Your Body Makes Its Own Master Antioxidant — Here's Why It Stops.
September 14, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readYour body makes glutathione—a tripeptide of glutamate, cysteine, and glycine—and it is the single most important antioxidant you produce. Unlike vitamin C or E, which get used up once, glutathione can be recycled and used repeatedly. The problem, as Dr. Josh Axe explains in this episode, is that production drops sharply with age, and most people are trying to supplement their way around a broken factory instead of fixing the machinery. In a small trial at Baylor College of Medicine, adults in their 70s had roughly 70% less glutathione in their blood than adults in their 20s and 30s, and they showed over 300% more oxidative damage to their fat cells. Then researchers gave them two inexpensive amino acids—glycine and N-acetylcysteine—for 16 weeks. Glutathione levels came back completely. So did mitochondrial function, walking speed, grip strength, and insulin sensitivity. Participants looked and felt younger.
What glutathione actually does
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What you'll learn
- 1 Timestamped Outline
- 2 (01:30) **The Glutathione Problem** - Most people try to raise glutathione backwards with expensive IVs and supplements, but the real question is whether your cells can make and recycle it
- 3 (03:59) **What Glutathione Is and Why It Matters** - Glutathione is a tripeptide made of three amino acids that acts as your body's master antioxidant
- 4 (05:35) **Case Study: Rosacea Reversal** - A patient with severe rosacea who tried everything cleared up 98% in eight weeks by supporting glutathione production
- 5 (08:05) **The Three Amino Acids Behind Glutathione** - Glutamate, cysteine, and glycine form the tripeptide, with cysteine being the bottleneck and glycine mattering more than previously thought
- 6 (10:58) **Why Glutathione Drops With Age** - Your body produces less glutathione every year, and the consequences are measurable
- 7 (14:10) **The 16-Week Study That Proves the Benefits** - Supplementing with two amino acids raised total glutathione by 225% and active glutathione by 259%
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Your body makes its own master antioxidant — but after 40, production drops every year and most people never know it's low until something breaks. Dr. Axe walks through the clinical evidence, the exact blood marker hiding on your last lab panel, and a 4-step protocol to rebuild glutathione at the cellular level — without expensive IVs.
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