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Glutathione Precursor Cross Comparison

golden

Senior Member
Messages
1,831
I know that sounds sensible ...

but my body is not made of laboratory conditions nor does it live in a laboratory.

Start with a single supplement...

record results..

oh but that supplement throws one or multiple other reactions out of balance.

Is this a bad reaction...?


Do i stop the supplement or add in another to balace tbe first out.


So now on two supplements...

record results...

whilst the actual M.E. is fluctuating plus real life factors are fluctuating.


Plus initial supplements first OK can become very problematic at any unknown point...

delayed toxicity.... is a real factor for M.E.

Or it could be a good detox reaction, its really difficult.

Unless its something really obvious eg. took pill felt better for four hours and this is repeatable day in day out...

its just not an option for me.

Plus some supplements need months to give them a proper chance.

I did have a peculiar reaction after trying co q10 -( something else a blood test said i was low in)

it had 100mg MCT in in a base of spirulina, alfalfa, ...

I didnt like it. I felt like it messed with my brain. My dog accidentally knocked the bottle off the counter and all pills were ruined. I have no money to replace as of yet.
 

golden

Senior Member
Messages
1,831
Thanks Lotus,

At a guess it was a strong detox reaction... I am confident in the pills at present... but in general am having a difficult time getting to grips with The Supplement World.

I am glad Rich found it complicated too!

I worry that my body is doing stuff for very good reason and I am tinkering with it when I have no real clue :(
 

Lotus97

Senior Member
Messages
2,041
Location
United States
I know many people here are avoiding dairy, but non/undenatured whey protein is another option. It seems it would carry the same risks as NAC/cysteine in regards to mercury. The whey (and NAC/cysteine) could also cause issues for those with CBS. The lactoferrin in whey is a prebiotic, has antibacterial/antifungal/antimicrobial properties, binds to iron so candida, Lyme, and other pathogens can't feed on it, and is also supposed to inhibit biofilms. This is what Rich said about ImmunoPro (a type of non/undenatured whey protein) back in December 2011.
ImmunoPro has quite a history in ME/CFS. It was developed in the 90s by Michael Keenan, a guy who had CFS, and found that raw milk protein helped him (http://www.wellwisdom.com/pages/About-Us.html ). ImmunoPro was the first truly nondenatured whey protein product, meaning that it was the first one that was not made as a byproduct of cheesemaking, so that the milk had not been pasteurized at a temperature high enough to cause the shapes of the proteins to be altered or to fragment them, or acidified with lactic acid to promote curdling, and thus incidentally to cause the cysteine in the whey to be oxidized to cystine. It therefore preserved the lactoferrin and immunoglobulins that are naturally in milk, and it made the nonoxidized cysteine available to the liver cells, where it is usually the rate-limiting amino acid for making glutathione. Elimination of bacteria is performed by ultrafiltration rather than by pasteurization (sort of like Coors beer,which is filtered through a ceramic filter, rather than being heated to kill the bacteria).

Other whey protein products include the isolates (designated by the misnomer "undenatured whey protein"), which are a byproduct of cheesemaking, but have received some additional filtering and processing to remove fragments of damaged proteins), and the cheaper commercial whey that comes straight as a byproduct of cheesemaking and is sold in the big plastic jars. From a nutritional standpoint, whey protein in general has the best proportions of amino acids for human nutrition of all the protein supplements available on the market, including egg, soy and the others.

Dr. Gustavo Bounous, then at McGill University in Montreal, was the person who first showed the value of whey protein as a balanced protein supplement, and he also identified its important role in building glutathione, because of its high cysteine content. The average human diet supplies only about half the cysteine that the body needs. The other half is normally made from methionine via the methylation cycle and the transsulfuration pathway. However, in CFS the methylation cycle is partially blocked, and glutathione becomes depleted.

Before Dr. Bounous did his research, whey protein was considered a waste product from cheesemaking, which uses the curd fraction. When dumping it became an environmental problem, European cheesemakers approached him to find a use for it, which he did. Now the production and sale of whey protein products has become a fairly large industry.

Dr. Bounous and others formed the Immunotec company, which produces a whey protein isolate product called Immunocal. In whey protein isolates, the cysteine is oxidized because of the heating and acidification of the whey as part of the cheesemaking process, but this type of product is superior to the straight commercial wheys, because it is more refined. In some isolates, lactoferrin is added back in. Dr. Bounous discovered the deleterious effect of heating the whey, but he was confused about cysteine, thinking that the heating produced cysteine rather than cystine, which was not correct. I wrote him about this several years ago, but I don't know if he really accepted what I wrote him as fact. He said that they were getting some more equipment and would be able to check this. I never heard any more from him about this. Nevertheless, his work really launched the whole whey protein industry, including all its forms, and also did a great deal for raising the appreciation of the importance of glutathione in the body. Dr. Bounous deserves a lot of credit, in my opinion.

Perhaps the availability of large quantities of processed whey from the cheesemaking industry was a factor in the business decision of Immunotec to produce an isolate, rather than a truly nondenatured whey protein product, starting from raw milk.

Cystine is still usable by the body, but it has to pass through the kidneys to be reduced to cysteine before it is readily usable by the liver. Liver cells do not absorb cystine very well. They absorb N-acetylcysteine (NAC) somewhat more readily, and cysteine the most readily.

Dr. Paul Cheney started recommending whey proteins, including ImmunoPro, in the late 90s, when he found that glutathione was depleted in nearly all his CFS patients. I learned about it from his talks, and later met Michael Keenan at a conference. I have corresponded with Dr. Bounous by email. and have a copy of his book, but have not met him in person.

For about 5 years, I encouraged PWCs to try ImmunoPro, and it did help quite a few, at least temporarily, I think because it raised the glutathione levels somewhat. There were other people who could not tolerate it, and I didn't know why. Some people reported that Immunocal or other whey protein isolates were more helpful to them than ImmunoPro was. I later learned that the DAN! program for autism was not using whey protein because many of the kids are sensitive to casein, and even though casein mostly goes into the curd fraction when the curds and whey are separated, there may still be a small amount of casein in the whey. So perhaps that was one possible problem for some of the people with CFS, also. Freddd, on these forums, also found that whey protein was counterproductive for him and some others, and in his case it may be because when glutathione combines with B12, as it normally does, his cells are not able to utilize the B12, for genetic reasons.

Over time, Dr. Cheney's enthusiasm for using whey protein supplementation cooled, as he also found that it did not produce as much benefit as he had hoped. Because of some lab data that he later received (which I suspect was misinterpreted, a view I have shared with him) he has come to believe that glutathione depletion is not as fundamental an issue in CFS as he originally thought. We continue to interact about this issue.

In late 2004 I learned from the work of S.Jill James et al. in autism that there is a partial block in the methylation cycle in autism, which is upstream of glutathione synthesis in the metabolism, and that if this partial block is lifted, glutathione comes up automatically. I suspected the same might be true in CFS, and it has turned out to be so. So I stopped recommending ImmunoPro to raise glutathione, and switched to methylation treatment. That seems to bring glutathione up on a more permanent basis.

I still think ImmunoPro is a very good supplement, and it has been used by people in my family (who don't have CFS, but benefit from protein and glutathione, as do all of us). So long as a person does not have an unfavorable reaction to it, perhaps for one of the reasons mentioned above, it should be a very good source of amino acids, which are often depleted in PWCs, and it should also help to support glutathione synthesis, in parallel with lifting the partial methylation cycle block.

Best regards,

Rich
 

Lotus97

Senior Member
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2,041
Location
United States
The other day Jarod posted an article about how Lyme/borrelia uses manganese. I sort of skimmed over it and it mentioned iron so I assumed that it was saying used iron or manganese, but I'm glad you mentioned this because I reread the article he posted and it just says the Bb uses manganese (unlike other pathogens who use iron).
Scientists have confirmed that the pathogen that causes Lyme Disease—unlike any other known organism—can exist without iron, a metal that all other life needs to make proteins and enzymes. Instead of iron, the bacteria substitute manganese to make an essential enzyme, thus eluding immune system defenses that protect the body by starving pathogens of iron.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-03-scientists-reveal-quirky-feature-lyme.html#jCp
 

Lotus97

Senior Member
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United States
This is from that article Hip linked to earlier. It seems there is another reason not to use cysteine if you have mercury toxicity. He doesn't mention it, but I'm assuming the same rules would apply to NAC and whey (?)
Mercury can block the utilization of cysteine, and if cysteine rises too high, it can act as a neurotoxin. (This last is also the reason L-cysteine is not recommended as a supplement for building glutathione.) It’s a good idea to measure the blood plasma level of cysteine periodically when building glutathione, to make sure it is not rising too high.
 

ukxmrv

Senior Member
Messages
4,413
Location
London
ukxmrv,

Did you ever try a straight Glutathione supplement just for the sake of it? I feel like any sort of whey protein, if it's not specifically one of the L-cystine/ l-cysteine types like ImmunoPro or Immunocol, that it would be impossible to tell what is helping you and what is hurting you. I don't even know if ImmunoPro/col are purely those substances, it just seems like such a broad brush type of way to treat low glutathione
.

Yes, I did. The glutathione capsules I took had no effect.

The whey protein was Immunopro. That was around the time Cheney was using it on his patients.

My ME symptoms are pretty stable (in a bad sort of way) and it's usually easy to tell if a drug or a supplementing is helping me. I keep a daily journal if I am trying a new one and try to last at least 3 months before I make a decision, unless the effects are so severe that I cannot continue.
 

Lotus97

Senior Member
Messages
2,041
Location
United States
This is from Rich about glutathione and B12 (he's not talking about supplemental glutathione)
O.K., in 2011 a paper was published by two researchers in Korea, Jeong and Kim. The abstract is pasted below.
The research they report was actually done on a bovine (cow) B12-processing complementation group and cyanocobalamin. However, the human complementation group is very similar, and I suspect that the results will also be similar for other forms of B12 than cyanocobalamin.

They studied the CblC complementation group. This is part of the B12 processing pathway that is found inside all cells. When a form of B12 comes into a cell from the blood by the usual transcobalamin route, it is bound to CblC, and its beta ligand (cyano-, methyl-, or adenosyl-) is removed. Then it is sent on to be converted back to methylcobalamin or adenosylcobalamin as needed by the cell.

In order for this processing to happen, the CblC complementation group must first bind the B12 form. The strength of binding is called the affinity (Kd), and it is measured in concentration units. The higher the affinity, the lower the Kd. It turns out that the bare CblC complex has a relatively low affinity for B12, compared to the concentration of B12 in the cells, and this would be unfavorable for the necessary binding, and would tend to lower the reaction rate.

What these researchers found is that normally glutathione binds to CblC, and in doing so, it increases the affinity of CblC for B12. And it does so by a whopping amount--over a factor of a hundred!!

Turning this around, if glutathione becomes depleted, as in ME/CFS and autism, the affinity of CblC for B12 is going to drop substantially. I suggest that the glutathione depletion, combined with its major effect on this affinity, is the reason the B12 dosage must be so high in treating ME/CFS and autism.

Best regards,

Rich


Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2011 Aug 26;412(2):360-5. Epub 2011 Jul 29.

Glutathione increases the binding affinity of a bovine B?? trafficking chaperone bCblC for vitamin B??.

Jeong J, Kim J.

School of Biotechnology, Yeungnam University, 214-1 Dae-dong, Gyeongsan-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do 712-749, Republic of Korea.

Abstract

Intracellular B(12) metabolism involves a B(12) trafficking chaperone CblC that is well conserved in mammals including human. The protein CblC is known to bind cyanocobalamin (CNCbl, vitamin B(12)) inducing the base-off transition and convert it into an intermediate that can be used in enzyme cofactor synthesis. The binding affinity of human CblC for CNCbl was determined to be K(d)=?6-16 ?M, which is relatively low considering sub-micromolar B(12) concentrations (0.03-0.7 ?M) in normal cells. In the current study, we discovered that the base-off transition of CNCbl upon binding to bCblC, a bovine homolog of human CblC, is facilitated in the presence of reduced form of glutathione (GSH). In addition, GSH dramatically increases the binding affinity for CNCbl lowering the K(d) from 27.1 0.2 to 0.24 0.09 ?M. The effect of GSH is due to conformational change of bCblC upon binding with GSH, which was indicated by limited proteolysis and urea-induced equilibrium denaturation of the protein. The results of this study suggest that GSH positively modulates bCblC by increasing the binding affinity for CNCbl, which would enhance functional efficiency of the protein.

Copyright 2011. Published by Elsevier Inc.

PMID: 21821010
 

Freddd

Senior Member
Messages
5,184
Location
Salt Lake City
That's interesting because according to Rich, glutathione protects B12.
http://phoenixrising.me/research-2/...etion-theory-of-mecfs-by-rich-von-konynenburg
One of the jobs that glutathione normally does is to protect your supply of vitamin B12 from reacting with toxins. If left unprotected, vitamin B12 is very reactive chemically. If it reacts with toxins, it can’t be used for its important jobs in your body. A routine blood test for vitamin B12 will not reveal this problem. In fact, many people with CFS appear to have elevated levels of B12 in their blood, while their bodies are not able to use it properly. The best test to reveal this is a urine organic acids test that includes methylmalonic acid. It will be high if the B12 is being sidetracked, and this is commonly seen in people with CFS.

When your glutathione level goes too low, your B12 becomes naked and vulnerable, and is hijacked by toxins. Also, the levels of toxins rise in the body when there isn’t enough glutathione to take them out, so there are two unfortunate things that work together to sabotage your B12 when glutathione goes too low.

The most important job that B12 has in the body is to form methylcobalamin, which is one of the two active forms of B12. This form is needed by the enzyme methionine synthase, to do its job. An enzyme is a substance that catalyzes, or encourages, a certain biochemical reaction.

When there isn’t enough methylcobalamin, methionine synthase has to slow down its reaction. Its reaction lies at the junction of the methylation cycle and the folate cycle, so when this reaction slows down, it affects both these cycles.

Hi Lotus.

That's interesting because according to Rich, glutathione protects B12

Unfortunately he got this very wrong. After glutathione combines with b12 it is excreted by the kidneys very rapidly. It protects b12 the same way cyanide protects b12, from reacting with anything else until it is rapidly excreted. This can be easily demonstrated. Anybody taking injections of MeCbl above 1mg can compare visible excretion of b12 in the urine. Glutathione or certain precursors will demonstrate the massively increased excretion of b12 in the urine followed up over several hours to days of massive folate deficiency symptoms via methyltrap. If a person follows the directions anybody can demonstrate this for themselves if they can see the coloration in urine as well as the rapid increase of the following symptoms.


Group 2a -

IBS – Diarrhea alternating with constipation, IBS – Normal alternating with constipation

Group 2b –

Headache, Increased malaise, Fatigue

Group 3 - Induced and/or Paradoxical Folate deficiency or insufficiency

IBS – Steady diarrhea, IBS – Diarrhea alternating with normal, Stomach ache, Uneasy digestive tract, increased hypersensitive responses , Skin rashes, Increased acne, Skin peeling around fingernails, Skin cracking and peeling at fingertips, Angular Cheilitis, Canker sores, Coated tongue, Runny nose, Increased allergies, Increased Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, Increased asthma, rapidly increasing Generalized inflammation in body, Increased Inflammation pain in muscles, Increased Inflammation pain in joints, Achy muscles, Flu like symptoms, Depression, Less sociable, Impaired planning and logic, Brain fog, Low energy, Light headedness, Sluggishness, Forgetfulness, Confusion, Difficulty walking, Behavioral disorders, Dementia, Reduced sense of taste, Increase irritability, Loss of reflexes, Fevers, Old symptoms returning, Heart palpitations, Bleeding easily.
Nobody has to go on anybody's belief systems or hypotheses or theories or "supposed to" or any variation thereof. There is a way to demonstrate it. I don't know who or what percentage of people have a problem. The best predictor of having problems with glutathione is to have a response to MeCbl and/or AdoCbl and healed to some degree and then watch a few weeks of glutathione precursor use destroy 3 years of healing progress, starting with severe and worsening folate deficiency symptoms followed by worsening MeCbl deficiency symptoms followed by worsening AdoCbl deficiency symptoms. Of the N=10 trial of glutathione and various precursors, all of whom had substantial healing with active b12/folate, 100%, all 10, demonstrated drastic setbacks and reversal of healing plunging every person into a severe triple deficiency that needed substantially increased doses to reverse.


It cost ME several years of CNS healing and threw the symptoms of SubAcute Combined degeneration back 3 years of progress that has never been entirely regained. Glutathione damaged my Central Nervous System unlike anything else has ever done extremely rapidly. Taking glutathione/NAC is like playing Russian Roulette, you could damage your brain and the rest of your nervous system. It is entirely too dangerous to take. The only reason it isn't recognized is because of 70 years of faulty research on b12 and folates.
 

Jarod

Senior Member
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784
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planet earth
I used to do really well with NAC and freddd's protocol. I was actually taking 2400 mg NAC daily. I was also taking a bunch of ALA and Carnitine.

Somewhere along the way something went sideways...Long story. Maybe a chelator or stomach infection...Not sure, it seemed like a stomach infection by the sudden onset.

Bottom line, the NAC used to work great with freddds protocol for me.

Now when I take NAC I get stomach pain, and brain frog......However, if I had the gut for it, I would definitely want to take it again.

On the other hand, the whey, and glutathione responded very negatively in my situation. Got nerve pain pretty quickly I believe.

I think NAC might be a critical missing component in my particular situation, but that is based purely on intuition and how my body responded to it and the ALA combined for about a year....

I'm not sure the ALA is required, it might have been the carnitine that was mixed with the vitacost supplement that made it work so well. The NAC did work by itself I believe also, but not the same as with the carnitine ALA supplement.
 

Freddd

Senior Member
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5,184
Location
Salt Lake City
I used to do really well with NAC and freddd's protocol. I was actually taking 2400 mg NAC daily. I was also taking a bunch of ALA and Carnitine.

Somewhere along the way something went sideways...Long story. Maybe a chelator or stomach infection...Not sure, it seemed like a stomach infection by the sudden onset.

Bottom line, the NAC used to work great with freddds protocol for me.

Now when I take NAC I get stomach pain, and brain frog......However, if I had the gut for it, I would definitely want to take it again.

On the other hand, the whey, and glutathione responded very negatively in my situation. Got nerve pain pretty quickly I believe.

I think NAC might be a critical missing component in my particular situation, but that is based purely on intuition and how my body responded to it and the ALA combined for about a year....

I'm not sure the ALA is required, it might have been the carnitine that was mixed with the vitacost supplement that made it work so well. The NAC did work by itself I believe also, but not the same as with the carnitine ALA supplement.

Hi Jarod,

NAC is not a 1:1 replacement for glutathione. Sometimes NAC gives the same reaction as glutathione and sometimes it doesn't. I'm would suppose that NAC gives that same response only when enough of a suitable co-precursor to trigger excessive amounts of glutathione. If it affected you with "NAC detox" then you would have had many of the symptoms in my earlier post. I know what you mean about sometimes things just go sideways for suspected or unsuspected reasons.
 
Messages
15,786
I think NAC might be a critical missing component in my particular situation, but that is based purely on intuition and how my body responded to it and the ALA combined for about a year....
It's possible that you're short on glycine now, which is the third amino acid that combines with cysteine and glutamate to form glutathione. At any rate, some people seem to be low in both, and maybe you've ended up in that pot :p
 

Jarod

Senior Member
Messages
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Location
planet earth
It's possible that you're short on glycine now, which is the third amino acid that combines with cysteine and glutamate to form glutathione. At any rate, some people seem to be low in both, and maybe you've ended up in that pot :p



I'm running in to some interesting stuff to do with thiol in food or supplements or sulfate in my particular situation. The sulfate stuff sounds like a direction I'd like to explore. I need to re-read this stuff about 4 times first I think.

I need about a week or two and maybe I'll be able to provide some meaningful clues. :balloons:

thanks!
 

Lotus97

Senior Member
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2,041
Location
United States
I posted earlier in this thread about glutathione made up of glycine, cysteine, glutamate. Therefore, L-cysteine or NAC (possibly also combined with glycine) could reduce glutamate induced excitotoxicity. It seems Rich is saying that L-cystine (not L-cysteine or NAC) might actually be better. I'm not sure if anyone has actually tried this, but this is his explanation for why it could work:
(note: L-cysteine, L-cystine, and NAC could cause problems for people with mercury toxicity)
Quite a few PWMEs who have tried the methylation protocol have reported that they have experienced an increase in symptoms associated with excitotoxicity when they began (anxiety, insomnia, nervousness). In the past, I have suggested trying acetyl glutathione or liposomal glutathione to counter this. One or two people reported that they thought this helped them.

Now I would like to suggest something else that I think would help with this, which is less expensive: L-cystine. Note here that I do mean L-cystine, not L-cysteine. (Cystine is the oxidized form of cysteine, consisting of two cysteine molecules bound together by a disulfide bond.) Douglas Laboratories is one producer of L-cystine, and there are at least a couple of suppliers of it on the internet advertising 60 capsules, 500 mg each, for $16.50. I would suggest starting with a dosage of 500 mg and increasing to as much as 1,500 mg, depending on the response. L-cystine should not be taken by people who have a tendency to develop cystine kidney stones, or people who suspect that they have a high body burden of mercury, because L-cystine may move mercury around. And as always, I recommend working with a physician while on this protocol.

Here is the rationale:

I believe that the increase in excitotoxicity results from a further drop in the glutathione levels in the astrocytes (helper cells) in the brain, when the protocol is begun. (We know from the recent MRS measurements of Shungu et al. that glutathione is already somewhat depleted in the brain in ME/CFS.) The further drop in glutathione lowers the production of ATP by the mitochondria of these cells, and they then have less energy for pumping glutamate out of the synapses and recycling it. When glutamate builds up, it overexcites the NMDA receptors, and that produces excitotoxicity.

If this is true, then it would seem that we may be able to lower the excitotoxicity if we can support the glutathione levels in the astrocytes as this protocol is begun.

According to the Dringen model, the astrocytes make their glutathione using cystine as their source of cysteine. Cystine is obtained from the blood, and is able to pass through the blood-brain barrier.

How does cystine normally get into the blood? The liver produces glutathione from the constituent amino acids that it receives from the diet via the intestine and the portal vein blood flow. The liver exports some of its glutathione to the circulating blood, and enzymes break down the glutathione into its constituent amino acids. The cysteine is mostly oxidized to cystine, and some of this is taken up from the blood by the brain.

When the methylation protocol is begun, the activity of the methionine synthase enzyme in the liver is increased by supplementing B12 and folate forms. This causes more of the homocysteine to be converted to methionine, so less is available to support synthesis of glutathione. One result of this is that the cystine level in the blood goes down, so that less of it is available to the brain.

It would therefore seem that if L-cystine were supplemented, it would augment the cystine in the blood and increase the supply available to the brain, and hence to the astrocytes. Hopefully, this would raise the glutathione levels in these cells, and increase their ability to remove glutamate from the synapses, lowering the excitotoxicity. Ingested cystine is not metabolized significantly by the liver, because it does not import cystine readily.

If anybody decides to try this, I would be interested to hear the results, whatever they turn out to be. Thanks.

Best regards,

Rich
 

Lotus97

Senior Member
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United States
This is the cheapest place I found for L-cystine. It looks like they also have free shipping when you buy that brand.
http://www.thenaturalonline.com/dou...apsules.html?gclid=CP3lqKf9qrcCFUKd4Aod1DgAbQ

While it's true that L-cystine is cheaper than acetyl l glutathione and liposomal glutathione, Vitacost sells reduced glutathione for around the same price as the L cystine. And NAC is even cheaper. I think Swanson might have a better price on NAC, but I'm not sure. They had a buy one get one free sale on NAC a couple months ago so I bought a few bottles.
 

Jarod

Senior Member
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planet earth
Found a couple interesting clips that help explain cysteine and how it makes it from the "stomach epithelial lining cells" to the "neuronal cells".

It involves something called an "EAAT3 transporter". This transporter is what allows cysteine to move where it can help supply cysteine for methylation.

To help understand the function of the EAAT3 transporter please view the Dr Deth Redox/Methylation in Brain video at 32:50.

Dr Deth goes on to say that Casein, gluten, and moraphine can all inhibit function on the EAAT3 transporter which prevents the cysteine from getting where it needs to go.

1) The infections can impair the absorption too. That may explain why I tolerated NAC better while on ABX? .

On another note....Yasko talking about "maintaining sulfur in the complex form"? Is that glutathione? HERE (at 24 minutes)
 

Jarod

Senior Member
Messages
784
Location
planet earth
Good slides from:

Dr Deth: Redox Methylation in the Gut, Brain, and Immune System power point presentation.


Check out the path of Cysteine, and Cystine.


You can see EAAT3 also.


GI_Tract_cysteine.jpg
braincellercysteine.jpg
 

triffid113

Day of the Square Peg
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831
Location
Michigan
I'm not necessarily recommending NAC (and neither was Rich btw). I'm just pointing out that there are other viewpoints (backed up by science) and I'm not convinced a handful of anecdotes and conjecture. If someone has mercury issues then it would be a bad idea to take NAC, cysteine, cystine, or non/undenatured whey.
Freddd's viewpoint is not conjecture - NAC made him lose all th eprogress he'd made for a year during which his symptoms regressed significantly. He is not the only one by far who warns against NAC -- ALL the doctors who work with autistics warn that autistics often have a problem with NAC.

I am afraid to try it myself but I was already using Life Extension's curciferous veggie product and milk thistle with no problem and surely these both contain cysteine, so I get cysteine safely in these forms.
 

triffid113

Day of the Square Peg
Messages
831
Location
Michigan
The solution to this is to keep a journal of your supplement and drug experiments, and make a note every time you observe an improvement or worsening of any particular symptom. Then when you look back at your notes, if a medication was consistently making an improvement each time you took it, you can be reasonably confident it was the medication (and not just random symptom fluctuations) that was responsible for the improvement.

Making notes is particularly important for ME/CFS patients, because our memories are well below par anyway, so we are unlikely to remember things unless we write them down. I keep my journal in a word processor document on my computer, as I find that I can type in information quicker that I can write it on paper.
I have often thought I should do this. In the past it would not have helped because of my cycles - I would be a totally different person from one day to the next -- for instance, one day susceptible to MSGtoxicity, the next not (I was crying inside many times for sheer frustration of never knowing what each day would bring).

Do you have a form you use to determine how you feel to put it into perspective with every other day? I have thought I should make a form where I can just check thinsg off or rate things on some scale...but it would have to list a boatload of symtoms so I could check yes/no if I had them that day.
 

Lotus97

Senior Member
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2,041
Location
United States
Freddd's viewpoint is not conjecture - NAC made him lose all th eprogress he'd made for a year during which his symptoms regressed significantly. He is not the only one by far who warns against NAC -- ALL the doctors who work with autistics warn that autistics often have a problem with NAC.
Most people don't have a bad reaction to NAC. Ergo anecdotal evidence and conjecture.
I am afraid to try it myself but I was already using Life Extension's curciferous veggie product and milk thistle with no problem and surely these both contain cysteine, so I get cysteine safely in these forms.
You also get cysteine if you eat any protein source. And if you're doing methylation you're increasing cysteine.