The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #171 - Dr. Nayan Patel

TRANSCRIPT

Melanie Avalon: Hi, friends, welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation that I am about to have. The backstory about today's conversation, it is about a topic that I personally have been wanting to do a deep dive into. It was literally on my list of topics to have a show about and that is glutathione. When this incredible author, his team reached out to me about his book, The Glutathione Revolution: Fight Disease, Slow Aging, and Increase Energy, I was so excited and I was also really hopeful that when I read the book that it was going to really deliver on everything that I wanted, which would be a deepest of deep dives into the science and it was that. Oh, my goodness, before reading the book, I was pretty much sold on the importance of glutathione. But after reading it, I just feel everybody needs to know about this. So, I have so many questions today. He's actually a fellow Trojan. We just realized we both went to USC and he now teaches at USC. I am here with Dr. Nayan Patel. He is a pharmacist, a health expert, and a thought leader in the industry. And like I said, the author of The Glutathione Revolution. So, Dr. Patel, thank you so much for being here.

Nayan Patel: Absolutely. It was my pleasure to be here today.

Melanie Avalon: I have just so many questions for you. But to start things off, what is your personal story? When you were growing up, did you anticipate being the glutathione guy? What led to that? Did you just have an epiphany one day? Why are you doing what you're doing today with glutathione?

Nayan Patel: No, I did not grow up being a glutathione guy. I grew up as every kid out there want to-- A male kid, I wanted to be in aerospace engineering and seeing the world from the outer space. That was my childhood dream when I was probably six, seven years old. Of course, that did not pan out that way. But it started off being a pharmacist in the mid-90s and that's when they started the revolution of insurance companies dictating what we are going to be having for our healthcare, for fellow Americans. I saw very early on, this is not the path I want to be in, because the insurance company is not going to give us the right option, they're going to give us the cheapest option. And so, I went into compounding and started researching on my own trying to figure out better and different ways to heal the human body other than the medications that we already have today. 

As they say that all road leads to Rome. Everything led to me to glutathione early on. And of course, it was the hardest thing to work on. It's been out in the market for multiple decades and nobody has figured out how to actually deliver to the human body. Forget delivery, they hadn't even figured how to stabilize in the first place. And so, I had a big hill to cross and start off stabilizing the glutathione and then later on delivering how to deliver to the human body. But anyways, my whole focus started early on in my career to focus on that because that I thought was going to help me address a lot of the common issues that we have today.

Melanie Avalon: Are any of the astronauts using glutathione?

Nayan Patel: [laughs] I hope so because-- we all do, right? We all travel in this aluminum suit, we call the plane across the world. Aluminum suit is not made up of lead unfortunately, so, it's not blocking any of the cosmic rays. When we are flying 30,000 feet above the ground, we don't have any layers to protect us from the cosmic rays. Your body is constantly being bombarded with these toxic rays that body has to clean up one day. And so, I hope the astronauts are using this product. But if they are not using or not optimizing glutathione level, they should.

Melanie Avalon: Do you know they've done studies just with normal planes, people before and after a plane trip the effect on their antioxidant status?

Nayan Patel: No, I have not heard about that one yet. Sorry. But it just makes sense because we hear all about the ozone layers and we are going above the layers to go across the world. So, in theory, it makes sense, but I'm sure there must be some research out there.

Melanie Avalon: Well, okay, so many other questions. One more question about your personal story and I hope this isn't a controversial question, but when I hear pharmacists-- I don't think I've ever interviewed a pharmacist by the way, but when I hear the term pharmacist, I get a feeling of the pharmaceutical industry and a lot of the issues that you just spoke about fighting against. What is your experience being a pharmacist? I just feel you have a different end goal than maybe-- I don't want to make an assumption, but how do you feel relate to your colleagues? Do you find that the way you're approaching this is typical or is it diverging from the norm?

Nayan Patel: It is absolutely the complete opposite on what everybody else is doing. When I talk to my fellow pharmacists, my colleagues, it's like the thing I'm in a different world altogether, because they don't comprehend what I'm trying to achieve. Their focus is disease management. I said, "Hey, you have a problem, we'll manage your problem for you." I'm going the other way. I said, "No, you have problem, let me help you get rid of the problem." And that's a whole different mentality. Managing is relatively easy in the sense that you have tools to basically stay in equilibrium or stay focused. But when you have to get rid of the problem, it requires entirely different mindset. And so, when I talk to my friends, it's really, really difficult. And as you might have guessed right now, but I have very few friends left, because I can't communicate with them.

Melanie Avalon: Wow, that's crazy. A personal related question. You do talk in the book about how you found your perfect partner and creating your line. I just thought that was so cool, because I recently partnered up with somebody to create a product and I just really-- It can be really magical to find that person who really understands. Are you still working with him?

Nayan Patel: Absolutely. He was at the USC Keck School of Medicine in the research department with us when I was going to school. And so, when I graduated I called him up, I said, "You got to join us, because we got a lot more work to do." And he was about to retire from USC. I said, "Retirement? Come on. retire is if you're ready to give in. You don't have to give in. You have a lot more to offer." And so, I was doing the thinking process, he was going back in the lab and helping me do all the physical work that requires to develop a product. And then once the product was developed, he thought his job was done. "Hey, here's the product. Now, you deal with it." I said, "No, that's just less than half the problem. The other part of the problem is developing into a product that can actually deliver to the human beings and then figure out what the results are going to be and how we're going to use it in a clinical setting. There's a lot more work done after that." And so, now, he's still with me. Even today's date, he is still here in this building with me.

Melanie Avalon: Awesome, awesome, awesome. Okay, so questions about the science of everything going on here. I'm trying to figure out how to approach the topic, but maybe we can start with just the concept of oxidative stress in the body and free radicals. And so, what is happening? What is oxidative stress?

Nayan Patel: Okay. Let me put it this way, first of all. Is stress good or bad for us? I always believe a little stress is always good for human being, because it makes you more resilient. And so, stress is not bad thing. Chronic stress is a bad thing. When I talk to my patients-- I do see patients every day. When I talk to my patients, I always give them example. If a dog is chasing you, your body is under stress and it does have no time to think about it. Only thing you can do is run. Your pupils get dilated so you can see every single thing. Everything is super hyper focused to get rid of the dog that's chasing you. Well, either dog found a bone and left you alone or you're able to dodge the dog and you find a place and literally the stress goes away once the dog stopped chasing you. But the dog in our life today is this chronic stress, the traffics, the pollution, the toxicities in the environment, chronic burden that we have with financial stress and social stress.

Now, the last two and a half years, three years we have this disease stress that we have been in intense amount. All this chronic stress is not good for us. What happens is that this chronic stress is actually increasing oxidation in your body. It's like if you want to see a visual picture, you're putting a bunch of nails in the water and then instead of taking it out and drying the nails, these nails stay inside the water and you can see the rust happening on the nails right before your eyes. And so, chronic stress is actually what's doing inside of body is rusting your body from inside. It can do in multiple different ways. One major source is the oxidation because we breathe every single day. Oxygen is a lifeline for us, but you have to get rid of all the remaining oxygen and that's where the lungs come in very handy to make sure that you are breathing correctly and then oxygen gets used up and carbon dioxide gets expelled.

Any oxygen that is leftover, oxygen is a reactive species. We call it a reactive oxidative species, ROS and those species in your body can cause havoc. That's what we're trying to avoid. The N thing when all the oxidative species increases in your body, you can loosely term it as oxidative stress, but what it's really doing is that it's affecting your organs and your ability to function normally.

Melanie Avalon: Does that oxidative stress you spoke about the rust, could we see it if we looked inside? Would it literally look like rust?

Nayan Patel: One thing is, what you do see is you do see those spots. Now, you do see on your skin the age spots. Your body's eventually rusting up and coming up onto the surface. And so, we call them age spots, we call them liver spots, and those are the physical signs, those are the oxidized species that are actually surfacing on your skin. The same thing can also be inside your bodies. And yes, you can see those rust inside your body.

Melanie Avalon: And so, how does the body mitigate that damage? What is the role of free radicals and what's the role of antioxidants and in particular, exogenous versus endogenous?

Nayan Patel: Yep. This is a great question because people always think about, we want to solve a problem with exogenous supplementation. Everything that we do, "Oh, if we have oxygen species, let's drink some orange juice, take some vitamin C, take some vitamin E, and so on and so forth, coenzyme Q10." There're so many different products out there to help you to reduce that oxidative stress, or reduce the oxidation, or all the other terms that-- you take a bunch of antioxidants to help reduce oxidation. So, that's all exogenous sources. But your body produces endogenously glutathione to deal with the same problem, right? Only thing that you need is all the substrate it requires to produce the glutathione, i.e., they're three different amino acids, glutamine, glycine, and cysteine, two enzymes, and a catalyst like selenium to have this reaction happen to produce glutathione. And that's endogenous source of antioxidants the body produces to help with the excess oxygen species that we get from outside sources. Exogenous are good, but they're always limitations.

Melanie Avalon: So, to further clarify there, so glutathione on the one hand and then antioxidants that we think of vitamin C, vitamin E, all these "vitamins," for both of those two categories, can both of them be endogenous and exogenous?

Nayan Patel: Body does not produce vitamin C at all. So, it can only be from exogenous sources.

Melanie Avalon: What about the other ones like vitamin E and CoQ10 and things like that?

Nayan Patel: Vitamin E is extracted from the diet that we eat. So, that's also exogenous source. The CoQ10 is found intracellularly, so that is probably getting produced inside the humans. But keep in mind, you cannot take exogenous source of CoQ10 and get into intracellular levels. Same thing with the glutathione. You cannot take glutathione from outside and get into intracellular levels until now. So, that's the technology that we have created. But all this-- For the last hundred years, we have the glutathione, we have the exogenous source of all these nutrients, but it cannot penetrate intracellularly.

Melanie Avalon: Why do you think we lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C as a species?

Nayan Patel: Yeah, humans cannot produce vitamin C like other mammals do, right?

Melanie Avalon: Why do you think we don't have that ability?

Nayan Patel: Again, this is an assumption for me because I do not know the real answer for that. I'm assuming that our body does produce abundantly glutathione. We have second most molecular body next to water is glutathione. There is no need for us to have vitamin C in there when we have so much glutathione that we can have in our body.

Melanie Avalon: I read that in your book about being the second most abundant next to water. And so, I don't know the total amount of molecules total in the body. So, it's hard for me to get a picture of what that even looks like. Does that mean we're just saturated in glutathione or just compared to all the other molecules, it's the second most abundant?

Nayan Patel: Yeah, it's just compared to every single thing out there, glutathione is the most abundant molecule in your body. And that has to do with how much our needs are. Our needs for glutathione is far or more than just the antioxidant effect.

Melanie Avalon: So, if we have some oxidative stress and free radicals, what is the difference and how something that people would think about vitamin C mitigating that or neutralizing that free radical compared to glutathione? How do they compare?

Nayan Patel: Okay. This is my theory at this point. I don't have something to back it up yet. I do have some anecdotal point that I can present to you. One thing is vitamin C if you look at all the literature, they'll tell you vitamin C at low doses that means about 10 grams or less per day is an antioxidant. Anything more than that it becomes a prooxidant. Chemically, I cannot believe the vitamin C has a redox property that at low doses in the body has an antioxidant effect and at high doses, it becomes a prooxidant effect. That's why they use vitamin C IV drips at high doses to treat patients with cancer. And so, the high dose vitamin C is a prooxidant.

This is my theory and I think I can back it up pretty well is that at low oxidants what's vitamin C actually doing is it's reviving oxidized glutathione inside your body. So, GSH is the abbreviation of glutathione. GSH when it gets oxidized becomes GS molecule. The two GS molecules come together and becomes GSSG molecule. GSSG molecule is oxidized glutathione, it is stable and it revolves in your body and you can easily measure that in your blood with a simple blood test. So, that part is easy to measure. But this GSSG molecule can, again, revive itself and become GSH again by accepting electrons from vitamin C. And so, assuming that I think I can make a pretty darn good case that at low doses this vitamin C actually what it's doing is giving the energy back to the glutathione and is reviving itself. When I play video games with my kids, the kids go, "Daddy, daddy, come on, come on, give me that jump because I'm dying." And so, they get this jump and the person revives in the video games, same thing in the human body. We have all this oxidized glutathione in your body and instead of using your own body's energy, it is getting energy from vitamin C to revive itself.

Melanie Avalon: If it's going from GSH to GSSG back to GSH, is it taking a hydrogen from the antioxidants? 

Nayan Patel: Yes, exactly.

Melanie Avalon: Okay. Or, where else could it get hydrogen from?

Nayan Patel: I mean, any of the antioxidants. Vitamin E has that similar components, a lot of amino acids have that too. The low grade's available all the time. Vitamin C is by far the cheapest and the most popular one because there're lots of different places you can get vitamin C from.

Melanie Avalon: And so, that whole process of-- So GSH being the "active form" that can do that benefits that we want and then this stable neutral GSSG forum that is inactive it sounds like and then the back to GSH, so that whole process practically and realistically, how fast is that happening? Is there a central mechanism in the body that's determining like how much that's happening or is it on a case by case basis?

Nayan Patel: I think is happening pretty fast because the glutathione molecule, the simplest term I can give example is that let's see if we get sunburn. When you get sunburn, your skin is very hard to touch and you feel the pain. As soon as you apply the glutathione, the pain goes away within seconds, right? When that pain goes away within seconds, there're two things happening. One, the absorption is pretty good. The second part is quenching all the free radicals immediately. On the sunburn, if you apply vitamin C, oh, my goodness, you'll burn.

Melanie Avalon: It'll hurt.

Nayan Patel: Oh, my gosh, right? Just imagine. If you're applying vitamin C on a sunburn victim, "Oh, my goodness, they'll probably scream at you," right? But yet if you apply glutathione within seconds the pain is completely gone. If you keep it applying every few hours, within a couple of days the healing process starts really, really fast. All that excess glutathione is applied [unintelligible [00:19:42] GSSG molecule, now if you apply the vitamin C, some other parts of the body or just take oral capsules of vitamin C, it will help revive this glutathione back into GSH molecule.

Melanie Avalon: Okay. Wow, gotcha. So, when you, I guess we need to discuss the actual avenues. So, historically, what have been the avenues for people trying to supplement glutathione? I'm sure people are pretty familiar with IVs. I know a place I go. They do intramuscular shots, there's been oral. What happens in those different avenues?

Nayan Patel: You mentioned a few of them, right? Oral capsules, there's oral liposomal technology liquid that people drink up. There's an intravenous form of glutathione that people have it. Then there's all these lotions and soaps. The rest of the world has a lot of different products of glutathione, all those molecules, there're few things that we worry about. First, glutathione is actually a protein. It is a three amino acid protein which is one of the smallest proteins. When people think about protein, people think about large proteins that are anywhere from 100, 200, and more amino acids linked together to make a larger protein. But it's a very small tripeptide protein. But when you take the protein by mouth, the body actually breaks it down into various amino acids and then it takes the amino acids and use up as building blocks. 

There was a study done at Texas University in 2010 where they took some patients and they gave them these oral capsules as well as the oral liposomal form, because they think that liposomal form is more stable, so it bypasses the stomach and so it goes into the intestine and gets absorbed over there. Regardless of where it gets absorbed, the body breaks it down into various amino acids. There was zero increase immediately into the red blood cells when they consume oral glutathione. When you do IV glutathione, this was something that was done in 1990s, early 90s, 1991-92 I believe so. There're a couple of scientists that did a study. What they did was they infused 2 grams of intravenous glutathione and then they were measuring the blood levels. Of course, what's your first thing that you think about? If you envision the blood, it is going to be 100% the blood, which is true. It happens in the blood. But then they took one step further and they measured the RBC levels of glutathione. And it was 0. So, what that told us that all the glutathione went into the bloodstream ended in the plasma, but never ended with the red blood cells. So, that showed us one thing is once the molecule is large enough, it gets outside the cell, it can't go back inside the cell. It is having a baby. When the baby comes out, it cannot go back in. 

Melanie Avalon: So, that process of taking it in orally-- And so, if you take it in its normal form or like you said, a liposomal, which in theory-- is supposed to protect it from being broken down. In theory, it would have stayed the same, it gets broken down anyways. When it's broken down into those building blocks, would the body since it's the perfect recipe for glutathione, automatically try to make it back into glutathione or just be these random building blocks and it doesn't really inform the body to make glutathione from it, it just might happen to.

Nayan Patel: Absolutely. So, that's a great question, in fact, because you assume just because you gave a glutathione that there is a chip that tells the body that, "Hey, I'm giving you glutathione. I know you are going to break it down, but please put it back together." Yeah and the answer is no.

Melanie Avalon: Okay, okay, that's so interesting. 

Nayan Patel: Yeah. So, you can get, in fact, better results by just consuming amino acids. That's why FDA has actually approved N-acetylcysteine as a medication to improve glutathione levels.

Melanie Avalon: What are the three amino acids in glutathione?

Nayan Patel: Cysteine, glycine, and glutamine. Cysteine is the one that is not abundantly found in human bodies or in your diet.

Melanie Avalon: Okay, gotcha. Does this apply to a lot of things where we take them in and we assume-- where they would get broken down and we would just assume that they would get rebuilt into the same thing? 

Nayan Patel: Yeah, for the proteins, yes. 2022, this year, the biggest push is people are using all kinds of peptides. They have peptides in the skincare, peptides in injections, peptides in oral capsules, oh, my God, peptides are all over the place. Similarly, peptides have a similar issue as well, because body sees it as a protein and will try to break it down. And so, the synthetic peptides that we do consume orally, there're prescription drugs out there which are synthetic peptides that the body cannot sense them. And so, it's hard to break those things down. And the absorption is also very, very limited because these are large molecules and the body cannot absorb this large molecule pretty fast or even readily.

Melanie Avalon: The buyer doesn't even really detect them. So, are they used?

Nayan Patel: They are currently used as prescription drugs, yes.

Melanie Avalon: Sorry. I mean does the body use them in their original purpose?

Nayan Patel: The peptides that are commercially available in synthetic forms of peptides, they're like signals. They are signaling the body to produce something versus when we take glutathione, we are actually giving them the real product they can use it today. Let me give a simple example. Let's say you have a gun and you have two choices. Either I give you bullets or I tell you message that, "Hey, I'm going to save the bullets over there." Glutathione has given you bullets. You just put in your gun and shoot them now. The synthetic form is giving you a message that, "Hey, there're bullets over there. Go get them yourself." So, that is somewhat different. You're still getting what you want, but what if the messenger comes into play and there are no bullets in the safe left? Then you're in trouble, then you're in trouble. So, that's why when it comes to the glutathione, if I can give you the glutathione in the ready-to-use format that your body doesn't do anything whatsoever and is ready to use right now, the results should be instantaneous.

Melanie Avalon: So, going again with the gun analogy, if you're giving bullets, does the person stop stockpiling bullets on their own because they're getting it, does giving yourself glutathione stop your body's natural production?

Nayan Patel: I get this question literally every single day, every single day, because doctors we think along negative feedbacks. Whatever we give you that your body produces, we give it you, the body stops its own production and it's true it does stop its own production. But here's the caveat. We think stopping your own production is bad for you, because then you're making your body lazy. That's a common theme that we have amongst physicians that we don't give anything that your body already produces, because otherwise the body is dependent on what we give them outside sources and the body becomes lazy. It is true when you're dealing with hormones. It's true when you are dealing with pituitary hormones and hypothalamic hormones or the gonadal hormones. But it's not true when you're dealing with proteins, because guess what if the body needs to produce more proteins, it is going to produce regardless. If he already has it, it's not like the person is sitting idle and not doing anything else. It can use the same energy to do some other chemical reactions.

We always give steroids to people if they have inflammation. When you give steroids, your adrenal glands stop producing cortisol or the corticosteroids. And so, temporarily, it's a good relief for the adrenal glands because adrenal glands are all stressed out. And so, if I give a short-term relief from not producing this product, I'm okay. But long-term use of steroids can diminish the ability to produce steroids for rest of your life, because adrenal gland now shrinks up. If it shrinks up and it cannot produce any more then we got a problem, but when it comes to the glutathione, it is producing in every cell intracellularly. If it doesn't use the energy to produce glutathione, it will use the same energy to produce something else.

Melanie Avalon: The adrenal gland situation would be like if you had a person, and you gave them lots of money, and they just stopped getting a job, and just stayed at home, and then they're helpless compared to the glutathione, where giving somebody a lot of money, and they use that money to make more money, and do lots of stuff, and they became more successful.

Nayan Patel: Yeah. The analogy is correct. When you give money to somebody, it tells them that, "Hey, you don't have to work and here's the money to live your daily life." And more than likely, we all know that they're not going to live long enough because the body is not going to be conducive for doing the work, because it's not used to doing work versus when you give glutathione to somebody, actually what is doing is that it's not just giving you money to spend. Instead of giving him money, it is basically loading up your bank deposits or loading up something else where it said, "Hey, the money is there for you to use, but you cannot spend it in your hands right now. If you want to spend it here, that's good enough, but it's there plentiful, but now you're going to work for using it up." I'm not sure if that makes sense or not, but I'm trying to give the same example because it's not the same. Giving glutathione to the body does the make the body lazy at all. In fact, it's giving the ammunition to deal with the daily problems. All the excess glutathione that your body takes, all the excess you just pee it out. So, let's see you have monthly expenses of 5,000 bucks a month and I give you $100,000 a month. So, what happens is that 5,000, you'll use it up, 95,000, you just go dump it. It just goes away.

Melanie Avalon: You talk about the levels of glutathione as people age. So, what is the likelihood that somebody would take glutathione and would have extra or do most people really need it?

Nayan Patel: Well, most people after a certain age, when I say certain age, I can't give a definite answer, but my theory thinks that by 30, you need some sort of supplementation. By 40, you for sure need supplementation because your body's ability to produce glutathione reduces as you age, because keep in mind, it requires the three amino acids and the enzymes. If you have all the building blocks but no enzymes, your body cannot produce glutathione. And so, as you age, the enzyme starts depleting, your diet keeps on changing, but our needs never reduce. In fact, our needs keep on increasing. As soon as you turn 21 only you can legally drink now, but they don't realize that that alcohol is a solvent that is toxic to the body that your body has to neutralize it, conjugate it with some glutathione and get rid of it. And so, every time you drink alcohol, physically, if we think about it visually glutathione is actually conjugated in this alcohol and getting rid of it. If you don't have enough glutathione, guess what? That's when you have trouble drinking so much. The person that drank so much beers in the 20s, even if they just drink two beers in their 50s, they're going to have a hangover. 

Melanie Avalon: Can it ever be something like alcohol and we could talk about exercise? Could alcohol ever be a low enough dose that it has a hermetic effect or is it always going to be a net loss, you think?

Nayan Patel: Alcohol is a solvent and that needs to get neutralized anyways. There's a very low dose of alcohol that your body can basically use it up. Again, that's a very low dose. If you just drink a glass of wine every single day, it might be okay. I have a lot of patients that they drink even just one glass of wine per day and the ability to consume wine and still be able to function in the morning diminishes as they age. So, even just one glass is probably going to be too much.

Melanie Avalon: What about the oxidative stress of exercise, for example?

Nayan Patel: Yes, that's a great question, because when you see athletes performing at the highest peak and if you look at the workout regimen they go through, oh, my gosh, it's nuts. They work out two or three hours per day, every single day, and they are super, super fit. And yet, you work out for three hours in a day and you're probably not getting out of the bed for a month. And so, there's a difference. There's a huge difference. Working out, any kind of strenuous exercise is producing intense amount of oxidative stress in your body. When those stress had to be reduced down, so people will do cold plunges, or they may do massage every single day, or they will just rest, or they will take some vitamins to reduce that lactic acid production that's already happening, and things like that. But most of the athletes when they do work out, they have a full on six-to-eight-hour rest schedule for the same day versus average patient of mine, guess what, they work out in the morning, then they would get up after the working out make all the food for breakfast and lunch for the day, pack up the lunch, pack up the kids' lunch, and get in the car and go to work, work, work, work, come back home, probably didn't have chance to eat properly, come back home, and now you've to make dinner. It's on the go and then the only time you have time relax in the evening, you watch TV or do something that is not supposed to do. 

Now, all of a sudden, you can't sleep at night, because it all wired up. And so, sleep gets disturbed and you wake up in the morning, and the whole cycle starts again. There is no rest. There is no rest that even little bit of exercise is too much for you. I always tell all my clients and I have clients both ends. I have Olympic athletes, Fortune 50 CEOs, and I have patients that are just average persons that are trying to make ends meet on a daily basis. Everybody has a different regimen. No matter who you are, I always recommend you only work out enough that your body can handle that oxidative stress and typically, that is 30 minutes or less.

Melanie Avalon: And is that just for aerobic exercise or anaerobic as well?

Nayan Patel: Aerobic. For the anaerobic, I can tell them that, "Hey, you can still go for another half an hour or more for that one" to build the muscle mass, but what you're really doing is you're breaking your muscle fibers. And every time you break the muscle fibers, you're also creating lactic acids inside the muscles. It can also increase oxidative stress. And so, it is there, but it's not that much compared to the aerobic, because aerobic, you are breathing oxygen really heavily, you are breathing out carbon dioxide. And so, the easier fuel to burn would be the oxygen. Your body never gets into this anaerobic state, so to speak that is very healthy for you. So, again, you just have to build up the tolerance for 30 minutes of workout every day and not have to get so much huffing and puffing every day.

Melanie Avalon: People will talk about with exercise not taking antioxidants because then you won't get this oxidative stress and then you won't get this-- The body rebounding and ultimately dealing better with oxidative stress in the future. So, do you subscribe to that or should we be taking antioxidants and glutathione with exercise?

Nayan Patel: I always tell all my athletes. I have patients that are in all the major league sports, from NFL to MLBs to NBA and all the other sports as well that are played. Even though these are athletes it's putting toll on them. I always tell them, "Yes, you exercise as hard as you want." Then what they do is they go hit the cold plunge. They put in the ice bath. What's ice bath actually doing, it's actually promoting your production of glutathione as well.

Melanie Avalon: To my daily cryotherapy?

Nayan Patel: Yeah, cryotherapy. That's what it's doing anyways. And so, yes, you can put a cold plunge in there. It has a lot of other anti-inflammatory effects as well. But that is not going to stop production of glutathione. Your body's going to produce the glutathione. And so, yes, you want to use glutathione, but you want to use it after you exercise, not before because if the absorption is so fast, then you want to wait until you have enough stress in your body to make a physical change in your body and then all the excess oxygen, I want to get rid of it, because that's what you're trying to do when you relax is trying to get rid of all this excess oxygen that has been created in your body.

Melanie Avalon: Does mental stress create free radicals or does it just contribute to the taxed state of the body in general?

Nayan Patel: It does create free radicals. Any stressors will create free radicals. We have identified all those stressors. We have physical stressors, if you have infection, or you stabbed on a nail, or you put your thumb in the door jamb, all kinds of things. That's one stressor. Then the second stressors are environmental pollutions, sun, sunlight, they will create stressors. And then the chemical stressors, the foods you eat and the pesticides that's created from day one, and the fertilizers they use in the food. And the last one is the mental stressor. You have financial stress, social stress, relationship stress. So, those are things that can also increase oxidative stress in your body.

Melanie Avalon: Here's a very random question and I don't know if you would know the answer to this, but when the glutathione deals with these free radicals and neutralizes them and creates water, is that hydrating? Is it a lot of water? Does that have effect at all on hydration status?

Nayan Patel: No, it should not. It should not because it does not create hydration status that much. You have to drink water for that one.

Melanie Avalon: Okay. So, you're speaking about all of these stressors with toxins, and chemicals, and things in our environment. How does glutathione deal differently with toxins versus free radicals?

Nayan Patel: Yeah, so, glutathione is probably the only molecule that we produce that does both. It can give up an electron to neutralize a charged molecule. Oxygen is a charged molecule. It can give up the electron and neutralize the oxygen molecule and basically get rid of it. And that molecule, the GSH molecule becomes GS to GSSG eventually. It can also conjugate with chemicals and make it water soluble and so you can pee it out. That process is a one-way process. Once you conjugate with a known chemical, then it cannot revive itself again. You just pee it out. When you are dealing with lots of chemical exposure from either foods or environmental sources, then your body has to produce a lot of glutathione because it's a one -way process only. 

People with heavy metal toxicities, same thing. People consume lot of vitamins. I think US is probably the number one country in the world that consumes the most amounts of vitamins. Ask any pharmacist. I check every single day. My job is all the vitamins that we sell or we also make products over here is we check all the heavy metal content in every chemical, every chemical. And there is a limit on how much you can use. If you take it by mouth, any product that you take it by mouth can have a lot more heavy metals than if you're doing the same exact chemical and you're using it topically or injecting it. Injection should be the bare minimum. It's still there, it is still there, but it's bare minimum.

Melanie Avalon: You'd say we should or should not do injections?

Nayan Patel: No, no, what I'm saying is that the chemicals are tainted. All the chemical sources are tainted. It doesn't matter where they come from. There's a limit on how much heavy metals is going to be there. But heavy metals humans are going to be there all the time. All these metals every single day that gets inside your body, your body has to clean up.

Melanie Avalon: I just want to clarify because I get injection vitamins. Those are more likely or less likely to be intensely tainted?

Nayan Patel: Less likely. less likely because the limits on those injections in terms of the impurities is bare, bare, bare minimum. It has to be 99+% pure. 99.9% pure, 99.8% pure, something ridiculous amount of purity is required. That's why the cost of the injections are very, very high compared to the same stuff you can take orally.

Melanie Avalon: That's a bit of a shocker. I've been talking for so long about the importance of vetting the supplements that you're taking. And so, it sounds you could be doing a lot of damage if you're taking the wrong supplements.

Nayan Patel: You can. Keep in mind. For 20-plus years, I've trained physicians all over the world on intravenous nutrient therapies. There is a book that I wrote for physicians only, Art and Science of Intravenous Nutrient Therapy. It's a guide for the physicians to do IV therapies inside their office. And I've trained thousands of doctors in my 20-year career and how to do IV therapies. And so, I was a strong advocate for IV therapy. I still am today as well. And the chemical source is where I got all the information from as to how we can do a good job and have benefited the patients without increasing toxicities.

Melanie Avalon: Wow. And so, if people are getting IVs at most places are there really stringent criteria or should people be concerned with getting IVs?

Nayan Patel: The criteria are stringent, but at the same time, you still have to follow your due diligence to making sure that you're going to reputed healthcare provider. Because keep in mind, there are not enough inspectors in this world to check up on every doctor that's given IV therapies out there. The biggest thing that the government did was they basically went after the makers of the injectable medication and made sure they were in proper compliance. Once that got into place, of course, the next goal would be to go after the providers and see if they're doing a good job mixing those vitamins together before injecting you that.

Melanie Avalon: Because I know there are a lot of corporate-type chains that you can go to. Are those more likely to be, because there're a corporate situation safer than random person's office or is it really just a case-by-case basis?

Nayan Patel: It's a case-by-case basis. Everybody, when they have corporate offices, what they have in place is a good management structure. At the end of the day, if the person that's making the bag for you is the most important person. You can have thousand locations, but that one bad person that's making the bag is floppy, now all of a sudden you have a tainted bag, it doesn't matter how big the firm is, you get a tainted bag.

Melanie Avalon: The person making the bag in the office who gives you the IV or the person who made the supply that was given to the office?

Nayan Patel: The person that make the bag in the office. The doctor's office will buy all the supplies from a drug manufacturer, and then they'll take all this vials, and then they take portion of all these vials and make into an IV bag, and that bag gets infused. So, for your listeners, one thing to remember is, ask when was this bag made? If it's more than four hours, never infuse it. 

Melanie Avalon: Oh, okay, this is so good to know. Any other questions to ask? Is that the main question?

Nayan Patel: That's the main question I want to ask is, "When was the bag made?" So, if it's more than four-- I ideally like to infuse my bag within an hour of making the bag. But if it's within the four hours, I'm still okay with it. But after four hours, I am very highly skeptic. If your infusion is, let's say, two hours or an hour, then you will reduce the time by another half an hour or an hour. Let's see, if your infusion rate is one hour for the bag, then the bag has been made at least three hours before.

Melanie Avalon: Does this apply as well to the subq and intramuscular injections?

Nayan Patel: No, those are instantaneous. They dry it up and they inject it. So, there's no mixing going on. The only time you ask those questions is because there're a lot of chemicals being mixed into a bag before they infuse it to you. And the glutathione can never be in a bag ever and can never be IM either. You can't give a shot in the butt of glutathione, it's acid. 

Melanie Avalon: I've had intramuscular injections of glutathione.

Nayan Patel: I'm sorry. There's no need for it. We were the largest producer of intravenous glutathione in the country.

Melanie Avalon: Of intravenous?

Nayan Patel: Of intravenous and then we stopped it in 2019. The reason is because in 2020, this book was published. Once I know what I know, I could not see in my doctor's eye and tell them that, "Hey, this is a good product."

Melanie Avalon: The half-life or the effect of an IV glutathione that you no longer do compared to which we haven't even talked about your version of the spray, how long does that glutathione last in the system for both of those and what is your version? 

Nayan Patel: The intravenous form of glutathione, again, going back to the study that was done in 1990-1991 I believe so, this showed that after 2 grams of intravenous glutathione, the half-life on average was about 14.1 minutes, plus or minus nine minutes. So, as the best case scenario, it was in your body for 23 minutes. The worst-case scenario, it was in your body for five minutes. The reason is because nothing, not a single molecule of glutathione ended up in the red blood cells. It was only in the plasma. And once into the plasma, it hits the kidneys, the kidneys just pee it out. So, in 30 minutes, you probably will have the most expensive urine you can ever have.

Melanie Avalon: In that situation, let's say that you are really in need of glutathione. Let's say you're just super hungover or something. Would you get a benefit from that IV or is it literally just in and out not even helping anything?

Nayan Patel: It does help for 14, 15 minutes. You give me an example of a hangover, right? Hangover, basically, it's a neurotoxin that the alcohol dehydrogenase enzymes basically break up the alcohol into alcohol and metabolizes to acetaldehyde and that acetaldehyde is neurotoxic. So, that's where the headaches are coming from. What glutathione does is it helps metabolize the alcohol, but not the acetaldehyde. Let's see, if all your alcohol in the system has already been metabolized, then my friend, you can have a hangover for a long time. It's going to be for the whole mornings or late afternoons or maybe the whole day. It's going to be miserable. But if you can reduce the alcohol itself the night after drinking, then the next day when you do wake up, the conversion to acetaldehyde is very, very little. And so, you still had the buzz all night, but you probably would not have any headaches in the morning.

Melanie Avalon: If you had a glutathione IV while drinking, you probably would not have too many negative side effects or that would really help? I know that's not practical, but I'm just trying to understand what's actually happening. 

Nayan Patel: I'm picturing myself at a bar with IV pole and ordering my favorite scotch. I said, "Hey, can I have a couple of scotches?" "What is that?" I said, "Well, just making sure that anything I put inside is getting neutralized immediately." It doesn't help, because people that drink alcohol are drinking for the neurotoxin, the buzz.

Melanie Avalon: Right. Yeah. So, you wouldn't get tipsy, maybe?

Nayan Patel: Yeah, you might not. Or, what I do see that happens is that now they consume more alcohol because they're looking for the buzz and they're getting it yet. Eventually, they're going to get it because keep in mind, an average time you spend drinking is not 14, 15 minutes, it's hours.

Melanie Avalon: I've actually thought about this before and I don't know if this is going to sound controversial to you, because people will say, "Drink with food because you won't get the effects as much." Basically, when I'm drinking, I actually like to have a glass on an empty stomach, because I get a bigger effect with less alcohol [giggles] rather than if I had more alcohol, which maybe I shouldn't be saying this. But people saying like, "Doing things to make you have less of the effects, then I think the effects might be you might just drink more." So, it could be an issue.

Nayan Patel: What I did realize, Melanie, at least as a human being that you do drink alcohol. So, that's a good sign. It wouldn't have to be buzz all the time, but at least you enjoy once in a while adult beverage. That's not a bad thing. So, eating foods, drinking water, all those things, what it does, it dilutes the alcohol itself. When it is diluted a little bit, then the absorption gets slowed down a little bit, the liver has a higher chance on metabolizing it faster. And so, if you put a whole bunch of alcohol in your liver at once versus give a small, small dose over half an hour, the liver can work better and more efficiently if it gives you a over longer periods of time. So, all the things that the water and food does while you're drinking an adult beverage is slowing the absorption down, so your body has a chance to basically recuperate faster.

Melanie Avalon: The way I like to approach it is just drink really slowly on an empty stomach rather than with food, but that's just me.

Nayan Patel: Yeah, you enjoy for-- It's less alcohol. You'll never have for sure because it's just one glass. You got your buzz that you're looking for and it's for long time. So, if a glass takes you maybe half an hour to an hour that's even better, because then guess what that's just one drink. So much better.

Melanie Avalon: Going back to that detox issue. It sounds like glutathione use from free radicals and oxidative stress from exercise, and damage, and a lot of things that can contribute to that, not that that's good, but at least the glutathione can be recycled. But when it's detox, I mean it's just used. So, it sounds like exposure to toxins is really an issue.

Nayan Patel: Yes. And so, in California, there was a study done. This was back in the 90s as well. And of course, that was done by the oil company, because in California we can stick it to the private industries to do all the work for them. If oil company wants to produce oil in California, they do all the studies. And so, they decided, I don't know thousand cadavers and they looked at all the tissues. 100%, 100% of all cadavers' tissues was laced with pesticides, fertilizers, organic solvents, and chemicals. I don't think there's anything you can do to avoid that. Well, everybody has different intensity, everybody has a different intensity. When the intensity increases, then your body can handle it, that's when the onset of disease comes into play. 

Now, obesity is rampant today. I don't want to make it, it's all in our food, but the food is playing a major role in getting our kids fatter today because the kids have a sedentary lifestyle, they're eating foods laced with pesticides and fertilizers. They are not able to detoxify it fast enough and those fat cells are basically getting saturated with all these toxins that your body cannot produce enough glutathione to get rid of it. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to make sure that people take everytime glutathione when the kids are a little bit overweight. What I'm trying to say is that it's a bigger problem than we think it is. The problem lies from every single thing that we do. Our water source, our food source, our addiction to the technology, not having enough exercise, all these things are playing a major role in our society and we're trying to solve a problem with a drug, with a medication, and we cannot. I can give all the glutathione in the world that's still not going to solve the problem that we're still eating food that is not 100% clean.

Melanie Avalon: People, for example, on a vegetarian or vegan diet and eating conventional versus organic, for example, how bad could that pesticide exposure be? Can people do more damage by eating foods like that?

Nayan Patel: I became vegetarian about six, seven years ago. Even before that, my meat consumption was not very high to begin with. During my research, when I was working on the glutathione project myself and I was advocating to all my patients to become vegetarian if they have issues, if they have concerns. If you don't have any issues, then you can do whatever you wanted to. But if you have a problem, then let's figure out ways how to minimize the problem. So, a lot of my patients, pretty well to do patients, they have the personal chefs at the house, a lot of my patients have that, so, they can cook whatever they want to-- Whatever they want to eat, somebody's going to cook for them. They have the avenues and the means to make themselves healthy if they choose to do so. And so, we went vegetarian, we went organic on at least the Dirty Dozen, those 12 products that has the highest amount of pesticides and fertilizers into them. If you can avoid those being inorganic, it would be a great thing to do.

All I can tell you is you can minimize the problem, but you cannot get rid of the problem. And so, all the tips I have in the book on how to minimize the problem is to eat-- The Dirty Dozen cannot be inorganic. It has to be organic. If you can try to be a vegetarian-- I'm not vegan myself. I should be but you know what, I love my dairy products so much. So, I am not vegan yet. But yeah, our body processes fruits and vegetables much, much more efficiently than meats. And so, being said that meats are okay for good protein source, but the fermentation process that's how the body eliminates the foods we eat. The meats are not supposed to be fermented. And so, the meats do not get fermented in the elimination pathways. And so, meats can cause a lot of inflammation. When the body is inflamed from inside? Yes, they need glutathione to reduce inflammation down. And so, a need for glutathione increases especially when you eat a lot of meats.

Melanie Avalon: So, can we quantify that with the meat? So, is it only after a certain amount of meat that there's that issue with fermentation byproducts?

Nayan Patel: No. The fermentation is the way-- Average human intestines are 21 feet long. The food has to go through the 21 feet of processing tube before it comes out the next day. This processing tube we call it intestines, they process the food by basically fermenting it and the fermentation process extracts all the nutrients out of it. Meats cannot be fermented. So, if it cannot be fermented, it causes inflammation. But basically, the body sees this as a foreign object and it starts producing anti-inflammatory markers because the body's getting inflamed, because it's trying to see, "Hey, what is this foreign object into my colon? Let me get rid of it." And so, even the smallest amount of meat has to have some sort of inflammation inside the body and low-grade inflammation is okay because the body can deal with it. It's the constant inflammation of your body that's an issue.

Melanie Avalon: Because vegetables have protein as well. So, is there something special about the meat protein that creates that effect compared to vegetable protein?

Nayan Patel: Yeah, the tissues, the animal protein. I wish we just eat the proteins. And yes, you can eat the proteins by itself in that form of shakes. They sell these protein shakes and some are made from animal source and some are made from vegetable source. Those are different because those proteins can be broken down by your body, not really because you have to chew to produce the enzyme. So, most of the protein shakes that you buy a good source will have digestive enzymes built into it, so that digestive enzymes will help break down the proteins to do that. But when we eat the meats, what we are really eating is the tissues, the muscles. And so, those tissues, yeah, to extract the protein out of there is little harder, but at the same time, it is a tissue that's causing the inflammation inside of the body.

Melanie Avalon: What about the protein? It just the way that the proteins are connected or why is that harder to digest and having that inflammatory effect compared to breaking down, again like vegetable protein?

Nayan Patel: Vegetable proteins are not that large to begin with plus the vegetable proteins are not complete protein anyways. For example, if you eat a lot of seeds or lentils, then you have to eat some sort of grains [unintelligible [01:00:45], millet to combine them as one complete protein. So, you're getting the proteins from two different sources to make it a complete protein, but in actuality there is no complete protein in any animal-- in any Western diet.

Melanie Avalon: It sounds like there could be issues with breaking down the animal protein. What about with the plants, all these protective compounds that people talk about like gluten, and lectins, and, other compounds that might have an inflammatory potential? Are they a concern?

Nayan Patel: The inflammatory components, those are genetically modified and that's another issue. That's a whole another can of worm. We can talk all day long on that one too. That thing is completely different because those genetically-- Keep in mind today. There're all the fruits and vegetables. There's a whole big gene lab out there trying to perfect the shape, the size, the taste, the color, the texture, everything. They have mapped every fruit and vegetable out there and they're trying to figure that portion out to see how to get the best-looking fruits and vegetables with the best taste with the highest amount of nutrients. They're being genetically modifying those products do their part. And by the way, as of yet, we have yet to perfect even one vegetable.

Melanie Avalon: I recently interviewed Mark Schatzker, who has a book called The Dorito Effect and also The End of Craving. It's all deep dive into all of that. It was really, really fascinating. Another question about the dietary choices. So, I was googling and I really thought that there would be a lot of studies on this, but I couldn't find that many studies looking at vegans versus omnivores and glutathione levels. I did find a few. They were mixed. Some found that vegans and vegetarians have lower levels. Usually, the hypothesis was due to the need for the specific cysteine, and glycine, and glutamine.

Nayan Patel: Cysteine is the one. Yep.

Melanie Avalon: Some found comparable. I'm just wondering like stepping back, because I know a lot of my listeners eat animal protein inclusive diets. And so, if you could buy regenerative or organic meats that don't have the potential toxins that go along with that, is meat a good substrate for glutathione because it can have pre-formed glutathione and the building blocks?

Nayan Patel: It does and you're right about that one. That one, I cannot deny it because vegetarian diet as much as I would love to-- being on vegetarian diet myself, I need the cysteine. Cysteine comes with the milk products, the whey. The whey [unintelligible [01:03:26] cysteine is in there. It's hard to get cysteine in your vegetarian diet. You can still get, but it's not that easy. The meat source becomes extremely important for that because those meat sources, there's quite a bit of meat source-- I think this is in my book, all the animal proteins that you can take that can increase the glutathione level to be the best. And so, it's absolutely necessary to have both. What I do, my pros and cons, I have to figure out that-- I have all the tools in the world and I have decided which tools I'm going to use. And so, I decided that, "Hey, since I've already figured out that I can take the glutathione from externally-- topical solution spray form and increase my glutathione level, then I will not need the meat source to increase my glutathione level for that reason." And so, I'm just using a tool to figure out what's right for me personally, but everybody's different. Everybody has to do figure things out for themselves. Some people eat meat because it's not just a good protein source, but it's really helped them stay lean and more agile. People, they want to eat vegetarian diet, they are very frail. They're strong, but they're just frail. They look frail, but by all means they're pretty strong from inside. And so, everybody has a different persona. 

I want to make sure that everybody understands that you have to use all the tools that are available to you today to make the right choices. I cannot tell you that, "Hey, one particular diet is going to be good for you or not." What I can tell you is that use the diet as a source for nutrients for your body. If you buy an expensive car and on the car it says unleaded gas only, and what happens if you put a lead gas inside? The car will still function, but what happens, all the parts inside are going to get the lead inside and eventually get clogged up and all of a sudden, the fuel injectors are not going to be working and you got to have this car not functioning at an optimum speed. And so, I wish we have something below our nose saying real food only.

Melanie Avalon: I'm so glad to hear you say that because that's the exact mindset I have about everybody finding what works for them personally and realizing that people exist in this paradigm often where it's like you have to be just carnivore, just vegan, or just this one thing when maybe you can find the aspects that work together. I don't think it's bad that if you're vegan and you might need to supplement certain amino acid. I don't think that means that the vegan diet is bad. It just means that you do something to optimize it. 

Actually, one of the slides I was looking at, it's literally what you just said. It was looking at the glutathione levels of the different populations and I found that there was a risk for vegans for low glutathione levels, but that lacto-ovo vegetarians actually had higher glutathione levels than the omnivores. So, there's just a lot of nuances there and there's the role of privilege, because with the vegetarian situation, you might have to supplement to make it the optimal form. But then on the animal side of things, you might need to get versions of animal products that aren't conventionally raised due to toxins that might be in there. So, yeah, it's just very nuanced. People have to find what works for them, for sure.

Nayan Patel: Yeah, I should not be giving diet recommendation at all because I think there're a lot more choices that people have. People should listen to their own body than any expert that's out there and just follow your body. If you think that your bowel movements are great, then follow your diet. If you feel that you're healthy and functioning properly and you have high energy, then follow the diet. Whatever that is right, follow the diet. When you talk to any healthcare provider like me, even like me, we are just giving an opinion based on our findings. That is not the truth, okay? And your job as a patient is to find the truth and you may be asking 10 different people, 10 different healthcare provider and getting their opinion as to what's right for them. But if I tell you this is the right way and this is the only way, then I'm fooling everybody that's out there. So, my intention is not to do that at all. I just tell what works for me and it has been working for me. So, that's all I do. I do like my partner in crime, my PhD that's with me on this thing. He doesn't eat any vegetables.

Melanie Avalon: At all? Is he carnivore?

Nayan Patel: Completely.

Melanie Avalon: Completely carnivore?

Nayan Patel: Completely and he's been that way. He's what 98 pounds, is slim as heck, he's in his late 60 early 70s now. No other health condition so to speak. Yeah, that's how he is. Of course, he's been taking glutathione for nine years now since the day we found out about it. But other than that, no, he is completely carnivore and his greens for the days is hot chilies.

Melanie Avalon: [chuckles] Oh, my goodness, I love that. Well, speaking of-- another question about the food because you list in your book foods that have pre-formed glutathione in them. Is that the same situation as oral supplementation like we were talking about earlier, where the glutathione would be broken down and then possibly reassembled or when it's in food, can it be used as is?

Nayan Patel: No, they are all going to be broken down and reassembled. And so there comes my technology. Keep in mind, I'm going to give you a visual, Melanie, right now. I'm going to give you a visual. Let's say, you go out in your car in a hot day and the scorching sun and you park your car. What you do is you pull up this windshield shade so to speak as a small ball, you open it up and put on the windshield, so that there is no sun coming inside the car. When you're done, what you do with the shade? You fold it up nicely and put it back inside. So, think about it. When the glutathione is produced intracellularly, it's like this small ball. As soon as it comes out of the cell, it becomes this windshield shade, big enough. Now, if we cannot fold it back again, it can never go back inside. 

Our technology, what we have done is we've taken the glutathione molecule itself and in my lab I basically fold the whole thing down. Once I fold it down, all of a sudden, it becomes-- The technology was not just falling down, protein enveloping is not a common phenomenon. A lot of companies are doing it today. But folding it down and keeping the integrity of the molecule at a stable format was the toughest thing that I have encountered to do. And then giving it to the body that your body can absorb it and release it back once is inside, that was a whole new ballgame. It took us four and a half years to just to figure that portion out.

Melanie Avalon: So, the glutathione that is folded down, what's keeping it folded down and why does it unfold when it's back in the body?

Nayan Patel: It's a chemical reaction that happens inside the body that breaks the bonds to unfold it. That's why we created a complex. It's a chemical complex that we have created, so it keeps it holding down. And then the enzymes inside your body, we break those bonds off and basically make the glutathione readily available within seconds.

Melanie Avalon: Is it temperature stable? Is it light stable?

Nayan Patel: Right now, it is temperature stable, it is not light stable. We always pack them in an amber bottle and we put them in a box that is always there. It is stable at room temp, but I don't like to keep it at high temps either. The stability of the product increases as the milligram increases. So, glutathione is about 200 mg/ml is the solubility of the product. And then, with this complex creation that we have done, we can get up to 500, 600 milligrams in an ml as stable format. And as the milligram increases, the stability also increases because the bonding gets tighter and tighter.

Melanie Avalon: Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Because you sent me some which was so kind. So, thank you. I've been using it. Can I keep it in the refrigerator?

Nayan Patel: Oh, yes, yes, yes, absolutely. It depends on where you are. If you're in the hottest part of this planet, please keep it at the room temperature, which is 75 or less Fahrenheit or better yet just put in the refrigerator. It's cold to apply it, but you know what, it's okay. So, I usually put all my spare balls always in the refrigerator and the one that I'm using I leave it in my medicine cabinet.

Melanie Avalon: I wanted to put in the refrigerator because it smells very sulfurey and I found that putting it in the refrigerator made it not smell as potent with the sulfur smell.

Nayan Patel: That's true. And the sulfur odor is because thiol group on the glutathione. And so, if I remove the thiol group, it reduces-- all the potency of the glutathione is gone. And so, thiol group was important. I have put a chemical cap on it. The chemical cap makes it stable from not getting oxidized, but it's not enough to get rid of the smell. It's not a physical cap. I put a chemical cap on it. So, with the chemical cap on the thiol group, I was not able to get rid of the smell.

Melanie Avalon: Do you think there's the possibility in the future if the technology that would?

Nayan Patel: I have been working on this for since 2007 now.

Melanie Avalon: I believe it.

Nayan Patel: The formula I created in 2007 and the formula that you got in 2022 is identical. I have probably done at least between 50 to 100 different variations of this molecule over the years and nothing worked like the one we did the first time.

Melanie Avalon: Trying different variations specifically for the sulfur smell or just in general to see how it would work?

Nayan Patel: There're two things. The sulfur smell, the odor is there and I cannot change that. The second problem is the stickiness. It's very tacky when you apply it. And so, you have to rub it in to let it dry up a little bit. Those are two big challenges I have. Keep in mind the cosmetic world has trained us that if you put anything on your skin, it has to smell good and feel good. And my product smells like sulfur and it's tacky like glue. And so, my goodness, you have no idea how hard is it to tell people that "Just use it, it's good for you." I say, "Yeah, right." But once they use it, then they see the benefit of it, they can never unsee that.

Melanie Avalon: So, I read your book before receiving it and I was like, "I'm sold." I got to be using this and then I received it and I am still using it every night, but I had definitely had to come to terms with the sulfur smell. I did find like I said putting in the refrigerator helped a lot. And for rubbing it in, it does have that feel. Do you really need to physically rub it in for the effectiveness or is it just for comfort rubbing it in?

Nayan Patel: it's just for comfort.

Melanie Avalon: Okay. So, I don't actually have to rub it in?

Nayan Patel: No. I rub it in everything because even if it absorbs through your palm, it doesn't really matter. I spray it on, I will rub it in with my palms and then I have a dog, so the dog loves glutathione. He licks off .

Melanie Avalon: He'll lick it off? 

Nayan Patel: He licks up my palms. He just waits around, he sits there like a good dog and as soon as I'm done, he will lick off the glutathione, and so then I wash my hands up. So, he gets a little bit, I get a little bit, so we both have it.

Melanie Avalon: That's so funny. I love that. Okay, so questions about actually using it in that form. When we put it on, is it similar to the IV situation where it has a half-life that's fairly short or what happens to it?

Nayan Patel: That's a great question because I can give you a short answer right now, but the real answer is going to come back later this year. We just got human trials approved by IRD. We will shut down for two years almost into this pandemic and all the IRBs and universities were closed. And even though they were approved, there was nobody to do research on that one. When we did the original research which was a short study to apply for the patents, what we found out was that the half-life of this product was anywhere from four to six hours after single-dose application and inside your red blood cells, not just plasma, in your red blood cells. So, that's what we measured.

Melanie Avalon: Okay, that's impressive. So, four to eight hours, does that mean that you should be--? I know on the bottle, it says, every eight hours or so.

Nayan Patel: I recommend twice a day and I have my reasonings behind that one because according to the current study, you should be using every four hours. But if you do all the calculations as how your body processes this medication at the rate of elimination and also counting into how much of it is going to be GSSG molecule, was this conjugation pathways. If I do all those calculations, I figured out that if you use it twice a day, I can literally get anybody-- not anybody, I would say more than 80% of population, I can probably get them on a steady state in between four to six months. Now, anybody who has acute issue, I want to use it every four hours for a few days to get rid of the problem, they have done this part 2.

Most of our doctors, they treat the patients for multiple reasons, they'll put them on every four hours for two days and then twice a day thereafter, so that the acute problem is gone and then they put in a maintenance dose for six months. And after six months, I think the tests will tell us more in detail. But if we extrapolate that information out that 80% of people after six months can get away with it once a day using and still have significant glutathione levels up to the high normal area. So, that's what we're hoping to have one day is to set a sort of maintenance dose. But you said right now, you have to come in terms to it. But if you just rub it in, the smell goes away within a couple of minutes too.

Melanie Avalon: Yeah, definitely I've integrated it into my routine. I was wondering, would there be any different effect or would it even matter? I do an infrared sauna session every night. Would you suggest doing it before, or after, or does it not really matter?

Nayan Patel: After, because sauna is also creating oxidative stress. Sauna is a mild-- I hope you are not doing infrared, is it infrared or hot--?

Melanie Avalon: Infrared. 

Nayan Patel: So, infrared is you cannot do too long either, because that is actually setting frequency to create oxidative stress. Little stress is good for you. Overexposure to stress is not good for you. So, if you're doing for 10, 15 minutes, I hope no more than that.

Melanie Avalon: I do a long session every night like an hour.

Nayan Patel: Oh, my gosh. [laughs] Okay. I'm not sure what the intensity is, but we can talk about that one too. But if you are doing that long of a session, then what you're getting is, you're getting a lot of oxidative stress afterwards. During the session, you're getting all the benefit. As soon as the session is over, you should spray the glutathione on right away and it will quench all the additional free radicals whatever it can and make it into GSSG molecule. And then if you take your vitamin Cs in the morning, that GSSG molecule will come back to be the glutathione again.

Melanie Avalon: Okay. That is interesting. That's what I've been doing. I've been doing the glutathione right after that. So, I know the dosage is four sprays. If you do more sprays, do you get more of a benefit?

Nayan Patel: Absolutely. Like all my clients, they have more money than they can ever dream of. They think that, "Oh, this is only 120 bucks, but the plus is 200 bucks." I said, "No, you only need the regular stuff. You don't need the 200." "Is this going to hurt me?" I said, "No, it's not going to hurt you, but you are just wasting money." I got plenty of that. So, that's the reason they come up. We've done studies to do two sprays. I'm talking about the regular glutaral. Two sprays, four sprays, eight sprays, 12, 16, and 20. So, this is the thing we have done. What we found out was four sprays at a time give you the best cost-benefit increase in your bloodstream of the glutathione level that taking more it doesn't justify double the cost. I'm the first one to tell you that if your product, the doctor tells you that you need a lot of glutathione-- Most of my products are recommended by physicians anyways. So, we work with doctors all over the country. They will come and tell me, "Hey, this person, this person, how much glutathione do I need?" 

I do work with your physicians if they have any questions. Those people will tell them that, "Hey, go to high dose temporarily for maybe three months or four months. Once the symptom is under control and they do a follow-up blood test or they do some ultrasounds and things like that to figure out and any issues they have, then they can go back to the regular dosages. But typically, four sprays which is the best cost benefit ratios you can ever have. So, if you're doing it, I recommend four sprays. And if you want to do more, do more often. Do like every four hours instead of eight sprays once a day, I'll rather do four sprays twice a day, it will get you more benefit than eight sprays once a day.

Melanie Avalon: Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And as far as where you put it, will it have a systemic effect regardless? Will it also have a more acute effect for that wherever you put it, like if I put it on my face?

Nayan Patel: Yes. A lot of my female clients, they apply it on their face, they get twofer. They get skin tightening effect immediately on their face and they also get the facial rejuvenation while the glutathione is getting through the skin. They get twofer applying in the face. A lot of my athletes, they also apply on the joints sometimes too. And so, they apply to the joints, so the joint gets a little bit more attention at that time. And so, it helps with that as well. But yeah, it doesn't matter what's part of the skin you apply to. People always say, "Oh, if you apply on the thinner part of skin, does it absorb better or not?" No, this is a water-soluble product. It doesn't use the lipid layer on to your skin to absorb this product at all. It uses the water channels of your skin to do their part. So, it doesn't matter. Thick skin, thin skin, it has to be skin though and it cannot be no skin. Anywhere you apply to the skin, it is going to get absorbed through the water channels.

Melanie Avalon: Oh, wow. So, I could put it on my feet?

Nayan Patel: Yeah.

Melanie Avalon: Oh, wow. I'm going to put on my face and see what that's like. That's exciting. Speaking of the face, because you have a whole chapter and section on the skin, why is glutathione often thought of as whitening or brightening?

Nayan Patel: Well, the thing is, there's a mechanism of action for glutathione. It affects the melanin production and helps with-- That's a far stretched one. That's why there're a lot of people injecting glutathione in the world, but not a single country, not even one has approved glutathione for injections for skin lightening, or brightening, or whitening because it really affects the melanin at those very, very high dose at a very short amount of time. The low dosages if you apply it, what it really does, it helps to cleanse out your liver. Keep in mind, when you have high stress, when your stress levels are extremely high, your skin gets darker. And when the skin gets darker, if it's really dark, what we would call it, Addison's disease, right? When somebody has adrenal insufficiency and cortisol levels are completely gone, the skin gets really, really dark, it's adrenal insufficiency. But more than just adrenal issues, the skin also gets darker when your liver is taxed. The glutathione is produced highest in the liver because liver is a detox house of your whole body.

As soon as you give glutathione, the liver gets more efficient and hopefully the skin gets lighter to your natural color. Now, if you're African-American, I cannot make you Caucasian. There is no way, okay? Or, if an Indian descent, my skin is brown skin, I cannot make it completely light or go away. If I do that, it requires a high dose of glutathione and I'm playing with fire now. So, it's not the healthiest way to do that part. The healthy way to do is low dose, whatever shade you get it, it says what you're going to get it.

Melanie Avalon: And if it's reducing melanin and having that effect, is that actually making your skin more susceptible to sun damage?

Nayan Patel: It can Yes. That's why as I said low dose is all you need. When you give 2 grams of IV push versus my four sprays typically roughly about 104 milligrams only, you're getting 20 times more dosage in the IV push. So, that's my beef. That's my beef, right? Why give so much? In the theory for the physician is that, "Hey, your body is not observing anyways, so I only have for 15 minutes and I'll give the biggest bang for the buck for 15 minutes."

Melanie Avalon: Right, but it's still in and out. 

Nayan Patel: It's still a lot. It's still a lot. People, they take this IV shots for skin lightening once a week for months. And so, that to me is not right for long term. We all do things for the right reason. If the skin is darker because you have toxicity of liver or because you have adrenal insufficiency, we can fix those part with something else. We don't have to take glutathione for that one. But the flipside is that I also have a skincare line and the reason I have a skincare line is because guess what? The same technology, I can take all the antitoxins in the world, shrink them into small balls, put them into one cream, and give it to you. And so, the skin condition doesn't like me right now, they don't, because I don't believe in [unintelligible [01:26:47] from products. I just want to give you one. It has everything you want.

Melanie Avalon: What about you talk in the book about the S form of glutathione?

Nayan Patel: S-acetyl glutathione. And so, this is an acetyl form of glutathione. What they have done is that since glutathione is very hard to keep stable, what they have done is they have combined them with the acetyl group to make it stable. Just because it's stable, it doesn't mean it's absorbed in your skin. And that's where the problem lies. S-acetyl glutathione is out in the market today and the thing is, it doesn't get absorbed through your skin. In fact, the glutathione molecule is so large that it can never go through any parts of your skin.

Melanie Avalon: But so, the S form you're saying it is-- [crosstalk] 

Nayan Patel: It's just stable. It is stable outside the body. So, the thing is, it doesn't get oxidizes very fast. Chemically, it's a great product because it looks good in the bottle, it looks clean, it looks white. It's good-looking product, but it stays on the surface of your skin and it doesn't get into your skin.

Melanie Avalon: So, what was the part about it possibly crossing the blood-brain barrier?

Nayan Patel: When you take it orally, basically, it's a stable form of glutathione. Again, we're assuming that it's causing the blood-brain barrier, but acetyl glutathione is not a glutathione. We still haven't figured out how the acetyl glutathione gets cleaved and acetyl group has been released and the glutathione has been absorbed. They are

Melanie Avalon: We haven't figured out, if that happens or how it happens. 

Nayan Patel: If and how. 

Melanie Avalon: Oh, okay. Interesting. So, we're just guessing that it's working that form?

Nayan Patel: Exactly. And chemically stable product. We take so much products in our body that we don't even know how it performs. I also do a lot of hormone replacement therapy for lot of my male and female patients. For female patients, all your hormones are produced in your ovaries, but yet when you get estrogen or progesterone cream, where do you apply it? On your wrist. Ovaries are not on your wrist. How do you know that from your wrist it is going to get to your breast tissue or uterine tissue or barrier your brain?

Melanie Avalon: How do we know that's happening? Is it because that's using the lipid channel and so, we don't--? [crosstalk] 

Nayan Patel: It uses your lipid channel as a passive diffusion. We know it is diffused into your fat cells and then is it going to the bloodstream, is it going to the lymphatic system? Obviously, it can get absorbed all over the body. And if it is going through the wrist, if it's going to the wrist, how do I know that it's going to end up in the uterus or end up in the breast tissue where it needs to be at or end up in the brain where it needs to be really fast, because I have foggy memory? And they need this almost now. How do I know that it's getting there. If we apply it to the wrist, what are the chances of it going to the wrist has side effects versus applied through the ovaries?

Melanie Avalon: The distinguishing factor here with your version because it's using the water channel, it goes systemic. But when it's the lipid channel, we don't know. It might just be staying right there.

Nayan Patel: We don't know, we just do not know. 

Melanie Avalon: Wow. Have they done studies on putting the progesterone as close to your ovaries as you can?

Nayan Patel: Yep. 

Melanie Avalon: And does it have a bigger effect?

Nayan Patel: Yes, they do. That's the reason I'm saying that part. When you apply as close to always as possible, as a medical community we don't know hardly that much. We think we know that much, but we don't. Just because you take an oral pill, it doesn't mean it's going to get to where it's supposed to get to. If it gets to that place, how much it is going to get there and where else it is going to go there, we're not supposed to go there? If you have infection, let's say if you have UTI infection and you take an oral tablet, it's going to go to the whole body and kill every bacteria and the bacteria in your urine tract. Why can we target this thing? For the hormones, they have the necessity for target, they have found out that if you get close as close to the ovaries as possible, there's less hormones required, better efficacy, and less side effects.

Melanie Avalon: Nobody's really talking about that.

Nayan Patel: No, no, we can talk about that one too because that's what I do full time for all my patients.

Melanie Avalon: I'm assuming you have patients using progesterone. Do you have them put it closer to their ovaries?

Nayan Patel: I put them either inner labia or vaginal. It depends on the volume. If the volume is too big, then it has to go intravaginally. If the volume is not that big, because we can make it too small volume then up into the inner labia just a drop of it, absorption is fantastic. That is as close to always as possible, the absorption is better and you can predict the results. Most of the doctors I work with, they will do a before/after blood test and they can really get the results what they're looking for instantaneously.

Melanie Avalon: Wow. And would that be specific to the ovary situation or people who are using progesterone for sleep and things like that?

Nayan Patel: That's capsules usually, because now for sleep you're not looking for progesterone. What you're looking for is a metabolizer of progesterone. And yes, you can get the metabolizer of progesterone through the topical chamber that they can leave it longer versus if you take it orally, it goes straight to the liver, and breaks everything down to progesterone, and makes it [unintelligible [01:32:35] pregnenolone which binds to GABA receptors, makes you fall asleep. So yeah, that's a different-- Again, using those same hormones differently because you're targeting different things.

Melanie Avalon: What about the suppository mechanism or route for different things? Does it have a systemic effect?

Nayan Patel: Yes. Oh, absolutely. Any mucosal membrane absorption has an immediate systemic effect.

Melanie Avalon: And people will often say that coffee enemas increase glutathione production. Is there any science to that? Do you know?

Nayan Patel: I have not tried that part. I am not a big fan of enemas because I've never tried one and coffee, I don't know yet.

Melanie Avalon: In the coffee general world, they'll say that it increases glutathione production. So, I don't know,

Nayan Patel: I have a better product that can raise the glutathione like this, then why go through the hassle and aggravation of doing something that is going to be affecting something else. I don't know yet. Yeah, but the thing is all this therapy exists you know why? Because until now, there was no good way or correct way to increase glutathione levels ever been discovered. Now that we have it, we can get rid of all these myths of ways to improve glutathione levels and just do it immediately. And literally, you can spray it on and 45 minutes later go to the doctor, do a blood test, and see the before/after results. Immediately, you don't have to wait for weeks and months. You can do today in 45 minutes.

Melanie Avalon: You mentioned doing a blood test, does it matter--? Are there issues to testing not taking into account all the different forms of glutathione and what can we actually learn from testing our levels?

Nayan Patel: There is a normal range for glutathione between 500 to 980 millimoles per liter. That's a normal range. Most of the adults are in the low 500s or below 500s. And so, the key is can we get to 900 and keep it that way for a longer period of time. It's not just one time deal. What we do is we measure the glutathione levels. You can only do a spot check. You want to make sure that the glutathione level is stable enough for whenever you're going to measure it, because if it's a shorter half-life, then you want to measure it when it's at the peak levels. When we did our study, we applied the glutathione levels, we measured it every 15 minutes for the first hour, and then every hour after that until for six hours to see what the levels were. And so, that's how we found out that it stays in the body for at least six hours. The peak plasma level was at 45 minutes to an hour in between. When you take a liposomal form of glutathione, the levels are not going to increase immediately because the body has to break down these amino acids, make these products back into the glutathione, it takes weeks, if not months to improve the glutathione level when you need that today and now.

Melanie Avalon: Okay. And this is all in the book, listeners. You've got to get the book to learn even more. But you talk about all of the health conditions that might relate to glutathione levels. So, if listeners get your product and are using it, what should they expect to see? Should they use it for very specific conditions? Just how can they monitor besides testing the actual levels? What should they expect to experience?

Nayan Patel: Absolutely. Everybody's going to be different. Everybody manifests oxidative stress in some shape or form. And honestly, I do not know how they're going to feel. What I do know is that you it a shot for 30 days, it's 100% money back guarantee, because I never want anybody's money for trying the product if it is not working for them. Even if you use the full bottle, if you don't like it for smell, or texture, or whatever, you are going to buy it ever again, I don't want you to pay for that bottle either. One thing that I do notice for people that I get the most of is, they see an increase in energy in the first 30 days. That's almost unanimous. That is what I hear from everybody that they see an increase in energy. 

Other than that everybody is going to get different results, everybody. Because if stress manifests in a particular human being in literally hundreds and hundreds of different ways. That was the reason why I put this book out because I've tried on so many different things and we have got so many different stories from physicians themselves. We've interviewed all the physicians that we have worked with and to tell their stories because even they were skeptic. I said I have literature that glutathione will help with reducing the sludge in your blood. I said, "Well. Doctor, do you want to try it?" I said, "What?" "I got a whole bunch of patients with high triglyceride levels. Let me try it." And so, doctor did the trial themselves and they got the results they're looking for. And then we interviewed the doctor and put their story inside because at the end of the day, glutathione is in every cell in the body. It helps reduce oxidative stress, it helps reduce the toxic overload and how it helps you physically, and mentally, and chemically, I cannot tell you that part. And so, you just have to experience that part. You just have to experience it.

Melanie Avalon: Okay, well, it's just so interesting. Like I said, I was not using your glutathione. I read the book. I hadn't even tried it yet and I was like, "I've got to start using this." And now even especially after this conversation, I'm pretty much sold. So, I'm going to be using it for life. Listeners, I definitely recommend trying it, adding it to your routine. Like Dr. Patel said, seeing how you react, but really nothing to lose. I'm just so grateful to you that you're doing this, because this is such an important thing and like you said, nobody's done this before. So, thank you. I'm glad to be alive now that this is available. So, where can listeners get the book, get the glutathione, where can they go for that?

Nayan Patel: Absolutely. Thank you for having me today. I had such good pleasure talking about this thing because this is my passion. Anything I can do to help my patients thrive, not just survive, thrive in the life. That's what I want to see. I want to go someplace and people recognize me and say, "Hey, you know what, thanks for the glutathione because now I can enjoy my life and I can travel the world." So, that's what I want to do. I want to do for everybody. If they want more information, go to our website. It's aurowellness.com. It's A-U-R-O wellness dotcom. All the information is on there, the product is on there, they can get the books in their favorite bookstore. Everybody has this book. They can buy the Audiobook, or Kindle, or hardcopy. I'm old school. I love hardcopy books only. I have the books on my website as well. So, you can pick a book at any of the bookstores you have online.

Melanie Avalon: Awesome. Well, the very last question that I ask every single guest on this show and it's just because I realize more and more each day how important mindset is. So, what is something that you're grateful for?

Nayan Patel: Today. I like my gratefuls every single day. In today's, I'm grateful that I am here today with you speaking and reaching the world. 

Melanie Avalon: Awesome. Well, I love that so much. I as well I'm so grateful to you Dr. Patel like I said. It's incredible that you're doing this that you took it upon yourself to find a way to make this accessible to people. I just think it's so, so important. Yeah, this is just amazing. So, thank you so much for what you're doing and I'm super excited to see the future of everything that you do.

Nayan Patel: Absolutely. There're lot more things we have to do in life and I want to make sure that I can help people heal from within and not be stuck to some sort of medications for life.

Melanie Avalon: I love that. Well, thank you and fight on.

Nayan Patel: Oh, fight on. Thank you. 

Melanie Avalon: Thanks. Bye.

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