How Glutathione Works & Detoxing: Interview with Dr. Robert H. Keller

This article is excellent for the way it describes Glutathione, the importance of Glutathione in supporting wellness in our bodies, and ways we can boost our levels of it with a supplement. The supplement mentioned in the article is MaxGXL. The third generation of this product is now available and is called MaxATP, which is only in powder form and is added to a glass of water.

Where is Max International Today?

Very few companies in the history of this industry (and even outside the industry) have been able to do what we are doing at this current time. We are working with medical professionals and within our infancy we have double-blind placebo crossover studies currently being done by Dr. Robert Keller. We are in a wonderful stage and a wonderful time, and we are excited about the future.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane and have you tell us what spawned your research.

It really was very simple–it was the recognition on my part that when I went into practice and saw people who were really impacted by horrendous chronic diseases and although I could stop the process to a large degree with pharmaceuticals (things I could write with my pen on a prescription pad) I couldn’t do something for them that I considered absolutely paramount. The pharmaceuticals did not help us to actually treat them as people – to give them back their quality of life, give them back their energy, give them back their ability to think, give them back their ability to play. Try as I might, looking at the pharmaceuticals, there was nothing in that arena that was going to achieve that, and so I went back to the drawing boards and I found a lab error that suggested they were deficient in antioxidants.

At that time I had no more nutritional training than any other allopathic doctor (which is virtually none), so I went back into the literature and ultimately came up with the idea and the fact that glutathione is the master “everything.” It’s the master antioxidant; it’s the master detoxifier; it is also the “maestro” of the immune system. Once having discovered that glutathione was the thing that I needed to give my patients if I was going to effectively treat them as people as opposed to treating their disease, I then spent three years going through formulations that would allow me to do give them the most “bang for the buck” with the simplest formula that I could come up with. The result of that was an antecedent product to MaxGXL that worked very well. It didn’t do what MaxGXL does, but it did raise glutathione levels.

In order to prove that, I had to go back and prove my own lab tests, because all glutathione at that juncture was measured in red blood cells, but it wasn’t very effective to find what was going on in the present. The lab test was developed; we did the studies, etc. We then got involved with Steve Scott, who was a great visionary and he said, “Doc – can’t you make this better?” Nobody had challenged me to do that, so I gave it a try, and ultimately we came up with the formulation for MaxGXL, which has done more things in shorter periods of time than I would ever have given it credit for. I really think the hand of the Lord was with me when I was developing that formula because it’s obviously beyond that which I could have done by myself.

This was nearly over a decade period of time. It started in 1996, and the first product came out in 1998; the lab test was developed in 1999 and presented at the National AIDS lab meeting in that year, and the product has been redone more times than my business partner would like to believe! We had a very small nutritional company called Vitamune and the problem was, when we did labels we had to do 5,000 at a time, but we never got through a run of labels on the glutathione product before I had already changed the product! This merely proves that the field keeps moving–and I will not even tell you that MaxGXL, as it exists right now will not be improved, as there are more things in the literature that suggest to me it’s worth going back and doing the kind of stuff I’ve always done (which is to develop a formula, try it on myself, try it on a few other people, try it on some of my “most ill” patients–and then if it works for them), consider changing what I’ve got that is being sold as MaxGXL.

This lets us know that we are never resting on our laurels, and that our complete focus stays true to what your original focus was and that was to improve the quality of life regardless of what measures need to be taken.

If you think about this, we (meaning me and Max International and everybody who is a distributor and working to improve the lives of others with MaxGXL) are really the three legs of the stool. As you well know, if you take one leg away it doesn’t work very well! So I will continue my commitment and I know you will, and Max International will–because we have a great message to give to the world.

Will you talk a little bit about glutathione so that people can completely understand how important this component is in our daily function?

Let me start with a very simple statement: Were you to have no glutathione, you would not have life. There are genetic defects that are created in utero (or when an embryo is developed) that prevent the development of glutathione–and that’s called a “lethal mutation”. That is to say the baby is never born, and there are multiple incidents of groups of people who have genetic defects in terms of glutathione control who have numbers of problems; i.e., the recent state of people who died of normal doses of Tylenol simply because they didn’t have the enzymes necessary to reconstitute their glutathione.

So to not give glutathione its rightful due on top of the antioxidant chain and in terms of life itself is a mistake. Glutathione exists in each cell in the body–and the body doesn’t make mistakes! If it is the thing that the body creates in every cell, there has got to be a vital function for it – and there is. In each cell you have a little energy packet or a furnace (or whatever you want to call it) called the mitochondria, and in that combustion engine or furnace there is a lot of heat going on, and that heat tends to burn the very structures that will produce energy tomorrow. If those surfaces and those structures cannot be repaired, your energy wanes at a precipitous rate.

There are multiple studies that show as we age or as we get sick, glutathione levels drop like a rock, and the sicker you are the lower they are, and every disease that can be looked at will show you decreased glutathione. So that tells you how important it is. Glutathione is the repair mechanism for the structures that are necessary for the production of energy in every cell of your body, meaning that it controls the heart, the brain, the thyroid, and any other organ system or any other gland in the body. When we ask the question, “Does it work well?” the answer comes out in veritably “Yes!”   If you don’t have enough glutathione you do not get the production of whatever it is that cell is supposed to do, and as a result, the organism (you, as a whole) are diminished.

When we look at glutathione, people don’t have the option of saying they don’t need it. This is something that you body absolutely has to have in order to function. Would you discuss how this differs from something we could get from some source of nature?

Again, the body doesn’t make mistakes. There are only four (including CoQ10) antioxidants that the body creates internally. The rest of them come from food, and everyone of the antioxidants has a purpose, but if you look at the endogenous antioxidants, they are thousands of times more powerful and most of the other antioxidants, such as vitamin C, vitamin E, and vitamin A, all of them feed in one way or another to the endogenous antioxidants. For example, if I have enough vitamin C around, maybe I don’t have to make as much glutathione because the vitamin C can help, but it’s still going to glutathione–and the reason for that is very simple. In this furnace (in this mitochondria) there are billions of free radicals being created thousands of times a second, and there is one particular radical called the “hydroxyl radical” that is probably the most damming and dangerous free radical that we develop.

It is glutathione that takes the hydroxyl radical out of the equation, both in terms of glutathione itself and in terms of enzymes that glutathione produces that are absolutely for the neutralization of the hydroxyl radical. If the hydroxyl radical is not taken out of the equation it can damage blood vessels, can damage cells, can reduce the energy of every cell in your body, can burn the mitochondria so that they cannot produce energy, and can damage the gene machine that is responsible for the production of new mitochondria. So not only do you not have good functioning mitochondria, you can’t even replace them! Other than that, you really need glutathione for nothing!

By obligate necessity, we create the hydroxyl radical because we are oxygen-based organisms. Oxygen is necessary, but it’s a two-edged sword. It allows us to breathe; it allows us to provide the oxygen necessary to be consumed with food in the mitochondria. In this furnace you put in oxygen and food and you get out ATP (or the energy).

We talk about all the pollution (and that certainly is a major factor and is getting to be worse) but even if we had none of that, even if we were in the most pristine environment in the world, eating the best foods that were not preserved, breathing in the most pure air that you could think of, drinking water uncontaminated by municipal water systems–if all that were true, we would still need glutathione because we wouldn’t get ATP if we didn’t have it. Our design is to produce ATP from oxygen and food, so without oxygen (which becomes a free radical) and without the food, which (within this chain) becomes a free radical, we wouldn’t create energy. Without glutathione we don’t create energy because those things that become free radicals burn the mitochondria, which are responsible for the production of energy.

If you add the increased pollution, the increased stress, the increased preservation of food with all kinds of things that are organic and all of which need to be detoxified by the liver (the washing machine of your body), no wonder we are in trouble! Think of glutathione as the detergent for the washing machine because if you didn’t have glutathione you wouldn’t detoxify anything. If you put all that together with stress, with lack of sleep and with all the other lifestyle choices, you are kind of in a pickle without this glutathione. It is your ultimate bale-out.

In the aspartame that’s in the diet Coke are organics that need to be detoxified by your liver, so every time you have a diet Coke, you are using up the glutathione. What are you putting it back with?

The proliferation of the energy drinks that are out there now – Red Bull and all that stuff – is life-endangering. Let me tell you, because of the preservatives that are in there and because of some of the other ingredients, you are putting stress on the washing machine, your liver. And if you don’t have glutathione you will not detoxify it. By creating that false energy (which these things do) you ultimately crash, and one of the things that leads to the crash is the utilization of glutathione which doesn’t give you enough to keep going at the level you would like. So if you want the law of diminishing returns, just do ten Red Bulls a day! You’ll get energy for two or three hours and at the same time you are going to be aging your body, decreasing the functionality of the mitochondria and of every cell in your body – and at the end of the day, what have you achieved?

Can you talk a little bit more about the benefits of a clean system and the possibility of dumping these toxins a little too quickly and what does happen in that case?

In seeing some of the questions that are coming from the distributors it is becoming obvious that detox reactions are occurring more and more frequently. I can only attribute that to the fact that (a) the distributors are really doing a good job of getting the message across and more and more people are taking the MaxGXL, and (b) when Steve and I first discussed this he gave me the challenge of creating it for “normal people.” First, I have never met a normal person and second, most of the people that I hear from are far from normal and have a list of medical problems that are as long as my arm.

In any case, the following happens (and think of this kind of like a garbage heap): Glutathione in a very real way, is a little like fly paper, and it will pick up the toxins that are in the cells and get rid of them. The problem is that as they are exiting the body they are going through the bloodstream, and if there is too much of them there, you feel the effects. I believe that when toxins increase in your bloodstream it engenders an immunological response and that makes you feel like you’ve got the flu or you want to throw up or you’ve got GI problems or you’ve got a massive headache or a variety of other things. But all of it seems to center on things that I know that the immune response does when it gets over exuberant about a problem.

The way to solve it is very simple: If the poisons are at the top of the “garbage heap”, it’s going to happen right away. If the poisons are buried further down in the garbage heap, it’s going to take longer to occur. I’ve seen detox reactions happen out to as long as 18 months – initially you feel wonderful and then a month, two months, three months, etc, you feel terrible. That’s not because it’s stopped working, that’s because it’s working even more effectively to clean up your cells. That garbage heap (by the way) is your cells, the fat cells in your body. Fat cells aggregate poisons and the deeper down in the garbage heap of the fat cell it is, the longer it is going to take to get out. Please don’t stop! These detox reactions are actually going to benefit more than somebody who never gets a detox reaction, but they didn’t have the poisons – you do!

You can drop back to one capsule–you can even break open the capsule and sprinkle a quarter of it in applesauce and increase by doubling it once a week until they got back up to full doses. You will go through the detox reaction with minor symptoms and at the end of the day your cells are going to get the best “wash and wax” that they’ve ever had! They will be able to function the way they did when you came out of the womb before you got exposed to all the stuff that is in our environment.

Do you have any final thoughts?

Two things:

(1) If you are undergoing a detox reaction, the more you hydrate the less bad it will be. That is critically important.

(2) I want to enjoy the rest of my life. The studies of glutathione have shown that the levels go down in every age group except one, and that one is the people who reach 100 years of age. Interestingly, those people have glutathione levels that approximate those of a normal 30 to 40 year-old – not a sick one – a normal one. I don’t think this is coincidence. That may tell you if you really make the right lifestyle choices and do MaxGXL as your body says it needs it that you may have a longer life.

Please help us to get the message across because this is life changing and we need everyone’s help to do it.