot, you are taking different medications that may create those and so that’s another reason why you may be running low in glutathione.
So there is a lot of different things. We also know that stress will zap glutathione and this is lots of data on that. Well that’s bringing me right then to the chronic fatigue patients because all of them will report an increased level of feeling stressed or perceived stress factor prior to onset of symptoms then people who are healthy normal controls in a similar period.
So one of the things we see with chronic fatigue is before they were ever symptomatic if you do a survey they were definitely feeling that they were under increased stress – emotional, physical, and situational perhaps. We know that glutathione has to be very, very low in chronic fatigue syndrome patients. We also know that the different stressors in life, all of them, physical, emotional will affect glutathione.
We also know that elevation of Cortisol, which is, happens with adrenal fatigue or just stress will also make it difficult for your body to make glutathione. These are all components of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. When we look at, and this is a really fascinating thing, people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome will often report that they have a lot of viral breakouts, it might be herpes it might be epstein barr, megalovirus, different latent kind of viruses and so the question that often comes up is, am I getting these things because I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome? Or were they already there, is that what caused the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and why do we see so much of an outbreak after symptoms of Chronic Fatigue developed?
Here’s some of the data on this: most of that evidence points to reactivation of latent viruses that are already in your body at the onset of CFS rather than new primary infections. So you had it, it was under control and now that you’ve got CFS you are beginning to have much more exacerbation or showing up more frequently. We know that infections by members of the herpes family as well as epstein barr are found with Chronic Fatigue patients, we know that glutathione depletion, listen to this folks, glutathione depletion is associated with the activation of several types of viruses including herpes simplex type 1 and that raising glutathione concentration inhibits replication of that virus by blocking the formation of a particular glycoprotein that is necessary for the proliferation of the virus.
So let’s repeat that again. If we can keep our glutathione levels higher, the ability for this herpes simplex virus to replicate itself, which means to become more prevalent goes down because the glutathione itself blocks the formation of one of the bonds that stabilizes the protein that’s necessary for the virus to replicate itself. That same exact protein is also found in all other herpes family viruses and also Epstein barr and so the megalovirus very likely there’s a strong correlation between what we see with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, with the presence of these viruses and with glutathione. Now there is a theory as well that, you know getting the virus itself may cause the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. It’s a theory, it may be true, it may not be true but in any case, keeping your glutathione levels high whether you are trying to stay healthy or whether you have some medical condition and you are just trying to support the structure and function of your body, there’s a lot of evidence of keeping glutathione levels high would be good for all of us and certainly if you have Chronic Fatigue.
The theory here is that glutathione likely becomes depleted prior to the onset of Chronic Fatigue and since infections by these viruses are commonly found in the Chronic Fatigue it seems very reasonable that low glutathione has a component in the development of these viruses during an exacerbation or when you start showing symptoms of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
So Chronic Fatigue, now here’s another thing too – we do believe it’s an autoimmune condition there’s a lot of data that would show that, I would certainly say in my experience I would strongly consider it that it is an abnormal immune response that often causes it. That will take you back to, actually to another call that I did on autoimmune disorders, listening to that and we’ll go over some of the theories there, including for sure a condition called, leaky gut syndrome which may frequently, at least the precipitating factor that got things really going in the wrong direction.
Because of all the varied symptoms that we see with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the problems that we see with it, people tend to do many different things to try to deal with it, detoxification is commonly done, people who deal with leaky gut may be looking for that like I do with my practice and fix that if they find that that’s going on, you’ll find a significant theory about viruses and different toxins causing Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
As you are looking at all of those things 100% of the time in every direction that you look, maintaining levels of glutathione that are abundant in your body makes a lot of sense. Nothing about it that does not make sense.
Most people with Chronic Fatigue in my experience with MaxGXL have been beyond delighted with their results. However let’s have a caution with that. If indeed you do have some toxins in your body, which you probably do, and if indeed you might even have leaky gut syndrome, which you very well might and if indeed Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is an autoimmune disorder which at most likely is, then one of the things that we would always want to be concerned about is making sure that as we are boosting the strength of our cells, and supporting glutathione production, well your immune system cells use a lot of glutathione, they love glutathione and if you have an autoimmune condition, it would be possible to take a supplement and have your immune system get very, very healthy and have you feel worse because now all of a sudden you are even more allergic to yourself.
So whenever I am dealing with someone who does have an autoimmune condition they don’t want to feel worse, now you may be someone who doesn’t have an autoimmune condition at all, you just have a lot of toxins in your body and you may actually feel worse for a short period of time coz your body is trying to flush those toxins right out, through your liver and through just intracellular and detoxification process. I oftentimes will start very slow with one capsule a day and just do that for several days, see how you do and as you are feeling fine with that, move it up to two capsules a day and 3 and 4 and to the normal dose slowly watching for yourself of course how you feel. If you are feeling good, then you know it’s not scary to continue going.
Now what will it take for you to feel very good? Every body is different, I can’t answer that for you, I mean, there are people who are listening to this call right now, without a doubt, who suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome who had a beautiful feeling very quickly after starting Max GXL, their bodies just ah, were happy for the support of their, of the structure and function of their cells. If your symptoms get better and your doctor feels like your Chronic Fatigue is improving or you feel like your Chronic Fatigue is improving since that is a medical disease that is a good thing, we’re happy for you but you’re not taking any nutritional supplement, at least we’re not telling you to, to treat your Chronic Fatigue, with hope that as you can support the health of your body, your symptoms will become less prevalent.
Certainly those of you and I hear this frequently with CF, I have a lot of herpes outbreaks, I get shingles a lot, you know, with my Chronic Fatigue, would it be helpful for me to take MaxGXL?. Well, again I am a big believer to supporting structure and function glutathione is important for function in any case but what we know about its effect on keeping the ability of viruses to replicate themselves, it would make sense to me to support glutathione within ourselves and MaxGXL by far is the best I’ve ever seen in that arena to do so. It’s a phenomenal product.