Natural Antioxidant Acetylcysteine
Acetylcysteine is a fantastic and little known about supplement. Anyone who is health conscious these days has heard about the wonderful benefits of antioxidants in preventing cancer and maintaining an optimum state of health. The human body contains and uses many different types of antioxidants, and the actual number of examples is almost endless. However, there is one antioxidant in the body which is present in almost every cell, and is essential for life. That anti oxidant is called glutathione. Glutathione is everywhere in the body, and serves multiple functions. It boosts the immune system, protects cell membranes from free radical damage, prevents lipid peroxidation and among other things plays an active role in maintaining and repairing DNA in the body, which is under constant attack. You might still be wondering where acetylcysteine fits into this picture but it will all become clearer soon enough.
The question that people often think about on hearing about glutathione is “how can I get more glutathione in my body?”. Many people have tried to do this by making glutathione supplements and attempting to use these to boost levels of glutathione within the body. If only it was that simple. Glutathione is a peptide, which means it is made of amino acids. Unfortunately this means that it is pointless consuming it as a supplement, because it is broken down in your digestive tract to its component amino acids. The posh way of saying this is that it has almost zero oral bioavailability, and so is useless as a supplement that you can swallow.
There is a way around this however, our little known wonder supplement acetylcysteine is capable of making it into the circulation and boosting the synthesis of glutathione by providing the rate limiting raw material for glutathione synthesis (the amino acid cysteine) in a form readily available to the body. You will also be pleased to know that there is solid scientific information to back this up, unlike with many other supplements. For example, in a paracetamol (tylenol) overdose, the reason that an overdose is lethal is that it destroys the liver. This happens because the liver uses up all its glutathione in attempting to remove the toxins from the body. Once the stores are depleted, those toxins can then destroy liver cells. Guess what is used to treat a paracetamol overdose? Thats right, acetylcysteine! It follows then that if you want to boost your levels of glutathione, then you need to take acetylcysteine.