Submitted by support on Tue, 04/24/2012 - 03:07
PROTANDIM & YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM (increases glutathione, SOD & catalase) (click here for more information)
According to medical science today, most disease is caused by a progression from toxicity -> oxidative stress -> inflammation.
This effects every system in the body : your brain and central nervous system – your heart and cardiovascular system – your immune system – your digestive system – your skeletal/muscle system, etc.
According to statistics: 1/2 women and 1/3 men suffer from depression at some in their lives – yet much of depression is due to toxicity, oxidative stress and inflammation.
Heart disease used to be the #1 cause of death – yet most heart disease is caused by inflammation. Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger people in greater numbers every year.
Dr. Dwight Lundell is the past Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery at Banner Heart Hospital, Mesa, AZ. He is the founder of Healthy Humans Foundation and Chief Medical Advisor for Asantae. In 2003, Dr. Lundell made the most difficult decision of his 25 year surgical career. As traditional medicine continued to chase the cholesterol theory of heart disease, Dr. Lundell closed his surgical practice. He then devoted the rest of his life to speaking the truth that inflammation causes heart disease. By lowering inflammation, heart disease has a cure. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INSPCU36kPI)
According to Dr T O’Bryan, approximately 50 million Americans, suffer from autoimmune disease.. Unfortunately, many people with autoimmune conditions are either misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all. (http://www.thedr.com/)
These diseases are all progressive – do not happen overnight – but progress slowly. The body attempts to keep compensating until WAM!! It just can’t do it anymore. For example, your immune system may be currently producing antibodies to your thyroid. You may not feel any effects today, however five years from now you may experience symptoms of hypothyroidism.
Physicians don’t test for the antibodies; but may test the thyroid for T4 – T3; yet 80% of the conversion happens in the liver not the thyroid and the enzyme needed is produced by the adrenals!! But you just thyroid meds and anti-depressants. Thyroid medications don’t solve a compromised liver; adrenal fatique or a compromised immune system.
A root cause is the autoimmune reaction being perpetrated by the thyroid antibodies produced by your immune system! Medication won’t stop these antibodies from flaring up and chewing away at your thyroid tissue. The destruction continues. Eventually, you might be diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, an autoimmune condition for which severe conditions are commonly treated with steroid medications. Not good.
The key players we will discuss today are the mucosal/intestinal barrier, the TH-1 and TH-2 immune systems, the regulatory T-cells, and TH-17 system.
Many parts of the body are lined with a mucosal screen that acts like a window screen – keeping the unwanted bugs out. This screen lines your airways, lungs, reproductive system and your intestines – where 80% of your immune system resides. If you get holes in these screens you get bad bugs in: bacteria, viruses, molds, yeasts, etc.
Toxicity, oxidative stress and inflammation cause the holes. Where does the toxicity come from? Your medications, food, drink and the air you breathe. When your intestinal barrier is compromised due to inflammation, bacterial and/or fungal overgrowth, parasites, stress, medications, and/or food sensitivities, you’ve got holes in the window screen. Undigested food particles, toxic chemicals and various gut bugs can cross over into your bloodstream and cause problems. Now your immune system recognizes these antigens as invaders and mounts an immune response to fight them off.
The TH-1 system starts to attach the bad guys, the invader (antigen). But the TH-1 is dependent on the TH-2 to properly tag them. The TH-1 swallows those molecules with tags. But like most systems in the body, we need a balance between the TH-1 & TH-2 – if either is out of balance we have a problem.
1) If the TH-1 system is overactive – it will start attacking even harmless tissues like your own necessary tissues, glands, and organs (causing Hashimoto’s thyroiditis MS, Type 1 diabetes).
2) I the TH-2 system is overactive – it starts tagging everything including healthy foods you eat. Now we have an auto-immune disease with lots of mistaken identity going on (causing conditions like lupus & dermatis).
3) T-3’s help to regulate this system and keep it in balance. (Laughter -> opioids -> T3s!!!)
3) If the immune system is severely attacked the TH-17 guys come into play. And that’s not good.
So what kinds of things can cause imbalance? Well there are a number.
1) When stress is high due to emotions; lack of sleep; depleted glutathione, etc, bad things can happen.
2) The role of the gut mucosa/screen, is now recognized as being an important factor in triggering autoimmunity. If we have holes in our gut screen, undigested food particles and other bad stuff can make their way into the circulation (your bloodstream) and trigger an immune response.
3) In a case of mistaken identity, your immune system begins attacking tissues, organ, and glands. This process is called molecular mimicry, confusing one molecule with another.
4) Environmental toxins, called haptens, can also trigger autoimmune reactions. Haptens include inorganic compounds like the formaldehyde coming out of your carpet, chemicals in your water, as well as heavy metals like mercury, lead, copper, and cadmium. (Note: aspartame turns into formaldehyde in your body)
5) low glutathione: One of glutathione’s primary roles is detoxification. It acts like sticky paper grabbing onto toxins and carrying them out of the body for you. In other words, when toxic chemicals and bad guys come into your body, glutathione takes the hit for you, allowing the immune system to rest.
However, when glutathione levels are depleted due to aging, toxicity, stress, and poor diet, your immune system is hit! When environmental toxins enter the body with your glutathione defenses down, big bad TH-17 is upregulated, contributing to autoimmune flare-ups.
The TH-17 activity in the system determines the severity of the autoimmune flare-up. If you are currently dealing with autoimmunity, or would like to avoid it altogether, downregulating TH-17 by way of maximizing glutathione levels is certainly in your best interest.
Note: If you are a practitioner and suspect toxicity is playing a role in your patient’s or client’s autoimmune condition, you may want to think twice about using heavy detox protocols (like chelation) without increasing glutathione levels first. Heavy metal chelation can be devastating to anyone with autoimmunity if glutathione is not there to take the hit.
So we know we a TH-1 and TH-2 balancing act. We know autoimmune conditions usually show a dominance of one system over the other. We know the role of the T-regulatory cells reduces this imbalance. We know that when there is a down regulation of the T-regulatory cells, TH-1 and TH-2 go out of balance, and this triggers a faulty immune process. And we know that glutathione rescues this process.
Research now shows that glutathione is hugely important in upregulating T-regulatory cells, which brings TH-1 and TH-2 back into balance and calms the autoimmune response.
The (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18801305) study, in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Science demonstrated “a significant correlation between plasma glutathione and SLE (lupus) severity exists that may aid evaluation of the disease severity and usefulness of the management of SLE”.
SLE, or lupus, is the most destructive of all autoimmune conditions. This study showed that those with the most severe symptoms had the lowest glutathione levels.
In addition to regulating the balancing of TH-1 and TH-2, and down regulating the bad guys, TH-17; glutathione is also the master endogenous (made in the cells) anti-oxidant/ detoxifier in every cell and in the liver. In addition, glutathione reduces intestinal wall inflammation, promotes the healing of the mucosa, and contributes to a variety of other functions both in and out of the gut. Glutathione is involved in almost every process in the body, from the immune system to the respiratory cells, to the regulation of hormones & nitric oxide
Glutathione helps resolve inflammation easily; glutathione prevents autoimmune disease and increases the body’s capacity to recover from autoimmune attacks. Peer review research (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=protandim) on protandim reveals a 300% increase in glutathione, in addition, to the increase in SOD (super oxide dismutase) and catalase – other important endogenous anti-oxidants.
An additional therapeutic measure for dampening autoimmunity is to increase levels of superoxide dismutase (SOD), another powerful antioxidant enzyme. Coincidentally, the discoverer of SOD is Dr. Joe McCord, the primary formulator of Protandim and winner of the 1997 Elliott Cresson medal for co-discovering the biology of free radical reactions in living organisms. That means he co-discovered the entire field of free radical biology.
The Ohio State University published (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21167278 ) in 2011 which demonstrates a threefold increase in SOD activity in the Protandim-treated group.
Protandim is now recognized as turning on several gene pathways, ie., the “survival pathways” that effect: anti-oxidants (glutathione, SOD, catalase); anti-inflammatory pathways and anti-fibrosis pathways. This is absolutely awesome cutting edge science.
For more information, contact: Dr Holly at holly@choicesunlimited.ca
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