(Modification of Max International Article)
Glutathione and Asthma Your Lung Health
Breathe in………………..breathe out………………..breathe in………………..breathe out………………
You don’t even have to think about it! Every few seconds, your body automatically takes a breath of air which your heart sends on to every cell.
Your lungs are crucial to your survival. Only your heart would rank higher when you think of the most vital organs of the body. Heart and lungs: a true team that works together and is vitally dependent upon one another!
Health advisors and doctors are constantly telling us how to support good heart health. But when was the last time you heard anyone worry over lungs?
We think it’s time to focus a little attention and care on our hardworking and faithful lungs. And we hope this doesn’t come as a surprise: glutathione (GSH) is a vital antioxidant of the lungs.
Just think about it. Each breath you take exposes your lungs to pollution, allergens, smog, dust, first- or second-hand cigarette smoke—a lungful of dangerous airborne particles. If any area of the body is under a full-scale attack by free radicals and toxins, it is certainly the lungs.
We probably don’t realize the one-two punch our lungs take from this exposure to toxins and free radicals. Not only is there oxidant damage from free radical attacks, but the body’s response to cellular injury is inflammation. That’s all well and good but the inflammatory process, once triggered, often rages out of control. When that happens, a number of lung ailments and disorders arise.
Thankfully, the epithelial cells that line the lower respiratory tract have a protective screen of glutathione to protect against oxidant damage by free radicals. In fact, early research showed that total glutathione (both GSH and oxidized GSSG) of normal epithelial lining fluid was 140 times higher than the glutathione found in the blood of the same person!1
Irfan Rahman and William MacNee, researchers from the University of Edinburgh in the UK, stated that glutathione (GSH) “is emerging as one of the fundamental antioxidant defense mechanisms in oxidant-induced lung injury and inflammation.”2
Smokers: Are you aware of this?
Rahman and MacNee estimate that one single puff of cigarette smoke contains 1014 or 1,000,000,000,000,000 free radicals! They go on to say that “epidemiological evidence leaves no reasonable doubt that cigarette smoke is the major causative agent of COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease], with atmospheric pollution as an additional contributory factor.”3
A free-radical attack of that enormity would be purely terrifying when you think of the damage that could be done to the lungs. But remember, there is protective glutathione already in place in the lungs. In another study, Rahman observed: “Glutathione (GSH) is a vital intra- and extracellular protective antioxidant in the lungs.”4
A highly damaging effect of cigarette smoke is that it depletes total glutathione in the airways. Components in smoke cause glutathione to oxidize but not to the normal oxidized form (called GSSG), which the body can recycle back to GSH. Instead, cigarette smoke creates “nonreducible glutathione-aldehyde forms,” depleting the total available glutathione pool.5
This depletion is reason enough to ensure that the body can create new glutathione to replace that lost by smoking. Researchers Rahman and MacNee validate this in the study mentioned previously. They also understand how to increase glutathione. “At present, GSH precursor amino acids are the best means of manipulating GSH biosynthesis intracellularly.”6
Several studies have also shown antioxidant imbalances in patients with asthma:
Nadeem and colleagues “summarized the scientific and epidemiological evidence linking asthma with oxidant-antioxidant imbalance and possible antioxidant strategies that can be used therapeutically for better management of asthma.”7
Smith and colleagues showed “reduced superoxide dismutase(SOD) activity in lung cells of patients with asthma suggests that diminished SOD activity serves as a marker of the inflammation characterizing asthma. Alternatively, it may play a role in the development or severity of the disease.”8
British Medical Journal Revealed the Best Incentive for Quitting Smoking.9
It seems it doesn’t seem to do much good to tell smokers all the negative consequences of smoking. Surprisingly, what actually doubled the rate of quitting was a simple discussion of lung age! A study in the March 15, 2008 issue of the British Medical Journal told how showing smokers that smoking damages the lungs as if they were aging more rapidly than normal, doubled the rate of those who stopped smoking.
I hope this information inspires those who would like to quit smoking!
Remember the Good News!
You may not be able to control all the pollutants in the air you breathe.
You can be proactive in your health with Max GXL, a glutathione accelerator and Max N-Fuze (SOD and Catalase).
References
1. Cantin AM, et al., “Normal alveolar epithelial lining fluid contains high levels of glutathione,” J Appl Physiol. 1987 Jul;63(1):152-7.
2. Rahman I, MacNee W, “Lung glutathione and oxidative stress: implications in cigarette smoke-induced airway disease,” Am J Physiol. 1999 Dec;277(6 Pt 1):L1067-88.
3. Ibid
4. Rahman I, “Inflammation and the regulation of glutathione level in lung epithelial cells,” Antioxid Redox Signal. 1999 Winter;1(4):425-47.
5. van der Toorn, et al., “Cigarette smoke irreversibly modifies glutathione in airway epithelial cells,” Am J Physiol Lung Cell Mol Physiol. 2007 Nov;293(5):L1156-62.
6. Rahman and MacNee, op. cit.
7. Nadeem A, Masood A, Siddiqui N , “ Oxidant–antioxidant imbalance in asthma: scientific evidence, epidemiological data and possible therapeutic options,” Ther Adv Respir Dis. 2008 Aug;2(4):215-35.
8. Smith LJ, et al., “Reduced superoxide dismutase in lung cells of patients with asthma,” Free Radic Biol Med. 1997; 22(7):1301-7.
9. Parkes G, et al., “Effect on smoking quit rate of telling patients their lung age: the Step2quit randomised controlled trial,” BMJ. 2008 Mar 15;336(7644):567-8.
