Endurance athletes score among the top one percent of producing glutathione, including former professional Olympic athlete Greg Bennett, now host of the Greg Bennett Show. "[Learning this] fascinated me because I was taking a product called Glyteine^® and I wasn't sure if I needed to be taking it," he told his guest Ara Suppiah, MD.

This didn’t shock Suppiah, who believes there’s a time and place for taking antioxidants. As a certified ER physician, trained cardiac surgeon, sports medicine physician, functional medicine practitioner and Chinese medicine physician, Suppiah explained that natural, gifted high-performance endurance athletes tend to have higher glutathione levels. "Their antioxidant capacity is higher. Their mitochondria are better. … they’ve inherited really good genes from their moms."

While supplementation to increase glutathione may or may not be necessary for an elite athlete because they have a higher redox potential, Suppiah did have one caveat: "If you increase your [exercise] volume significantly for a certain period of time and you start to see your numbers plateau and are not seeing the improvement, at that point, supplementing to increase cellular glutathione production is a great idea." Glyteine^®, available in Continual-G^® products, has been shown to quickly increase cellular glutathione levels above homeostasis.

Suppiah explained the easiest, noninvasive ways to measure your own redox potential. "Put it all together," he advised. "If your numbers have stabilized. If your resting heart rate is starting to creep up. If your heart rate variability (HRV) has stabilized or dropped a bit… or if you see a sudden spike in HRV … it may be your body slapping on the brakes because you've pushed it too hard." That's when adding a rest period and strategically increasing your antioxidant support with Glyteine^®, is important.

Listen to the full podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-greg-bennett-show/id1492933135?i=1000496088050