Glutathione and Cell Health

Glutathione: a Buzz Word of the 21st Century

Glutathione is a tripeptide built of only three amino acids the smallest protein, containing only two peptide bonds, between glycine, cysteine and glutamic acid. Glycine is the smallest amino acid, glutamic acid is an acidic amino acid and cysteine is a thiol a molecule with a -SH group. This allows a hydrogen ion or proton (HI-) to be easily removed from the sulfur that is responsible for the reductive power of glutathione. The glutamic acid carboxyl group -COOH can release HI- too, and functions even at low pH- important especially in the case of mitochondrial glutathione.

Two linked processes are of central importance in biochemistry - oxidation and reduction. Oxidation is essential to all multicellular organisms, including humans, as it provides most of the energy they need to function. Reduction is also a beneficial process. But oxidation has its negative side as well; it is a very aggressive process involving the splitting of molecules and leading to the formation of free radicals and oxidation products; As we humans cannot avoid oxidation, we had to evolve some means of cleaning up after it, and cells had to develop antioxidants as scavengers of free radicals to make order in the vicinity of reaction sites.

In the chemical process, molecules do not simply disappear. Split molecules in one place are combined with another molecule somewhere else; hence, reduction takes place simultaneously with oxidation, and, overall, we have what is called a redox reaction.

-e

oxidation

electron removal

A+B

C+D, e.g., H20

014+11

reduction

electron addition


Such migration of electrons in water, important because 75% of our body is water, and in other molecules, is dangerous in itself because electrons removed from a molecule bombard other molecules in the vicinity, there being no emptiness in a cell. The electrons removed can in turn bombard other molecules, causing aberrations, the worst of which are in the DNA of which the genes in the cell nucleus are built. Bombardment with electrons causes mutations in the nucleotides of DNA (more in volume II), and these aberrant genes transmit, from the nucleus to the cytoplasm, aberrant information concerning how to build protein and what to put into the protein molecule. As a result, the protein is formed incorrectly, the enzyme or other protein molecule is inactive or less reactive and part of the cell s physiology is altered.

Sometimes, when a mutation is within an oncogene, or cancer-causing gene, this oncogene can be unblocked and lead to the development of a cancer cell. We know that a cancerous tumor arises from just one cell in which the ability to control mitoses has been lost, and when such a cell starts to divide rapidly it forms a shapeless, disorganized tumor

There thus seems to be a firm connection between one bombarding electron and a tumor. The initial cancer cell can divide further, and becomes dangerous, unless it is destroyed by the lymphocytes of our immune system. These recognize the foreigner, engulf it and digest it in their cytoplasm.

Such digestion processes happen every day in many organs of our bodies scientists have estimated that at least nine cancerous or precancerous cells are formed daily within the human organism, and are alt destroyed. But what happens if our immune system is weakened? When the immune system is not fully functional, or if there is another disease in the body, or if we have been exposed to radiation, more of such bombarding electrons form, the number of mutations increases, and if one precancerous cell escapes the lymphocytes it can result in cancer.

Similar mutations from bombarding electrons or very small free radicals (OH; NO, N02) can occur in another part of the DNA that is not an oncogene. In this case, no cancer develops, but the protein formed because of the mutated information is an altered protein that in turn leads to alterations to the biochemistry within the cells. Such cells, having been altered, are not healthy. Also unhealthy are cells with viruses and bacteria that have penetrated into them, having escaped the immunological responses. The conclusion is, therefore, that the body's strongest defenseis its immune system, which can not only recognize and identify the foreign antigen, but can also then destroy it. Every cell of our body should work with maximal efficiency and should be maximally healthy.

Glutathione contributes to such maximal efficiency by reducing the number of toxins, free radicals and oxidants in our cells. Production of cellular glutathione this master antioxidant is enhanced in every cell by the increased availability of glutathione precursors, an4 especially by the one that occurs naturally in the lowest concentrations in diets cysteine.