Glutathione is often referred to as the king of antioxidants amongst the nutrition community, however there is a catch!

In this blog, Epsom, Surrey based Naturopathic Nutritional Therapist and functional medicine test expert, Natalie @NatNutHC, explores the role of glutathione in cancer support and why it’s not always beneficial to supplement it.  Knowing your genetics with nutrigenomics testing is the ultimate key!

 

What is an antioxidant?

An antioxidant is a substance that prohibits the oxidation, or the reactions promoted by oxygen, peroxides, or free radicals.

In layman’s terms, everything in the body whether it be your cells or toxins that are eaten, inhaled, or absorbed must be broken down at some point.  Cells for example only have a set lifespan and thus after a certain time they are broken down, parts of them recycled and other parts excreted as waste products.

During the process of breaking down toxins and old cells, some of the individual molecules that make up these substances temporarily become toxic (or oxidised), and these are what are often referred to as free radicals.  An abundance of free radicals and a lack of antioxidants can lead to increased risk of a multitude of diseases including cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s, inflammatory related conditions and can even speed up the ageing process.

Now this is the cool part, because antioxidants, such as vitamin C, vitamin E, quercetin, carotenoids, and glutathione for example can neutralise these oxidised free radicals/damaging toxic compounds, and thus can delay or inhibit cellular damage and DNA genetic based mutation.

In essence antioxidants prevent oxidative damage in the body.  They do this by donating their electrons to stabilise the toxin.  However, this process of giving away one of their electrons, means they themselves turn into a toxin, and this is why having a variety and an abundance of antioxidants is key because together they play a game of ‘hot potatoes’.  In other words, they constantly pass electrons to each other to keep each other stable.  The antioxidants that do this are referred to as ‘chain breaking antioxidants’ and include Vitamin E, Vitamin C, Quercetin, Vitamin A, Bioflavonoids and Carotenoids.

Now this is where glutathione is unique because glutathione is an antioxidant enzyme, and has the ability to stabilise itself via a series of complex reactions that are dependent upon the mineral selenium.  Hence why glutathione supplementation has become a bit of a trend in recent years, with all sorts of companies using cleverly designed marketing strategies to sell you the dream of glutathione supplementation, however is it as good as it is made out to be, and is it for everyone?

The answer is NO, its not for everyone and here’s why.

 

Why may glutathione NOT be right for everyone, especially when it comes to breast cancer care:

Let’s start by saying, that NatNutHC specialises in naturopathic nutritional therapy and operates within a functional medicine framework.  We are not oncologists nor medical physicians and where possible we work collaboratively with oncologists and physicians to provide our patients with a holistic option to their health care choices.

When it comes to breast cancer, and other cancers, oncologists tend to advise their patients not to use antioxidants during their conventional treatment because the antioxidants will likely have the opposite affect to the conventional treatment you will be receiving.  We add an additional layer of care to the conventional treatment you will be receiving and thus tend not to recommend any form of antioxidants during your conventional treatment.  However, we do support individuals during their treatment with non-antioxidant based products such as diet and medicinal mushrooms to help minimise the side effects of treatment and generally support the body during cancer treatment including minimising the risk of cachexia for example.   However, once your treatment is complete and you move towards healing your body following treatment, rebuilding your immune system, and taking a preventative approach to your cancer remission then this is where antioxidants can be used appropriately.  However, we would not prescribe all our patient’s glutathione at this stage, and the case example below should help explain why.

 

A genetic testing Breast Cancer case example of why glutathione supplementation would not be appropriate for everyone:

Firstly, there is much controversy on whether glutathione should be used in cancer treatment, and the jury is still out on this, but regardless of this your genetic test profile can help determine whether glutathione supplementation would be right for you and can help to fine tune the most appropriate course of action.

This case example happens to be based on one of our breast cancer clients, but can easily be applied to people without cancer who are looking to understand what specific nutrients may or may not be right for their individual genetics.  Firstly, let’s explore what genetic testing we use at NatNutHC.

We use a form of genetic testing called nutrigenomics testing.  Nutrigenomic tests provide us with an insight into whether you have any defects in certain biochemical pathways in your body that can be impacted by food and lifestyle.  The tests look specifically for what are known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (snps), which in layman’s terms can be described as defects on biochemical pathways in the body.  They allow us to assess if you may be susceptible to issues with neurotransmitter processing (our chemical messengers), hormone balance, stress, detoxification, histamine metabolism, energy metabolism, converting certain vitamins to their active forms and much more.

In essence most things in the body get converted from one thing to another, whether that be because they are old and worn out and need to be switched off (detoxed by the liver), or the body needs to take certain nutrients and use them make to hormones or neurotransmitters for example.

Nearly everything needs to be converted by the body, to either be in an active form so it can be used or to be excreted from the body for example, and to do this the body uses what we call biochemical pathways, but individuals often have defects on these pathways and thus it is these pathways that nutrigenomic testing looks for.  Many defects are common, but everyone will have some defects but until we test, we do not know specifically what genetic defects each individual has.  Learn more about the nutrigenomics tests we offer here.

Let’s take Vitamin A as an example:

Vitamin A to be effective in the body needs to be in its active form.  The active form can be found directly in foods such as meats.  However, if you are a vegetarian then you would need to consume beta-carotene rich foods (generally found in orange fleshy foods), however beta-carotene is the inactive form of Vitamin A and needs to follow one of the bodies biochemical pathways to be converted into the active form of vitamin A.  Now if you have a defect on this conversion pathway then as a vegetarian you are likely to have sub-optimal levels of Vitamin A, which impact numerous processes in the body and thus unfortunately you may do better consuming meat or you may need to supplement with an active vitamin A form.

Nutrigenomic tests, thus allow us to see if there is opportunity to upregulate or down regulate certain biochemical pathways using nutrition, herbs, and lifestyle.  They let us see, what you may be susceptible to, and they add an additional layer to our preventative and initiative-taking health care approach.

 

So lets get onto this breast cancer case example:  

Female client, age 43 from Epsom in Surrey.  Natalie @NatNutHC had been looking after the patient for about 18 months, advise had been given on diet, lifestyle, and medicinal mushrooms were used during the patient’s conventional treatment, and she was doing great.  She had minimal side effects during conventional treatment, was able to continue with the day job she loved and following treatment reported feeling better that she had done for years.  However, the patient had always eaten well, had for years home cooked most of her foods from scratch, didn’t drink alcohol, didn’t smoke, didn’t use toxic personal hygiene products or toxic cleaning products around the home, and so it baffled us a little as to what had led to her cancer diagnosis i.e., what was the underlying root cause?

Because the client had an oestrogen dependent breast cancer, we assumed that it was likely her body was converting her oestrogens to more toxic forms.  Our bodies can convert oestrogens to 3x different forms, one is a protective form (and this the form we want to promote), one is a carcinogenic form (the form we don’t want), and the final form we don’t want too much of, but we a need a little bit of it, you can read more about different oestrogens here.  Therefore, we had been supporting the client using food to promote her protective oestrogen pathways and downregulate the carcinogenic forms, and to be fair this is a fairly standard approach and certainly wouldn’t do any harm regardless of the client’s genetics.

But, when we undertook nutrigenomic testing on the client, we found minimal defects on her pathways that converted oestrogens to their different forms, minimal defects on her phase 1 liver detoxification processes, no issues with her bodies ability to make glutathione, but we found significant defects in her phase 2 liver detox processes, and significant defects on her body’s ability to use selenium (remember we wrote above, that selenium was essential for glutathione to do its job properly).

 

So what did this mean?  How did this help us fine tune the client’s nutrition and supplement plan?

Let’s, break it down step by step:

Firstly, it’s important to understand the difference between phase 1 and phase 2 liver detox.

Phase 1 takes toxins/oxidised substances pulls them apart and passes them to phase 2 so that phase 2 can do its job, make the phase 1 end products safe and pass them on for excretion from the body.  Now unfortunately, phase 1 makes a toxin temporarily more toxic, and thus in an ideal world you want an optimal phase 2 liver detox process so phase 2 can quickly kick into action, pick up the phase 1 end products and make them safe.  However, this client has a pretty good phase 1 process but has significant defects on her phase 2 processes, which means she is potentially susceptible to getting a build-up of toxic intermediates while her phase 2 liver detox processes try to catch up.

Now glutathione, is used in phase 2 liver detoxification, so one may assume we give this patient some glutathione to support her phase 2 liver detox processes, but remember she had no defects on her bodies ability to make glutathione, and in fact in phase 2 liver detoxification the liver is using and recycling glutathione and this is where she had defects.  Thus, by giving this patient glutathione we would have risked making things worse by potentially causing a backup/excess of glutathione and putting more of a strain onto phase 2 liver detox processes, so instead and because she had defects in her ability to use selenium and because glutathione needs selenium to be able to recycle and neutralise itself, we gave this client a high dose and highly bio-available form of selenium supplementation.  We also gave her a number of key herbs and nutrients to help mop up those toxic metabolites being created by phase 1 liver detox, and thus potentially giving her phase 2 processes a chance to catch up.  In addition, she had defects on other phase 2 liver processes and so we tweaked her diet to ensure she was getting the nutrients that these other areas of phase 2 liver detox needed to work effectively.

We hope this example has given you an idea of how nutrigenomic testing can be used to fine tune diet and supplements for each individual.  Without these genetic tests we would never have known that this patient had these defects, and thus needed support to upregulate her phase 2 liver detox processes and mop up the toxins created by phase 1 while her body was waiting for her phase 2 to catch up.

Please note, this case example is based on a real patient of NatNutHC, however the details have been simplified and some modified to try and make it easy to understand and respect the privacy of the individual client, but the idea was to try and illustrate the benefits of nutrigenomic testing, how they can be crucial to help fine tune an individual’s diet and supplement plan, and show how they can support the NatNutHC preventative health care approach.  Learn more about nutrigenomics testing here.

It is also worth further noting, that nutrigenomic testing is just one piece of the puzzle.  As explained above, they tell us what snps (genetic defects) you have on various biochemical pathways, however they do not tell us what the body is currently doing.  For example, while this patient is susceptible to oxidative stress due to a high level of toxic intermediates from phase 1, that does not mean that she currently has a high level of toxic intermediates and this is where other tests such as blood testing or urine metabolite testing can work hand in hand, because while the nutrigenomic testing tells us what the body is susceptible to, the blood and urine metabolite testing tells us what the body is currently doing.  This means if there are currently high levels of oxidative stress for example, we may want to increase the dose of some supplements for a temporary period, or if levels were low for example we may instead choose to follow a low maintenance dose approach or advise the client to take her supplement on alternative days.  While there is alot we can do without testing, testing can be a great tool to help fine tune and tailor plans to clients specific genetics and current presenting needs.  Learn more about our testing services here.

We have supported numerous clients throughout London and the South of England especially those living in Surrey including Epsom, Worcester Park, Cobham, Weybridge, Woking, Hersham, Oxshott, Kingswood, Twickenham, Esher, Kingston, as well as Hove in East Sussex and the A3, M3, M23 and M25 corridors including Basingstoke, Hickstead, Horsham, Crawley, Burgess Hill, Guildford, Godalming, Haywards Heath, Brighton and Hove, and along the South Coast of England.  This in turn has resulted in numerous health benefits for our clients including reduced migraine frequency and severity, reduced perimenopause symptoms, improved sleep, improved mood, reduced anxiety and depression, reduced weight, better managed premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and improved blood markers and health outcomes in our cardiovascular and cancer patients.

If you would like more information on the best diet for your particular needs and to understand more about how naturopathic nutritional therapy and functional medicine testing can be used to support your cancer journey, get in touch today via:  info@natnuthc.co.uk or follow us on Instagram or facebook @natnuthc.

You can also visit our website to book an appointment or schedule a free discovery call to discuss your health needs.

 

If you liked this post, you may also like:

Nutrigenomic (Genetic) Testing for Personalised Detox: A Naturopathic Nutritional & Functional Medicine Approach

Unravelling the Gut Hormone Cancer connection with Cancer Naturopath & Nutrition Expert

Functional Medicine and Naturopathic Nutrition as an adjunct to Breast Cancer Treatment

Has Conventional Medicine Oversimplified Oestrogen in Hormone Dependent Cancers? A Naturopathic Nutrition Perspective!

Oestrogen Metabolites: Promoting Protective Oestrogen with Personalised Naturopathic Nutrition for Optimised Health

Sources of Information:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/antioxidant

Ashwell et al. (2010). Natural Antioxidants: Fascinating or Mythical Biomolecules?

Daher et al. (2020). Cysteine depletion, a key action to challenge cancer cells to ferroptotic cell death.

Desideri et al. (2019). Targeting glutathione metabolism: partner in crime in anticancer therapy.

Kennedy et al. (2020). Role of glutathione in cancer: from mechanisms to therapies.

Lobo et al. (2010). Free Radicals, antioxidants and functional foods: Impact on human health.

Lv et al. (2019). Unravelling the potential role of glutathione in multiple forms of cell death in cancer therapy.

Nimse & Pal. (2015). Free Radicals, natural antioxidants and their reaction mechanisms.

Pei et al. (2023). Research progress of glutathione peroxidase family (GPX) in redoxidation.

Traverso et al. (2013). Role of glutathione in cancer progression and chemoresistance.

Vivak & Bains. (2014). The antioxidant master glutathione and periodontal health.