On this episode of Vitality Radio, Jared continues the conversation about protein, amino acids, methylation, and detoxification. He explains how the body uses amino acids to make glutathione, one of its most important antioxidant and detoxification compounds. Jared also breaks down the roles of NAC, selenium, zinc, B vitamins, TMG, creatine, and protein quality in supporting normal detox pathways. You’ll hear why daily detox support may matter as much as occasional deep cleanses, how food and supplementation can work together, and why balance is more important than extreme diet strategies. Jared also shares practical was to support methylation, liver function, antioxidant defenses, and overall resilience through everyday nutrition.
Full Transcript
Methionine matters, glycine, matters though. And so does cysteine and so to glutathione and soda B vitamins and sodas zinc and sort of selenium. You get the point.
It's not that fat is bad or fat as good, that carbs are bad, or carbs or good or animal protein is good. Or even more methylation is. Good or met less.
Methylation is, good balance is king. and ultimately, if we can find balance in our diets. We can use less supplements and then target supplements when it makes sense to optimize our well-being.
Welcome to Vitality Radio, the podcast that helps you make sense of natural supplements, and thrive without pharma drugs. I'm Jared St. Clair. Detox starts with protein.
Today is part two of our conversation about methionine and methylation, but this episode is really about detoxification. That's where I want to put most of my focus because, well, frankly, it's a critical thing we all need to be paying attention to anyway.
And I think most people who listen to this show realize that. I certainly get a ton of questions about detoxification and one of the things that I hope you get out of this is that there are so many things we can do in our diet and with our basic supplementation beyond, you know, the big parasite cleanse or the Big Liver Detox, I'm not opposed to any of those things.
I preach about those thing on a regular basis, but there daily things that can be done to support our systems that I think are often overlooked and many of them have simply to do with just our diets like we talked about in the last episode.
If you didn't hear the episode, would pause this one now and I'd go back and listen to that one first because this One relies fairly heavily on that One for context and so I want you to make sure you understand all this and give both of these episodes a shot Okay, so when someone says detox, you know, what do you think of milk thistle?
Maybe greens a parasite cleanse like I said Maybe spending three days on a juice fast and running to the bathroom on the regular. No, because I mean sure you might think those things but detoxification is an everyday thing.
Those pathways require raw materials and some of the most important raw material are amino acids and that means adequate nutrition, specifically adequate and balanced protein intake.
Here's a 60 second recap from last episode, but like I said, I would recommend listening to it before you listen to this one. If you already have, though, hopefully this will, you know, get your brain back into that space so that you can remember where we were talking about there.
Methionine becomes SAMI. SAMIs involved in methylation. That pathway eventually gives us homocysteine. Homocystein can be recycled back towards methionines or it can take another road towards cysteines.
Today, we're taking that road because cysteine is one of the three amino acids required to make glutathione. Those three-amino acids are glutamate, cystein, glycine, and glutothione is on of body's major antioxidants, generally considered the master antioxidant for the body, for liver, in a powerful detoxification tool.
That's the bridge, methionine-cystein-glutathion-detoxification. Glutothion gets called the Master Antioxidant, as I said, I don't love calling everything the master of every something, but glutathione is incredibly important, and I think it's overstated.
It helps cells manage oxidative stress. it also participates in normal liver detoxification processes. Your body can attach glutothione to certain compounds and help move them toward elimination.
But the piece that I want you to remember here is that your body has to build glutathione and it builds it from glutamine or glutamate, cysteine, glycine.
So supporting glutothione starts with nutrition before anything else. Cystein often gets most of the attention because it can be the limiting ingredient.
That's why N-acetylcysteines or NAC is so popular as a glutithione precursor. But glycein matters too and you do need all three. Now glutamine, frankly, or glutamate is pretty easy to get.
It's found all over the place in protein and generally doesn't need to be supplemented unless you're doing something like a leaky gut protocol where you taking on an empty stomach and then it does wonders for your body.
But for the purposes of building glutathione, The reason that a lot of times NAC is the thing is because that cysteine or lack of cystein is a limiting factor, but glycine can also be a limited factor which is why in the last episode we talked about the importance of not just muscle meats for our protein.
So when we talk about those three amino acids, we have to remember not just muscle meat, not bone broth, and not plant protein. Different foods emphasize different amino acid because glutamine, like I say, is found all over the place.
Cysteine is plentiful in foods like eggs, poultry, meat and dairy, legumes. Methionine in abundant in eggs and fish, meats and other complete proteins.
Glycine, though, especially concentrated in skin, tendons, cartilage, connective tissue, bones and broth. slow cooked, tougher cuts of meat. And our ancestors may not have understood glutathione, but they simply didn't waste any of those parts of the animal.
So we've got to make sure that we are focusing and getting those other areas mixed in. That can be done strictly through diet and you can figure out how to do it.
And I encourage you to do it. And it's way easier to now than it used to be because bone broth, you can buy in a 32 ounce liquid at Costco right now. Right.
So it can be done much more easily than used. To be, and it be worked in to our diets much easier than you used it to. Like I said, for me and my family, we actually use the Rebuild Plus as a delicious option to make sure that we're getting that level of nutrition as well.
But let's talk about something I get asked about all the time, and that is heavy metal detoxification specifically. We have these environmental toxins all around us, including endocrine disrupting chemicals that I talk ad nauseum sometimes on this show, but heavy metals.
are one that I get asked about a lot. And it's not that methionine is a heavy metal chelator specifically. You don't take methione and it magically grabs the mercury out of your brain for instance.
But glutathione is part of the body's normal defense and handling system for environmental toxins including heavy metals. Metals such as mercury, cadmium, arsenic and lead can increase oxidative stress and interfere with sulfur containing compounds and antioxidant systems.
Glutathione is one of the important protective systems involved in all of this. And now if you look at everything necessary to support that system, here's the list.
It's protein, methionine, cysteine glycine all from protein. Gluteathion made from those amino acids, selenium and zinc, those minerals, B vitamins, and then of course keeping your liver in good shape.
All of that is critical in All Of This. So when you think about that big list, it can get overwhelming. But it's really not if you thing about it in the individual parts and where you might be getting these parts from.
If you get the right proteins, you've got the amino acids covered. The reason that my vital five starts with a great multi-vitamin and I always say great because most multi vitamins are not great.
I'll remind you of that. And the reason I developed my multi vitamin, the ultimate vitality multi the way that I did is because we wanted to cover these key elements so that you don't have to get them in a bunch of different supplements that gets overwhelming.
It gets expensive and it gets a lot of pills. So, Ultimate Vitality Multi has zinc, selenium, the B vitamins, and the proper form of folate, proper B12, B6, or B2 or riboflavin and even that 200 mg of TMG that I mentioned to make sure the body is doing its methylation job without having to take a bunch of additional supplements to help make that happen.
And then we also include in it broccoli, dandelion and burdock. Those are included for normal liver detoxification pathway function to make sure things are open on a daily basis.
Here's my take on this. Basically, we're detoxifying daily. Our body is doing it with or without us. The question is, is it doing well because we have supported it in that process.
I do not think that what is in any multivitamin, including mine, or what does in diet, my own diet is enough with the environmental load that we are subjected to on a daily basis here in America and beyond.
And therefore I say, let's support our daily detoxification all of the time. with the diet that we eat, meaning we're avoiding a lot of the toxins with our diet, but also eating a lotta the nutrition that supplements our body's ability to do these things, and taking things like the ultimate vitality multivitamin that covers all of those key elements that might not be getting in our diets, fills in a lof those gaps for us.
That's our daily thing. And then the occasional thing is going after the toxins in a more deep way with things like liver vitality, endo cleanse, which of course there's other episodes on these products where I recommend a month or two on liver Vitality twice a year and a couple of months, or maybe even three on endoclanes twice, depending on where you're at with your hormone picture and status that way as well.
If we can basically Keep the house clean for the most part, but once it gets a little bit too cluttered, do a deep clean. You do it in your home. So many of us do spring cleaning or whatever it is once a year where we clean the blinds and go all out.
Then that I think makes all kinds of sense. And some of those detoxification periods can be used on parasite detoxifications, some can use on liver detoxication, Some can used in endocrine detox, but daily detox support I think matters a whole lot because daily abuse through these toxins from our environment are certainly, it's happening to all of us, right?
So I don't put amino acids in the Ultimate Vitality Multi or in Vital 5 simply because If you are eating right, even if it's not perfect, you should be getting plenty of amino acids in your diet, especially if you're finding the balance that I talked about and I had to make things as universal as possible with the Vital 5 and frankly trim it down to as few supplements as possibly to give you as much as I could in the limited amount of capsules that i'm actually recommending, which I know even the vital 5 is overwhelming for some people, I get it.
but it is the world that we live in. Now, how does NAC fit into this? Because a lot of people are big fans of NEC. It provides the body with a very highly bioavailable form of L-cysteine.
Cysteines is one of the three building blocks that makes glutathione and tells you, is, the key element that oftentimes from a supplement standpoint is missing in, in glutathon production.
And glycine is other one that can be missing and glutothione production if we're not getting enough of once again, collagen and all of that sort of thing.
And so NAC can make sense as a supplement. It can makes sense is a daily supplement, a lot of people do that. I personally like NIC and use NEC as part of my detoxification protocols a couple of times a year.
That's why it's in liver vitality. And it also can, make for pretty much any kind of detox that you want to do. NNAC, can it make a sense. Take it every day if you, want there's no downside to taking N. A. C on a, daily basis other than it is another supplement to take.
I guess I just don't think it's necessary on a daily basis, but I think that makes a lot of sense in periodic detoxification. And then again, without NAC is great, but if you're not getting enough glycine, that's a big deal.
And so then we can talk about ways to get glycein. I talked about all the protein sources of glycyne, But some people now, a lot of people are supplementing with glycerin on its own, two to five grams, usually in a powder form before bed as a powerful sleep aid.
A lot people find really good results with that. So it's something that you could consider doing that way, especially if you're not getting much of the connective tissue aspects of animal protein.
So that's another way that can kind of create that balance between methionine and lysine if so desire. Now let's just quickly touch on creatine too, because it has a surprising connection to methylation that I don't think people have thought about, or at least I had never thought.
You mostly think about muscle and strength and exercise and brain health with creatinine. And I've talked a lot about all that, but creatines is interesting.
Because making creatine uses methyl groups. So if you consume creatines, you're supplying something to your body that otherwise would have to be manufactured to a great degree.
Creatine isn't a methyl donor, but supplemental creatinine can reduce some of the body's need to make createne internally, which means this supplement we normally think about for muscle also intersects with methylation.
And I love that connection. And it actually even makes a little bit more sense in a case in Jen's case, because she supplements 10 grams of creatine every day.
Perhaps that's one of the reasons why she actually gets away with less of The Methyl Donors, even though she's dealing with the MTHFR stuff. And I had never pieced that together, and I don't think she's ever piecing that and talked to her before I recorded this show, but we'll certainly talk about it now.
Perhaps that's why she gets away with less of the methylfolate and the Methyl B12, as some people do, is because she is actually taking the load off of her body by supplementing creatine.
Now going on to the MTHFR thing again, if you have Mthfr variants, the same foundations still apply. Protein, glycine, B12, B6, b2, folate, TMG, and so on.
The difference is that I would pay much closer attention to how efficiently the methylation pathway is working. What is homocysteine actually doing? And that's one that blood tests will tell you a lot.
what's the diet like? How does the person respond to folates and high b12? Is it like gin where it actually makes her more agitated rather than making her feel better?
Be cautious with that. And if you do find that that's happening, reduce your doses. If you find the too much methyl B12 is an issue, consider hydroxocobalamin.
That has worked really well for gin and is certainly worth looking into. Again, we're optimally methylated, not maximally methylating. So when we look at the detox from a diet standpoint, what does that actually look like?
way more simple than maybe you think. I don't know. You want vegetables, certain vegetables specifically, and that is going to be the cruciferous vegetables.
Things like broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage. kale, things like that. Any other cruciferous vegetables apply. These are fantastic specifically for the endocrine disrupting chemicals.
You want leafy greens, you want choline rich foods like eggs, really good pasture raised organic eggs. you Want glycine rich food like, of course, bone broth, slow cooked meats, connective tissue, or something like Rebuild or collagen powder can work as well.
you want adequate fiber, you wanna plenty of water, You want normal bowel function and you movement and sleep. That's really what it is for daily detoxification.
It's not as detailed as you might think it, it's just covering those bases, checking those boxes. Then if you wanted to supplement, like I said, those things that we've already talked about are really important.
The Vital 5, It covers so many bases, but especially in this case, the Ultimate Vitality Multi makes a ton of sense. Supplementing with glycine or collagen or Rebuild Plus, or another bone broth of a good quality of your choice, any of those things makes all kinds of since.
And then the occasional use, occasional is probably not the right word, regular but not consistent use. How about that? Cycling on and off of things like liver vitality, endo cleanse, maybe one of our parasite protocols, things that.
periodically going after it hard for a month or two or three, depending on what it is you're going After and then going back to normal, giving your body a little bit of a break, letting it recover and relax and all that kind of stuff so that you are not fully trying to detox all the time because I think that can be a bit too much as well.
So what does my simple framework look like? Eat enough complete protein, especially as you age. That's number one. Number two, don't let all of your protein be muscle meat.
Make sure that you're getting those collagenous foods that we've talked about over and over again in this series. whether it's through the ultimate vitality multi or through organ glandular supplements like we've talked about or some combination of those things.
Number five, make sure you're getting that collagenous protein. If you need to supplement it, do it with Rebuild Plus. And number six, if you really are struggling in the methylation pathway side, extra B vitamins that are methylated and cell ready, NAC, TMG and perhaps even creatine can be useful.
And that's it. What I'm hoping happens with this episode, this series of episodes, is that I've just shed a light on mostly this concept, I guess I'll say, of balance over extremism.
That's really where I come out on so much of this stuff. and that does not mean I am opposed to fasting. I love fasting! It does NOT mean that i'm opposed hardcore fasting, like dry fasting for three days or water fasting three things like that.
I think that's great. Also think carnivore can be great for short term for a lot of people. Some people think it's a long-term strategy. Personally not convinced of that, but that me, I'm not opposed to all raw vegan short-terms, especially if you're dealing with something where detoxification is this really critical element.
And in some cases people have cured cancer doing that But I don't think that's a long-term strategy. I personally am going to do a little short burst of keto for a month or so very soon, which I've had a lot of success with in the past.
But, I think mostly for me, and I live in a real world and realize that it can get overwhelming, it can get very, very difficult to follow a very hardcore diet strategy when you want to go out with your friends or you wanna feed your kids something that you're not feeding yourself or your husband or wife or whatever it is.
And so for me, It boils down to me looking at the world Me looking at what God's designed for us and me thinking to myself that more often than not, we should probably be partaking in most of that, not little specific avenues one way or the other.
A lot of people might disagree with me and if you're one of those people, I have no problem with that either. I don't claim to know that I'm right on any of this stuff, but it is how I feel and I hope it makes sense to you.
So as I close, Methionine matters. Glycine matter though. And so does cysteine. So does glutathione. Soda B vitamins. and soda zinc and so the selenium.
You get the point. It's not that fat is bad or fat as good. The carbs are bad. Carbs are good or animal protein is good, or even more methylation is better.
Balance is king. Ultimately, if we can find balance in our diets, We can use less supplements and then target supplements when it makes sense to optimize our wellbeing.
I hope this has been a helpful episode for you. These episodes are a lot different than a lotta the episodes I've done in the past, but I thought they were very helpful, at least to me.
They've made me rethink the way that I'm eating and really put some focus on some areas that i haven't focused on recently. Give me some feedback. The best way to do that is in our chat.
vitalitynutrition.com, or you can hit us up with an email if you'd like, which you could do through our website as well. You can jump on Instagram, at Vitality Nutrition Bountiful is the way you get us there.
And you an also comment on Spotify on this episode, and you comment YouTube on the episode aswell. I would love to have your feedback in any of those places.
Positive, negative, I like to hear it all. It makes the show better when you participate. If you want to participate in the shows, there is a listeners community.
It's on Facebook, we'll link it. It is always linked in the show description. We'd love for you to join. You know, it's free. That's a great group of people that provide great advice to each other.
And I am vowing with this episode to get in there more often myself and provide more content in their because I think it is just an amazing community and I've frankly neglected it a bit over the last little while.
So jump in to the Facebook community if you're on facebook. Its definitely worth being there. I'm Jared St. Clair. Thank you so much for listening to me on Vitality Radio.
Hello, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of Vitality Radio. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast has not been evaluated by the FDA.
Thank you.
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