80. Dr. Nayan Patel: Your Cells Are Drowning (And One Molecule Can Save Them)

Oxidative stress. Toxin overload. Immune dysfunction. These aren't separate problems—they're all symptoms of your body working overtime on one exhausting job. In this episode of Extend, I sit down with Dr. Nayan Patel, a pharmacist who's dedicated his career to understanding glutathione—the molecule your body produces more than any other. We break down the three proven ways glutathione protects you, why IV and oral supplements have been failing for decades, and the gene mutations that leave 20% of people unable to benefit from traditional glutathione therapy. Most importantly, we discuss the stable glutathione breakthrough that's helping doctors reverse decades of brain fog in minutes. Nayan Patel, Pharm. D, is a pioneering pharmacist and researcher who discovered the first stable form of glutathione in 2007. His 25-year journey to unlock this master antioxidant has led to revolutionary insights about aging, detoxification, and immune function. We Also Discuss: Why Your Body's #1 Job Is Slowly Killing You (And How to Take It Over) The 100+ Daily Toxins Your Liver Must Process (You Can't Avoid Them) Glutathione's Triple Threat: Antioxidant, Detox, and Immune Power Why IV Glutathione Fails: The Shocking Truth About What Really Happens The Gene Factor: 20% of People Can't Use Traditional Glutathione (Are You One?) From Brain Fog to Clarity: Why Some See Results in 5 Minutes Thank You To Our Sponsors: Timeline: Upgrade your energy from within! MitoPure by Timeline helps power up your cells, supporting muscle strength, mental clarity, and overall vitality. Stay active, sharp, and strong at any age! Claim 10% off your first order now at timeline.com/DrShah http://timeline.com/DrShah IM8: Try IM8 today with a 30-day money back guarantee. You can get 20% off your first order with code DRSHAH at https://im8health.com/discount/DRSHAH. Learn more about Dr. Shah: Website: https://www.drshah.com/ Clinic: https://www.next-health.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/darshanshahmd/ Learn more about Nayan Patel, Pharm. D: Website:https://aurowellness.com/ Instagram: @aurowellness https://www.instagram.com/aurowellness/ Book: https://aurowellness.com/glutathione-revolution/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21, and trained and board-certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We're living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease, and most importantly, extend your health span.

• 0:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Dr. Patel, thanks for coming today.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Absolutely. It's my pleasure to be here.

• 0:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I've known you for so long, and it's finally great to have you in this seat in front of me.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So, what I'm really excited about talking to you today about is kind of this new field of medicine, where we're bringing IV therapy out of the hospital and only using it in emergency cases, to actually using it for wellness. And that involves nutrients, that involves also glutathione, if you're going to spend a lot of time talking about.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Pharmaceuticals are a great way to emergently take care of an issue, but the whole goal should always be to fix your biology so you don't need the pharmaceutical in the future.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right? And that might take years. You know, I got off 10 different pharmaceuticals over the course of eight months, but I've been on two of them. One is a blood pressure medication, one is a cholesterol medication, for 10 years now. And I'm trying, but it's difficult to get off some pharmaceuticals. But I was supposed to get off 10 different pharmaceuticals in eight months, once I got my lifestyle in order.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Well, today, we're going to take off one or two of those medications.

• 1:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay, great.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Both of them, we have a solution for you today.

• 1:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, I can't wait.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  So, we're going to talk about that one, because that's exactly what my dad had for 35, 40 years, almost. Blood pressure pills, cholesterol pills, and all those things. And I'll tell the story at the end, but let me just go back to, again, pharmaceuticals. Once the pharmaceutical is gone, the second part is, of course, we bring the nutrition. The thing is, we've got to look at it in order for... You, as a doctor, you see patients, you run a business, you help millions of lives all over the world, I hear. So, your, your number one job every single day is one thing, right? Get up and see patients and, and take care of them. If we can figure out a way to take over that job away from you.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  That means, not that you're not doing it anymore, it's just that somebody else is doing it for you. Now you have all this free time to do whatever you wanna do. And I can, I can assure you that if that happens, you'll be not affecting millions of lives, you'll be affecting the billions of lives. Right, absolutely. So that's the whole thing. Number one job in your body, number one job in the body, right? A body produces the highest molecule in the body is produces glutathione. That's the number one job the body has every single day. Really? We, we breathe oxygen, we consume water, without those two, we will not survive, right? So that's the fuel that's coming to the body for the reactions that are happening. The reaction that's happening is to produce one product, the normal product is glutathione.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  And that's what my, I've spent my twenty-five years of my life working at that one molecule. And the reason was because if I can make a difference in that one molecule, I would have, I can change the whole trajectory on how people are gonna age in the future. Wow. That was my ultimate goal, right? As if I can change the trajectory, instead of you aging a year at a time, if I can only make you age maybe one month a year at a time, oh my god. I can just increase your lifespan by eleven folds. Yeah. That's, that's nuts, right? Think about it, that is nuts. And that's why we, when we first met, this was years ago, I was doing IV glutathione because I thought that was a solution. Right.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  That was not the solution, but I was still, at that time when we first met, I was already into my, like, five or six years of research on the glutathione. Sure. After I had discovered the molecule as a stable form. We didn't talk about that at that time because I was not ready to release the product yet. Got it. But, so that was the first thing that I was working on. And most of people may not know what glutathione is. I'm confused, you know what glutathione is. But the glutathione is a tripeptide, it's just a basic peptide. People know peptide today because of GLP once. But twenty five years ago, I said peptide. People said, was it peptide? They didn't understand what I was talking about, right? So today we know what peptide is.

• 4:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  So three amino acid chain peptides. It's the simplest molecule, but it's the most abundant producing in the body. If I can take that job away from the body. Imagine now the body has all the time and the energy and the resources to do everything else.

• 4:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Especially if you're in your sixties, fifties, sixties, seventies, that your body has gone so far off the track.

• 5:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Mm hmm.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  To bring them back on the track is going to take you years to do that. And in most cases, it never comes back on track.

• 5:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  In most cases, it never comes back on track, right? So my goal is to, can I bring you back on track? The only way I can do that is if I can take the number one job away from you.

• 5:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  And allow the body to heal. Proper nutrition, IVs, proper, proper diet, proper exercise plan, everything, nothing excessive. Everything in moderation and I can get you back on track.

• 5:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So, I mean, that, that's amazing. So glutathione is this incredibly important molecule. I've known this for years. But sometimes patients and people, just in general, when they first hear the word glutathione, they're like, what is that? And how does it work? And so you did, you did a great job explaining it's three amino acids kind of put together. And what does this amino acid combination actually do in your body?

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Okay. So the thing is, we have not know, we have known about glutathione for a hundred and forty plus years.

• 5:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  The problem is, we never had a product that in the marketplace that actually absorbed intracellularly.

• 6:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  So you can, you can have a product, but if it was not absorbing, we have not found all the uses for it yet.

• 6:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Right? So we can only do the research based on what your body does.

• 6:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  And I mean, do we know every single thing that's in the body today?

• 6:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Probably like one percent of it.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  One percent of it, right? So how do we know what the glutathione does every single thing? So as of today, we have known two things, which is as of right now, that is, that is done. Well, one is antioxidant benefits, which is it quenches all the free radicals. Free radicals happens every single second. You know, we breathe oxygen, we have chemical reactions. The byproducts is all this chemical reactions. Byproduct is all oxidative stress are a species that has to be neutralized and quenched. Otherwise, they will cause damage to the body. And oxidative stress damage is the number one damage to the body. Right? That's, that's, it's a given fact. So that's one thing we know. One, the second thing that nobody talks about it is the detoxification pathway activation. So what it does is conjugates inside your liver.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  There's all these different enzymes. The most, the easiest one to see, because I do hormone replacement therapy all the time. So when I do hormone replacement therapy, I'm always looking for the CYP two B one gene. Because that is affecting the metabolism of all the hormones I give them. If I can improve that enzymes and their conjugation pathways and eliminate all the toxic metabolites, I have immediate positive response on all the hormone benefits. And so when I saw that, I said, great. So now I can tell my patients that, hey, hey, this is where the glutathione is working. They have to see it to believe it. When I say that this works this way, well, show me, right? I, I trust you, but show, prove it to me.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  And the body does it on its own, or I can trust my body, but I don't trust you, right? So that's what the issue was. So that's one thing that we have seen is, is affecting hormone metabolism. So it's a conjugation pathways. The easiest one to do is the alcohol. Yeah. When you drink alcohol, it goes straight to your liver. Liver processes really fast and within fifteen, twenty minutes, you're buzzing.

• 8:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  The buzzing is what? Acetaldehyde, which is the, one of the toxic metabolites of, of alcohol. Now, if you use glutathione, guess what? All the alcohol gets metabolized even faster. So though you're buzzing even faster.

• 8:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Uh huh.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  But when you do a breathalyzer test or a blood draw, there's zero alcohol left.

• 8:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  So it's all getting metabolized.

• 8:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  So I'm not saying that it gets you sober faster, but what it does is it processes alcohol so fast that we've done some testings, right? We have done, I mean, we have given to patients that have, not patients, uh, customers. They have been drinking alcohol, like two, three, four glasses or whatever they want to drink. And then apply the glutathione and literally fifteen, twenty minutes, the blood alcohol levels has dropped dramatically to under, under legal limit. They're buzzing like crazy, so they're completely impaired. They cannot drive, they cannot do anything. They're buzzing, but what's happening is it's conjugating or activating the alcohol dehydrogen enzyme to metabolize all the alcohol.

• 9:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  So that's a second part.

• 9:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  So there's two things that we do know of. It's antioxidant benefits and the conjugations or detoxification benefits.

• 9:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Besides those, we haven't learned anything yet.

• 9:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow. So, okay, I mean, but these are two really important things. And this is not in the forefront of most people's mindset when they think about their health, is this concept of oxidative stress. And the way I like to explain to my patients is your body is basically producing energy all the time, right? We're burning, we're burning food to make energy. Just like any furnace has burning food to make energy, there's smoke that comes out of it.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 9:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And the radical, the free radicals is like that smoke. And you have to get rid of this, otherwise the smoke is gonna sit up everything in your body, right?

• 9:51Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 9:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's a slow burning. And so the glutathione is a molecule that's basically cleaning all that smoke, the free radicals, after the body burns energy to keep the system functioning well. And if you don't have enough glutathione, what happens? It's just like burning a fire inside your home and everything just becomes damaged and your cells die, right?

• 10:13Speaker 01

  That's true. And that's a great example. I've never thought of that one, but like when you have a fireplace, when the wood's burning, you know, the wood is really hot and it's covered up with this black suit on the top.

• 10:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Unless you turn the logs.

• 10:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  As soon as you turn the logs, it just, the heat comes up again.

• 10:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Guess what? If you do not clean the, the film on the The top, that's in the mitochondria, the mitochondria doesn't produce more energy.

• 10:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Even though then it has the capacity, it doesn't produce more energy.

• 10:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  And all of a sudden, as you start aging, guess what? What's what's the first sign of aging? No, it's high fatigue. I can't, I don't, I just don't have the energy to do anything anymore.

• 10:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Because it's not that they don't, they don't even know mitochondria. Well, that could be another reason too. But what I'm saying is that there's so much oxidative stress to the mitochondria that is refusing to produce more energy.

• 11:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oxidative stress is a root cause of aging and it's a root cause of chronic disease as well. And so you have to address oxidative stress. And it's probably the one that's the most difficult to address because you don't, number one, you don't see it, right?

• 11:15Speaker 01

  You don't see it.

• 11:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Number two, you don't feel it until it's been accumulating for twenty to thirty years. And thirdly, when you tell someone like, you know, when you tell someone you have a nutrient deficiency, they know I need more nutrients. We definitely have a lot of oxidative stress. They don't know, like, what's the first thing you do to help with oxidative stress? And what you're saying is glutathione is a key molecule to dampen oxidative stress.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  That's right. That's why I'm on this, on this journey now to educate everybody on this glutathione molecule. Because the number of question I get asked, I said, how do I know that I need glutathione?

• 11:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  I say you don't. Do you don't take a chance?

• 11:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  If you have a, if I have a magic ball, if I can tell you right now, if you take glutathione on a regular basis or improve the glutathione levels in your body for a regular basis, that I can extend your life by ten, fifteen, twenty years, would you do it today?

• 12:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  I said, no, because I, I don't know if it's for true or not, because if I, if I take for thirty years, I'm paying you for thirty years. I have no guarantees. People want guarantees.

• 12:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  And I said, okay, well, how about if I do it and if I survive for extra few years, then you can do it in twenty, thirty years from now. That's the second choice people have, right? Or somewhere in between.

• 12:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  And, and so. What I'm doing today is educating people about oxidative stress, what it is. And you can see people with oxidative stress when they're older. And if I can impact their lives and get them better. And if you're today in your thirties and forties, you have the best chance to nip the oxidative stress in the bud today and have a very long life.

• 12:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  This, when I say long life, long life doesn't mean in a nursing home life. Long life.

• 12:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Long, healthy life.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Long, healthy life. Because life is only good until you're surviving and you're thriving. As you're in a nursing home and waiting to die, that's not a life, you're already dead.

• 13:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly, exactly. And so, you know, I want to touch again on the second mechanism that you say we know about glutathione, which is our conjugation, basically our liver detoxification pathways, right? So the liver, biggest, one of the biggest organs in our body, the most metabolically active, the only place where you detoxify many chemicals and also make hormones functional.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Functional.

• 13:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  As well. And so if the liver is not functioning well, then you have a problem, right? You're gonna succumb to toxins and your hormones are not gonna work well. If you're on hormone replacement therapy, or even if you're not, you have problems there. And so glutathione is actually helping your liver conjugate the, these molecules.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Molecules, yep.

• 13:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Well, by the time you wake up this morning, when you came over here to the studio, you're exposed to at least seventy different chemicals.

• 13:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, exactly.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Right? And these are chemicals that are foreign to human body. That your liver has to figure out a way to get rid of it. That's every single day. By the time you get home, you'll be exposed to another seventy more chemicals by the time you go to sleep. There's a different chemicals, not the same, different chemicals. So every single day, there are at least hundred to hundred and forty different chemicals your body has to process. And over time, gets accumulated. Have you lived in an old house before?

• 14:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, of course.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Right? If it's a brand new house, guess what? Everything's the right place.

• 14:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Over time, you accumulate things and it gets dusty. And if you haven't cleaned the house in a while, oh my god.

• 14:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  That's how the body is. The body needs to be cleaned up at all the times. And if you don't do that work on a regular basis, as you start aging, you get, your joints get all calcified and you don't move as, as, as you used to like to move. Your mitochondria gets dampened, so the fatigue kicks in. Every single thing starts deteriorating.

• 14:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  And there's a way to even bring it back.

• 14:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, and that's why you don't feel it necessarily day by day, but the accumulation happens over years and years and years, and then that's what leads to chronic disease and aging as well, right?

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Well, that's the whole point. If, once you get a chronic disease, that's the time the body has done its work to bring you back to equilibrium or homeostasis, and it has done everything possible to do that, and now it has come at a point of no return.

• 15:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's succumbed to the forces.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Right, and when that change happened for the very first time, that change is what the problem begins for us, for me especially. So when I, when people ask me this question all the time is that, hey, can I reverse any single thing? I said, as long as you have no diagnosis for any diseases, I can get you back to normal. But once you get the diagnosis of a disease that your body has a metabolic disorder or something that happened, that's a point of no return. I can get you back to that point and make, and can help you live a very healthy life until that point, but I can't reverse it back.

• 15:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Right?

• 15:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  And so like Dr. Kurzweil said, right, singularity, and now he has a new book coming out, Singularity is nearer right now, so I've been fortunate enough to talking to him as well about this thing. And the thing is, yes, there's a possibility that, that we can live in perpetuity only if you have no disease today.

• 16:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  If you get there in a healthy state, right? And as I tell that to everybody, my job is to keep you healthy long enough so you see what happens in 2035, when supposedly that's the day, Ray Kurzweil predicted singularity is gonna happen.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Well, original was 2029 was the original prediction. Recently, he's just changed to 2025.

• 16:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, he did? 2025?

• 16:26Speaker 01

  2029 was the original one.

• 16:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Uh huh.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  So I have his speech, because I, I spoke at a conference, and he was a keynote speaker at that conference as well, it was a pharmacy conference. This was back, I think it was 10, 12 years ago. At that time, he predicted 2029.

• 16:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, okay, because I read in his original book, 2035, but then he's, he's bringing, because you know, it's so true, the technology is coming faster and faster.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  That's right, that's right.

• 16:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I, I, I have the privilege of talking to Ray every once in a while, too, and he's an incredible guy.

• 16:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So I'm 52 right now, but I'm still pushing all of my limits. I'm running long distances. I travel across many time zones to support my work and I just want to live my life to the fullest. Staying active as I age isn't just about willpower. It's about supporting my mitochondria, the powerhouses of my cells with the energy that they need to recharge my muscles and recharge my brain. Mitopure is a supplement that I take. It's backed by solid research showing that it can boost cellular energy, increase muscle strength and support overall healthy aging. Personally, I take Mitopure every single day. This helped me continue my active lifestyle, whether it's a high intensity workout or keeping up with my kids.

• 17:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So if you are looking to support your body and want to feel younger from the inside out, my friends at Timeline are offering you a 10% discount on your first order. Go to timeline.com/drsah to get started. That's timeline.com/drsah. Your future self will thank you.

• 18:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hi, Dr. Shah here. I want to take a minute to talk to you about cellular health. So in my clinics, I've actually seen 30 year old people with cells that look like they're pushing retirement. And I've also seen 60 year olds with cells that look like they're 40 years old. So what's the difference? It's really about how fast their telomeres are breaking down. Your cells you see are like phones and they have limited cell phone battery. Poor sleep, stress, processed foods, all of these things can drain that battery way faster than it should. So this is the reason why I partnered with IM8. IM8 powers that cellular battery. It's not just another multivitamin. It's a comprehensive 92 ingredient formula designed specifically for cellular health and longevity.

• 18:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I'm talking 900 milligrams of vitamin C. That's like 20 oranges worth of DNA protection. The clinical dose of CoQ10 that you need to power your cellular engine. You also get zinc, selenium, vitamin E, alpha lipoic acid. All of these work synergistically for cellular repair and protecting your telomeres. So instead of taking a handful of pills every day and all these supplements, IMAID actually gives you everything that you need in one scientifically formulated system. And this isn't just a theory anymore. IMAID had partnered with Oxford University, the International Space Station, San Francisco Research Institute, and they've done studies and they've gotten this NSF certified to truly power your health.

• 19:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Most people are aging twice as fast as they should, unfortunately. You don't have to be one of them. Try IMAID. I actually have a discount secured for you if you go to drshah.com/ima or go to im8health.com/discount/drsah and you can get 20% off with my discount code, drshah. You can also find the link below.

• 19:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay, so you're saying like these are the two pathways we know, but there's probably other effects in the body as well of glutathione?

• 20:05Speaker 01

  There is, and the thing is we have no idea yet. And the thing is, we've done one human trial. And so when we first discovered the glutathione, stable form of glutathione in 2007, it was so far ahead of me understanding what glutathione actually did for us that I never released the product to the public. Now, doctors had access to it, but I never released it to the public because I had no idea what to do with it. So I found out how much to give you, how often to give you, can I give you long term? Can I give you short term? Am I going to get results? What am I going to see? So it took me a long time to do all this figuring things out. And in 2021, we released the product to the public for the first time. And when we released the product, the first question they got asked is, hey, have you done any human trials? Right?

• 20:50Speaker 01

  So of course, I'm very familiar with the human trials. I'm also on the dean's advisory council at one of the universities. And so I called the dean up and said, hey, can we do some human trials for the glutathione product? I said, oh, yeah, absolutely. Let's do it at the university campus. So I said, okay, but you have to be off, you cannot do anything. You just give us the product, both the placebo and the active product, and we'll do all the work. And so they did a human trial. And what they found out, this was a three-day trial. We went to IRB for approval. Took them about a year to get an IRB approval because we went straight to human trials without animal studies. So that's why they were kind of a little bit hesitant. But they give us the IRB approval because it was a three-day trial. In three days, taking any product like a supplements, right? What are you going to see?

• 21:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  In three days?

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Three days.

• 21:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Probably don't see much of an effect, right?

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Nothing. You don't, you won't see anything. I've taken dozens of vitamins in my lifetime. In three days, you don't expect much, right? So I said, okay, we'll do a three-year trial, we'll, we'll, we'll see what happens. The first thing they noticed was absorption was off the chart. I said, I already knew that answer, so that was, that was given. But what they saw, within four hours, they saw the oxidative stress markers, which is the MDA levels, plummeted within four hours.

• 22:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  MDA level?

• 22:05Speaker 01

  MDA. MDA. MDA. MDA. MDA. MDA. MDA. MDA. That just went down within the four hours. So immediately, oxidative stress markers were dropping. So it has an immediate effect on, on antioxidant benefits. An immediate effect on making sure that oxidative stresses doesn't rise anymore. We did not, we did not check the HNE levels.

• 22:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, yes.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Four HNE levels, we didn't measure that, or hydroxy levels. We measured those, but we measured MDA levels.

• 22:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  So those were indicative of the oxidative stress was dropping immediately.

• 22:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it, got it.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  I said, okay, so the researchers went one step further. They took the blood out, infected the blood with mycobacterium infection. I said.

• 22:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Well, effectively, what, what?

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Mycobacterium.

• 22:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, mycobacterium, okay.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  I said, well, we'll see what happens.

• 22:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So with outside of the body?

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Outside of the body.

• 22:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, because there's no cure for it right now, so we don't want to do that. So they took the blood, took a test tube, infected the blood, blood inside the test tube, and with the mycobacterium avium. And so let's, let's absorb it. So they saw, okay, they only had money to do a three-day post-trial, right? So in three days, they took the blood and did all the testings. In three days, this, this saw all the rise of all the cytokines. The IL-2, IL-12, interferon gamma, TNF-alpha, these are all the cytokines for inflammatory markers.

• 23:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  T-cells.

• 23:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Of inflammation.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Of inflammation, because guess what? We are infected, so the body is responding by improving the immune system, and the macrophages are activated. And what they saw was this test tube, which was reduced, which was drawn after one hour. The lower mycobacterium dropped. In that one hour post exposure to glutathione. So within one hour, it had a positive impact on mycobacterium infection. Again, this is is a thirty patient trial, not a huge trial.

• 23:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  But what was, what do you think the mechanism of that is? Some mechanism to the immune system, is supporting the immune system?

• 23:58Speaker 01

  It's immune system. So besides conjugations and antioxidant.

• 24:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  It has a major impact on activating the immune system.

• 24:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Ah, okay, okay. So this could be potentially very useful for people that are currently having any kind of infection.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Any infection.

• 24:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Bacterial.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  Doesn't matter.

• 24:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Just activates immune system.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Ah, we have doctors using it for mold toxicities and Lyme's disease and, and I mean, some of the like viruses and things like that, there's no cure for it today. What we do, the Epstein-Barr viruses, coxswax virus, there's nothing we can do about those kinds of things at this point. The only thing we we can hope for is if I can increase my immune system. They'll keep it in check. And so that's what, that's what they've been using for, for, for years now with us.

• 24:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So this is even though we don't know the exact mechanism, this is the third benefit of glutathione.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay. Now, you mentioned a few times that the glutathione that you've found is a stable form.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And so just can you unpack that a little bit? Because, you know, um, what is an unstable, stable? And then talk about also like IV versus the skin application product that you've developed.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Okay. So, yeah, this is, this is, this was a major breakthrough for, in, in my history. But glutathione outside the human body is, gets oxidized really fast.

• 25:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  So as soon as it comes in contact with the air, boom, it just gets oxidized really fast.

• 25:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  So the key is, can I keep it stable enough so it doesn't get oxidized? That was my, that was my only goal I had in my pharmacy. I said, my job as a pharmacist to create, give a stable product and give it to some researcher or physician to use it up. So that was my goal.

• 25:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  I, I wasn't planning for something major than that, but that was my first goal. When I made that first product, was stable enough at room temperature, I said, oh, this, I can work with this. Now we have time to work on it.

• 25:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  And none of.

• 25:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  How did you make it stable? What did you do to it?

• 25:42Speaker 01

  So we use Dextran technology. So glutathione is a three amino acid chain peptide. One of the amino acids, which is cysteine, has a sulfur group. The sulfur group smells like sulfur.

• 25:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  The sulfur group is the most reactive amino acids in the whole.

• 25:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's what gives it the smell.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  The smell. But it's the most reactive. As soon as a sulfur gets dislodged, right? And accepts the hydrogen from the air. The smell goes away and the whole thing is oxidized. The whole thing turns brown. So that's the mechanism that it works. So my job was put a chemical cap on it.

• 26:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Ah, okay. So you make the sulfur group no longer exposed.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 26:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  To the oxygen.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, again, X-Men movies, you know? You put the cap on, you put the cap on, you can't get to the head. That was my whole thing. I was just visualizing that thing. Put the cap, chemical cap on. And once you put a chemical cap on, it's not, no longer accessible to the, to the environment.

• 26:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Voila. That was my first, first technology. We got a patent for that one. So when we got that, I said, okay, now what? Now to get inside your body. What I found out was, and this was again, early 2000s, that I was making liposome glutathione. It's another technology. This was, this was huge in the prescription world. Some liposome products in the prescription world was great.

• 26:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Liposomal, just for people don't know, is putting a vitamin or anything inside of a liposome so it gets absorbed through the skin.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Well, it, it's skin or the stomach or wherever. It doesn't matter.

• 27:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  It doesn't matter. But liposome technology, it basically, it basically layers it up. So it's this molecule, you basically layered up with some lecithin. So that becomes like, like an onion. You just, you can.

• 27:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  As it goes to your, to your body, keeps on peeling the onion, which is intestines, is exposed to the intestines to get it absorbed right there and there.

• 27:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Ah, I see.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  So it, it bypasses the stomach, harsh condition of the stomach.

• 27:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So it kind of protects the molecule until it gets to the intestines to be absorbed.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Absorbed. So they also say, hey, liposome was a great product in the pharmaceutical side, but nobody, back 25 years ago, nobody knew to make this for, for the vitamins. I said, okay. So one of the doctors came. To me, I say, hey, can you make this a liposome form of of this product? And he apparently he was the patent holder for the liposome technology.

• 27:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  So he comes to us and said, okay, fine. What do I want to make? I said, make me some vitamin C, some CoQ ten, some PQQ, some azotin, and some glutathione. I said, okay. So we made all this product. And the only one that we that I was interested was glutathione, of course. And I go, I said, Doc, this is not working. I said, work on somebody, not work on everybody.

• 28:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  I said, oh, well, if that's the case, then don't worry about it. Just make the other products.

• 28:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  And the rest do this, we will abandon this project.

• 28:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Mm hmm.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  I said, okay. But I said, I know the benefits of glutathione, because I started reading about glutathione at that time. I said, I know the benefits. I said, there has to be something else. So that's when I started making the IVs in two thousand and one.

• 28:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So why? Why was the liposomal glutathione not working? What was?

• 28:40Speaker 01

  I had no idea. I had no idea. Why was I? I'll tell you, in twenty eleven, the study was done. That's what I found out why was not working back then. But at that time, there was no research done. So I had no idea.

• 28:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Fast forward.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Fast forward, right? So it did not work. So I said, well, there has to be some other reason I could not figure out.

• 28:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  In nineteen, in two thousand and one, when I was making the IV form of glutathione, it only worked for short term.

• 29:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  And I said, why is it only working short term? And then I had a students back then, you know, to come for internship at the pharmacy. I said, hey, can you find out about some research articles on glutathione? Can you, I need, I need more research. What's going on? Why is it not working? And there was sure that there was a study done in nineteen ninety one.

• 29:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Uh huh.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  That when you give two kinds of IV push of glutathione.

• 29:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Hundred percent of the glutathione only stayed in the plasma. It never entered the blood cells. And because of the state of the plasma, everything gets filtered by the kidneys and by the five to fifteen minutes, all the glutathione was in the kidney in the bladder.

• 29:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  And so nothing got absorbed into the blood cells and the body just spit everything out.

• 29:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  But then, you know, it works a little bit.

• 29:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  It does work.

• 29:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  How? So my question is, well, it works. It doesn't work right away. It works right away for fifteen, twenty minutes. And then there's a lag for about six hours and later, and then it works again. I said, what's happening?

• 29:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  I couldn't figure out. And then with the research, what they did was they were they were continually monitoring the blood test. And what they saw like like an hour and a half to three hours later, they saw a rise of cystine in the blood. Where does the cysteine come from?

• 30:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  What was happening was the body was breaking down the glutathione through amino acids. Cause it senses this as a peptide, it's just chopping it down.

• 30:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, I see.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  And cysteine was getting reabsorbed. And cysteine enters the bloodstream, enters the red, into cellular levels. And now the body can take cysteine and produce glutathione endogenously for the first time.

• 30:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  So it does work, but not because it is absorbing it. You're getting glutathione, the body is taking the cysteine out of it.

• 30:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Making it.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  You make its own glutathione.

• 30:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I see.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  So I said, okay, so that's how it was working. And so I was beating against the bush all the time with all the physicians. Hey, this is how it's working, this you should be careful on how to use it. And of course, you know, Dr. Pal Mutter, he was using what? Five and 10 grams, I pushed for, for Parkinson's patients. Cause I was dealing with a lot of Parkinson's patients at that time.

• 31:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  He goes, oh yeah, you may have to go like three grams. I said, well, three grams is not working. So well, go five grams, go to 10 grams. I said, by pushing more and more glutathione, it's not the solution. There's something I'm missing out or not know. But anyways, I do know the whole answer. In 2011, somebody took on the, the challenge of the liposome technology. And did a study at the University of Texas in Austin. Same thing, they give 26 kids, autistic kids, oral liposome products and transdermal liposome products. And in both ends, they only saw a rise of cysteine in the blood. No glutathione. And eventually that rise of glutathione came in. So please make sure everybody knows all product works, but you should know how it works.

• 31:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Because if you have a gene mutation, which now you're finding out was 15 to 20% of people have it.

• 31:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  It's huge. Those people are never going to get, see the benefit from doing glutathione supplementations. If it doesn't, if it's broken down, that never gets reabsorbed.

• 32:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right, right, exactly. So, so what is that gene mutation that we need to look for?

• 32:11Speaker 01

  So. GSTM, GSTP, GST, GGT, there's three or four of those.

• 32:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  And they may have a gene mutation, but they may not be expressing it yet.

• 32:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  So that's another problem, right?

• 32:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Because just because you have the genes doesn't mean that you have the problem yet.

• 32:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  But when it becomes a problem, then you go downhill really, really fast.

• 32:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So there's some people that cannot use IV or oral glutathione, even if it's liposomal, because they cannot convert it into an active form.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Active form, at all. And those people, it's like a really fast ship. I have, I have, in fact, I have, every conference I go to, I always find one doctor. They have this brain fog for decades and they have, they have no idea. Most physicians that I work with, they themselves are patients first.

• 32:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  That's what they're converted, that's what they're converted, right? Otherwise, there's too much money in allopathic medicine. You're doing this for passion, for passion, because you, you, you found a cure for yourself. So now you're gonna help the people. That's what you're doing this for. It's not because to make money.

• 33:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's exactly why, yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  And so, most people that I work with are converted to this practice because they themselves are patients.

• 33:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  And they say, oh, I use glutathione all the time. I said, well, just use my product. And I kid you not, one out of a hundred, I'll find one doctor and say, oh my God. In five to fifteen minutes, the brain fog just clears up. Instantaneously. Oh, I've been using some liposome products or some IV glutathione for, forever and did not do anything. One treatment and the brain opens up. And all of us, now they believe. I said, okay, now I know this drug is actually absorbing and is actually doing something within five to fifteen minutes.

• 33:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And so, when you say your product, you're talking about the, the, um,

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Transdermal.

• 33:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  The transdermal, the skin solution, the lotion for your skin.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 33:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for coming and talk, talking us through glutathione, an important molecule.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  It's my pleasure to be here today. Thanks for inviting.

• 34:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you liked this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps to support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best, and it's always important to seek their guidance.