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Kwik Brain with Jim Kwik
Glutathione Expert: What’s Draining Your Brain and Energy at the Cellular Level
00:29:16
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A
Welcome to Kwik Brain Bite Sized brain hacks for busy people who want to learn faster and achieve more. I'm your coach, Jim Kwik. Free your mind. Let's imagine if we could access 100% of our brain's capacity.
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I wasn't high, wasn't wired, just clear. I knew what I needed to do and how to do it.
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I know kung fu. Show me. What if the biggest reason you feel tired, maybe foggy, or anxious or not as sharp as you used to, isn't your age or your workload or even your motivation, but a molecule your body is quietly running out of? And what if restoring it could change how your brain feels, how it thinks, and how it performs even faster than you expect? So many high performers, CEOs, athletes, creators, they hit a wall where their focus drops, maybe their memory slips, their energy crashes, even though they're doing, like, everything right. So welcome back to the Quick Brain podcast where we help you to learn faster, remember more. I'll live. Truly limitless. I am your host and your brain coach at Jim Kwik. If you care about your brain, your energy, your longevity, and quite frankly, your future, this episode is really essential. Listening for you, your family, your friends. We talk a lot about brain optimization on this show. Focus, memory clarity. We talk about neuroplasticity. Underneath all of that is something most people have never been taught. Something that often really affects every cell in your body, including your brain cells. So this is gonna be conversation about the master antioxidant, glutathione. It's often referred to, as I mentioned, it's kind of like the mother of antioxidants. But this title doesn't even begin to capture its role in detoxification. Mitochondrial energy, immune function, protecting your brain from oxidative stress, inflammation, you know, accelerated aging. So my guest today is one of the world's leading experts on this topic. Today's guest is Dr. Nayan Patel, a pharmacist. He's founder of RO Wellness. He is a global authority on this thing called glutathione. It was really developing innovative ways to restore it, especially in a world full of stress toxins, poor sleep. He's the best selling author on a book called the Glutathione Revolution. Fight disease, slow aging and increase energy with the master antioxidant. If you've ever felt a brain fog or chronic fatigue, slow recovery, or just like your, your mind is not as sharp as it used to be, this conversation may completely reframe how you think about your own brain health. So let's dive in. Welcome to the show, Dr. Patel.
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B
Well, thank you for having me here today.
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A
You know, I get to see you when we're speaking at various health, wellness, biohacking, anti aging events. So I'm looking forward to this conversation. Why don't we start with many people might not have heard about glutathione. Maybe you could take a couple minutes, explain what it is and why do you believe it may be one of the most important molecules for, for human health?
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B
Well, the first thing people should know, it's the most abundant molecule produced by human body. So if that doesn't grab your attention, I'm not sure what will. But that is something the body doesn't produce anything out of ordinary. So if this is the molecule produced, we have to learn everything about it. So what it is, it's it in a, in a chemically it's a tripeptide, three amino acid coming together. You eat every single day. So the body absorbs all these amino acids. Three of them combines together which is glycine, glutamine and cysteine. Coming, coming together, combine them in a sequence, makes it a glutathione. So chemically that's what it is. But then in terms of it work wise it is, it is named different things. It, it's considered an antioxidant, it's considered a detoxifying agent. And so far in the 140 years that it has been discovered, there's only two things that we have known that it does perfectly good for us, which is one, it neutralizes all the free radicals. So that's why it's called the antioxidant. And the free radicals are produced every single second. Because you're breathing oxygen, your body is producing nitrogen for all the body functions. So those are the two main species that causes all the free radicals. And the second part is you're exposed to so many different chemicals every single day. Either from your diet, from your exposure to the environment, slapping onto your skin, some, some skin care products. All those chemicals have to be neutralized, detoxified and has to be conjugated inside your liver to get rid of it. So glutathione does both of things. So when people say what is glutathione? I can give you chemically what it is, but people are not interested in that chemical what they're interested what does it do for me? So hopefully I, I get both the answers covered in one question and then
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A
what some people might be. There are a lot of options. People go to Amazon or you know, they take, they, they take a pill or maybe they get something more liposomal like, or maybe an IV does it does. What's, what's the most of different ways are they effective or what's the, like what what is, you know, maybe you could talk about the different options in terms of, for people, maybe they've, they've done their little bit of research, they know some of the benefits and we'll talk about more of the benefits, but in terms of the delivery systems.
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B
So the thing is, when it comes to glutathione, your body can produce plenty of it. It needs the three amino acids which you can get from your diet, needs to, needs energy production from mitochondria, which is ATP. So, so as long as you have low exposure toxicities like smoking or alcohol, things like that, then your mitochondrial functions better and can produce more ATP. And of course your body also needs nad, which is therefore electron transfer. Not a whole lot of it, but just enough to do the electron transfers. And as long as you have enough of those substrates, your body can produce enough glutathione. Now that is true for about until you're 30, 35ish, but after that it starts getting lower and lower because one of the ingredients that's missing in your body, so supplementation comes into place and for 140 years there's now been a single supplement that actually got absorbed into your body inside your cells. None. You can inject it straight into your, into your veins and it stays in the plasma, never enters your red blood cells ever. And so all this research has been done for, for decades. I'm talking about 30, 40 years ago, it was already done and nobody ever figured out how to basically get it inside your cells. FDA has actually approved of one product which is called nac or brand name is called Mucomist. And it's just a cysteine molecule that your body uses up to produce its own glutathione. And so all this year, and that was up until in the 60s, 60 years ago, nothing's new have ever come out of it after that. And so my job as a new and upcoming pharmacist was that hey, I need to figure, I need to crack this code and how can I get this tripeptide inside your cell membrane, inside your cells. And if I can get that part, I can have a profound impact on health and longevity or the journey of health and longevity. And so this was my first goal as soon as I graduated from pharmacy school, started working on that one in 2007 we actually figure out a way to stabilize glutathione molecule in a lab outside the human body. And then we started figuring out how to get into your system. And the only system we found that was actually effective when we went topical. When I went oral, the body breaks it down. When I went to nasal spray, actually, the peach was so low that it was burning the nose off a little bit. So it was not going to be conducive for business for the rest of their life. People may not be using it for everyday purposes. And so the route left was a topical route. And so we figured a way how to use the skin cells topically to transport the molecule. Because when you want to talk about transportation, we're talking about, okay, I need to get into the bloodstream. And the blood will go everywhere in the body, including the brain and the kidneys and everywhere else. And so if I get in the bloodstream, my job is done. And when it comes to glutathione, it did not work. So we follow different delivery system where there's a cell to cell transfer, so I can get a new skin cell and skin cells is touching your different types of cells, and it can cell transfer to cell to cell transfer, and it can reach your brain within seconds. Within seconds.
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A
Transdermally Trans.
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B
Well, it's topically because transdermally you're pushing through the cells into the bloodstream. Topically, it stays in the skin cells and from the cell to cell transfer is what's happening, which is transporting this glutathione up into the brain cells or into your kidneys, into your liver, into your heart, and everywhere else.
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A
So when people, if they were, if they saw a glutathione supplement that they take orally, something happens in the digestive system where it can't be as effective.
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B
Well, it's a peptide, right? So it's like when, if you eat a protein, the body will just take it apart, chop it off with the enzymes and absorbs all the amino acids. The body only needs amino acids. It doesn't need. Doesn't need proteins. This needs amino acids. And it builds its own proteins on its own. So when you consume an oral capsule of glutathione, the body's actually seeing this as a peptide. The body's going to chop it off and break it apart, absorb the cysteine out of it, and use the cysteine to make its own glutathione internally itself. And so, yes, it, it works a little bit. But if you are 35 or 40 years of age and your needs are so much, so much higher and you're taking the capsules or something over the counter that is, that is, that is available. Your levels are not going to get high enough. It works a little bit. So you think it's okay, it's working a little bit. So I should take more of it? No, you already, you already hit your ceiling already.
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A
Now, glutathione, and specifically the, the brain, you know, in your research, how has glutathione been supportive of greater cognitive, greater brain health? You know, as a man, as a master. Antioxidants, you know, is, is it, is it neuroprotective? Is it helping with stress? Is a detoxifier energy? How's, how do, how do people usually report feeling? And obviously this is not meant to treat or diagnose anything. You know, this is for educational purposes. But what have you seen in your research?
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B
So Jim, you know, over the last five years, you know, what we have seen is too much inflammation in the environment. From the pandemic to today, they're still lingering on to vaccinations, to over medications and things like that. We have seen inflammation that has now been seen before. And because of that, the brain fog issue that you talked about earlier is, is rampant. Right? And so of course we're going to find out, okay, what is it coming from? Is it inflammation causing the brain fog or is it just too much oxygen stress causing the brain fog? Where is this coming from? And so what we have done, of course we have worked with a lot of universities and we have a couple of published articles on this already. And if you just google glutathione with complex and brain health, long Covid or any kind of mitochondrial dysfunctions, you'll see come up. A couple of the articles come up. It's already been published. And what we have found out is when we are using a glutathione product topically, it is actually reducing the oxidative stress in your brain. Now keep in mind your brain is only 2% of the total body weight, but yet it consumes 20% of all the oxygen that you breathe in. And it's the cpu. If the brain doesn't get it, guess what? The whole body shuts down. So no matter what happens, the brain gets the first dips of all the oxygen that you breathe in. And I would say 80 to 90% of the people are shallow breather, they don't breathe normally. They just, this is on the top upper part of the lungs to breathe normally. Your Belly has to extend out and you have to exhale all the air out and so and so forth. So most people are shallow breather. And even for those people, the brain gets the first oxygen, not the rest of the body. So the brain is the highest amount of oxygen stress. The key is how can I get glutathione into the brain? Another technology exists right now to transport the glutathione from your body to the brain. The body has to done internally only. So you can inject it, you can take pills. Nothing gets to your brain. And so when we found out that when we put on your skin cells and the cells are transporting this glutathione up to your brain, of course we are working with somebody in Pittsburgh at this point at the medical center, and they have been using, due to, they're using this MRI scans to measure glutathione levels in your brain. And when they apply topically, they saw a rise of glutathione levels in the brain. Of course, this is still preliminary. This is still. We don't know where he's getting to. Is he going to substation nigra, frontal lobe? You know, where is he going at it? We don't know all the answers yet, but the one thing we are finding out is that it is crossing the blood barrier. And the researcher who's a neurosurgeon is a good friend of ours and he's been using this for the last four or five years. He says that this has been a game changer for him. He just recently did an ironman at the age of 82. Of course he won it because he was the only person in his age class. Right. But regardless, what it is, is that he's seeing a way to actually help people reduce oxygen stress in the brain. And by doing so, the neurons are reconnecting, the neuroplasticity is increasing and he sees the inflammation coming down and the thinking capacity is improving. So all those things are seeing by just doing one thing, quenching all the free radicals and reduce oxidative stress.
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A
What about besides oxidative stress? What about, what about detoxification?
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B
So detoxification is two parts, right? So in the brain, what the. And again, there are some other researchers out there, they're talking about Parkinson's patients too. The detoxification is actually over. It's too much of those amino acids, glutamine, cysteine. Right. That also is actually can combine with some other metabolites and become this toxic chemicals that your body has to start trying to get rid of it. So a glutathione is actually there to conjugate and remove those chemicals, too. So it is doing two parts, right? Antioxidants, quenching the free radicals, conjugations, and removing all the metabolites. Those two things are the cornerstone for the whole body, not just for the brain, even for your liver, for your kidneys, for your lungs, everywhere. We got to remove all this toxic exposure chemically as well as electronically. If you can do those two things every single day, the whole body can regenerate and rejuvenate at a very fast pace, like in your 20s.
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A
Dr. Patel, what about brain energy or mitochondrial energy? Have you seen any research with glutathione being supportive of that?
- [16:14]
B
So I don't research for that. I can tell you that right now firsthand. We have thousands of patients using this product on a daily basis, and the very first thing they tell me is, what is? I don't know what happened. I have too much of energy. I don't know where it's coming from. One lady, in fact, calls me up and tells me that, hey, you know what? Is it okay if I just use it once a day instead of twice a day? Because I'm not willing to give up my coffee. The second cup of coffee in the afternoon, it was like, crazy, right? And the reason is because why? To make glutathione, you need three amino acids. You need two molecules of ATP. If I give you glutathione the way it's supposed to be inside your cells, your body doesn't have to produce any more of glutathione. And guess what? It spares the two molecules of ATP. So over, like, next two to three weeks, you're gonna have surplus of ATP energy that your body can use it for some other functions. But all of a sudden, the first thing you notice is, hey, I have this innate energy in my body that I don't know where it's coming from.
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A
Yeah, that's the first thing that I noticed the first week. And I started on this protocol a couple years ago. But the first thing that I noticed was a boost of energy, not having to rely on the caffeine. And that's a game changer because your body requires that energy to do the things that it needs to repair, to be able to perform. I'm curious, you know, after dedicating your life to studying glutathione, if everyone listening could, like, get or understand, like, one simple truth about glutathione, what do you wish that would be. And what do you think the ripple effect would be like? How do you think it could change people's lives?
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B
So this is something that, why I'm so passionate about this thing today is because initially, you know, like every, with everything else, I didn't believe in my own product. I said, you know what, make it, use it. Because I'm a pharmacist, I can make other products too. So I was not, not into that much. But when I first saw how it started changing my, my dad's life. My dad was 78 years old when he first started using this product. And then you're 78. He had diabetes and arthritis and blood pressure issues. He had a mic, he has an infarction, so he would put a stent in his, in his arteries and all those things happen. And at the age of 78 and at the age of 89 when he passed away, it was an accident, unfortunately, he fell down and broke his skull. But anyways, the thing is the journey for the last 11 years of his life progressively got better and better and better every single day. And to me, that proved one thing. Our human body can actually repair and restore back to its youthful times. It just needs to figure out how to do that part. And so I started putting all the pieces together and what I found out was that it's like the domino effect, right? When the people are, when the dominoes are falling down. You only see the last dominant fall down because that's a disease or a symptoms or whatever that you're experiencing. But you as a human being or we as a human being, we're not seeing from the top. We're not God, we're not seeing from the top, we're seeing from the bottom. So we don't see the first dominant fall down because you have no idea what the first Domino fell down 20, 30 years ago. That first domino is glutathione. Because if I can reduce oxy stress from the get go there, it stops the progression of all the diseases. And so to me is like, if I can give one thing to everybody is to tell them that hey, if there's only one thing that you can do in life to have a, have the real chance for longevity is to optimize your glutathione levels. Do whatever it takes, right? Take a supplement, reduce exposure to alcohol and cigarette smoking and pollutions and chemicals, eat the cysteine rich diet, do everything and improve the reserves of your levels. Because guess what, if the number one, number two job of the body is taking care of it. Only thing left is repair and restore. That's it.
- [20:19]
A
Yeah. No, and you mentioned age. You know, with age or stage, if we're not producing as much and then even people listening, it might be athletes, it might be frequent travelers, they might be, you know, busy entrepreneurs. Menopausal women, you know, would have higher oxidative, of course demands. Right, yeah. Are there certain signs that they people could look for that might indicate they need extra support?
- [20:47]
B
Um, so. So Jim, you and I, we travel a lot. We go to all over the place. And guess what? We don't fly in this lead. Lead shoots. These are aluminum shoots we call the planes. And there's no protection for us for, for, for human body from the cosmic rays. So when I travel, I usually triple my dose. Triple. And if I don't do that part, I get sniffles, I get inflammation, I get, I feel the pain to my body instantaneously. So when I'm feeling, traveling, I'm. I'm usually tripling my dose for those, those through two or three or four days. When I'm doing it, all my athletes, my athletes, they work out so hard, right? I have NFL athletes, NBA athletes, they work out so hard. Now they're young, their needs are not very high, but the only needs they have is a day they work out. So all my athletes, they use it like a pre or post workout, once a day during the days they work out. And if they only work out five days a week and not seven days, they only use it for five days. And it's an amazing way to reduce oxygen stress down and allow the body to heal faster so they recover better and they become this mean machine on the field the next day.
- [21:57]
A
And lifestyle. Obviously you know, the foundational habits, I'm sure you subscribe, you know, sleep, hydration, stress management, nutrition, they all interact. You know, these are routines and tools, lifestyle things that could piece. Be supportive, antioxidant and being able to be protective. You know, this is. But it's just like the reason you supplement is exactly why. It's just because if we're not getting enough or also we're in an environment, as you mentioned, there's electromagnetic fields, there's emotional stress, financial stress, there's environmental toxins. I mean it's. We live in a very interesting, you know, world, you know, where a lot of people have these kind of demands. And I like what I like about specifically your, your products. It's like you think about the skin. It's the largest organ and I love the skin brain connection because it's because your brain, you know, is the one that's controlling everything else. And it's kind of like the master organ, if you will. But it's, it's. Many people overlook the skin as being more than cosmetic. Right. Aesthetic, you know. And so your skin can be potentially a powerful indicator, I would imagine of oxidative stress and aging and you know, and people are there actually skin benefits also as, as well?
- [23:19]
B
Well, you know, as you know the skin is. You can physically see the organ deteriorating. Right, right. You cannot, you cannot see the organ of heart or lungs or kidneys deteriorating, but you can see the skin and
- [23:32]
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liver and liver too. If it's a detoxification.
- [23:35]
B
Yes.
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A
Right. I would imagine, you know, a lot of. I was talking to a client who's struggling with fatty. Any liver, you know, and there's challenges there in our, you know, in our detox systems. Yeah. And I imagine this would be supportive also as well.
- [23:50]
B
Oh, absolutely. All those things are basically inflammation, toxic overload, things like that. And you got to chip it away slowly by slowly every single day. And the skin being the largest organ physically, you can see with your naked eyes the changes that happening in your skin. I mean, we have a skincare line because of that as well, because of the very reason, because you'll see the benefits on the skin immediately. Right. So and if that's happening on your skin and you can feel that it's getting inside your body, then all of a sudden you start seeing the dominance starts falling down one by one. And to me that is what the most interesting part is. It's not a one time use or let me use it for two months, then let me wait and see what happens after that. So no, it's progressively the body is using this and using this to a point where it starts repairing itself. And so the real changes are going to happen once you start progressively using for over months to years. And as I said, my best example was my father. At the age of 89, he was traveling the world by himself. When he passed away, he was by himself in India traveling for four months on its own. The last 11 years he had 13 overseas trips. 13 on his own. He's single. My mom passed away a long time ago. So my dad was single. He traveled the world by himself. He did the glacier mountains on its own. He went to Canada, he went to Australia, New Zealand, he went to Costa Rica for 10 days on doing all kinds of activities over there. I mean, think about a guy who is 89 years of age and doing all these Things not humanly possible at the 78 because he had all these diseases. And to me, that's the progress I want to see in everybody. I'm so passionate because if my dad could have these things, I want the whole world to enjoy this life. And what you said earlier, yes, all the basics are taken care of it, the nutrition, the sleep, the diet, all those things. But we live in a world where we want to explore the world. The world has become so small that I want to, you can literally in less than 24 hours you can go the whole world,
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A
right?
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B
And you want to, and you want to see it. You want to explore things. In order for to do that part, you got to bring inflammation, oxidative stress down. So yes, travel, but make sure you have enough glutathione to bring the stress down so you can enjoy the life.
- [26:15]
A
I think it's a real game changer. I mean this is an eye opening conversation. You know what I really want everyone listening is to take away that, especially when we're talking about. Brain health isn't just about the, the processes and the strategies. It's also about the brain itself. Right. The cellular foundations. You know, we could teach people how to train their focus, improve their memory, upgrade their mindset. But if they're, if their cells are overwhelmed, they're inflamed, you know, they're underprotected, then you're playing the game really on a more difficult mode than you need it to be. And it sounds, you know, from this conversation, you know, Glutton isn't about. We speak at a lot of the biohacking conference. Not just, just about biohacking, it's about almost like biological resilience. Right? It's, it's about giving your, your body and your brain's part of your body, you know, the internal environment it needs to, to, to, to heal, to adapt, to perform at its best. You know, this is something that, that I use and I only talk about things that I use because it's one of those questions we get a lot in terms of resources, you know, since, you know, from our family for, for our clients and such. I have, I have one of your products right here. And I don't want to turn this into an infomercial. I want to just because. But people are asking, this is something I just spray, I just spray it on my arm, you know, like three or four sprays. And people want to see details about this proprietary product and process. They could go to. It's ro wellness.com kwik and if you use code KWIK K W I k you'll actually get a discount as a thank you for for listening also as well. A u r o wellness.com kwik let's and so people can see all the details because I know some people are they want to like look at it and kind of see some of some of the more find points to to it. So Dr. Patel, thank you again for, for the work that you do, the research that you do and you know, continued success on on your mission, you know, going out there. You know, there's this thing with health. They say that a healthy person has a thousand dreams. An unhealthy person, like a sick person has one dream, right? It's just, just to be healthy again. And we always talk about that lead domino that one a handful of things that you could do up front that can make everything, you know, else easier down downstream. So. So I really appreciate it.
- [28:48]
B
Thank you so much.
- [28:49]
A
And to our Quick Brain family, if you found this episode valuable, please share it with someone that you love. You know, join our 1.9 million subscribers on YouTube where we put the extended version of this podcast. And you know, because when one brain gets better, I feel like the world gets better. So until next time, keep your brain sharp, your mind strong, and remember that you are limitless.