The Benefits of Transdermal Glutathione

Antioxidants serve a crucial role in the body by preventing free radical damage, and when it comes to antioxidants, one stands far above the others—glutathione. The body’s master antioxidant is crucial for your health, something which only becomes more apparent when we see just how many diseases and dysfunctions can occur due to glutathione deficiency.

Thankfully, there are ways to supplement your glutathione levels, and some methods are more suitable than others. Let’s explore transdermal glutathione and the benefits it can offer you.

Key Takeaways

• Glutathione is the body’s master antioxidant and plays a crucial role in reducing free radical damage.
• Transdermal glutathione is a supplementation method that bypasses the digestive system, increasing the body’s absorption of glutathione through topical applications.
• Transdermal glutathione offers continued and consistent support, enhances the benefits of other therapies, and boosts the immune system.

What is Transdermal Glutathione?

Glutathione has received the title of the body’s master antioxidant, an esteem that comes with no shortage of importance. As an antioxidant, glutathione has a crucial task in subduing reactive free radicals, which can otherwise cause damage to the cells of the body. If left unchecked, free radical damage can contribute to many progressive diseases associated with aging, such as cardiovascular disease and dementia.

In addition to protecting the body from free radical damage, glutathione also plays a role in:

• Supporting immune function
• Making DNA
• Forming sperm cells
• Helping certain enzymes function
• Regenerating vitamins C and E
• Helping the liver and gallbladder
• Assisting regular cell death

Despite glutathione’s crucial roles, our production declines as we age, which can cause problems such as:

• Neurodegenerative diseases (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease)
• Mitochondrial dysfunction
• Infertility
• Chronic liver disease
• Cancer
• Cardiovascular disease
• Pulmonary disease
• Mental health disorders
• Autoimmune diseases
• Cystic fibrosis

Given all the problems that can occur due to glutathione deficiency, supplementing glutathione can be vital for your body’s wellness and proper functioning.

Transdermal glutathione is an application method for glutathione that involves applying it directly to the skin. This allows the glutathione to bypass the digestive system as it is absorbed directly into the bloodstream.

The Benefits of Transdermal Glutathione

There are many challenges with supplementing glutathione orally. Mainly, it has low bioavailability, meaning it can be challenging for your body to retain any glutathione you supplement. Some companies work around this by instead supplementing the body’s building blocks for glutathione, but another option is transdermal delivery.

Transdermal delivery maximizes your body’s absorption by delivering through a different method—the skin instead of the mouth. Not only can this be easier for those who struggle to swallow pills, but it offers many benefits by increasing your glutathione levels, including:

Continued Support

Some health conditions—such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic inflammation, and cystic fibrosis—benefit from continuous glutathione replenishment, as glutathione can help fight the cause of the disease and improve your symptoms.

Unlike glutathione administered in one potent dose, transdermal applications are designed to gradually and regularly release glutathione, which helps to keep glutathione levels steadier.

Treatment Enhancement

For those undergoing other treatments to manage their chronic conditions, transdermal glutathione can offer a significant advantage in supporting other therapies and boosting their results.

For example, research has explored how glutathione supplementation may help with the treatment of mental health disorders and offer protection from cardiovascular diseases. This stems from findings that glutathione is low in those with these diseases and health conditions, suggesting that increasing glutathione levels can help the body get to a place where the disease or health condition can be treated without fear of reappearance.

Boosts The Immune System

By delivering glutathione directly to the skin, which already serves as one of the most important barriers for our immune system, glutathione can further enhance our body’s immune support and build its defense mechanisms, keeping your immune system functioning as it should be—not over- or under-reacting.

Tips To Maximize Your Benefits

Transdermal glutathione can offer many benefits to your health, but the key to achieving them and ensuring that they continue to occur lies in maximizing your benefits by:

• Implement anti-inflammatory lifestyle habits. While glutathione alone will help to reduce inflammation in your body, you’ll see even greater results if you combine it with lifestyle habits that are also aimed at reducing inflammation, such as eating a diet rich in antioxidants (glutathione isn’t the only antioxidant your body needs), getting regular physical activity, and adopting stress management techniques.
• Monitor glutathione levels regularly. We recommend regularly measuring your levels to ensure you’re getting your glutathione levels to your body’s ideal range. This way, if your glutathione levels are low or we continue seeing markers of oxidative stress, we can adjust your glutathione supplementation or lifestyle to further address these factors. The better control we have over your oxidative stress, the better we can protect your body from internal damage.
• Use it correctly. As with any medication, proper use is crucial for seeing the most from its results. For transdermal glutathione, it should be applied to a patch of skin without hair—the abdomen is a common choice. It should be rubbed in for 90 seconds until dry, and then it should be left for at least 45 minutes to maximize your body’s absorption.

Boost Glutathione with a Transdermal Application

Glutathione is the body’s master antioxidant, and its natural decline as we age can cause some significant problems, such as mitochondrial dysfunction, infertility, and neurodegenerative diseases. Many progressive diseases that take years to develop often stem from glutathione or, more specifically, glutathione deficiency.

Transdermal glutathione is a supplementation method that brings the body’s master antioxidant back into action so that it can continue all its crucial roles, including fighting free radical damage. This delivery method, in particular, also offers the benefits of being easier to use and offering more consistent glutathione levels.

Sign up for a naturopathic consultation to explore if your glutathione levels are low. We can evaluate your glutathione levels and discuss a treatment plan that returns them to normal and helps you maximize the benefits of your glutathione supplement through other therapies and lifestyle adoptions.

Ultimately, naturopathic medicine aims to determine the root cause of your disease so that we can treat the source. With many age-related diseases stemming from free radical damage, glutathione deficiency is often one of the root problems—let us help you address it.

References

Pizzorno J. (2014). Glutathione!. Integrative medicine (Encinitas, Calif.), 13(1), 8–12.

Poladian, N., Navasardyan, I., Narinyan, W., Orujyan, D., & Venketaraman, V. (2023). Potential Role of Glutathione Antioxidant Pathways in the Pathophysiology and Adjunct Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders. Clinics and practice, 13(4), 768–779. https://doi.org/10.3390/clinpract13040070

Tan, M., Yin, Y., Ma, X., Zhang, J., Pan, W., Tan, M., Zhao, Y., Yang, T., Jiang, T., & Li, H. (2023). Glutathione system enhancement for cardiac protection: pharmacological options against oxidative stress and ferroptosis. Cell Death and Disease, 14(2). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41419-023-05645-y

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