People often ask what are the glutathione side effects. There is only one that is known to science. It will be at the end of this post. First, there are a few things you need to know.
It is a bit of a wrong question as what they most likely want to know is what are the side effects of cysteine.
Glutathione is a naturally occurring antioxidant within our body. To take oral glutathione results in very little benefit. This is because studies show that the gut breaks it down and makes it into a form that the body is not able to absorb.
Oh yes, as to the skin whitening, There were no, not one high level studies that shows that glutathione whitens your skin. The thing that makes our skin dark actually is part of the mechanism that protects us and is part of the glutathione production.
If your red from sunburn, then cysteine can indeed whiten your skin from the red of the burn. This is because it helps the body heal the burn.
As to the side effects of glutathione, there is basically only one for oral glutathione.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1362956
A PubMed article: The Systemic Availability of Oral Glutathione has an interesting take on this.
It starts off by addressing what is now known as low CG syndrome. In HIV infection, alcoholics, and patients with cirrhosis, there is a decrease of glutathione.
So the hypothesis was presented that increasing the availability of circulating glutathione by oral administration might benefit such patients.
To check out if it would work, they gave a supplement of oral glutathione to 7 healthy volunteers.
The result….The researchers found that dietary glutathione is not a major determinant of circulating glutathione, and it is not possible to increase circulating glutathione to a clinically beneficial extent by the oral administration…of glutathione.
Because the body does not absorb it, there are no side effects reported on.
It should be noted that sometimes when you read that foods have glutathione in them, this may be a marketing ploy. Actually these are often new findings as books over a few years ago do not list these foods as having glutathione.
So, why are they saying this. Well, some foods do have cysteine. This is one of the main precursors of glutathione.
The Glutathione Diet has the foods rich in the glutathione potentiatator cysteine.
Oh yes, the one side effect. Oral glutathione has been associated with extreme and needless pain in the wallet syndrome, also known as parting with your money for nothing syndrome.
In some circles it is viewed as a enabling and co-dependency problem. This is because those who are afflicted with this are often supporting a market that is taking their money and providing no benefit.
Can you spell con artist.
Most do not even realize the condition exists because they are experiencing a placebo effect. If your going to spend the money, why not go for the better quality cysteine supplements. There are several on the market. Two are even listed in the physicians desk reference and are used in the hospital.
If there were a better way, it would start with life style and diet changes.
Good health to you and yours.