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Glutathione: Pro / Con arguments confuse me!

picante

Senior Member
Messages
829
Location
Helena, MT USA
This should provide another clue about neurological damage: i.e., why I experienced it while failing to follow the protocol correctly (and then improved on reduced glutathione) vs. those who improved on the protocol, but then experienced neurological damage by adding glutathione.

I can't put together a coherent hypothesis about this, but someone else may be able to.

UPDATE: I was taking the reduced L-glutathione cream, half the recommended dose, for about 5 days on, followed by a break (usually longer than 5 days). This was because my hypoglycemia was getting worse the longer I was on it.

The last round of 5 days I noticed a symptom I was having 10-11 years ago when trying mercury chelation: middle-of-the-night depression. I was feeling low during the day, too, the longer I took it. I decided to stop it entirely. My last dose was on July 27th.

This is further confirmation of @Freddd & company's findings, which included neurological problems.

Besides the probability of mercury redistribution, I have a second hypothesis about why it would cause neurological problems if taken long-term. I've been experiencing increasing gut inflammation, and having more and more trouble eating (everything). The bloatation I had 2 nights ago just after eating guacamole (avocado, salt, fresh lime, tomato) was so painful I started thinking more about neurotoxins. Until now I've been suspecting homocysteine, ammonia, sulfite, and peroxynitrite. I hadn't really thought about this reaction in terms of glutamate, because my brain goes groggy, not hyperactive. However:

As a side note: before talking to Rich, I had doctors who fruitlessly gave me glutathione IVs (hellaciously expensive but I didn't know any better since my body was in full revolt with SPS) that made my symptoms worse. Why? The darn glutathione breaks down into glutamate, cysteine and glycine anyways and if you can't make your own you get jacked with glutamate.

Dietary glutamates usually give me the helium-balloon gut + brain in Dorothy's poppy field. I've avoided them like the plague for many years. It took me this long on L-glutathione cream to realize that it was triggering the same problem. (Note the +/+ GAD snp in my signature.)
 
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Gingergrrl

Senior Member
Messages
16,171
I have not read this whole thread and know there is no way that anyone can re-cap it but I am wondering in general if anyone has had success with liposomal or nebulized glutathione for mold toxicity/detox?

Also if anyone with MCAS has had negative effects from either mode of glutathione? I cannot remember if I already posted this elsewhere and apologize if I did!

Thanks in advance.
 

ahmo

Senior Member
Messages
4,805
Location
Northcoast NSW, Australia
@picante I also have GAD++. @Gingergrrl I have mild mast cell issues, and have had neurological problems w/ glutathione from whey. It wasn't the only offender, I unwittingly was following suggestions that had me overwhelmed with histamines and sulfur, including whey, d-ribose, possibly 5HTP and NAC. It took me years to understand that the toxic psychosis was likely due to largely to the whey based glutathione.
 

ahmo

Senior Member
Messages
4,805
Location
Northcoast NSW, Australia
This one, non-denatured whey.

Have you put your 23andme results through promethease? There's an interactive version, you can type in what you're looking for. But, I saw it because I have snptips add-on for Firefox. Whenever I'm on a page with rs numbers that match mine, they're highlighted. So I looked at picante's signature and saw that the GAD was highlighted, then moused over it to see I was also ++.
 

Gingergrrl

Senior Member
Messages
16,171
@picante I also have GAD++. @Gingergrrl I have mild mast cell issues, and have had neurological problems w/ glutathione from whey. It wasn't the only offender, I unwittingly was following suggestions that had me overwhelmed with histamines and sulfur, including whey, d-ribose, possibly 5HTP and NAC. It took me years to understand that the toxic psychosis was likely due to largely to the whey based glutathione.

@ahmo do you think if the glutathione is not whey based it is okay to try (in light of the MCAS part?). I have tried to grasp the sulfur/sulfate connection and if this is good or bad for me in my situation.

When I was less ill, I took liposomal glutathione daily with no reactions but am much more ill now with the added MCAS too so not sure how I might react and it is a different brand I will be trying (but if I understand correctly the sulfur part is always there regardless of the brand?)
 
Messages
46
I have seen threads where there have been warnings against taking Glutathione percusors, does this warning also extend to amino acids that build GSH e.g. L-Glutamine, Glycine and Cysteine ?
 

PeterPositive

Senior Member
Messages
1,426
I have seen threads where there have been warnings against taking Glutathione percusors, does this warning also extend to amino acids that build GSH e.g. L-Glutamine, Glycine and Cysteine ?
I find this implausible, those amino acids are pretty important and besides it would take a very restrictive diet to avoid them.
 

ahmo

Senior Member
Messages
4,805
Location
Northcoast NSW, Australia
do you think if the glutathione is not whey based it is okay to try (in light of the MCAS part?). I have tried to grasp the sulfur/sulfate connection and if this is good or bad for me in my situation.
I wish I knew the answer. I initially thought, once I knew I had a problem w/ sulfur, that this was the problem. But the more I learned about glutathione, as in the early posts on this thread, I shifted the blame onto the glutathione itself. Mind you, this is only retrospective problem-solving. For me, I don't know that any of the substances on its own would have caused havoc. But I was engaged in Teitelbaum's approach, which is basically (maybe a glib interpretation) to add in things to energize the system.This might work for some, especially if it's CFS on it's own (if there is such a thing).

And I also now understand that my brain was aflame from gluten and histamines as well. It's only in these years since I've repaired my nervous system that I can see how fragile it was, how vulnerable to stress, and how poor my resilience from stress was. This nervous system repair I attribute to eliminating gluten and dairy, B12/folate, and getting the right minerals.

@picante has experience with transdermal glutathione, she might have something to add. I've just decided to add my experience to glutathione conversations, in case anyone else might be on the verge of a nasty response.
 

Freddd

Senior Member
Messages
5,184
Location
Salt Lake City
In people with certain types of genetic polymorphisms glutathione can produce "catastrophic b12 deficiency". In others it takes longer. It can cause methyltrap and demyelination of nerves (potentially permanent damage) can start in 10 days or so.
 
Messages
46
In people with certain types of genetic polymorphisms glutathione can produce "catastrophic b12 deficiency". In others it takes longer. It can cause methyltrap and demyelination of nerves (potentially permanent damage) can start in 10 days or so.

Hi @Freddd are there any studies/ further evidence to back this statement up?
 

Freddd

Senior Member
Messages
5,184
Location
Salt Lake City
That is a direct quote from one of the posted CblC papers from the 2011-2014 bunch that have been posted. I have directly experienced it as did the N-=10 in the small trial I was involved in 5-6 years ago. I still haven't healed from the additional demyelination it did and may never do so.

There is nothing to prove it. As far as I know everybody getting "glutathione detox" or "NAC detox" is experieriencing partial methylation block or worse, methyltrap and setting them selves up for terrible problems. The longer the "detox" goes on the longer demyelination continues and the worse the permanent damage. It doesn't appear that CblC disease and polymporphisms are needed, as 100% of the 10 people suffered such problems, they only took longer. The key ois the so-called "detox". That is damaging and even potentially fatal from eventually MMA Acidemia and or Hyper homocysteine, both causing various forms of multi organ breakdown. My edema was from kidney damage and heart muscle damage. We will all be dead before anybody "proves" this. Each person can test it for themselves. The worst mistake I ever made was becoming a vegetarian. The second worse was taking glutathione. However, without that I couldn't identify induced methyltrap.

There is a lot of dangerous nonsense that is promoted on glutathione. We each have to make our best judgments and choices knowing it is a real life and death game going on.

I'm an experienced nobody. I'm not qualified in any way except experience and having healed myself from FMS, CFS, congestive heart failure. What is only somewhat improved and in remission is Sub Acute Combined Degeneration, the damage caused by methyltrap.

My next induced deficiency was SACD type problems with copper deficiency which I am trying to write up currently, what the distinguishing features are.
 
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Messages
46
That is a direct quote from one of the posted CblC papers from the 2011-2014 bunch that have been posted. I have directly experienced it as did the N-=10 in the small trial I was involved in 5-6 years ago. I still haven't healed from the additional demyelination it did and may never do so.

There is nothing to prove it. As far as I know everybody getting "glutathione detox" or "NAC detox" is experieriencing partial methylation block or worse, methyltrap and setting them selves up for terrible problems. The longer the "detox" goes on the longer demyelination continues and the worse the permanent damage. It doesn't appear that CblC disease and polymporphisms are needed, as 100% of the 10 people suffered such problems, they only took longer. The key ois the so-called "detox". That is damaging and even potentially fatal from eventually MMA Acidemia and or Hyper homocysteine, both causing various forms of multi organ breakdown. My edema was from kidney damage and heart muscle damage. We will all be dead before anybody "proves" this. Each person can test it for themselves. The worst mistake I ever made was becoming a vegetarian. The second worse was taking glutathione. However, without that I couldn't identify induced methyltrap.

There is a lot of dangerous nonsense that is promoted on glutathione. We each have to make our best judgments and choices knowing it is a real life and death game going on.

I'm an experienced nobody. I'm not qualified in any way except experience and having healed myself from FMS, CFS, congestive heart failure. What is only somewhat improved and in remission is Sub Acute Combined Degeneration, the damage caused by methyltrap.


Ok - I am still a little confused by this assertion, given that the main aim of methylation is to increase the production of GSH, yet paradoxically supplementing with GSH would cause a methyl trap?
 

picante

Senior Member
Messages
829
Location
Helena, MT USA
In people with certain types of genetic polymorphisms glutathione can produce "catastrophic b12 deficiency". In others it takes longer. It can cause methyltrap and demyelination of nerves (potentially permanent damage) can start in 10 days or so.

I expect that we have to look at the breakdown products of GSH to find the mechanisms involved. Let's say your glutathione synthesis is impaired. Then you're stuck with a lot of the breakdown products, as they aren't being recycled. One of those is glutamate. Let's say in addition that your glutamate-GABA conversion is slow. And perhaps your glutamate clearance is impaired. It didn't take much of a Google search to find that these problems could lead to demyelination:

On How Altered Glutamate Homeostasis May Contribute to Demyelinating Diseases of the Cns

They don't have the full paper available, and I wouldn't understand it if they did. I'll leave it to the biochemistry whiz-people to look for the rest of the connections.

I don't understand the connection with methyltrap, either. But I did learn yesterday (through self-experimentation) that taking methylfolate has been aggravating my glutamate-related symptoms . So that lines up with what @Freddd is saying. Methyl trap is when there isn't enough B12 to use the available methylfolate, is that right?

So I'm wondering if a short time of taking just MeB12 (without the mefolate) would use up some of the excess folate or clear out excess glutamate. I've read that folate can also convert to glutamate. Does that happen more in a state of methyl trap? Anybody have an educated guess?
 
Messages
15,786
I do better when I take NAC, a glutathione precursor. It helps my sleep quite a lot, as well removing the wired-but-tired feeling all day. I've taken 1800mg per day for the past 4 years with no ill-effects, and studies have also shown no side-effects from taking it from a year or more.