Anti-Aging Pt 3 - Free Radicals - User Manual For Humans S1 E19 - Dr Ekberg

all right thank you for coming good to see you all here this is in our series

of anti-aging and we have come to the third part about anti-aging and we will

talk about free radicals and antioxidants today so there's a quote

from a book by Dr. Perlmutter he's a neurologist something he says the

same forces that age your body are aging your brain only they hit your brain

earlier and harder and then number two the

these culprits are at the core of virtually all brain degeneration from

mild memory issues to Alzheimer's so virtually all long-term all chronic

diseases - related to some form of degeneration and some form of

inflammation and these low-grade things and these are due to two things the

proliferation of destructive chemicals called free radicals so that's what

we'll talk about today what what they are and what do we do about them and the

second is the decline in the ability of the brain to make energy we've talked

about that a little bit before we take a lot of stuff for granted in the body but

everything takes energy there's not a molecule that passes across a membrane

without without being shoveled it takes energy to do all those things

something like digestion we take it for granted it takes as much as a third of

all the energy that you make goes to digesting the food in your body and when

you have it when you get an infection when you get sick your body shuts down

because it needs all that energy to make little cells so that you can fight off

the disease to make white blood cells so all these cellular processes require

a lot of energy and when the body's ability to make and

she goes down than our ability to maintain balance and fend things off

also goes down and today we'll talk about the the first of those two though

we'll talk about free radicals so what is a free radical we're not talking

politically here we're talking biochemistry they're also called

reactive oxygen species so you'll see these two terms interchangeably and what

it is it is something that has been oxidized when you burn a log on the fire

you're oxidizing that log and it's happening at a very high temperature but

in the body it's the exact same thing is happening you're you're taking carbon

which is what what wood is made from and we take carbohydrates and fats and

proteins that have carbon in them and we oxidize them and that's because we can't

maintain that those temperatures of a fire inside our body we have enzymes

instead to make those reactions happen but anytime that you exciting you will

have a free radical because that's what oxygen does so it's sort of a necessary

evil it always has to happen and there's always a detrimental by-product but the

key is to maintain the balance so with normal metabolism there is sort of a

normal amount of free radicals what we're mostly concerned with is the

excess amount of free radicals that are created by

a detrimental lifestyle and my toxins and by stress so free radicals are

inevitable we just want to try to control the excess and we want to see

what we can do about balance II have the whole thing uh antioxidants why is there

so much talk about them because they neutralize free radicals and we will

talk specifically about something called glutathione which is the king of all

free radicals is it does the majority of all the antioxidant work in the body so

what is a free radical so here's a molecule here's an atom here's a nucleus

and then we have one electron shell and another electron shell and in the outer

electron shell depending on the the size of it but typical electrons such as

oxygen and most carbon they want to maintain eight electrons in the outer

shell but when oxygen comes along and you burn something when you extract

energy from it you are pulling off one of these electrons and now this molecule

is a free radical because it is very reactive it's like it's like the

Tasmanian devil it's this this twirling jagged thing

that just sort of embraces everything in its way because it's so reactive it will

do whatever it can to react with something else and pull another electron

off of something else to fill that shell again the problem is whatever it does

that it's going to pull an electron from something else and that thing

a free-radical so that's the problem with free radicals is that they cost

chain reactions whenever something is a free radical he'll try to get that

electron back and in doing so it creates another the key to antioxidants is that

they can donate an electron without becoming a free radical there's

something about their configuration that they can do that and not become so

unstable and the best one of them all is called glutathione and it's not just a

molecule it's the hue it's not just an animator it's a large molecule each day

try it peptide meaning you consists of three amino acids and what we'll get to

that also and I think that was all yes so what are some antioxidants the most

common ones are things that we get from the food and the acronym the people want

you to memorize is called aces it is vitamin A C & E like that aces so that's

vitamin A C E and selenium those are the primary antioxidants that we get from

food and they're all very important but they may not be enough and vitamin A we

get from things like carrots carotenoids they're yellow and orange and leafy

greens also contain those vitamin C comes from citrus green peppers leafy

greens fruits and berries vitamin E from nuts and seeds whole grains and leafy

greens you notice no leafy greens keeps showing up

maybe that's a good thing and selenium comes from fish red meat grains eggs

chicken and garlic then there's a bunch of these new ones that they have started

talking about a lot flavonoids poly phenols lycopene lutein lignans so don't

memorize it just kind of read up on it you don't really have to worry so much

you just have to eat good food that means whole food the more that we

processed food the more that we change it the more we destroy the antioxidants

because they're part of lot of foods so the most important antioxidant of all is

called glutathione and what is that besides being the king of antioxidants

it's the body's number-one intracellular defense so inside your body you have all

these different cells and they have nuclei with DNA in them but then you

have interstitial fluid between the cells and this is where waste products

and things drain into the lymph and then you have blood vessels that carry the

blood cells but there's an intracellular environment and an extracellular

environment and DNA and most were all actually on the metabolic processes

occur inside cells so there's not much action all what we're talking about

about health is really happening inside the cells the other stuff is just a

transport system so glutathione is produced inside the cells so we'll make

a little triangle to call that glutathione axis it's a tripeptide this

one is we we can eat this one but it is too large to pass across the cell

right it will not we can't eat it and get it absorb it has to be manufactured

inside the cell and it is the number one thing that your body uses for all sorts

of defense and all sorts of detox there are books written about glutathione

because it is so important so if we can't eat it then how do we get it well

we need to make it inside the cells and we need to have the raw materials to

make it and the raw materials are called cysteine glutamine and glycine there was

no there in your notes there are three amino acids and if you eat these three

amino acids that will be broken down then there will be absorbed and now

they're small enough to get into the cells and now your body can use those

amino acids to rebuild the glutathione there's only really one that you have to

be concerned with and that's cysteine cysteine is basically always the one

that's in short supply so if you just make sure that you have enough cysteine

then you always have enough building materials to make the glutathione that

you need it does occur I mean it is in food all

all amino acids or most amino acids are in most foods it's just a matter of how

do you get enough and in the case of cysteine I would suggest getting a

supplement because it's very inexpensive and it's very powerful if you want to

try to get it from foods then the main group to get it is from sulfur rich

vegetables and we'll we'll get to that also

so what does glutathione do it protects the cells and the DNA it protects the

mitochondria the energy factory it protects the liver the that your

detoxification plant your your chemical factory it protects the brain that

regulates everything it protects them from free oxidative damage meaning free

radicals but it also helps in in elimination of free of heavy metals such

as mercury and lead so one of the first things you want to do for for heavy

metal elimination is is glutathione and the precursors and your immune system

also benefits from glutathione first because it is made inside of all the

immune cells so if you have an infection and you need to make lots of immune

cells you need lots of glutathione to be inside of those too to protect them but

more than that natural killer T cells those are cells that go around and

protect against cancer cells and foreign invaders of all sorts and they are

activated only by glutathione so people with HIV and AIDS are typically

extremely low in glutathione and by bringing that up you can actually help

there in your system as well so we have genes inside the DNA inside the cell

there are genes that code for the manufacture of luta Thyle just like we

have it's just one of the hundred thousand proteins that that we can make

the genes code for all of that and typically in especially in cases of

are important like glutathione we have several genes that code for that and

they're not identical in all human beings just like some people have blue

eyes and brown eyes and we have one or more genes that code for different

things the genes that we have the code for glutathione are different also and

people who have a full set like to have a complete set of all the genes they

have a fantastic defense against all sorts of things they're generally

extremely healthy and most of us though don't have that complete set we don't

have all of them we have some of them and there's one that's fairly crucial

that as many as 50% of the population are missing and the interesting thing is

that if that from from self selection during evolution as as our DNA adapts to

the environment we tend to favor the traits that that help survival but

apparently if so many of us have that gene missing then that must not have

been a big deal throughout the thousands of years because otherwise we would have

died off and and only the people with a strong gene would have survived so the

difference is we are our environment is so much more toxic today than it was

during the last forty thousand years if the environment is clean and we don't

have so much stress and not so much toxins then you can get by on not making

so much and it's not even a disadvantage but the more toxic the environment get

and the more stressed we get the more crucial it becomes to have that full set

and if we don't then we need to do something extra to to supplement

and reduce stress so the last 20 to 50 years they have added 80,000 chemicals

to our environment we eat dead food we have heavy metals and all the fish and

now those partial genes can't quite keep up so again I I hate every time this

sounds like a doomsday lecture but we just have to realize that with what

we've done where we are is not ideal and we just have to do the best with it we

have to do something about it so glutathione your most important

molecule for health it is depleted by poor diets processed foods preservatives

etc pollutions toxins medications stress trauma aging infections and nutritional

deficiencies and that's that's all in your notes and conditions associated

with lack of luta theone is virtually everything under the sun chronic fatigue

heart disease cancer chronic infections autoimmune diseases diabetes autism

Alzheimer's Parkinson's arthritis asthma kidney problems liver disease etc

glutathione is so powerful that in the emergency room if you come in with liver

failure from overdosing on Tylenol which by the way is fairly common it doesn't

take much there's tens of thousands of cases every year it's so common that

it's it's there's a protocol for it in the emergency room the first thing they

give you is is cysteine so you can make more glutathione that's how powerful it

is and the name for what you get is NAC stands for and

acetylcysteine and that's the supplement form that that you can buy also it's

very inexpensive and very powerful they they give it to people before they do

kidney or contrast x-ray imaging when they know they're going to expose people

to a lot of radiation they give them some in acetylcysteine ahead of time to

help protect the tissues so it's it's a common and it's a powerful thing so

eight ways to boost your glutathione one is sulfur rich foods and there's been a

lot of talk there's people saying that they have cured ms and they cured

autoimmune diseases and cancer and different things from from eating sulfur

rich foods sulfur rich vegetables and the main reason is that the sulfur

they're talking about is a sulfur molecule in the cysteine when you have

more cysteine you can make more glutathione and you balance your body

out and help protect it and those are things like garlic onions and

cruciferous vegetables broccoli kale collards cabbage it's all the cabbages

and all the green stuff basically or most of the greens second thing is to

take bioactive whey protein whey protein has been found to have virtually none of

if it's done right to have none of the bad properties of dairy most people in

the holistic field who who study health they are not very they're not very

favorable of milk and dairy products but the exception is whey protein

cuz when you process it right it is very very low in in allergens very few people

are allergic to it and it has tremendous benefits it helps the body make

glutathione it participates a great protein it's a great food and it's a

little bit on the pricey side when you get it the right stuff but think of it

as food because it's really like a meal replacement so if you spend a couple of

bucks on it it's what you don't spend on food and it has to be on denatured that

means you want to take an organic grass-fed holistically raised cow take

the pear milk and you process out the way without using heat or chemicals

because now you maintain all the properties and that way is called um

denature and bioactive virtually all the way protein sold on the market is whey

protein isolate and they tell you oh this is great because we've isolated all

the good stuff no it's not because they use acid and chemicals and

heat to process it and they denature it and it's not what it's supposed to be

anymore it's more of a burden to your body than

a benefit exercise will increase raise glutathione in will help your immune

system and it will help detoxification for n-acetylcysteine we said that

already used to the emergency room to treat liver failure and also for lung

and kidney damage during x-ray studies so even they know about it

five alpha lipoic acid this is a second antioxidants but second only to gluten

in importance that's something that you can eat that that your body does utilize

and it helps with various antioxidative functions but it also helps replenish

glutathione because you're always sort of recycling glutathione in your body

meth sex methylation nutrients so methyl a methyl group is a little appendix

thing on a molecule that the liver uses to make things less toxic so if you have

something that's really really toxic then the liver takes methyl groups and

slaps them on this really toxic thing and now it's not so toxic anymore and it

becomes typically water-soluble and you can flush it out with with a pile of the

natural way so methylation is very very important and there's two in particular

b6 and b12 so whenever you take b6 and b12 those vitamins are important by

themselves but if you take them when they're made to have a methyl group on

them now they're just many times more beneficial because now they do so much

more so as you're taking those vitamins you

might as well take the best form which is the methyl form so b12 comes as

methyl cobalamin which is the one you want the cheap one is cyano cobalamin

that they throw in 99% of all multivitamins yeah so cyan

coal pile up and can you read that and

methyl cobalamin and there's nothing wrong with this one it's just cheaper

and this one is just so much better because it won't in addition to giving

you b12 it helps you in detoxification

and then you had the ACS that we talked about vitamin A C E and selenium they

help the body recycle and produce more glutathione and then there is an herb

called milks milk thistle or silymarin I guess that sounds pronounced and for

thousands of years that's been used to help in liver disease and to help boost

glutathione levels and on the sheet that we have printed out for supplements that

you want to take all of these things are already in there and the multis super

multi that we recommend from life-extension has all of these and more

it has all of the lignans and lycopene and all of those antioxidants that

they've found that's that's really a lot of what you're paying for in that

supplements that long long list most of those are antioxidants of

different kinds that they have found to be beneficial so

that concludes it for tonight for it for this afternoon do we have any questions