The last few years have been very exciting for me.  Until recently, I thought that the years that I was director of a clinical laboratory (1982 to 1992) specializing in allergy and viral immunology and at the same time, maintaining an active ENT surgery practice was the most fun I could have in medicine. Taking a patient’s blood sample directly from the clinic to the lab for evaluation of antibody responses to pollens, molds, bacteria and viruses gave significant insight to the mechanisms underlying problems such as allergy, chronic sinusitis and asthma. This experience showed me that it was possible to explore the basic science of a health problem and “translate” the information directly into the care of the patient. I learned that an immunologic approach to managing the problem could have direct benefits for improving health problems. For me, an immunologic approach involved calming excessive allergy-like problems by what is called allergy immunotherapy. It is fun for me to see that the evolution in moving from allergy shots to using oral drops that I started using in the 80’s has progressed to become an acceptable form of therapy for allergy.

Early on in the management of allergy and inflammation, it became clear that additional support for antioxidant function and detoxification helped in the management of these problems. In 1996, I ran across research that showed that a biochemical in the body called glutathione was critical for both antioxidant function and detoxification. One article showed that  deficiency of glutathione in the immune cells responsible for the “decision” to respond with a calm, pick up and remove response to offending materials or invaders would trigger the regulatory cells to respond with an antibody stimulating response and chronic inflammation. Around the same time, I found another article that showed a major mechanism of the toxicity of “toxic” metals is related to the depletion of glutathione.  Reading about glutathione and its role as antioxidant, detoxifier and immune modulator became a hobby.

After years of reading about glutathione and using all the available methods for repleting deficient glutathione (precursor amino acids supplements and intravenous – IV) in my clinical practice, I was fortunate in 2004,  to develop a great method of providing glutathione to the body using oral liposomal glutathione. The years of experience using the other methods for repleting glutathione allowed me to quickly understand the benefits of using the liposomal glutathione supplement with my patients. The next problem was to convince skeptical colleagues  and scientists that liposomal glutathione has a clear role to play in supporting glutathione in both acute and chronic conditions. Please note, I will only be referencing the use of liposomal glutathione as a supplement to support glutathione. There are no claims for the diagnosis or treatment of any disease conditions. So, the years of research using liposomal glutathione began formally in 2007 with the publication of an article describing the antioxidant and anti-atherogenic properties of liposomal glutathione. You can find the article in the research section of this website. It is an amazing serendipity that this study was done and I am grateful to everyone involved in its publication. I am only now beginning to understand the importance and implications of this article. Happily, some of the subsequent publications and data that we have now support and will elaborate on the findings that were reported by Mira Rosenblat and others in the laboratory of   Michael Aviram.

As you can see on both the research and publication pages that the last few years have been busy with exploring the role that supporting glutathione may play in maintaining normal cell function. We have data that is being prepared for publications from several universities and it is a real privilege to be able to communicate with “real” researchers in several areas. So check back here from time to time and see what we have accomplished.

My Interest in the role that molds play in chronic illness led to a collaboration with Dennis Hooper, MD, PhD, who has developed tests identifying the presence of toxins from molds (mycotoxins) and mold infections  in individuals with mold exposure. There is some very interesting and important data that is being collected by an infectious disease specialist that is yielding novel insight into chronic health problems such as fatigue and chronic pain syndromes. This information may be published in the near future.

So there is renewed excitement in several areas of research for me. You will see that these areas cover quite a range. Some of the latest clinical research sheds light on the role that mycotoxins play in compromising health problems and yes, how maintenance of glutathione can help in the management of these problems. So now we are seeing the biochemistry behind the immune responses. We have some very exciting information on the role of glutathione in infection in progress and were just notified that a book chapter I co-authored in this area has been accepted for publication.

Thanks for stopping by. I am going to try to keep this information up to date and to fill in some the “back story” on what is a really fun journey. Let me know if you would like to be added to a newsletter list about glutathione and we plan to use this list keep everyone informed about publication of articles and the newsletter is short!