Boost Your Immune System... Eat Liver

The crave to boost our immune system, to drink from the fountain of youth, is one of the most desired things in our society. Whether it be from food, meditation, or supplementation, extended youthfulness and life in general is a trillion-dollar industry… and this is where one might insert liver and the antioxidant Glutathione in to the picture.

Glutathione is an antioxidant produced by the liver, consisting of three amino acids (cysteine, glutamate, and glycine), which helps combat free radicals and chemicals (both natural and un-natural) in the body. Glutathione reduces with age and lower levels of glutathione are linked with various diseases, such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Diabetes, Cancer and more. In theory, the superior disease fighting capabilities of glutathione may be a result in the detoxification of metals.

Glutathione can boost your immune system while building tissue. It plays a crucial role in the detoxification (particularly of metals) and antioxidant systems of cells. Glutathione and has been used to treat acute poisoning and chronic liver diseases by intravenous injection (2). Reduced glutathione (GSH) is considered to be one of the most important scavengers of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and its ratio with oxidized glutathione (GSSG) may be used as a marker of oxidative stress (3).

Oxidative stress, which is an imbalance in free radicals and antioxidants, is manifested by the excessive production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the face of insufficient or defective antioxidant defense systems. Oxidative stress causes profound alterations of various biological structures, including cellular membranes, lipids, proteins and nucleic acids (3). Diseases linked to oxidative stress are aging, Alzheimer’s, arthritis, diabetes, etc… Any opportunity to supplement or treat oxidative stress before it ravages your body is advantageous, which is why Glutathione has been brought on the market. This protein-bound glutathione may be deposited in the liver…

As the ingredient has gained popularity the supplement industry has taken notice. However, before you go spend $100’s of dollars on supplements, the evidence of your body absorbing Glutathione at high levels through supplementation is up and down. Some studies have reported that the level of the protein-bound form of glutathione increases 1–2 h after ingestion of glutathione, which suggests that orally administered glutathione is absorbed into the blood (4). The dose of glutathione was 300 mg/day. The amount of cysteine potentially released from 300 mg of glutathione is less than 120 mg, which is the amount that can be obtained from 10 to 20 g of meat or 100 mL of milk (5).

What does all this mean??? The antioxidant named glutathione is essential for your immune system and it is produced in the liver.

Eating a high-quality grass-fed liver could be a benefit to boosting your immunity through this antioxidant.

Sometimes it is wise to listen or learn from animals in the wild, and the wolves are a premier species. When a pack of wolves get a kill the Alpha wolf always eats the organ meat (heart, liver, etc…) while the other wolves get the skeletal meat. What do they know that we do not?

Here are a few ways to get glutathione in to your bodies by way of food:

- Wild game meat

- Garlic

- Broccoli

- Asparagus

- Avocados

- Raw grass-fed liver… the primary principle here is “like supports like”

Each of these foods are high amino acid foods with sulfur, which can help with absorption.

My Takeaway

We used to eat organ meat of animals in our past. In fact, I would bet that your grandparents ate and still eat organ meat often. The lack-of-quality of the way our meat is processed these days and how are animals live have caused us to move away from organ meat.

Processed foods and microwavable dinners have pushed our society to “fast food” rather than “healthy” quality food.

A combination of low-quality raised animals and fake foods have led to a less healthy and obese society. Our addiction to medicine and supplements has taken us even further away from being more primal in our ways.

Glutathione has powerful immunity boosting properties and is something we should all be thinking of for health. Supplementing this product orally might not be as effective as some companies are selling it, so choose to build a lifestyle around it by way of eating foods like the ones I listed above. A high-quality liver is another and a prominent way of boosting your health. Lastly, studies have shown that injecting the antioxidant, which is available now-a-days, can be another more highly effective way to get this immune system booster in to your body!

SOURCES

1. https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-717/glutathione

2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5549431/

3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3506742/

4. Park EY, Shimura N, Konishi T, et al. Increase in the protein-bound form of glutathione in human blood after the oral administration of glutathione. J Agric Food Chem. 2014;62:6183–6189. doi: 10.1021/jf501338z.

5. Mardinoglu A, Bjornson E, Zhang C, et al. Personal model-assisted identification of NAD+ and glutathione metabolism as intervention target in NAFLD. Mol Syst Biol. 2017;13:916. doi: 10.15252/msb.20167422.

6. Park EY, Shimura N, Konishi T, et al. Increase in the protein-bound form of glutathione in human blood after the oral administration of glutathione. J Agric Food Chem. 2014;62:6183–6189. doi: 10.1021/jf501338z.