Remember playing “hot-potato” as a kid?  Whether it was just a fast-paced game of catch or it was literally a steaming tuber being tossed around, speed and urgency are the name of the game.

The way your body deals with free radicals - the little, unstable molecules that can lead to inflammation if left unchecked - has to be fast too. Pick up that hot ember, quickly make a decision on who to pass it to, and then wait for when another one comes around to you. Even though your antioxidant system coordinates this at the tiniest scale, how well it works has big implications for your energy levels, healthy aging, and joint and heart health.

Your standard vitamins A, C, and E take care of the quick response.  Healthy glutathione levels provide the power to deal with the hot potato game of oxidative damage (check out our other posts if you want to learn more about glutathione - a hint: it might be your most important antioxidant, but you can’t supplement to get more). But what happens to your antioxidants in the process? 

Damaged glutathione and other antioxidants have to be recycled. In a sense, the troops have to be refreshed before they go back to keeping the peace with inflammation. If we were to play a full scale game of hot potato, with the potato being a free radical, there would be three classes of defenses to keep in mind: security, medics, and waste management.

Security and Communications: Selenium

Selenium is a part of selenocysteine. It’s a special amino acid that works in a protein to receive damaged glutathione and signal the rest of the peacekeepers to mount a defense. Higher selenium levels are linked to increased glutathione processing power, but that doesn’t mean everyone should just go and start supplementing with selenium!  Go too much over the recommended 400 micrograms per day and you’ll have some serious repercussions! Keep reading for the information you need to keep your selenium optimized.

Medical team: Copper, Zinc, and Manganese

These minerals have many other important roles in the body. In combination with glucosamine and chondroitin, supplementing with manganese is linked better joint health in older adults with osteoarthritis. High quality research suggests zinc might be helpful to take at the start of a cold to support the immune system’s activity. Low copper levels might be associated with heart disease and supplementing can increase some positive measures of heart health.

In the antioxidant system, copper, zinc, and manganese work to get glutathione back out on the front lines.  Copper supplementation has been shown to increase glutathione recycling systems.  Zinc raises the same enzyme that helps keep glutathione working well.  Even though it might not be enough to lower oxidative stress in the average person, it seems to work in people with increased risk for oxidative damage, like those with kidney disease, and in high-level athletes.

Disposal: Manganese and Iron

If the other minerals are the team of medics that patch up glutathione, then iron and manganese neutralize the damaging byproducts and leftovers.  Iron is a little tricky: just like selenium, you can get too much of a good thing, but too little will leave you feeling low-energy and easily fatigued. Women and children are at highest risk for iron deficiency. Too much iron can itself lead to increased oxidation and fatigue. The good news is that the National Institutes of Health recognize that iron overload from food doesn’t seem to be a big problem for most people - so outside of supplementing, eating iron-rich foods will help keep your energy up and your stress down. We’ll go more into how to eat to make sure you have the right iron levels in another post, so stay tuned!

How do I get enough selenium without getting too much?

The last time selenium made headlines was in 2008, when 201 people suffered from selenium poisoning in a poorly regulated supplement. You won’t find this kind of poor oversight in Resync products: our supplements go through rigorous testing to carry the highest safety certifications. 

The only other likely way you’ll get too much selenium is if you eat too many Brazil nuts. How many?  Well, it depends. Selenium in plants comes from the soil, and soil levels vary depending on where you live, but it seems that levels in animal products are more consistent.

So, if you think you have a clean diet and you’re getting lots of local whole foods, you really don’t know how much selenium you’re getting in your diet.  If you’re in the United States your best bet is to check out this map from the U.S. Geological Survey. If you’re only eating local foods in an area with low selenium levels, you should balance your diet out with some high-selenium foods.  If you get your food from an area that has decent selenium levels, the FDA states that it’s probably nothing to worry about unless you have increased needs.

Do I need more selenium?

Some groups that have been shown to have low selenium levels include:

• Health-conscious individuals who only eat local grains and vegetables from an area that doesn't have selenium in the soil.
• Vegans who eat no animal products.
• Women over 60
• Athletes who needs to stay on top of your stress balance and energy levels.
• Some people who are overweight and can’t effectively handle the oxidative stress of exercise.
• People undergoing dialysis, living with HIV, or who have cancer. 

Bottom Line

• Your antioxidant system coordinates a number of players to keep your antioxidants - especially glutathione - in their active form, letting you feeling full of energy and ready to take on the challenges of life.
• Selenium (as selenocysteine) is the first-pass player in the game against oxidative stress. It signals other players to get ready and it absorbs the damage that glutathione took the brunt of.
• That oxidative damage is passed on to proteins that use copper, zinc, manganese and iron to further neutralize the oxidation.
• Selenium levels in plants are not reliable. One brazil nut might be enough to meet your daily needs, but levels vary, and its possible to get too much from brazil nuts in particular (watch out for garlic breath!).  Other plants that have selenium are mustard and sunflower seeds, and beans. More consistent selenium levels are found in organ meats, seafood, eggs, and dairy products.

Whether you’re trying to find the lifestyle balance to lower chronic stress or you’re trying to recover your best from pushing your limit, optimizing your total antioxidant system is hugely important - and it goes beyond taking your one-a-day.  Choosing the best foods to boost glutathione and then making sure that your whole system is prepared to support your antioxidants is a winning formula for living your life on your terms. Play hard, recover your best, and maintain your energy through the whole day with the Resync lifestyle! 

See our next post in this series where we decode what methylation means for your heart health. You do not want to miss out on it!

We want to hear from you! 

Comment below with your thoughts and questions and we’ll get back to you in future posts. 

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Works Cited

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Battin, Erin E., and Julia L. Brumaghim. “Antioxidant Activity of Sulfur and Selenium: A Review of Reactive Oxygen Species Scavenging, Glutathione Peroxidase, and Metal-Binding Antioxidant Mechanisms.” Cell Biochemistry and Biophysics 55, no. 1 (September 1, 2009): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12013-009-9054-7

Bird, Julia K., Rachel A. Murphy, Eric D. Ciappio, and Michael I. McBurney. “Risk of Deficiency in Multiple Concurrent Micronutrients in Children and Adults in the United States.” Nutrients 9, no. 7 (June 24, 2017). https://doi.org/10.3390/nu9070655

Cominetti, Cristiane, Maritsa C. de Bortoli, Arthur B. Garrido, and Silvia M. F. Cozzolino. “Brazilian Nut Consumption Improves Selenium Status and Glutathione Peroxidase Activity and Reduces Atherogenic Risk in Obese Women.” Nutrition Research 32, no. 6 (June 1, 2012): 403–7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nutres.2012.05.005

Das, A., and T. A. Hammad. “Efficacy of a Combination of FCHG49 Glucosamine Hydrochloride, TRH122 Low Molecular Weight Sodium Chondroitin Sulfate and Manganese Ascorbate in the Management of Knee Osteoarthritis.” Osteoarthritis and Cartilage 8, no. 5 (September 2000): 343–50. https://doi.org/10.1053/joca.1999.0308

DiSilvestro, Robert A., Elizabeth L. Joseph, Wenyi Zhang, Adrienne E. Raimo, and Young Min Kim. “A Randomized Trial of Copper Supplementation Effects on Blood Copper Enzyme Activities and Parameters Related to Cardiovascular Health.” Metabolism: Clinical and Experimental 61, no. 9 (September 2012): 1242–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.metabol.2012.02.002

Gaby, Alan. “Nutritional Medicine.” Global Advances in Health and Medicine 2, no. 1 (January 2013): 80. https://doi.org/10.7453/gahmj.2013.2.1.013

Guo, Chih-Hung, and Chia-Liang Wang. “Effects of Zinc Supplementation on Plasma Copper/Zinc Ratios, Oxidative Stress, and Immunological Status in Hemodialysis Patients.” International Journal of Medical Sciences 10, no. 1 (December 22, 2012): 79–89. https://doi.org/10.7150/ijms.5291

Jones, Gerrad D., Boris Droz, Peter Greve, Pia Gottschalk, Deyan Poffet, Steve P. McGrath, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Pete Smith, and Lenny H. E. Winkel. “Selenium Deficiency Risk Predicted to Increase under Future Climate Change.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, no. 11 (March 14, 2017): 2848–53. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1611576114 

Ju, W., X. Li, Z. Li, G. R. Wu, X. F. Fu, X. M. Yang, X. Q. Zhang, and X. B. Gao. “The Effect of Selenium Supplementation on Coronary Heart Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.” Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology: Organ of the Society for Minerals and Trace Elements (GMS) 44 (December 2017): 8–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtemb.2017.04.009 .

Kafai, Mohammad R., and Vijay Ganji. “Sex, Age, Geographical Location, Smoking, and Alcohol Consumption Influence Serum Selenium Concentrations in the USA: Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988-1994.” Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology: Organ of the Society for Minerals and Trace Elements (GMS) 17, no. 1 (2003): 13–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0946-672X(03)80040-8 .

Kara, Ersan, Mehmet Gunay, Ibrahim Cicioglu, Mehmet Ozal, Mehmet Kilic, Rasim Mogulkoc, and Abdulkerim Kasim Baltaci. “Effect of Zinc Supplementation on Antioxidant Activity in Young Wrestlers.” Biological Trace Element Research 134, no. 1 (April 2010): 55–63. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12011-009-8457-z .

MacFarquhar, Jennifer K., Danielle L. Broussard, Paul Melstrom, Richard Hutchinson, Amy Wolkin, Colleen Martin, Raymond F. Burk, et al. “Acute Selenium Toxicity Associated With a Dietary Supplement.” Archives of Internal Medicine 170, no. 3 (February 8, 2010): 256–61. https://doi.org/10.1001/archinternmed.2009.495 .

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“Office of Dietary Supplements - Copper.” Accessed July 15, 2019. https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Copper-HealthProfessional/ .

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Glutathione is the front line in our body’s defense system. Inactivity, insomnia, pollution, and even healthy aging are just a few pieces of normal life that can increase damaging oxidation and inflammation. In our last post, we covered the lifestyle decisions that can enhance our glutathione. Exercise, good sleep, and getting rid of stressful triggers with yoga or meditation are some of the most powerful ways to decrease oxidative stress.

But what if we don’t have the time to exercise or sleep enough every day? When you’re being pulled from all sides, sometimes it feels impossible to take a moment for yourself, let alone an extra hour for a yoga session!

The good news is: you can keep up a healthy antioxidant system with what you eat too! Eating lots of colorful plants, healthy fats, and cutting out processed foods and sugar are the sure-fire ways to up your antioxidant power. 

When all else fails, natural supplements can raise glutathione as well.  More is not always better when it comes to antioxidant supplements. In fact, taking high dose vitamin C and E supplements can prevent some of the positive adaptations to endurance training. Yikes! You don’t want your anti-inflammatory supplements to work so well that they block healthy, adaptive inflammation too! 

Instead of focusing on antioxidants themselves, we’ll be looking at the supplements that can raise your whole antioxidant system. Plus, we’ll look into the research behind some bunk claims from less trustworthy sources on the internet. Even though we’re taking a look at the research to empower you to make your best decisions, it is still important to discuss any new supplements with your healthcare provider. 

How to keep glutathione up with the right foods

• Eat the rainbow. A colorful whole foods diet will help on every level.  First, plants are rich in antioxidants. Second, many plants have glutathione or proteins to make more glutathione.  And lastly, the natural chemicals in plants can tell your body to make more glutathione by itself. Remember that glutathione is very sensitive to processing (like canning, freezing, and high-heat cooking), so eat these foods fresh to maximize their benefits! To get the most glutathione out of what you eat, try these foods first:

• For plants, fruit is generally higher than vegetables. Apples, pears, bananas, oranges, tomatoes, and watermelon (if you eat enough of it!) have the highest levels. 
• For proteins walnuts and almonds are the nut of choice, and most unprocessed meats are good sources.

• Eat your Greens! Whether you want to eat 15 brussels sprouts, or about a tablespoon of broccoli sprouts, green veggies (plus cauliflower and red cabbage) are a great way to increase glutathione levels. Later on we’ll dive into why these superfoods work the way they do, but just know that they are linked to lower risk for osteoporosis, heart disease, liver disease, inflammatory conditions, and cancer.
• Garlic and onions. Eat those intense white veggies too! About a clove of garlic per day can boost your antioxidant system you if you’re in your golden years, and even less - 400mg in tablet form - can increase glutathione levels during pregnancy. It appears that if you have an advanced condition, you’ll need more than just garlic to offset increased oxidation levels. Two shots - 3.35 fluid ounces - of onion juice on the other hand, may even help prevent age-related bone disorders thanks to its effect on antioxidant capacity!

Besides your greens and pungent veggies, other sulfur-rich foods help keep glutathione levels up. For a list of other foods high in sulfur, see our post “Not your normal antioxidants: glutathione and sulfur”.

• Try out plant-based. Research shows that vegetarian diets may have higher glutathione levels than vegans or omnivores.  This might be because omnivores eat fewer of the veggies that tell the body to make more glutathione. On the other hand, vegan diets provide less of protein building blocks needed to make glutathione. Eating a variety of plants and protein sources goes a long way to keeping your antioxidant status healthy!
• Go Mediterranean. Thanks to the nitrate-rich vegetables, lack of processed foods, and ample extra virgin olive oil, the Mediterranean diet can lower oxidation compared to a typical diet. It takes just 3.5 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil to raise glutathione activity. Check out this nonprofit dedicated to traditional diets for great resources and recipes to hop on the best trend since whole-wheat sliced bread.
• Drink good coffee, but not too much! A single study showed that 5 cups of coffee a day for a week can increase glutathione levels by 16%.  Another showed that 3 to 4 cups per day for a month also improved antioxidant status. We don’t recommend drinking more than that long-term, but it’s nice to know that a little pick-me-up in the morning might have more benefits than we thought.  Who’s going to disagree with that?
• If you like alcohol, drink an amount that doesn’t make you feel worse off the next day. Even if you’re healthy in every other way, drinking on a daily basis can make lung glutathione levels plummet by 90% or more! If you want to enjoy your drink and get some of the antioxidant benefits, choose unfiltered craft beers and red wine full of polyphenols over distilled hard alcohol. Funny enough, take the alcohol out of beer and it can raise glutathione levels by 29%!

How to Supplement to Raise Glutathione levels

• Glutathione. Using a glutathione supplement doesn’t really raise your glutathione levels much, if at all. 250mg or more per day for a month might raise your glutathione levels like it did in a Penn State study, but another study from Bastyr University shows that it might not. Support your body’s ability to heal itself by reaching for some of those juicy fruits and lean meats we talked about earlier.
• Vitamin C and other classic antioxidants. On the surface, it might make sense that eating more antioxidants gives our body a step up in the battle against oxidation and inflammation. In fact, making sure you have enough vitamin C is absolutely essential to building strong muscle, cartilage, and collagen. That’s not the case in every situation though.  

Generally speaking, if you have a condition that depletes antioxidants or lowers muscle strength like natural aging, supplementation might be helpful to get your levels back to a healthy baseline.  But if you are already pretty healthy, antioxidant supplements might be doing more harm - especially if you’re trying to maximize your workout! 

Take for example, a study done with Taekwondo competitors. Yes, short-term supplementing with 2000 mg of vitamin C and 1400 IUs of vitamin E (those are some high doses!) lowers muscle damage and inflammatory responses.  But it’s been shown over and over that whether you’re training for strength or for endurance, as much as those antioxidants might lower the pain, they can also lower the gains (check out this study, this one, this detailed review on antioxidants in resistance training and this great review of antioxidants in endurance training). If you want to prevent massive damage to your muscles after a workout, go for it, but don’t go crying when long-term use leads to weaker, slower muscles! 

• N-acetyl-cysteine (aka. NAC, the non-toxic cysteine). N-acetyl-cysteine is the glutathione booster that medical professionals reach for in treating those with very low cysteine and glutathione levels. It’s positive effect on glutathione might even help in managing psychiatric and neurological conditions like ADHD, autism, addiction, and Alzheimer’s. But just like other antioxidant supplements, NAC will only help you if your glutathione levels are already low, so don’t bother supplementing without first focusing in on what you eat to get to a healthy baseline.
• Glycine. As impactful as cysteine may be, the amino acid glycine might be more important for some. It’s a major component in glutathione, may lower blood pressure, can likely lower risk of heart attacks, and it’s a crucial building block for tendons and bones. Like cysteine, even though your body can make some glycine, it might not be enough, especially if you’re older or more active and have a higher need for glycine. If you’re in your older years, an extra source of glycine might be just what you need to bump your glutathione levels!

Find glycine in animal products like meat, low-temperature treated whey protein, bone broth, or at lower levels in veggie proteins like nuts and beans. It’s especially high in our versatile and delicious collagen blend!

Think that going carnivore might pass as a good way to get your glycine? Think again! If you’re eating a lot of meat and not enough collagen you might be putting yourself at a disadvantage. Because of the way one of the proteins which is high in meat (methionine) interacts with glycine (which is high in collagen and organ meats and higher in plant-based diets), you should get 1 gram of collagen for every 10 grams of animal meat. This translates to grabbing one serving of collagen for every half pound steak you throw on the grill! It may be hard to get enough glycine to support your best joint, bone, mental, and anti-oxidative health in your food alone, so think about varying up your routine a bit with supplemental sources of glycine.

• Niacin or Nicotinamide riboside (what NAD+ is made of). It may be trendy to inject NAD+ to try to live longer, but even though there’s not much research on humans for that, there is some evidence that taking nicotinamide riboside - a type of niacin - may help raise glutathione if your levels are low due to age. It’s hard to make sense of which NAD supplement will be best for you, so your best bet might be to get adequate niacin in your diet.  Some foods like refined grains, refined fats, processed foods and sugar might deplete your niacin status, so balance those out with the foods highest in niacin: liver, fish, poultry, other meat, and peanut butter.
• CoQ10 (aka. ubiquinol). Coenzyme Q10 supplementation has been shown to raise antioxidant activity in people with heart disease, may have an added benefit on top of a mediteranean diet, and it fortunately doesn’t appear to consistently affect physical performance for better or for worse. CoQ10 is usually used for other reasons related to heart disease, so consider it’s glutathione boosting properties just an added perk!
• Selenium. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet! Although some sources like Healthline say selenium might raise glutathione levels, studies in healthy individuals and in people with inflammation show that it does not. Instead, it acts as a stress sensor and can tell your body to raise it’s the total antioxidant capacity. For example, keeping your selenium levels within a tight range is associated with lower risk of heart disease because you’re body is better able to handle and process stress.

Keeping a good level of selenium might be harder than it looks. Levels in food can be low or high depending on where you live, and might be changing with global climate changes, so it’s hard to say if you’re getting enough even with a healthy diet. Get it in a handful of Brazil nuts, most seafood, and organ meats. Wondering if you’re getting too much? Stay tuned for our next post on antioxidant recycling, but we’ll give you a hint now: watch out for a fruity breath!

• Phase II inducers.  This may get a little technical, but we’ll keep it brief.  For the same reason that exercise can create oxidative damage and then compensate to make you stronger, plant chemicals can have a similar response.  Silymarin in milk thistle and curcumin in turmeric may have a similar positive effect on glutathione levels, but studies in humans haven’t been done. Since there are so much better ways to increase glutathione, we don’t recommend these as front-line approaches.

Bottom line 

Work hard, rest hard, and eat a varied, generally good diet that includes a lot of vegetables, high quality organ meats, and the occasional supplement if you need it to maximize your glutathione. The most impactful recommendations are:

✅ Eat the rainbow, including greens and pungent white veggies like garlic and onion.

✅ Try out a Mediterannean diet with lots of plants, some seafood and meats, and enough olive oil to bathe in. (Just kidding, but studies use 1 liter (about 1 quart) a week as a healthy amount.)

✅ Alcohol saps your antioxidants, so drink an amount that lets you feel great the next day and consider wine or non-alcoholic beer.

✅ Get glutathione from food in juicy fruits and veggies, walnuts, almonds, and lean meats.

✅ Get glycine from food in collagen, like our delicious collagen recovery blend.

✅ Get other nutrients to support your antioxidant system in liver and organ meats, poultry, lean meats, seafood

✅ If lifestyle and diet aren’t going to work for you, some supplements you could consider include glutathione, N-acetyl-cysteine, glycine, and selenium-rich foods.

Whether you’re a young athlete pushing yourself to your limit, or your youth has been ousted by wisdom, start with your lifestyle, then focus in on what you eat, and finally supplement if you’re  worried about low glutathione status to keep your defenses up!

Your glutathione levels might be up, but is the whole system working in top shape? Learn more about enhancing your whole-body system to defend against inflammation and oxidation in our next post on the micronutrients that support your whole antioxidant system.

We want to hear from you!

Comment below with your thoughts and questions and we’ll get back to you in future posts. 

Click here to subscribe to your trusted source for nutrition, supplements and healthy living information.  See our next post in this series on total antioxidant capacity with “How to Keep Your Antioxidant System Running Smoothly”. You do not want to miss out on it!

***Note*** We strive to be your fact-based source for nutrition and supplement information. Unlike other companies that are just trying to sell you their stuff with clickbait and fake news, we make sure there’s a research study to backup everything we say.  Want to learn more about a topic? Click on the red text to be redirected to a scientific article. We believe that if you have the right information, you’ll be empowered to make the best decision for yourself. And if you decide that our science-backed products are right for you, then hey, that’s a great perk for both of us!

Works Cited

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Biswas, Saibal K., et al. “Curcumin Induces Glutathione Biosynthesis and Inhibits NF-KappaB Activation and Interleukin-8 Release in Alveolar Epithelial Cells: Mechanism of Free Radical Scavenging Activity.” Antioxidants & Redox Signaling, vol. 7, no. 1–2, Feb. 2005, pp. 32–41. PubMed, doi:10.1089/ars.2005.7.32.

Bloomer, Richard J., et al. “Impact of Oral Ubiquinol on Blood Oxidative Stress and Exercise Performance.” Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity, 2012, doi:10.1155/2012/465020.

Bogaards, J. J., et al. “Consumption of Brussels Sprouts Results in Elevated Alpha-Class Glutathione S-Transferase Levels in Human Blood Plasma.” Carcinogenesis, vol. 15, no. 5, May 1994, pp. 1073–75. PubMed, doi:10.1093/carcin/15.5.1073.

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Your master antioxidant, glutathione, is endogenous - meaning it’s not an antioxidant you take as a supplement, it’s one that your body makes (see more in our last post). 

However, making sure you have enough isn’t just about eating the best building blocks of glutathione. Having enough glutathione is also about minimizing triggers for chronic inflammation and oxidative stress in the first place, and then giving your body a chance to manage its own antioxidant and anti-inflammatory responses.