Chris Kresser: We talked a little bit about the murkiness of research on the absorption of curcumin, various curcumin products, and I will say that it’s somewhat similar with glutathione. For many years, the dogma was that oral forms of glutathione are not well absorbed and you need to take special steps, like the acetyl form of glutathione or the liposomal form, in order to really get the maximal intracellular increase in glutathione. Another way to increase intracellular glutathione levels was using something like whey protein, which is a precursor for glutathione production, or taking glutathione precursors to increase glutathione production. All of those strategies are valid, but interestingly enough, there was a paper last year—I’ll have to look it up, see if it’s in my database—that found that contrary to popular belief, oral glutathione actually is fairly well absorbed in some cases and can increase the intracellular concentration of glutathione. That was a bit of a surprise for many of us in the field.
Having said all that, I’ve mostly stuck with using the liposomal form. I just see better results with it. There are a number of different options here. There’s the Seeking Health one. There’s Quicksilver Scientific liposomal glutathione spray, which a lot of patients find to be really convenient in terms of administration. We’ve just kept with it because that seems to be the form that most patients get the best response from.